Renate Drucker

She volunteered to help with "history studies support" ("historische Hilfswissenschaften") at the University's Historical Institute under Professor Helmut Kretzschmar (1893–1965), and just over a year later was given a job teaching Medieval Latin, at which she excelled.

Progressing all the way to a higher degree at Leipzig was still unthinkable, so she then enrolled at Germany's Strasbourg University "Reichsuniversität Straßburg" where she worked on her doctorate, supported by the historian (1901–1988) and Walter Stach (1890–1955).

Renate Drucker (11 July 1917 – 23 October 2009) was a German archivist.

The official verdict on Drucker was not that she was Jewish, but that she was a "Mongrel, 2nd grade " ("Mischling II. Grades" / 25% Jewish).

She was rewarded with a permanent ("unbefrist") study ban at the university.

The absence of a simple "Aryan certificate" now became a continuing burden for Drucker and her family for the rest of the twelve Nazi years, making it very difficult for her to complete her education.

In October 1936 she moved on to Leipzig University initially intending to study Jurisprudence which would have enabled her to follow her father and uncle into the legal profession.

It was already apparent that the increasingly institutionalised antisemitism of Nazi Germany would make a legal career impossible, however.

Instead she quickly became fascinated by languages, attending lectures in German studies, Oriental studies, English studies and a little History.

By early 1938 she was evidently destined for a degree focused on Philology.

At this point, however, in April her studies were suddenly interrupted by the Nazi Race Delusions.

As Nazi ideas on race became embedded in daily life, Germans were encouraged to engage in a little basic genealogy and research their four grandparents in order to demonstrate to the authorities that none of these had been Jewish.

The enforced termination of her studies in 1938 was followed by three years of uncertainty and unemployment.

The outbreak of war in 1939 would in various respects intensify the difficulties.

She was then, in 1941, unexpectedly readmitted to Leipzig University, where without being exactly welcomed she was nevertheless, grudgingly, permitted to attend lectures.

She again adjusted the focus of her work, concentrating now on Historical sciences, Medieval Latin and Auxiliary history sciences ("historische Hilfswissenschaften").

Just hours before US and French troops entered the city, on 23 November 1944, she successfully defended her dissertation and thereby justified her doctorate for work on "the Old High German Glosses in the Salic law" ("Die althochdeutschen Glossen in der Lex salica").

She had chosen, a little unusually, to have the entire "vive voce" conducted in Medieval Latin, and the resulting qualification came with a cum laude distinction.

By the time the doctorate was awarded, in February 1945, Drucker, along with those of the university teaching staff still not conscripted into the army, had been successfully evacuated to Tübingen which is where the doctorate was actually issued.

War ended, formally, in May 1945, and with it the Nazi régime.

Drucker had successfully, and not without the odd adventure along the way, made her way back to the bombed-out city of Leipzig.

In terms of the future, the US and Soviet governments had already agreed that Germany would be divided into zones of occupation: Leipzig would be administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone.

When the war ended, however, it was the US army that had captured the city, while the Red army concentrated on military objectives further to the north including, notably, Berlin.

In the early summer of 1945 the Drucker family found themselves in danger in what remained of Leipzig.

Before the Nazi power seizure Martin Drucker had worked as a public prosecutor and had also gained a reputation as a criminal defence lawyer.

There were still plenty of Nazis in the city who detested him, and the family accordingly moved to Jena and went into hiding for several weeks.

It was only in June 1945, as order began to be restored, that the family were able to move back into Leipzig.

In July 1945 US forces withdrew from Leipzig which now, for the next 45 years, would fall within the ambit of the Soviet Union.

Renate Drucker's contribution to the democratic renewal of Germany now included work for the Leipzig Professional Committee of Lawyers and Notaries, engaged in the denazification of the profession.

The university reopened in 1946 which opened the way for a return to academe.

She was in charge of the university archives at Leipzig University for 27 years between 1950 and 1977.

She was qualified as a philologist and was also for many years an officer of the Liberal Democratic Party of (East) Germany ("Liberal-Demokratische Partei Deutschlands" / LDPD), one of several "bloc parties" controlled by the ruling East German Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED) which were intended to broaden the régime's constitutional legitimacy.

Renate Margarethe Drucker was born in Leipzig during the First World War, the youngest daughter of the lawyer Martin Drucker and his wife Margarethe (born Margarethe Mannsfeld).

Both her grandfathers had also been Leipzig lawyers.

Her mother's younger brother, Karl Mannsfeld, also had a legal background and at one stage served as the Justice Minister for the "Free State of Saxony".

She attended the Servières School for girls (Servièresche höhere Mädchenschule) school in central Leipzig and then the Schloss Salem boarding school near the shores of Lake Constance.

Salem was a prestigious establishment, but Drucker herself would frequently express her sadness that, as a girl, she had been unable to follow her brothers in attending the Thomas School in Leipzig, with its rich musical heritage.

(The school has subsequently become co-educational.)

In 1950 she was appointed to take over as head of the University Archive.

The appointment, which came after several months of unclarity, temporary arrangements and fevered discussions, was made at the suggestion of a history professor newly returned from several years at the University of Rostock, Heinrich Sproemberg.