Barbara Sandner (née Meinke, *1937) comes from Stralsund. She attended primary school there until the 8th grade in 1952 and secondary school until graduating in 1956. From the 7th grade, Barbara's chemistry teacher awakened her interest in this subject. Her parents, who had commercial professions, supported this and bought her a chemistry textbook, which was used to train laboratory technicians and chemical workers in vocational schools - there were no textbooks for primary and secondary schools in the post-war period.

At secondary school, the chemistry teacher offered an afternoon Working Group with experimental opportunities, which Barbara took part in. It is therefore not surprising that she was the only one in her year to apply to study chemistry at Humboldt University in Berlin. She was rejected because her political views, with grades of 3 in history and contemporary studies in contrast to the A's and B's in all other subjects, raised doubts.

She submitted her second application to the Leuna-Merseburg Technical University of Chemistry, which was founded on 1 September 1954. Representatives from the university came to Rostock for the admissions interview, which was successful. Barbara began her studies in Merseburg in October 1956.

After passing her intermediate diploma and completing her foundation degree, her main interest focussed on polymer chemistry. She attended a basic lecture and the lecture "Chemical Fibres", the latter given by Hermann Klare (1909 - 2003). He was deputy director of the Institute for Fibre Research at the Academy of Sciences in Teltow-Seehof. Supervised by Joachim Ulbricht (1924 - 2017), Barbara completed her diploma thesis there in 1960/61 after hearing nothing but positive things from other students.

After her thesis was accepted and she passed her diploma examination, she was offered a doctoral position as a research assistant at the institute in Teltow-Seehof. In Ulbricht's working group, she completed her dissertation "The influence of impurities on the solution polymerisation of acrylonitrile with special consideration of unsaturated compounds". She submitted this to the TH Merseburg in 1965 and defended it there at the end of 1965.

During the doctoral phase, she met and married her husband, also a chemist. Their daughter was born in 1964. Because there were not enough crèche and kindergarten places in the 1960s, her grandmother came to Teltow to look after the baby. The Sandners did not get the larger flat they needed, and the grandmother was not granted a residence permit in Teltow.

The housing problem was solved in 1965 by an offer from the chemical fibre plant (CFW) in Premnitz. Barbara Sandner's husband had already accepted a position as a research assistant at the CFW in August 1965. In December 1965, the family, including her grandmother, were able to move into a flat in Premnitz.

Barbara Sandner first worked as a research assistant from 1966, then as section head of scientific and technical information (WTI) in the Research and Development (R+D) department. At the end of 1967, she took over as Head of the Central Laboratory and WTI Department and was Deputy Director of R+D from May 1970. In 1969, she was given a nursery place for her daughter.

This was followed by strokes of fate: Her husband died in a car accident in 1970 and her grandmother and mother-in-law passed away in 1971. The following year, Barbara Sandner returned to what was now the Institute of Polymer Chemistry at the Teltow-Seehof Academy of Sciences as a research assistant. She investigated complex formation and media influences on the copolymerisation of acrylonitrile and styrene. Her results were so extraordinary that she was awarded the Friedrich Wöhler Prize. This was a science prize for outstanding achievements by young scientists. Only two women were honoured with this award between 1960 and 1991. The research results were presented and defended in 1979 for the doctorate B (Dr. sc. nat.). Barbara Sandner received the Facultas docendi from the TU Dresden in 1980.

In 1983, she was appointed as a university lecturer at the TH Merseburg. She expanded her areas of work to include composite medicine materials and polymer solid electrolytes. In 1988, together with dentists from the Erfurt Academy of Medicine, she received the Rudolph Virchow Prize for a dental composite that they had developed and tested together.

In September 1989, she was appointed associate professor in Merseburg. However, the first Higher Education Structure Act of the state of Saxony-Anhalt of 28 February 1992 stipulated that the TH would have to be legally dissolved on 31 March 1993. The three best performing departments, including Chemistry, had already been merged with Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. The scientific achievements of Barbara Sandner, who had no party affiliation, were fully recognised, her doctorate B was converted into a habilitation, and Sandner was transferred to the University of Halle-Wittenberg as Professor of Macromolecular Chemistry.

After her retirement in 2002, Barbara Sandner continued to supervise a doctoral student and a research assistant in a freelance research project until 2004.

This article was published in "Nachrichten aus der Chemie", May 2025

Author: Dr Gisela Boeck, Chair of the Division of History of Chemistry