She spent a year as a kindergarten assistant and then moved to the city and in 1898 entered domestic service, working for the Laßmann family at their home in Bremen-Schwachhausen till 1904.
Tailoring work was paid by the piece rather than by the hour, and in the summer they often found themselves sitting together stitching away from five in the morning till the light faded at the end of the evening.
War broke out in July 1914 and Hermann Niehaus went off to fight, but he came back in 1915 with a serious wound to his arm, as a result of which he was no longer able to pursue his trade in tailoring.
[1] As the front line slaughter and austerity on the frontline became ever more intense Charlotte Niehaus with her friend Anna Stiegler[3] and a number of other comrades to switch her political allegiance to the newly launched Independent Social Democratic Party ("Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / USPD).
A direct voting system was applied: the USPD won 37 of the 96 seats in the Bremen state parliament ("Bürgerschaft").
[1][2] Following the change of government in January 1933 the authorities lost no time in transforming Germany into a one- party dictatorship.
Charlotte Niehaus lived a very withdrawn existence and was not politically active during the twelve National Socialist years: she was spared arrest or serious persecution.
"), set up on the initiative of the American Unitarian Social Work Community ("amerikanischen Sozialwerks Unitariergemeinschaft"), in close co-operation with the AWO.
[1][2] During the 1950s one of her most important achievements was the establishment of a home for unmarried mothers and their children in the Bremen-Neustadt quarter (on the left bank of the Weser).
Alongside her AWO responsibilities Charlotte Niehaus also involved herself in maternal recovery work and with the Bremen Women's Committee ("Bremer Frauenausschuss" / BFA), briefly serving as chairman during the early year in 1947/48.
She herself died in her ninety-third year, looked after during the final part of her life by her granddaughter, and sustained by a powerful enthusiasm for Skat.