I came back to Vienna after my labour service in autumn 1945 and I started studying Architecture in October. Since I'd been at high school during the war and didn't have the university entrance qualification, the Matura, I had to re-sit exams in Mathematics and Representative Geometry. There were three-month courses for that at TU Wien.
Our high school actually only went up to Year 7. Year 8 lasted just a month and then we got a certificate but no Matura. Between the weeks when we were at school, we were sent to work for large families or at the cannery in Inzersdorf. The Matura would have been in spring 1945 but we were already six months into our labour service by that time. Everyone was involved in military service. The boys were already part of the anti-aircraft unit, the Heimat-Flak, by Year 6.
Back then, I was a non-degree student until I had passed these two courses. After that I became a regular student. I lost hardly any time at all; the courses counted towards my degree and took place during the first semester. All in all, I was a student from 1945 to 1951. By 1949, I had attended my final lecture. I was already working between 1949 and 1951. I spent that year at the university taking the programmes and examinations that I was missing. I was in the architectural practice from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., studying in the mornings and doing my sketches for university in the evenings. Then I got my degree in summer 1951. For the first state examination, we had to submit all our individual certificates. The second one lasted a week. We had to come up with a design and then this was followed by an oral examination about several subjects.

I studied Architecture. Around a fifth of us were women. Then lots of men came back from the war. They were all in a hurry to finish and make up for lost time.
We queued up at the Rector's Office and paid our tuition fees (140 schillings per semester). It sounds like something out of ancient times in the age of the computer we're living in today. Then there were these big red course attendance records that lecturers and professors had to sign at the beginning and end of our lectures and tutorials.
We sat in the lecture theatre in our coats and mittens because there was no heating. All the lecture theatres were overcrowded. There was no top floor for the architects yet. That didn't exist until much later.

I was always very interested in the history of art and I would have really liked to study that. But, during and after the war, art wasn't a very lucrative career choice. My parents gave me free rein and I got to pick my what I wanted to study and I chose Architecture. For me, it was the right career.

The courses at TU Wien were well explained. The colleagues there helped a lot, particularly in Representative Geometry – it's not something you can learn in three months. At school, it wasn't on the curriculum and we couldn't do it as an optional subject either. At my school, Radetzky Realgymnasium, we had just one English teacher for ten year groups!

I can still remember Professors Ginhart (Art History), Lehmann, Holey, Theurer, Boltenstern, Engelhart, Kupsky and Pfann (Landscaping and Interior Design). Professor Boltenstern led the reconstruction of the bombed State Opera, Professor Engelhart the Burgtheater and Professor Holey (our Dean) St. Stephen's Cathedral.

I was always very interested in the history of art and I would have really liked to study that. But, during and after the war, art wasn't a very lucrative career choice. My parents gave me free rein and I got to pick my what I wanted to study and I chose Architecture. For me, it was the right career.

The courses at TU Wien were well explained. The colleagues there helped a lot, particularly in Representative Geometry – it's not something you can learn in three months. At school, it wasn't on the curriculum and we couldn't do it as an optional subject either. At my school, Radetzky Realgymnasium, we had just one English teacher for ten year groups!

I can still remember Professors Ginhart (Art History), Lehmann, Holey, Theurer, Boltenstern, Engelhart, Kupsky and Pfann (Landscaping and Interior Design). Professor Boltenstern led the reconstruction of the bombed State Opera, Professor Engelhart the Burgtheater and Professor Holey (our Dean) St. Stephen's Cathedral.

You were one of the first women to study at TU Wien. What did you notice? Which experiences and events have stayed with you?

We had tutorials and lectures. We had to take the tasks from the tutorials to the assistant and have them corrected. Once, during a lecture, a professor asked me for the prices of different items. But how can anyone without work experience possibly know that kind of information? Then he asked me "Do you do the pools?" "No," I said. And he said "But you guessed everything correctly." When you leave uni, you really don't have much practical knowledge.

There was only one professor and a few assistants who didn't want women at the university. I can remember one girl who was obviously there just to find a man. But our male colleagues were too busy with their other interests. I think this girl was there for only two semesters and then she disappeared. All of us students wanted to finish our own studies, of course, but there was a lot of camaraderie too. I wouldn't say that our male colleagues discriminated against us as women. However, there wasn't a single female professor. There was one female assistant in Architecture 2. The lectures were held by Professor Holey, the architect who worked on the cathedral, and he had the only female assistant.

Back then, there were no books or lecture notes. Everything was banned and supplies had to be rebuilt. We went to all the lectures. Some professors spoke and drew at the same time, so we shared the note-taking. There were three of us girls and three boys – we called ourselves 'the learning machine.' One of the three boys had a girlfriend with a typewriter so we made copies of the lecture material at his place. Whoever got the fifth copy had drawn the short straw because not much was legible by then. But we always took turns taking the fifth copy. In that way, we helped each other.

I must say, I don't think they expected as much of us back then as they do today. A lot has changed since then and there have been a number of innovations – take the variety of building materials, for example. Nowadays you couldn't dream of studying without a computer. The first lecturers started with the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. We had Architecture 1, 2 and 3. They don't study that any more. Even then, Professor Theurer, who gave this lecture, was already an old man. He had been at the digs in Ephesus. Now there are once again digs in Egypt and they're being managed by a young Austrian female archaeologist.

Back then, it wasn't difficult to find work. I worked in an architectural practice from 1949 to 1982. That's extremely rare these days. My boss later also became Professor of Building Construction at the technical college HTL Mödling. At that time, the practice was in the hands of the engineer Ms Marchhart. We mainly worked on reconstructions, residential buildings, housing developments and privately owned homes. These days, people call it Emmental architecture. But you have to consider the times when we were doing this, there wasn't much money around. In the years before the war, the female architect Schütte-Lihotzky was well known. Indeed, the 'Frankfurt kitchen' had been tailored to the conditions at the time. From this perspective, Gemeindebauten – the social housing built between the First and Second World Wars – were groundbreaking. People came to Vienna from all sorts of different countries to look at these buildings. Of course, it's not much by today's standards, but back then having a toilet and a bathroom indoors was something special. We still had Gemeindebauten types A, B and C. A consisted of one-room apartments, with a living room, kitchen, bedroom, toilet, bathroom and hall. Then there were 2 and 2.5-room apartments. We did a Gemeindebau on Mauerbachstrasse. There you had so-called hall apartments without dividing walls. This meant that people could arrange the dividing walls themselves.

The tower block in Ottakring is by our practice too. You pass straight by it on the S45 train, it's right next to the church. The municipality authorised square kitchen windows for the first time during planning. It's laughable today but back then that was something new. The parapet was raised to create a practical work surface.

The composition of the bureaucracy of reconstruction was interesting. The so-called green W7 was used for tenders. The W7 was a comprehensive document for all professionals. Six copies of everything had to be filled in. These went first to the test engineer, then to the municipality and finally to the Ministry of Reconstruction. Unfortunately, this is where the prices were cut. So, it was difficult to build something good with the means we had available to us. We were asked to fit as many apartments as possible into the ground plan. We also made 1:50 furnishing plans. It was a nice moment of recognition when we handed over the keys and people would say how happy they were and that they could furnish the apartment nicely. They had often been waiting years for an apartment.

Once a week, there was a meeting at the construction site. We had to keep a builder's journal and record everything. On one occasion, a foreman called the practice and said "I want to speak to the lady engineer who handles everything." We still used pencils to draw the plans and opened them out on a table. My boss was in charge of supervising construction and I was responsible for construction negotiations. I was often the only woman there. That bothered neither the other participants nor me. Everyone accepted it as a matter of course.

In 1982, the computer age began and, since we couldn't find a successor to take on the practice, we retired together at the end of the year.

You develop a feel for the contours of a building and its surroundings at TU Wien. I'm not always much of a fan of modern glass architecture. Perhaps we tend towards a more practical approach as women because I find myself wondering "How would you clean that?" It always looks dirty. In my opinion, you should be able to guess the function of a building based on what it looks like from the outside. Professor Erich Boltenstern was a role model for me in this respect. He taught Residential Construction. A few years ago, there was an exhibition called 'Moderat Modern', or 'Moderately Modern' (http://www.eiblmayr.at/kuratierung/moderat-modern.htm). To name just a few examples, he was behind the Ringturm, the restaurant on the Kahlenberg and a number of other buildings. Professor Boltenstern had a feel for what he built, despite the scarce resources available to him.

The building for the mountaineering club Alpenverein Edelweiß on Walfischgasse is another that was converted by our practice. We were dealing with a listed building and had to make sure to maintain the existing parts of the façade. We merged the ground floor and mezzanine floor into a single space. Further conversions were carried out on the first and second basement floors, the courtyard and the first floor. The opening took place in 1982.

After my daughter Nicole was born, my boss gave me the opportunity to work part-time. This meant that I could continue working.

I never wanted to be self-employed. I don't think it would've suited me. But I enjoyed my job a lot. Nowadays work is much more difficult to come by.
I think if you like something, you'll do it well.