When Ursula Schubert began studying at Mittweida School of Engineering in 1948, she was a true rarity among her fellow-students. She went down in the college’s history as its very first female graduate. She was also her employer’s first female engineer. She countered the prejudice of her male colleagues with her professional expertise.
First female graduate and electrical engineer
Ursula Schubert
Ursula Schubert, née Weichelt, grew up in Chemnitz. When engineering schools began accepting students again after the war, she decided to study electrical engineering in her hometown and enrolled at Chemnitz Institute of Technology in 1947. Just one year later, she moved to the small town of Mittweida, where she was able to continue her studies, albeit as the only woman among the 41 students on her course. No allowances were made for her: “I was pushed just as much as my male colleagues, I had to work hard and sweated just as much as them during exams,” she later recalled. In 1950, aged 20, Ursula Schubert became the first woman to graduate as a qualified electrical engineer from Mittweida School of Engineering. When she started her career, she had to learn something else – how to assert herself in the male-dominated world of engineering at the Chemnitz power plant where she worked. She used her professional skills to win over her male colleagues. And she went on to spend 40 years in charge of network calculation, grid planning and future developments in the utility sector. In 1989, Ursula Schubert was awarded the Energy Industry Medal of Merit in gold. She retired a year later.
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