Ilse Schwidetzky


Ilse Schwidetzky was a German anthropologist. She was the daughter of Georg and Susanne Schwidetzky. Susanne Schwidetzky, who studied math at the University of Berlin around 1900, died in 1911 of tuberculosis. Georg Schwidetzky studied law and had a successful political career which ended with World War I. The family moved to Leipzig, where Georg Schwidetzky worked for Die Deutsche Bücherei, roughly equivalent to the Library of Congress. Ilse Schwidetzky had three siblings, Eva, Walter, and Georg. She is related to Oscar Schwidetzky, who invented the ace bandage and was the first non-MD admitted to the American Medical Association.
Ilse Schwidetzky studied history, biology and anthropology in Leipzig and Breslau.
From the 1930s, she worked as the assistant of Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt, one of the leading racial theorists of Nazi Germany.
Schwidetzky married Bernhard Rösing in 1940, also a professor. They lived in different cities. Then and now it is not uncommon for two-professor couples in Germany to live apart given how few positions there are for professors. The couple had three children, among them ethnologist Ina Rösing and anthropologist Friedrich Wilhelm Rösing. Bernhard Rösing was killed in a train accident in 1944. The train carried an army reserve unit of which Bernhard Rösing was a member. The unit was tasked with conducting clean up operations. It was a "regular" train accident and not caused by any military action. Bernhard Rösing was the only member of Ilse Schwidetzky's closer family who died during World War II. All of her children, her siblings and her father survived the war.
Schwidetzky worked at the newly founded Anthropological Institute at Mainz University from 1946, succeeding Eickstedt as Mainz Professor of Anthropology in 1961 until her retirement in 1975. She published under her maiden name, not her married name.

Awards and recognition

Ilse Schwidetzky was member or honorary member in numerous academic associations: