When LMU’s iconic Main Building was being renovated a few years back, the toilets on either side of the Audimax were refurbished. They were also reassigned – for an eminently practical reason. The existing Gents’ toilets took up much more space than the Ladies‘, but by the time of the renovation, women already made up the majority of students at LMU.
The first cohort of women admitted to the University – in the Winter Semester of 1903-1904 – consisted of 15 pioneers, all of whom matriculated in Medicine. Only 30 years before, an earlier member of the LMU Medical Faculty, the anatomist and embryologist Theodor von Bischoff, had vehemently argued that women lacked the intellectual, emotional and physical abilities required to study the subject.
In 1919, 100 years ago, physician Adele Hartmann became the first woman in Germany to qualify as a university lecturer.