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Adelheid Lucy Schwalbe, a Jewish doctor born in Berlin in 1896, became a candidate and later a member of the Psychoanalytic Society of that city. She did her training analysis with Otto Fenichel and had Salomea Kempner as her supervisor.
She married the lawyer Ernst Heinrich Koch and then developed her clinical practice in a private office. As the threats regarding the Second World War became more intense, and as she already had two daughters, she considered leaving Germany.
During the 15th IPA Conference in Marienbad, Ernest Jones informed Adelheid Koch that a small Brazilian group interested in psychoanalysis was searching for an analyst with a good background to work in São Paulo. She decided to face this challenge; she arrived in Brazil in 1936 with her family without knowing a word of Portuguese. Dr. Koch, as she became known, dedicated her first months to learning the language and adapting her children to the new country.
At that time, Brazil had just abolished slavery and had become a republic. The rural economy was moving towards a very recently begun industrialization process, stimulated by the arrival of the first European immigrants.