Born in Dresden on January 6, 1864 to middle-class parents, her formal education ended after primary school.
She met and married Emile Greie, a lathe-turner devoted to the free-thought and Social Democratic movements.
[3] A friend of her husband's, the writer Karl Schneidt [de], discovered her literary ability and urged her to write for his paper, the Neue Magdeburger Tageblatt, where she worked for some years.
[1] Forced to leave Germany as a result of the political convictions of her husband, whose views she shared, the couple moved to America in 1887.
She "flowered virtually overnight into a leading Socialist writer and lecturer",[3] becoming an editorialist in Der Sozialist [de], the party's weekly national newspaper; her major essay on the subject, "Is It Necessary For Women to Organize Themselves?," was published in early 1888 there and soon reprinted as the first major political treatise on women's organization from within the German-American Socialist movement.