Born in 1892 as the first child of the public prosecutor Dr. Heinrich Blochmann and his wife Anna née Sachs into an assimilated German-Jewish upper-middle-class family, Elisabeth grew up in the then Grand Ducal capital of Weimar, where she attended the upper girls' school, was certified as an assistant nurse, and qualified as a teacher.

Serving as a nurse at a lazarett in Weimar during the first year of World War I, and then for two years as a teacher at the Großherzogliche Sophienstift, she enrolled, in 1917, at the University of Jena to study history, philosophy, and German language and literature.

She then switched to the University of Straßburg, then in Germany, where she attended lectures by Georg Simmel, and after one semester, as a result of the end of the war, to the University of Marburg, where she focused on medieval history and on pedagogy and philosophy, two subjects taught together there.

In 1919, she switched to the University of Göttingen, where she met her most important academic teacher, Herman Nohl.

In 1922, she passed the State Exam qualifying her to teach at the Gymnasium, and in 1923, she received a PhD in history.

After the Nazis' rise to power, she was dismissed from that position in 1933 because of her Jewish background, and fled via the Netherlands to England.

In 1952, she was invited back to the University of Marburg, in order to build up the newly founded, first independent Chair of General Education (Pedagogy), and decided to accept this call in spite of many qualms.

During her Marburg time, she was the mentor of a large group of education scientists, many of whom went on to become very eminent scholars and administrators in their own right, forming a "Blochmann School".

Most important is the latter, as it takes a key role in the establishment of scholarly work on the Kindergarten, as well as on women's education.

In that field, her main scholarly interest was in its beginning, i.e. in the first institutions, such as girls schools, in Germany.

Of some importance for, and great interest in, the history of philosophy is Blochmann's affair (over many decades) with her philosophical teacher Martin Heidegger.

(die von Nohl angeregte Staatsexamensarbeit) 1923 - Promotion bei Karl Brandi in Göttingen Diss.

1929 1928-1933 Mitherausgeberin (neben Herman Nohl und Erich Weniger) der ›Kleinen pädagogischen Texte‹ im Verlag Julius Beltz.

1951 - Das Motiv vom verlorenen Sohn in Schillers Räuberdrama‹, in: ›Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte‹, Jahrg.