Elsa Rentrop

Daughter of Austrians, Elsa Rentrop (née Eckel) was born on 17 April 1907, a German, in Metz, Lorraine. She stuudied at Kabléelyceum and the Grammar School of Ursulines in Saarbrücken and graduated as Abitur, and studied drawing and painting under Professors Keuth and Grevening in Saarbrücken, and Music in Saarbrücken, Bonn and Cologne, passing her state examination as a Music Teacher in Cologne.

She married Dr Siegfried Rentrop in the year she graduated, who had first seen her at the age of 16 playing in a concert in Saarbrücken. For six years she wrote poetry, and later on authored fairy tales, aphorisms and a radio-play, published in various newspapers. Her poems “Eindrücke” und “Erkenntnisse” and her stories “Die Rechtfertigung” were also published.

She had three children, her eldest son being a member of the Bundestag, her second son serving as a Diplomat in India and Afghanistan, and her daughter studying Economics in which she earned a Diploma, and serving as Chairwoman of the Club of Professional Woman in Bonn. She has nine much-beluved grandchildren.

Mrs Rentrop twice saved her burning house with good neighbours when it was bombed during the war, they distinguished the bombs, and after spending some time with her children in Austria, she returned in 1945 to her house in Bonn, Bad Godesberg.

For 12 years meetings of the European Youth, led by her second son and her daughter, were held in her house, and in 1964, upon the invitation of a member of the Bundestag, she made a study tour through the USSR. In 1979 she made a trip to Sydney, Australia. Her son, Hermann, was a Fulbright-student in the USA.

Mrs Rentrop is a member of the Gedok (German and Austrian artists), Deutscher Frauenring, Woman, Europa-Union and Colloquium Humanum, and, actively working for human relations, she is a member of various conversation groups in Bonn, Bad Godesberg.