Wunderlich participated in this discussion through her lectures, like one titled "Freedom and Intellectual Responsibility" (1937)[9] delivered at a colloquium opened by Thomas Mann and focused on educational systems in totalitarian states.
She thought that National Socialism and its totalitarian aspects substituted for religion, with the belief in the superiority of the German race as its central tenet.
This definition exceeds the meaning of nation as a political society and, according to her, implies the war on inferior races as well as a fight against liberal values such as equality, liberty and self-determination.
Her colleagues elected her by a unanimous vote to serve as Dean of the New School's Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science for the academic year 1939–40.
The chairman of the faculty, Alvin Johnson, said:[11] Dr. Wunderlich's work in a succession of important educational and governmental positions in Germany prior to 1933 made her one of the first ranking women of that country.
In contrast to the present status of women, which restricts them to the lower paid and less important positions, Dr. Wunderlich's career embodied far-sighted social policy based on scholarly training in economics, on experience in social work that began with the administration of a whole district during the World War, and on practical politics in both elective governmental posts and trade unions and other politically important groups.She was the first women to be dean of a faculty in the United States.
[citation needed] Apart from her involvement in the university, Wunderlich was from 1939 until 1943 the head of a research projects funded by the Rockefeller Foundation focusing on social and economic control in Germany and Russia.
For example, she published a paper in 1924 about the problems of maternity leave and women's employment protection in general ("Frauen als Subjekte und Objekte der Sozialpolitik" in Kölner Sozialpolitische Vierteljahresschrift).