Käthe attended teaching seminars attached to Berlin's "Victoria-Lyzeum" (secondary school), and in 1882, she qualified as a language teacher for English and French.
[1] Thanks to the efforts of educationalists from Britain such as Georgina Archer and the known enthusiasm for modern ideas of the Kaiser's English-born daughter-in-law, Victoria, England was known (correctly) in liberal circles as a relatively progressive country in respect of women's education.
[2][4] In 1887 she emerged from the teachers' training college (Lehrerinnenseminar) in Dresden – at that time the only such institution for women in the whole of Saxony – with a full German teaching qualification.
In parallel with her studies she had already, since Easter 1886, been working as a teacher at the prestigious Teichmann'schen Teaching and Education Academy at its daughter school in Leipzig.
Described in one source as "the oldest German women's rights organisation", the ADF had been founded in Leipzig by Louise Otto-Peters and Auguste Schmidt in 1865.
She gave lectures and presentations covering a range of related topics such as care of the poor and of orphans, reading material, the women's movement and - a particular concern of Windscheid's: girls' education, as reported in the Neue Bahn, the ADF's house publication, available in the Louise-Otto-Peters-Archiv in Leipzig.
Probably it was her father's intervention with his friend, Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden, that enabled Windscheid to study for a doctorate at Heidelberg University.
She was awarded the certificate in 1895 for her dissertation submitted the previous year, entitled Die englische Hirtendichtung von 1579–1625 (loosely, "English Pastoral Poetry 1579–1625").
Saxony was more progressive than some parts of Germany, however, in that as far back as 1870, women were able to attend university lectures as "guest listeners", with the permission of the professors.
Since its creation in 1865 the ADF had submitted a series of petitions demanding better school provision for girls, equal standards for female and male trainee teachers and admission of women to universities.
Meanwhile, using a private foundation dedicated to provision of university-level studies and a girls' secondary school, the ADF was able, towards the end of the 19th century, to provide bursaries for a small number of women to attend universities abroad.
Increasingly, qualified teachers from secondary schools were also recruited to cover a remarkably broad curriculum that included German, French, English, History, Latin, Greek, Religion, Mathematics, Botany and Zoology, Chemistry, Physics and Geography.
Between 1903 and 1910 a second female teacher was employed: Dr Frida Hansmann's educational career, like Käthe Windscheid's own, reflected the limited opportunities for women at that time.
The state authorities proposed that they should take over the by now well established ADF secondary school courses, but with the added provision that these should now operate under male leadership.
She continued working at the school as an educator, in the first instance as a senior teacher and subsequently as a student counsellor, till 1924 when, having reached the age of 65, she retired.