Cornelia Schröder-Auerbach

With the Nazi takeover of the German government and its anti-Semitic discriminations, the non-observant Protestant Schröder-Auerbach was banned in 1934 from publicly performing, because her four grandparents had been Jewish.

After her parents separated in 1906, her mother, the teacher Käthe Auerbach (1871–1940), moved to Jena with her two youngest sons, while Johannes and Cornelia initially stayed with their father.

Cora Auerbach grew up in her uncle's house in Jena, which was frequented by artists and patrons such as Clara Harnack, Reinhard Sorge, Eberhard Grisebach and Botho Graef.

[3]: 209  Because Hanning Schröder composed songs for workers' choirs and his wife did not deny her Jewish ancestry, Cornelia Schröder-Auerbach, like her husband, was banned from the Reich Chamber of Music in 1934.

[5] During the final year of World War II trying to seek refuge from the bombing of Berlin, Schröder-Auerbach moved with her daughter Nele to the village of Dargun, Mecklenburg.

[3]: 212  From the beginning of 1944 to March 1945, the Schröders hid the Jewish couple Werner and Ilse Rewald, who had gone into hiding, in their home in Berlin-Zehlendorf, saving them from certain death.