Annette Leo was born in Duesseldorf, the eldest of her parents' daughters.
10 Facts About Annette Leo
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Annette Leo later discovered that the sudden move was triggered not - at least not directly - by political conviction, but by an instruction her father had received from the Communist Party: alongside his other work, her father was working for the party.
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Annette Leo grew up in the German Democratic Republic.
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Annette Leo's mother, born Nora Lubinski, was the daughter of Dagobert Lubinski, another left-wing journalist and a resistance activist: he stayed in Germany and was murdered at Auschwitz.
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Between 1968 and 1973, Annette Leo studied History and Romance studies at the Humboldt University, at that time in East Berlin.
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Annette Leo's son, Maxim Leo, was born in 1970 while she was still working for her degree.
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Annette Leo worked between 2001 and 2005 with the Center for Research on Antisemitism at Technische Universitat Berlin.
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In 2006, Annette Leo became a research associate at the Historical Institute of the University of Jena, where for some years she held a teaching chair.
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In 1991, Annette Leo published "Briefe zwischen Kommen und Gehen", a biography of Dagobert Lubinski, her maternal grandfather who had been a communist journalist and a resistance fighter.
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In 2008, Annette Leo received the Annalise Wagner Prize for a piece of work she produced on daily life in the Ravensbruck women's concentration camp at Furstenberg during the Hitler years.