Elisabeth was born in 1929 in the northeastern part of Germany which is now part of Poland. In 1945 she and members of her family left their home and fled the advancing Russian troops to the West. She moved to Norway in 1952 and raised her family there. She taught and wrote several books, both language textbooks and autobiographical fiction, as well as opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines in Norway and Germany. “De tar ikke Barn” (“They don’t hurt children”) is inspired by her experience as a 16 year old refugee, and will be published in the United States in 2021.

After a life of teaching she, in 1980, moved to the hamlet in the mountains where she started gardening. Never forgetting her war time experiences, she became actively involved in the integration into Norwegian society of asylum-seekers, refugees, and immigrants. She received Valdres Culture Prize and in 2015 The King’s Medal of Merit.