Ira Rischowski was one of Germany's first female engineers. She was a member of the Women's Engineering Society, serving on the Council and supporting efforts to encourage British women to become engineers.
Biography
Early Career
Rischowski was born in Germany in 1899 to Albert Rischowski and Ida née Salomonsohn, the eldest of four children. The family were Jewish by heritage but the children were baptised. Albert Rishchowski ran shipyards and took young Ira with him to watch the riveting of the ships which inspired her to become an engineer. In 1919, Rischowski enrolled as the first female engineering student at the Technical University in Darmstadt. Her successful application was supported by six months experience repairing agricultural equipment. From 1928, Rishcowski was employed as an engineer, following training at the electrical company Siemens-Schuckert. In 1930 Rischowski became a member of Germany's central engineering institution, the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure. In 1933, there was a women's section in the VDI, but Rischowski refused to join it since it was affiliated with the Nazi Party.
Seeking Refuge
Rishcowksi was persecuted by the Nazi regime because of her Jewish parentage and socialist politics. In 1936 she escaped to the UK through the domestic servant visa scheme. Rischowski was invited by Caroline Haslett to attend meetings of the Women's Engineering Society, and she became an associate member in 1939. Interned for a year at the Rushen Camp on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien, she was released in 1942 and worked as a draughtsman and planning engineer, first at Tuvox Ltd and later at James Gordon Ltd, where she became Head of Projects.
Family life
Rischowski met her future husband Fritz Bruno Karthauser while studying engineering at the Technical University in Darmstadt and they had two daughters. Their first child was born in 1923. On her death in 1989, the then WES President Dorothy Hatfield called her "an inspiration to us all".
Memorial
After her death, her daughter Edith Novak donated a seventeenth century silver cup, made by Hans Paulus, to the Victoria & Albert Museum, to remember "her mother Ira Rischowski, her aunt Rosa Friedlander and Hedwig Malachowski, and in gratitude for the safety found by younger members of her family in the British Commonwealth2.
