Lucy Mensing: Time in the Soviet Union and her return to Jena
Werner Heisenberg (left) speaks with Lucy Mensing (center). The photo is said to have been taken at a joint East–West conference of the German Physical Society in Berlin in 1952, though no record of such a meeting has as yet been located. The woman on the right is identified only by the last name Meißner.
AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Mensing Collection, Gift of Dr. Dorothea Roloff.
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 and Gernot Münster, “Lucy Mensing,” American Institute of Physics, 2025. http://www.aip.org/history/lucy-mensing.