Nora Kräutle studied chemistry in Stuttgart and was one of the first female chemists at Farbwerke in Höchst. But her career ended when she married in 1919. Her husband worked for the same company - and that was not wanted.

Eleonore (Nora) Kräutle was born in Stuttgart in 1891. Her father was a senior civil engineer at the Royal Württemberg State Railway. After attending the Höhere Töchterschule and graduating from the Königin-Charlotte-Gymnasium in Stuttgart, she studied chemistry at the Technische Hochschule (TH) in her native city. When she graduated in January 1914 and was awarded the academic degree "Dipl.-Ing. Chemie", she became the first female graduate engineer at the TH Stuttgart. She completed her doctoral thesis in the laboratory of Alexander Gutbier (1876-1926), Professor of Electrochemistry and Chemical Technology at the TH Stuttgart. After an interruption due to the war to work as a volunteer for the Red Cross and the Stuttgart Food Office, Kräutle became the first woman to receive a doctorate with honours from a technical university in the German Reich in July 1915.

She then worked for a year in Heidelberg in the private laboratory of Max Buchner (1866-1934), on whose initiative the German Society for Chemical Apparatus Engineering (DECHEMA) was founded in 1926. When Buchner moved to Hanover and took up a position at the chemical company Riedel de Haen in Seelze, Kräutle also moved into industry. In January 1917, she was one of the first female chemists to start at the former "Farbwerke Höchst am Main, vormals Meister Lucius & Brüning" in Höchst am Main in Nassau, which was incorporated into Frankfurt am Main a few years later. This company later became the chemical and pharmaceutical group Hoechst AG.

In 1919, Kräutle married her colleague Anton Gramberg (1875-1966). This ended her Career, as it was not appropriate for a married couple to work in the same company. While her husband rose professionally, the talented chemist was advised to leave the company. The couple also had two children, whose upbringing she took care of.
Nora Kräutle died in Frankfurt am Main in 1981.

In January 2014, the University of Stuttgart, which emerged from the TH Stuttgart, commemorated its first female graduate. To mark the 100th anniversary of Nora Kräutle's graduation, the university awarded the Prima! prize for the first time. It honours outstanding theses by female graduates of the University of Stuttgart.

Source

G. Hardtmann and N. Hille: Die Anfänge des Frauenstudiums in Württemberg: Erste Absolventinnen der TH Stuttgart. An anniversary publication, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 2014

Nora Kräutle as a student in the laboratory at the Technical University (today: University) of Stuttgart in the winter semester of 1911/12.