to the judgment that the work has become "completely outdated". Presumably that is not how it would have been perceived in 1937, however, and it seems to have assured her acceptance in academic quarters as a competent, if in some respects unconventional, ethnologist. During the later 1930s Gerdts-Rupp also undertook study trips in North Africa, South America and the Near East. Ethnologist and scholar She worked for a couple of years at the Hamburg Ethnology Museum. However, the outbreak of war in 1939 put an end to her travels, as passenger ships were requisitioned for military use. That year she returned to Tübingen as an Ethnology teacher. The appointment was "honorary" (unpaid), and she continued to teach on an honorary basis till 1947 when she received from the university a more conventional teaching contract. Following her husband's suicide she remained in Tübingen till her retirement in 1959, at one stage taking responsibility for both the Geography and Ethnology departments, and living with a "flock" of house-cats in some rooms at the "Tübinger Schloß" (castle). (The castle site also, by this time, accommodated the university Ethnology Faculty.) Among her more noteworthy students were Friedrich Kussmaul, Heinz Walter and Hermann Bausinger. In 1960 she returned to the region of her birth, settling on the shores of Lake Constance. She involved herself in nature conservation and continued to write poetry. Her poetry volume "Tier und Landschaft. Gedichte aus fünf Jahrzehnten" ("Animals and countryside. Poems from five decades") was published in 1958. Elisabeth Gerdts-Rupp died at Radolfzell, a small town at the western end of the lake, on 18 March 1972. Publications (selection) References Jurists from Baden-Württemberg German women writers German ethnologists People from Ravensburg 1888 births 1972 deaths University of Tübingen alumni Academic staff of the University of Tübingen