The amazing live story of Renate Ellmenreich
Although never a member of any youth organisation of the GDR, Renate Ellmenreich was allowed to graduate from high school as a so-called “worker’s and farmer’s child”. She studied theology and became a pastor but soon got into troubles with State Security. Then went to West Germany and as a development aid worker to Nigeria, where she founded a “widow’s village”. She supports a housing project for widows and their children in North Nigeria.
“We then experienced the so-called Prague Spring in full bloom in July of 1968. How we were blown away! My friend and I, we dared then, with trembling hearts and clasping each other’s hands, to join a free demonstration for the first time in our lives.”
Renate Ellmenreich
You can read Renate Ellmenreich’s Lived History in English on my Substack blog Rebecca’s Transatlantic Post.
In German you can listen to my reportage about her “widow’s village”.
After the fall of the Wall in 1989, Renate Ellmenreich evaluated files of East Germany’s Secret Service (“Stasi”) at the Federal Office for Stasi Records in Gera, where her daughter’s father had died in Stasi custody. As a development aid worker in Nigeria in the 1990s, she witnessed the rise of the radical Muslim Boko Haram.
Here is the housing project for widows and their children in Maiduguri, North Nigeria.
On the internet: Widows Care e.V.