In 1941, the year the German army invaded the Soviet Union, she passed her school exams with excellent grades, and was accepted as a student at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in the Faculty of West European languages.

Geier was well aware that, having worked for the Germans, her fellow countrymen regarded her as a collaborator and that she would never be able to study in the Soviet Union.

Her mother, too, no longer wanted to live with the "murderers of her/Svetlana’s father", so they joined up with the bridge building firm that was returning to Germany.

Having proven her excellent translating skills in an exam at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Geier was awarded a scholarship with which she could realize her dream of studying languages.

At the Kepler-Gymnasium (grammar school) in Freiburg she raised the profile of Russian so that the language was available to choose as an exam subject,[3] which she taught herself for many years.

This house, where she lived for over 50 years, and which belonged to the city of Freiburg, was to become a centre for translation through the efforts of a private initiative.

However, her choice of title for Dostoevsky's most famous novel (Crime and Punishment) had already been chosen by the earlier translators Alexander Eliasberg (1921)[7] and Gregor Jarcho (1924)[8] respectively.

Svetlana Geier received numerous awards and prizes for her outstanding contribution to the dissemination of Russian culture, history and literature, including the following: