Karola Bloch was born in Lodz (Poland) in 1905 and grew up in a jewish family. She studied architecture in Berlin, Vienna and Zürich, reaching her diploma in 1934. During this time she worked with Bruno Taut. Together with her husband, the philosopher Ernst Bloch, she fled to the U.S. because of the Nazi-regime, not only because she was jewish, but also because of being a member of the KPD (communist party of Germany). In 1949 Karola and Ernst Bloch came back to Germany with their son, Jan Robert, and settled in Leipzig. During her time in the GDR, she mostly designed kindergartens and créches in behalf of the Deutsche Bauakademie. As an anti-stalinist she was excluded from the ruling party SED, the successor of the KPD, in 1957. While Karola Bloch and her family have been on a journey in West-Germany in August 1961, the Berlin Wall was built and they decided to not coming back to Leipzig. Karola Bloch stayed in Tübingen, still politically active, and died there in 1994.