Elisabeth Schiemann was among the first girl-students officially admitted to study natural science at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat at Berlin during 19081912. During her studies she was greatly influenced by Erwin Bauer, one of the ablest of early geneticists in Germany, and through whom E. Schiemann became acquainted with the problems and great value of genetics for plant breeding. In 1912 she was graduated as a Ph.D. with the thesis "Uber Mutationen bei Aspergillus niger."
As an assistant of Prof. Bauer, E. Schiemann was in charge of the experimental work in barley. In 1925 she was granted the "venia legendi" with a paper entitled "Zur Genetik des Sommer-Winter—Tyfus bei Gerste"; in 1931 she became a full professor. In 1943 she was made head of the division for "development and history of cultivated plants" of the Kaiser Wilhelm-Institut fur Kulturpflanzen-forschung, and after the war continued her studies of strawberries.
Besides her research work on strawberries, E. Schiemann added much to our knowledge of the genetics, history, and development of the cultivated plants. In 1932 her book, entitled Entstehung der Kulturpfanzen, was published. This book has been an approved standard work for research about the history and development of the cultivated plants; a supplement was published in 1943.