Ilse Jahn: Mein Lebensgang und die Menschen, die ihn begleiteten. Autobiographie von 2006 (2020)
On her upcoming 100th birthday, I would like to present my mother’s autobiography to the public with her “Life story”. I received it around 2007 with numerous handwritten changes. Ilse Jahn was a Saxon from Chemnitz who grew up in safety in her parents’ house. While her father had already been a soldier in World War I, World War II robbed my mother of the husband and her only daughter of the father. Fortunately, he was able to hold his ten-month-old daughter in his arms once again during a vacation leave from the Russian front in 1944. My early childhood and first school years were difficult times: my parents’ flat was bombed out and we lived with my grandparents. After the war, Ilse Jahn had to support her small family by painting and selling her artistic works. On the advice of her sister and cousin, who were studying in Jena, she resumed her biology studies at the University of Jena in 1952. In doing so, she also defied the teasing of her husband and his male friends during their studies in the 1940s. This was possible because my grandmother continued to run the common household and my care in the proven constant family warmth. In my earliest memories, I see my mother always painting at a large easel and – thus awakening my interest in painting – always with a sketchpad in her hand. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren also benefited from this by being taught the secrets of painting. In her professional development, however, Ilse Jahn chose biology. In this autobiography, she vividly describes how and through whom she came to the history of the subject and the history of science. There is no doubt that she has made outstanding achievements in this field. Important stations were the Ernst Haeckel House in Jena and especially Prof. Georg Uschmann, whom she regarded as her teacher and friend until her old age. But also the Alexander von Humboldt Commission of the Academy of Sciences (of the GDR) in Berlin, the Museum of Natural History of the Humboldt University Berlin, as well as her active national and international activities during her work and after the end of her career 1982–2008 were influencing milestones. This “life story” is an impressive biography. Nevertheless, I have to admit that I am not able to do justice to the work of my mother, even with the “postscript”. So it was she who taught me to recognize bird calls, showed me the beauty of a Baltic jellyfish or made me aware of wildflowers such as “Anemone nemorosa” and the small “Viola tricolor” on hikes, or even conquered fairytale castles with me, etc. I would like to say that despite my mum’s many activities, our children and grandchildren never had the impression of being neglected by her. I would like to end with the statement of her colleague, Hannelore Landsberg, on her 80th birthday: We would like to congratulate “especially also on the verve, the vast knowledge, the humor, the love of travelling and also the mental agility with which our famous ‘old master’ puts away certain complaints of everyday life”.
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