Librarian Irma E. Hochstein was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 10, 1887. She was educated there at the Kindergarten der Norwertseite, Humbolt School, West Division High School (1901), Mrs. Bayliss' School, the Milwaukee Art Student's League, and the F.W. Heine's Art School. In 1905 she matriculated at Milwaukee-Downer College where she spent her freshman and sophomore years. Hochstein then transferred to the University of Wisconsin, graduating in 1909 with a major in German and a minor in Latin.
After several years of teaching high school she returned to the University and received a library degree in 1914. As part of her library training, Hochstein took the legislative reference library course under Charles McCarthy. McCarthy's personality and philosophy had a profound impact upon her life and later when she returned to school to complete an M.A. in political science (1929), her thesis dealt with McCarthy's work in the areas of minimum wage, child labor, and apprenticeship legislation in Wisconsin.
Except for a brief leave during World War I to work for the Milwaukee County Council for Defense and the Wisconsin Fuel Administration, Hochstein worked in the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library from 1914 to 1925, rising from assistant cataloguer to chief reference librarian. In 1925 she became director of the Central Bureau of Information and Statistics at Marquette University. This position ended in 1930 due to lack of funding. Hochstein then moved to Washington, D.C. to accept a position as assistant secretary to the Women's National Trade Union League, an organization with which she had been prominently involved both in Madison and in Milwaukee. Funding for this position, which involved writing and editing the League's magazine and researching legislative issues of concern to women ended in 1932; Hochstein then returned to Milwaukee as a social worker. She remained in Milwaukee until 1942, holding various positions from case worker to director of women's work projects. In 1942 she returned to library work as chief reference librarian in the research and reference library section for the Selective Service System in Washington, D.C. under E. A. Fitzpatrick, a longtime friend. When the Selective Service System was terminated in 1947 Hochstein returned to Madison for a year as chief reference librarian at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. In 1948 she returned to Washington, D.C. as librarian at the National Security Resources Board. After her retirement Hochstein moved to the Milwaukee area.
