 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.