Margarete Köstlin-Räntsch

Margarete Räntsch was the daughter of brewery director Friedrich ‘Fritz’ Carl Leopold Räntsch (7 October 1844 – 26 October 1891) and his future wife Agnes, née Donner (born 26 December 1855) who married on 6 February 1886.^[1] Her father separated from his first wife Caroline Wilke c. 1882 and divorced in 1885. The Räntschs were an upper-middle-class family and young Margarete was brought up strictly but liberally. She learnt to play the piano well at an early age. She had four younger siblings: Fritz Gustav Paul, (b. 1883); Carl Louis Adolf (b. 1887); Elisabeth Maria Johanna (b. 1890) and Waldemar (b.& d. 1892). Her father died young at the age of 47, when Margarete was only ten years old, a traumatic experience in her childhood. Waldemar was a posthumus baby, born three months after her father's death, but died at the age of five and a half months.^[1]

Shortly before his death, her father had purchased the restaurant ‘Auf dem Kynast’ for 200,000 marks. It was a popular dining spot situated on the shores of Schlachtensee. Following extensive expansion to accommodate 1,000 guests, he reopened it as ‘Schloss Schlachtensee’ and further expanded it with annexes and terraces to accommodate 2,000 guests. After her father's death, the restaurant remained in the possession of her stepmother, who then gradually leased it out to third parties, including her brother-in-law.^[2][3][4]

Margarete Räntsch initially attended a Höhere Mädchenschule (secondary school for girls), where she studied Latin and Ancient Greek. As there were no state-run programmes at the time enabling girls to continue their schooling up to the Abitur (school-leaving certificate), she enrolled in one of the privately funded grammar school courses run by educational pioneer Helene Lange to enable her to complete her schooling. This enabled her to sit the school-leaving examination at the Königlichen Luisengymnasium in Berlin in the summer of 1901.

Räntsch decided to study medicine and enrolled at the University of Freiburg. After her second semester, she transferred to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München for two further semesters. She then transferred to the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, where she passed her preliminary medical examination at the end of the 1903/04 winter semester.^[5] However, in order to be allowed to enrol at the University of Würzburg, Räntsch first had to register there as an auditor for two semesters. She eventually studied for four semesters at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg. In 1903, alongside Grete Ehrenberg and Barbara Heffner, she was one of the first three female students at the university.^[6][7] In the winter of 1906, Räntsch passed her medical examination and received her licence to practise medicine on 21 December 1906.^[8][9]

In early January 1907, Räntsch was admitted to the final clinical year of study. Räntsch was the first woman whose thesis was accepted by the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Würzburg (in November/December 1907). In 1908, she completed her studies with a doctorate under Karl Bernhard Lehmann. Her dissertation is entitled Untersuchungen über die Glätte von Kleiderstoffen (Investigations into the Smoothness of Clothing Fabrics).^[10]

Margarete Räntsch set up practice as a doctor in Quarnbek, near Kiel, in 1908. Later, until around 1917, she worked at the Heinrich Children's Hospital (Hei-Ki-Ho) in Kiel, founded in 1906, at Lorentzendamm 8/10 (today known as Kiel University Children's Hospital). Räntsch travelled around 25 kilometres by horse and cart every morning and evening to work there.^[11]