Technische Universität München

TUM's first female professor

Liesel Beckmann was born on October 10, 1914 in Limburg (Lahn), the daughter of two teachers. Her father held a doctor title and was headmaster of a local high school. She attended the reformed grammar school and the girls' upper school in Bonn and took her final examinations in 1933. She gained a diploma in Political Economics in 1937 and completed her doctoral thesis on "The Purpose, Development, Nature and Changes in the Promotion of Skilled Trades" in 1939 under the aegis of Professor Karl Rössle.  Rössle held the Chair of Economics at the University of Bonn and whom she followed to the Technische Hochschule München in 1938, where she became his assistant. When war broke out, she temporarily took over his lectures in economics and business administration. In 1940, Liesel Beckmann applied for to qualify as a university lecturer for her particular area of expertise. Thanks to her excellent qualifications in the field of economics and Rössle's recommendation, she was approved as a lecturer in 1941, on the condition that she agreed to remain single and "pursue an academic career as her aim in life". Her postdoctoral thesis on "The Position of Skilled Trade in Economics", completed in 1941, authorized her to lecture on the whole spectrum of Economics, and in July 1946 she was finally appointed Associate Professor (Extraordinaria) of the THM.

Soon afterwards the Faculty of Economic Science was transferred to the Ludwig Maximilian University.  She was initially deputized for Rössle's Chair, subsequently appointed as tenured Associate Professor in 1953, and eventually made Full Professor of Political Science at the University of Munich in 1956.

Following Rössle's death in 1958, she took over the management of the Munich-based Research Institute and was elected Chief Executive Officer of the German Trade Institute (DHWI) in 1959. She sat on the city council on behalf of the "Munich Block", the party of the middle classes, for 13 years and worked there in the field of commerce and education. She died on 22 July 1965, following a prolonged period of illness.