Inge Lammel

Rackwitz was born into a Jewish family in the Berlin district Prenzlauer Berg. Her father was a bank clerk and directed several synagogue choirs. In 1933, he was dismissed like all other Jewish employees. She attended primary school and later, like her older sister, the Höhere Töchterschule in Berlin-Lankwitz.[3] Occasionally, as Jews, they were beaten on their way to school or were subjected to other forms of discrimination. During the arrests after the 1938 Kristallnacht, her father was also deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Her parents were later murdered in the KZ Auschwitz.[3][4]

Inge and her sister Eva were able to reach the United Kingdom in 1939 with other Jewish children and young people in a Kindertransport. They were taken in by female teachers in Sheffield.[5]

In 1940, she was interned as an "enemy alien" and spent six weeks on the Isle of Man.[6] She was then trained as a nurse and kindergarten teacher in Bristol. In 1944, she moved to London, where she met German political refugees and joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1946. She also worked for the Free German League of Culture in Great Britain and in the Free German Movement.[7]

In autumn 1947, she returned to East Berlin. Inspired by the musicologist Ernst Hermann Meyer, who had also returned from British exile, she studied musicology at the Humboldt University in Berlin from October 1948. In 1950, she married and took the name Lammel. The marriage produced two children. Lammel received her doctorate in 1975 on the subject of the workers' song. She built up the Arbeiterliedarchiv at the Academy of Arts, Berlin of the German Democratic Republic and directed it from 1954 to 1985, during which time she brought out numerous collections of Revolutionary songs. From 1991 onwards, she researched the fate of Jewish families in Berlin-Pankow.[8] She was co-founder of the Pankow Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime.[9]

In 2006, Lammel was one of the supporters of the "Berlin Declaration" of the initiative "Shalom 5767 - Peace 2006",[10] which advocates a Palestine policy in accordance with the principles of humanism and international law.[11]

• 1966: Kunstpreis des FDGB.[12]
• 1971: Hanns Eisler Prize (together with Jürgen Elsner)
• From November 2011 until her death, Lammel was Honorary chairwoman of the Berlin regional association of the Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime.
• 2012: Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany[13]

• Günter Benser: Inge Lammel. In derselbe, Dagmar Goldbeck, Anja Kruke (ed.): Bewahren Verbreiten Aufklären. Archivare, Bibliothekare und Sammler der Quellen der deutschsprachigen Arbeiterbewegung. Supplement. Bonn 2017, ISBN 978-3-95861-591-5, pp. 62–71. Online (PDF, 2,7 MB)

• Literature by and about Inge Lammel in the German National Library catalogue
• Inge Lammel discography at Discogs