As a researcher at the Provincial Museum in Trier, she went on to investigate the origins of the city's terra sigillata Roman pottery.

[1][2] Born on 26 June 1868 in the Hamburg district of Wandsbek, Elvira Louiza Helene Fölzer was the younger daughter of the Jewish merchant Ferdinand Heinrich Fölzer (1822–1893), also German consul in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and his wife Ricarda née Bormann-da Maja, whom he married there in 1853.

She then studied archaeology, classical philology and history of culture at the universities of Leipzig (1899–1901), Freiburg (1901–02), and Bonn (1902-05).

[4] Fölzer twice applied for a grant from the German Archaeological Institute so that she could continue her work on Greek vases but was turned down because of her age.

[5] Despite the success of her book, although she twice applied for a permanent management post at the Trier museum (1911 and 1918), in each case a man was selected.