Elisabeth Schiemann

Elisabeth Schiemann (; 15 August 1881 – 3 January 1972) was a German geneticist, crop researcher and resistance fighter in the Third Reich.

Background and education

Elisabeth Schiemann was born in Viljandi, Estonia, at the time a part of the Governorate of Livonia in the Russian Empire. Her father was the historian ; from 1887 she lived in Berlin. She was part of the first generation of women in Germany who were permitted to study and pursue independent careers as academics, although initially in a limited capacity.

She attended a seminar for teachers and stayed on in Paris for several years to study language. Subsequently, she worked for a few years as a teacher in a girls' school. From 1908 she studied at the University of Berlin and earned her doctorate there in 1912 with a thesis on mutations in Aspergillus niger; her supervisor was Erwin Baur.

Academic career

From 1914 to 1931 she was senior assistant at the Institute for Genetics at the Agricultural University of Berlin, of which Baur was director. Her book Entstehung der Kulturplanzen (Origin of cultivated plants) was published in 1932, becoming a reference work in the field of cultivated plants and bringing her international recognition. In 1943 she published a further fundamental treatise about her new research under the same name in the journal Ergebnisse der Biologie (Advances in Biology). In 1931, she also became a faculty member at Berlin University.

In 1943, Elisabeth Schiemann took over management of an independent crop history department at the newly founded Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Kulturpflanzenforschung (Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Crop Plant Research; now the , a division of the Leibniz Association) in the Tuttenhof section of Vienna; her department remained in Berlin. In 1946 she received a professorship at the reopened Berlin University, teaching genetics and crop history there until 1949.

Honours

Elisabeth Schiemann received several awards for her scientific work. In 1953 she became a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society (as the first scientist since 1945). In 1945 she received the Cross of Merit (Officer's Cross) of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the same year she became an honorary member of the Société botanique de France, in 1956 a member of the Leopoldina in Halle. In 1959, Leopoldina awarded her the Darwin Plaque (as the only woman among 18 scientists). In 1962, she received an honorary doctorate from the Agricultural faculty of Technische Universität Berlin: the first woman to receive this honour. In 2003, Falkenberg (Berlin) named a street after her: Elisabeth-Schiemann-Strasse.

Resistance activities

Elisabeth Schiemann actively spoke up for those persecuted by the Nazi regime. She belonged to a network of sympathetic women which included among others the resistance member and pastor Elisabeth Schmitz. Alongside Schmitz, Elisabeth and her sister Gertrude were members of the Confessing Church in Dahlem (Berlin).

Death Schiemann died in Berlin, and is buried in the churchyard of the village church of Dahlem, where she had been a parishioner.