After studies with Nils Larsen, Leonid Kreutzer and Wladimir Horbowski at the Berlin conservatory she started a successful performing career in Norway in 1938, soon also in Hungary and Switzerland. In 1940 additionally, she began to write concert reviews and give lectures, both about the understanding of music as well as anthroposophical topics. Together with her husband Robert Riefling she helped persecuted Jews to escape to Sweden and negotiated with Gestapo officer Siegfried Fehmer (a music lover who was sentenced to death in 1948) about better conditions for her husband while he was incarcerated in Grini (1942). Her two brothers Johan and Werner and her sister Katrine actively served in the military forces on the British side.
