Lucy Mensing, 1929–1995: Life after physics
From left, Lucy Schütz, Jürgen Schütz, and Wilhelm Schütz.
AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Goudsmit Collection
In 1929, Lucy and Wilhelm Schütz moved to Munich, where Gerlach succeeded Wilhelm Wien. In 1930, she published what would turn out to be her last paper and gave birth to her first child, Jürgen (1930–2018). The couple would have three more children: another son, Ulrich (1935–2022), and two daughters, Cornelie (born 1937) and Dorothea (born 1939). Jürgen and Ulrich both went into medical physics, Cornelie and Dorothea into pharmacy and medicine, respectively.
Cornelie and Dorothea were born in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), where Wilhelm Schütz was appointed professor in 1936. He replaced Walter Kaufmann, forced into early retirement by the Nazis. In August 1944, a bombing raid of the Royal Air Force destroyed the Schützes’ apartment and they went to Jena, where Wilhelm Schütz had set up a branch of his institute in Königsberg.
In 1947, in operation Osoaviakhim, the Soviets rounded up about 2,000 scientists and engineers and put them to work in the Soviet Union. Wilhelm Schütz and his family were taken to the island of Gorodomlya where they were forced to stay for five years. While her husband worked for the Soviet rocket program, Lucy Schütz taught at a makeshift school for the children of the German families.
In 1952, the Schützes were allowed to leave the Soviet Union and returned to Jena, now part of the new German Democratic Republic. Wilhelm Schütz got a chair in experimental physics, which he held until his retirement in 1965. Lucy Schütz would assist her husband in his work, for instance by helping him prepare lecture notes.
Wilhelm Schütz died in 1972. Lucy Schütz moved from Jena to Meiningen in 1992 to be close to her oldest daughter, Cornelie. This is where she died three years later, on April 28, 1995. Her papers, which are now with her youngest daughter, Dorothea, will eventually be deposited in the Archives of the University of Jena.
Cite this resource
Michel Janssen, “Lucy Mensing,” American Institute of Physics, 2025. http://www.aip.org/history/lucy-mensing.