Until 1934, she worked as a full-time volunteer for the district leadership of the Berlin-Brandenburg KPD, first as a political worker and then as leader of the women's division.

In 1935 and 1936, she attended the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West in Moscow using her cadre name, Emmy Dublin.

Rather than prove his credentials, however, the document was taken as substantiation that Scharko had connections in Nazi Germany, a deadly serious charge in the Soviet Union at that time.

Damerius-Koenen played a dominant role in the preparatory committee to found the Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands (DFD).

She gave the keynote address at the German Women's Congress for Peace on 7–9 March 1947 at the Admiralspalast in Berlin.

In spring 1949, she was forced to relinquish the DFD chair, the result of a 1949 decision by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) regarding western emigration and internal struggles with the SED Women's Secretariat, under the leadership of Elli Schmidt and Käthe Kern.

She wrote many articles in the women's press of the Soviet occupation zone and many detailed memories regarding the history of the SED and the DFD.

Damerius-Koenen died on 21 May 1987 in the Friedrichshagen district of East Berlin and her ashes are buried in the "Pergolenweg" of the Socialists' Memorial at the cemetery, Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde.