Civil rights activist, pastor and founder of a “widow's village” in Nigeria

The amazing live story of Renate Ellmenreich, born in former East Germany

Although never a member of any youth organisation of the German Democratic Republic, 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 trouble with the State Security. Went to West Germany and as a development aid worker to Nigeria, where she founded a “widow’s village” after her retirement. She supports a housing project for widows and their children in the north of the country.

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This is Renate Ellmenreich’s live story as narrated by herself (translated by me):

I am Renate Ellmenreich, born in April 1950 in Oranienburg, a town about 20 miles north of Berlin. My parents are refugees from the former eastern territories that Germany lost to Poland in World War II, they got a farm in the countryside near Oranienburg. I grew up there. It was not easy after the war. We had enough food from the farm, but everything else was rather poor.

At home we read a lot, especially in the Bible. We used to pray a lot in our family. Of course, I did also not join the Junge Pioniere (Young Pioneers), a youth organisation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It was often a matter of course for Christians at that time that their children would not go to the pioneers. Later, I also did not join the Freie Deutsche Jugend, FDJ, (Free German Youth). I also didn't have a Jugendweihe (youth consecration), which in the GDR served as a replacement for the church initiation rituals. I rather lived in the other GDR, so to speak.

When I was twelve years old, we moved to East Berlin because my father, who was disabled in the war, could no longer work in agriculture after the Berlin wall was built. Before the Wall was built, he used to go to West Berlin once a month where he was treated in an American hospital. After the Wall was built, that was no longer possible.

Moving to East Berlin was quite a change. I was somewhat like “Anna from the village”. The other girls in the class already had perlon stockings, and I had never seen anything like that. But then I caught up quite well and, because I was a worker's and farmer's child, I was admitted to high school to take the Abitur (diploma). This was often denied to children of academics, and especially those from Christian homes.

At that time, in 1964, the GDR still kept this experiment going of learning a trade in addition to high school. This meant that we had lessons at school from Monday to Thursday and we had vocational training on Friday and Saturday. There weren't many professions to choose from. I didn't necessarily want to become a precision mechanic. That's why I signed up as a kindergarten teacher.

The nursery served the purpose to lay the foundation for the all-round development of the “socialist personality”. There was a precise plan of what children had to be able to do and when - and we had to train the children to do that. My skilled worker exam consisted of putting a bowl of blue and red beads and two plates in front of an 18-month-old boy - and getting him to put the red and blue beads into the plates, sorted by color. With a lot of chocolate, I conditioned him so that he got it right.

So when I was 18, I had a skilled worker's certificate and a high school diploma in my hands, and I could now study. But what were you allowed to study if you weren't in the FDJ, the Free German Youth organisation? Actually nothing at all. And so there was really only theology left for me. But that was my wish anyways. I wanted to stay in the field I had grown up in, even though I had become quite critical of it in the meantime. Or perhaps precisely because of that.

After graduating from high school, we went on our graduation trip in the summer of 1968. I am still amazed today that our teacher had succeeded in managing to organize a class graduation trip to Prague. We then experienced the so-called Prague Spring in its full bloom in July. And how thrilled we were! My friend and I, with trembling hearts and holding hands, dared to join a free demonstration for the first time in our lives! That was incredible.

We also didn't go back with the class at all, but stayed right there. And we lived with some students and painted banners and discussed with them for nights on end. And we were full of hope for a completely new life in a better socialism, which would no longer be as dry and ossified as ours in the GDR.

We stayed in Prague until we ran out of money. Then we had to go back. And at the Baltic Sea, where we wanted to spend another week's vacation, we learned that the Warsaw Pact troops had invaded Czechoslovakia. It was over. And we now had to concentrate on our studies.

Renate Ellmenreich as student ©private

I studied protestant theology for five years at the Humboldt University in East Berlin. I finished at the end of 1973, but then found myself to be the only one who was not accepted into church service. So all of a sudden I was unemployed. That affected me very much. I could somewhat explain it to myself. Because in the meantime, I had already had a lot of experience with the state security and the state organs, and had attracted attention several times with a certain stubbornness.

Then friends came to visit from Jena and invited me to come to them to this pretty little town in Thuringia. For us Berliners, that was, well, pretty provincial at the time. I then went to Jena anyhow. And I liked it there very much. The atmosphere was much more relaxed, not as dogged as in East Berlin. And there was a big new building district. The huge housing blocks had just been completed, and families from all over the GDR were given apartments there. It was considered great luck to get such an apartment with heating and hot water and a bathroom.

In this situation, the protestant church in Jena had decided to start a community development project there. Of course, there was no church planned in a socialist new construction area. And so we formed a small team of four people - I was hired for this - and visited the people who had just moved into the large blocks. And in doing so, we invited the people to take part in discussion groups.

That had somewhat of a communal or even original communist feel to it. Because there was a lot of sharing. Some people had tools, others had cars, they exchanged children's cloths and toys, and took each other's children on vacation or to the weekend house when their parents had to work, and so on. People were often surprised at the openness with which discussions took place. And that they were allowed to express one's own opinion without immediately getting a crooked look.

I was responsible for children's work. I was also assigned to do youth work. The Junge Gemeinde (‘Young Community”) was the refuge of the opposition groups in Jena. That's also where I met Matthias Domaschk, the father of my daughter Julia. We listened to music and danced and partied and read all sort of books. This JG, Junge Gemeinde, (“Young Community”) subsequently gave rise to several working groups and reading circles in Jena, which consciously worked in a political oppositional way.

We were a relatively large group. When everyone came together, we were well over 100, maybe 200 people, who belonged to the somewhat resistant, unruly core in Jena. Of course, the “Stasi”, the State Security, became aware of us. For example, there was a group of young poets at the cultural center. In the GDR, that was a special opportunity for them to include messages in their poetry, so to speak, that were ambiguous and that everyone in the opposition understood.

This poetry circle was soon banned. We then tried to establish our own free youth club. That was also forbidden. Wolf Biermann, a famous East German protest singer, came to Jena several times and sang in the apartments. And other young writers came, and held readings in my small apartment, where I then lived with Matthias. We had a large living room, where up to 40 people could sit, including the floor.

The expulsion of Wolf Biermann hit us very hard, precisely because Biermann had often performed in Jena. Two days later, we got together at the Junge Gemeinde and discussed the matter. And as a result, we co-signed the resolution of the writers in Berlin protesting against Biermann’s expulsion.

On this evening, "only" one IM, one unofficial collaborator of the Stasi, was present at the meeting. Otherwise there were several. But this one was enough. Immediately after the event, he ran to the Stasi, the State Security, after midnight. They called together a crisis team - and at six in the morning the arrests and house searches began. Of course, we were all ordered to the Stasi headquarters and interrogated. Eight of us then stayed in prison.

Matthias and I were somewhat luckier, we were released after the interrogations. My Stasi file that I could read after the fall of the Wall contains the sentence that unfortunately they couldn't arrest me because I was heavily pregnant. In the days that followed, we tried to get ourselves together again. First of all, I had my daughter. That gave us a bit of a boost, that life goes on. But we were now so much in the focus of the Stasi that the hassles didn't stop. There were always subpoenas and interrogations. Many of the young men were drafted, Matthias too, into the army. They really drove us apart.

I was then sent to the vicariate in a village near the town of Gera. My Stasi file tells me today what decomposition measures were initiated for me there. Of course, I didn't know that at the time, and I always just thought, what bad luck I had. First I didn't get a place in a daycare center, there was supposedly none left. Then they forgot to supply me with coal for the winter, so that I spent the first winter freezing and heating with stolen coal. There were several break-ins in my house, without anything being stolen. But it made me feel insecure. Then I was brought a typewriter from West Berlin. When I unpacked it, I noticed that several letters had been filed - to keep track of what I would be writing. I was sometimes mentally on my toes.

After the vicariate I was ordained and then held the pastorate. Matthias was in the army. We were no longer together in that sense. But we remained friends, of course, as parents of our daughter. Then I met a vicar from West Germany who was willing to move to me in the GDR. But that was rejected. Definitely. They didn't want to have Western pastors in addition to their own rebellious pastors.

Church councilor Johannes - who had been working for the state security for a long time, which we didn't know at the time - urged me again and again: "Then go, move there. We'll release you. Why don't you go?" All the negative experiences of the last few years and perhaps also the private situation that I was pregnant again, then led to the fact that I no longer said “no”. And one day I was told to pack my things and move very quickly.

Renate Ellmenreich 1980 ©private

It was hard for me to leave. As a pastor, you don't leave your congregation alone. And the GDR was my country, where I wanted to live and change things. But I was also happy with the prospect that my children would not have to go to school in the GDR. So I came to Frankfurt/Main in the summer of 1980 and then had another child, a son.

In the spring of 1981, I received a telegram that Matthias, the father of my daughter Julia, had been killed in an accident. However, through radio reports and telephone conversations with friends, I learned that he had been killed during an interrogation by the Stasi in the detention center in the town of Gera. He was arrested and was dead after two days. In the case of deaths in the State Security prison, suicide was always stated as the cause of death, as a matter of principle, and this case was no exception. None of us believed that Matthias had killed himself.

It took another nine years until the Wall finally came down and I could start investigating what had happened to Matthias. In the meantime, I was not allowed to re-enter the GDR. As soon as 1990 dawned, I set off again.

Two years later, in January 1992, the Stasi Records Act was passed, and citizens were given access to their Stasi files. I then went straight to Gera. I was able to look at my own files, which disturbed me very much, because I suddenly realized what they had known - but also what they hadn't know. I found nothing, nothing at all about Matthias’ case. I went there again and again for months. Until they offered me a job: We still have a vacancy, you could apply here and then do your own research on site.

I took a six-month leave of absence from my regional church in Hesse to do so. These six months turned into six years. The family followed. And for six years I secured Stasi files and clarified how the State Security had worked, what they had done with us. All the Stasi files were still jumbled up in lots of sacks, the cellars were full of paper. After six years, I was filled with Stasi files. I couldn't take any more. It is very, very stressful to constantly read this unbelievable malice and misantrophy. And I decided to start something different and look ahead again.

During a vacation in South Africa, my husband and I were made aware of something completely different. We met an old missionary in Namibia, who said, "Why don't you go on mission?" And we were like, "Huh?" But when you're told a question like that, that drops into your soul, it does something to you. On our return home, we started to look around what was available. And we found two job offers in Nigeria. One was for the continuation of a distance learning university. My husband was interested in that. The other was to set up a literacy program for women in rural areas. That was offered to me.

Our children had grown up in the meantime and were studying. So we took these two jobs and went to Nigeria. That's how we ended up in this northeast corner of the country, where we spent five years - intensively experiencing many new things, living in such a completely different culture. We also had to learn the language and shared life with the people there.

Once the literacy program was running well, I was asked to build schools. At that time, Sharia law was partially reintroduced in these Muslim areas in the northern states of Nigeria. This meant that the Christian teachers were dismissed, or the schools were converted into Koran schools. The Christians then said, "We don't want our children to go there.” And in many areas there was no school at all. So I collected the dismissed Christian teachers and provided teacher training. A total of 50 elementary schools were established in this way in our area during this time.

For me, this was an experience of such meaningful work. My husband felt very much the same way. And then the great misfortune happened. We were traveling in the far north of the country. And my husband got sick on the way, got a fever that went up and up. At first I thought it was malaria and gave him the usual medicine, but the fever continued to rise. Then his lungs collapsed, he was gasping terribly for air. And, to make a long story short: after 6 hours he was dead.

I had him buried in Germany. Before that, I had an autopsy done. The diagnosis was: unknown tropical virus. I went back after the funeral accompanied by my son. I realized that it would be too difficult for me to continue working there on my own, because it is unusual for women to work and live alone. I also witnessed how the church leadership negotiated with my son about our house and about our car and all such things, because you would not talk about such things there with a widow.

Renate Ellmenreich 2002 ©private

I went back to Germany and worked as a pastor in the town of Mainz in Hesse for ten years. During this time, the radical Muslim terrorist organization Boko Haram, which had already emerged at that time, raged worse and worse - exactly in the area where I had worked. They deliberately destroyed schools and killed teachers whom I had helped to train. They killed pastors and set fire to churches.

One day the female employees from the literacy program called me, "Do you hear what's going on here?!" You could hear helicopters and machine guns and screams and fire. It was quite a terrifying war situation coming to me through the phone. In that moment, I was not alone though, I was sitting together with other female pastors at our regulars' table. My colleagues overheard the call and said: "We can't leave you alone with this.” So it happened that we founded the association Windows Care. To take care of women, who have become widows as a result of the Boko Haram attacks.

The Islamists often take the women to their camps and marry them off to their fighters. And when the women are able to escape, they usually gather in the provincial capital, which is somewhat secured by the military. There the women also have founded a widow association, our partner organization. They register all the newly arrived widows, take care of their accommodation, provide them with clothing, give them medical treatment and try to send their children back to school.

We continue to do so to this day. And in a particularly nice action, we were able to buy a piece of land far away from the Boko Haram area. There we built a “widow’s village.” As a pilot project, so to speak. In it, widows live together and, above all, try to become economically independent.

Renate Ellmenreich with widows ©Rebecca Hillauer

In the meantime, almost all of the women there have found a job or opened their own business. All the children are in kindergarten and school and are properly fed on the premises. There is a health center. There is a restaurant. There are stores where the women offer for sale what they produce. I try to travel to Nigeria two or three times a year. In the beginning, my job there was mainly to encourage the women and also to train them in different job skills. In the meantime, I almost only visit them - and am happy with them how well things are going.

In the provincial capital in the northeast in the Boko Haram area, in Maiduguri, the women have it much harder - there are simply also many more women. At the moment, we have registered 2918 widows with about 8,000 children between them, all of whom depend on our support. The special thing is that this widows' association was able to acquire a building plot last year. There they would now very much like to build apartments for widows because most widows live very, very precariously. It is still commonly assumed that a widow does not really need a room of her own: she no longer has a husband who wants to sleep with her in the evening. Many widows sleep in the hallway or in the yard of other people where they work. With their children.

That's why we are now supporting the women in the construction of a housing complex. Which is not cheap, because in the city the women can't simply live in mud huts like we built in the village. But we hope to build 22 apartments on this plot. In addition, there will be eight stores where the women can be economically active.

They are also “my people”. I lived next door to them for years. We drank the same water from the same well and ate the same food that we harvested from our fields. That's what connects us. I have seen so many children come into the world who are now grown up and already have children of their own. That has become a part of my life - and I am also a part of their lives.

When the first raids of Boko Haram took place in the village where I had lived, women called me and said: "Help us, you too have become a widow in Africa! You know how it is." Yes, I know how it is. That's why I got involved and I'm still involved today. That's why it's important to me to support these very women.

Widows with children in front of the housing project in Maiduguri, North Nigeria

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This story was first published in German as a radio portrait. Also in German I made a radio reportage about my visit with Renate Ellmenreich to her Widow’s Village.

On the internet: Widows Care + Housing project in Maiduguri