Ilse von der Walde was born in Bad Kissingen on February 27, 1914 as the first child of Felix Gutmann and his wife Erna, née Haas. Her father was the owner of a “glue-industry”. Since 1934, he also ran a private spa board in Promenadestrasse. Ilse grew up with two younger siblings in Bad Kissingen Kurhausstrasse.

From November 1932 till January 1933, Ilse Gutmann – still as an unmarried domestic worker – lived in Fulda but then returned to her hometown.

There are only vague hints as to her further fate. Obviously, she could emigrate in time like her two siblings and thus survived the Nazi Era as her father’s student’s file contains an entry that his children had filed an application for compensation proceedings after the war (1952) and in that “Ilse von der Walde” is mentioned with “Medellin Columbine” as her place of residence, next to Elsbeth Guggenheimer and Paul Gutmann who lived in Denver (USA). This is also documented in the files of the application for restitution of 1959. 
She had previously lived in Bogota and married Paul Henry von der Walde (also called Harry in some sources), who was born in Bonn. The von der Walde family had moved to Koblenz around 1909, where they ran a Jewish restaurant and boarding house, and finally a Jewish coffee restaurant. Ilse's husband Paul Henry, who had divorced his first wife after two years of marriage, emigrated to Bogota in Colombia in November 1937 and married Ilse Gutmann there.

In contrast, Ilse’s parents Felix and Erna Gutmann who had stayed in Bad Kissingen were deported to Krasniczyn in April 1942 and murdered in the vicinity of Lublin. 

Ilse and Paul Henry von der Walde had three children: their son Roberto was born in Bogota in 1944, followed later by Myriam and another child. The family lived in Medellin in Colombia in the 1950s and traveled repeatedly to Denver in the United States, presumably to visit Ilse's siblings Elsbeth and Paul Josef.
Nothing is yet known about the further life of Ilse and her family.