[4] In 1928, during a visit to Prague with her brother, she was introduced to the poet Johannes Urzidil, who later remarked of her: a slender, pale girl, shy and silent, a student of philosophy and especially devoted to ancient literature.
[2] Between 1931 and 1939 she earned a meagre livelihood working as a tour guide and lecturer in museums as well as offering evening courses at Lessing University, an adult education institution.
Through the jurist, poet and historian Berthold Vallentin [de], she came into contact with the discussion group around Stefan George and befriended the philosopher Edith Landmann and the writer Ernst Morwitz, among others.
From June 1942, she supported Edith Landmann in working on a book, Stefan George und die Griechen : Idee einer neuen Ethik.
The German Jewish poet Karl Wolfskehl called it the most vivid, endearing, most tense and almost maternally cleverest book about Homer and the first world of Greekism.
[citation needed] During the years Von Scheliha was working at the University of Basel, she gave a series of non-university lectures on ancient topics, some of which were published posthumously.
She lectured about Ancient Humanity (May 1944), political and intellectual freedom, education and friendship among the Greeks (Winter 1944–1945), The image of antiquity from the Renaissance to the present (spring 1945), Pindar's life, his XIV.
[13] Most importantly, von Scheliha prepared a treatise on a rarely discussed topic; the competitions of poets in ancient Greece in the period from about 700 to 200 BC.
[2] The following year, von Scheliha was appointed as a cataloguer at the History of Medicine Division of the Armed Forces Medical Library in Cleveland, Ohio and held the position until 1954.