Elfriede Weidenhaus was born and grew up in Berlin, then in 1940  she was sent to Meissen in Saxony to escape the ravages of war, where she was able to complete her schooling. In 1947 she began studying at the Leipzig School of Arts and Crafts, where Max Schwimmer became her most important and influential teacher. In 1948 she followed him to the reopened Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Art, which she left in 1950 to work as a freelance artist. 

Her first successes came quickly – while she was still a student the Leipzig City History Museum and the Print Cabinet of the Dresden State Art Collections acquired etchings she had created. She took part in her first exhibition in 1948 at the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts when she was not yet seventeen, and held her first solo exhibition in 1952.
 
In 1953 she moved to West Germany and settled in Stuttgart as a freelance artist. She initially worked there as a textile designer, and also worked on commissions for newspapers and magazines, illustrated non-fiction books and literary texts. She also began to focus intensively on printmaking again, initially with lithography, and from 1967 exclusively with etching. She is particularly known for her ex libris or bookplates, of which she produced more than 300.

In 1990 she moved to Erkenbrechtsweiler, a small town south of Stuttgart, where she lived and worked until her death.

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for introducing us to this artist, and for supplying most of the images.