Ruth-Ellen’s parents came from very different backgrounds.   Her mother, Ruth Jewel Boetcher, was the granddaughter of Hank Jewel who made his living as an itinerant photographer in Virginia at the time of the Civil War.  Hank and his first wife had five children, one of whom went on to become an engineer in charge of building the Gatun Locks on the Panama Canal.   Another, Iva Jewel Geary, became a genealogist who had access to the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) library in Washington, D.C. to support her genealogy research.  Iva had a happy marriage to Jim Geary, who lived in Philadelphia while Iva stayed in boarding houses in Washington, D.C. to pursue her work.  They had one son, also Jim Geary, whom Ruth-Ellen and Erhard visited in Virginia in the early 1970’s.  After Hank Jewel’s first wife died he remarried and had three more children, the youngest of which was Ruth Jewel Boetcher, Ruth-Ellen’s mother.   Ruth attended Goucher College in Baltimore, where she subsequently met a German engineer, Hans N. Boetcher who worked for the Baltimore Gas & Electric Co..  Hans’ family came from Denmark and has settled in northern Germany. 

After the birth of Ruth-Ellen’s older sister Jane in April, 1933, Hans and Ruth suffered the stillbirth of a son before Ruth-Ellen’s subsequent birth on May 20, 1939.  Trauma again enveloped the family with Hans’ sudden death in 1945 of post-operative shock following what was to have been a routine gall bladder operation.  Ruth Boetcher was left a widow with two young children with no income and with few resources except her house.   Teaching in a private school while going to night school to gain a teaching certificate was one path open to her.   As a child Ruth-Ellen was quite conscious of being poor when she was sent to the grocery store with instructions to buy day-old bread.

At Goucher College Ruth-Ellen chose to major in German with a minor in music.   One of the classes she took from the music professor, Elliot Galkin, was devoted entirely to the study of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.   For her senior project Ruth-Ellen translated the libretto of Berthold Brecht’s opera “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny’ so it could be sung to its Kurt Weill score.

Several of the students from Goucher College, then an all women’s college, attended weekly meetings of the “Cosmopolitan Club” at nearby Johns Hopkins University, which at that time admitted only men at the undergraduate level.  Ruth-Ellen was an active member of this congenial group of friends throughout her undergraduate years.  Weekly lectures were followed by refreshments and dancing at Levering Hall on the Hopkins campus.  Ruth-Ellen graduated in 1960 and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to attend the University of Hamburg beginning that fall.  The year in Germany deepened her connection to German language, literature, and culture, interests that would shape the course of her academic career. 

Following her Fulbright year, Ruth-Ellen continued her studies in German literature while maintaining a long-distance relationship with Erhard, whom she later married in the Army chapel at Bad Kreuznach, Germany, on August 11, 1962.  The couple moved to a small apartment in the nearby village of Hargesheim. 

During the following years Ruth-Ellen commuted to nearby Washington, D.C. to pursue a Master’s degree in German at George Washington University.  Upon completion of the degree she entered the Ph.D. program in the Department of German at Johns Hopkins University.  Her research focused on nineteenth century German women writers, an area of scholarship that reflected her deep interest in literature and the lives of women whose voices had often been overlooked. 

Ruth-Ellen’s and Erhard’s hopes of becoming parents were abruptly altered in 1967 when complications from a medical test caused a rupture and infection that resulted in a complete hysterectomy.  Through a local agency they subsequently adopted Melissa, born January 31, 1969, at the age of four weeks.  Later that same year the young family returned to Germany, where Ruth-Ellen continued research for her doctoral dissertation.  Her work required access to archives and libraries in both West and East Germany, and as American citizens they were able to obtain visas to cross the “iron curtain” into the German Democratic Republic in support of her studies. 

Ruth-Ellen completed her Ph.D. in 1971.  Finding a teaching position afterward proved difficult despite her credentials and accomplishments.  At one interview the chair of a German department remarked to her: “your husband has a good job, so you don’t really need a position.”  Such attitudes were common obstacles faced by women in academia during that period. 

In January, 1973, Ruth-Ellen and Erhard adopted a second child when their son Timothy, at age five weeks, joined the family.  Shortly thereafter Ruth-Ellen secured a postdoctoral appointment at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin for the 1973–74 academic year. 

Her continuing search for a permanent teaching position resulted in a faculty appointment at the University of Missouri in 1974.  Ruth-Ellen and the children moved to Columbia while she began building her academic career.  Soon afterward she was awarded a Humboldt Foundation grant to pursue research in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.  The family lived in Munich from 1974 until the summer of 1976, when Ruth-Ellen joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota. 

Throughout these years Ruth-Ellen balanced the demands of scholarship, teaching, research travel, and motherhood with remarkable determination.  Her life reflected a singular commitment to education, intellectual curiosity, and family, even amid the personal and professional challenges faced by women pursuing academic careers during that era.