Her best-known character is the blonde doctor's daughter Annemarie Braun, whose life from childhood to old age is told in the ten volumes of the highly successful Nesthäkchen series.

The books, the six-part TV series Nesthäkchen (1983), based on the first three volumes, as well as the new DVD edition (2005) caught the attention of millions of readers and viewers.

Her happy childhood and her life with the extended families Ury and Heymann provided the environment and inspiration to write her books.

The prosperous bourgeois household with cook, governess, housemaid, doorman, and impressive furniture which is described by Else Ury in her Nesthäkchen series or in Studierte Mädel (1906) is a direct reflection of her life in Berlin, particularly after moving to the Kantstraße in Charlottenburg, and later on to Kaiserdamm.

While her father Emil (1835–1920) became a successful merchant, her mother Franziska Ury (1847-1940) represented the German Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle class).

Sustained by these concepts of Bildung (education), Else Ury's siblings started successful middle class careers: Ludwig (1870–1963) became a lawyer, Hans (1873–1937) a medical doctor.

Ury's subsequent book Goldblondchen (1908) earned her an honorary remark by the influential Jugendschriftenwarte, and a further five publications built on this success, until, eventually, the Nesthäkchen series was published between 1918 and 1925 and made her a famous author.

On her fiftieth birthday, on 1 November 1927, for instance, her publisher, Meidingers Jugendschriften Verlag, honoured her with a large reception at the famous Hotel Adlon.

By 1933, Ury had received 250,000 RM royalties for Nesthäkchen and another series, Professor's Twins, an astronomical sum at the nadir of the Great Depression.

More promising was her contact with nephew Fritz, who had immigrated to England and was acquainted with a Berlin literary agent, Karl Ludwig Schröder.

She promised to send the books to Kohner's agency, and gave the address of her brother Ludwig as her business correspondent.

Kohner answered 2 August 1939: "Dear Madam, I have your undated letter from last month, and I understand that Herr Karl L. Schröder will send me a number of your children's books.

[11] As a Jew during the Holocaust, Ury was barred from publishing, stripped of her possessions, deported to Auschwitz, and murdered the day she arrived.

An elevated memorial paving stone was laid in front, which reminds passers-by of Ury and her fellow Holocaust victims.

[13] Else Ury describes in Nesthäkchen and the World War the experiences of Annemarie Braun, who is eleven years old when the story begins and thirteen when it ends.

Much of Ury's narrative deals with Annemarie's experiences with a new classmate, the German-Polish Vera, who does not speak German at the beginning of the story.

The resolution of this painful relational aggression builds to a shocking, ringing climax, which has enthralled readers since the book's publication.

After 1945 the new publisher removed Nesthäkchen and the World War from the Nesthäkachen series, because it was on the censorship list of the Allied control boards.

The Nesthäkchen series represents a German literary genre, the Backfischroman, a girls' novel that describes maturation and was intended for readers 12 – 16 years old.

Among the most successful Backfischroman authors, beside Else Ury, were Magda Trott, Emmy von Rhoden with her Der Trotzkopf and Henny Koch.

Meidingers Jugendschriften Verlag, her Berlin publisher, was inundated with a flood of letters from Ury's young fans, begging for more Nesthäkchen stories.

Bubi and Mädi quickly adapt to their new surroundings, learn the language and attend school separately for the first time.Twin pairs had always fascinated Else Ury.

As for the twins, Professor Winter receives a scientific assignment at the observatory in Naples, and the family moves to Italy for a year.

People traveled with Goethe and the art history of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, narrowing their focus to seemingly timeless cultural monuments.

The Italy of 1927, marked by post-war chaos, where the leader of the fascists had come to power and persecuted and expelled any opposition, is not in this story.

It shows Else and her brother Hans Ury with radiant happy faces on St. Mark's Square in Venice, surrounded by doves.