Elisabeth Schiemann
| Elisabeth Schiemann | |
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| Born | 15 August 1881  Viljandi
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| Died | 3 January 1972 (aged 90) |
Elisabeth Schiemann (15 August 1881 – 3 January 1972) was a German geneticist, crop researcher and resistance fighter in the Third Reich.
Elisabeth Schiemann was born in Viljandi, Estonia, at the time part of the Governorate of Livonia in the Russian Empire. Her father was the historian Theodor Schiemann; 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 a 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.
From 1914 to 1931 she was senior assistant at the Institute for Genetics at the Agricultural University of Berlin, of which Baur was director. She habilitated in 1924 with a thesis on the genetics of winter and summer barley. As a Privatdozentin at the Agricultural University, she lectured on seed science and reproductive biology although her actual field of research was the history of cultivated plants.
From 1931 to 1943 Schiemann worked as a visiting scientist at the Berlin-Dahlem Botanical Institute. During this period she became interested in archaeological research on crop cultivation. 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. She openly spoke out against the so-called racial politics of National Socialism and its pseudo-Darwinism, against the persecution of Jews and abolition of the multi-party system. This put her in conflict with the regime and in 1940 after a denunciation and dispute over her teaching position, her Venia legendi was withdrawn.
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