for a prosperous German family there. There was time for reading and thinking and for close observation: she became very critical of the upper-class social mores she came across in the expatriate community, especially with respect to the subordination of women. She traveled to and from Argentina on the luxury passenger steamer Cap Polonio, and although she was obliged to travel third-class, she was able to interact with first-class passengers such as, most importantly, the naval officer Jan Gerdts. They married. According to one source the necessary formalities were concluded on the ship before they arrived back in Hamburg, the principal German port for intercontinental shipping. If anyone had thought that marriage would be followed by a life of conventional domesticity they would have been disappointed. Johannes "Jan" Gerdts' work on transatlantic passenger liners meant that he was frequently away from home for weeks on end. The marriage did, however, provide Elisabeth Gerdts-Rupp with improved opportunities for international travel. The couple remained together till Jan Gerdts committed suicide while in command of SS Cap Arcona (by this time, her engines barely working, in use as a prison ship) shortly before the end of the Second World War. Back to university Elisabeth Gerdts-Rupp meanwhile embarked on a new academic career in 1925, attending lectures at the University of Tübingen on Ethnology and Geography. She was taught by Augustin Krämer. Her studies led to the award of a second doctorate, this time awarded by the University of Tübingen, in 1934. Her work concerned the pre-conquest lives of Arauca people of what became part of Chile. The work involved her in close study of Spanish-language sources archived in Seville and in Argentina. In the introduction to her dissertation she expressed regret that she had been unable to afford to study Chilean archives as well. Because she was able to work only with Spanish language sources her work naturally saw the customs and practices of the Araucans through the prism of records compiled by their Spanish conquerors. The work was extensively reworked and published for a wider readership by the (then) Hamburg-based Ibero-American Institute, under the title "Magische Vorstellungen und Bräuche der Araukaner im Spiegel spanischer Quellen seit der Conquista." (loosely, "The magical concepts and customs of the Araucans as reflected in post-conquest Spanish sources". Subsequent scholars have criticised an apparent focus on the “magical understandings” and "magical customs" of the people, giving rise