Renate Riemeck

Renate Riemeck (4 October 1920 in Breslau – 12 May 2003 in Alsbach-Hähnlein) was an historian and energetic Christian peace activist who became known as former foster parent of the terrorist Ulrike Meinhof.

As a young woman she joined the "Christian Community" (Christengemeinschaft) an anthroposophical denomination founded by a group of evangelical theologians in Switzerland in 1922, and which was banned in Germany in 1941. In 1941 she became a member of the Nazi Party. 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 1946 she joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In 1960 she was among the founders of the German Peace Union (DFU).

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 Soviet 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 as a leading member of the terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang.

Sources and Further Reading

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