Renate Riemeck

Renate Riemeck (October 4, 1920 in Breslau – May 12, 2003 in Alsbach-Hähnlein) was an historian and energetic peace activist.

As a young woman she joined the "Christian Community" ("Christengemeinschaft") an anthropsophical denomination founded by a group of evangelical theologians in Switzerland in 1922, and which was banned in Germany in 1941. After the war she was among the millions who relocated away from the center and east of Germany, moving to Oldenburg where she worked in teacher training, herself authoring one of the first democratic school text books of the period. In the early 1940s, while living at Jena, Riemeck befriended the newly widowed Dr Ingeborg Meinhof, moving in with the Meinhof family as a lodger. After the war, with Jena in the Russian occupation zone, the Meinhofs moved with her to Oldenburg where, following Ingeborg Meinhof’s death from cancer in 1949, Riemeck formally became guardian to her friend’s two orphaned children one of whom, Ulrike Meinhof, would subsequently gain notoriety.

ources and Further Reading

*De| Renate Riemeck

Renate Riemeck: Ich bin ein Mensch für mich. Aus einem unbequemen Leben. Stuttgart : Urachhaus, 2. Aufl. 1994. ISBN 3-87838-934-5