[1] After attending Lyceum in Krefeld, Otte taught drawing and physical education in Uerdingen.

[3] [4] After leaving the Bauhaus, Otte served as head of the weaving workshop at the Kunstgewerbeschule Burg Giebichenstein, a vocational arts college in Halle, now the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design.

[2] A number of former students and teachers from the Bauhaus went to work at the school, including: Gerhard Marcks, the Rector from 1928 until 1933; Hans Wittwer, who ran the Architecture department; Marguerite Friedländer and Erich Consemüller.

Following the Nazi rise to power in 1933, Koch-Otte and other staff considered avant-garde were dismissed from the school.

Koch-Otte's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.