[3] It was, she later asserted, as a result of her studies at this time that she produced her first publication, "On the participation of the female sex in employment" ("Ueber die Beteiligung des weiblichen Geschlechts an der Erwerbsthätigkeit").

[4] She employed her teaching skills, giving lectures to the Workers' Education League covering literature, pedagogy, history, socio-politics and economics.

She became the chair of the "Association for women and girls of the working class" ("Verein für Frauen und Mädchen der Arbeiterklasse") in Leipzig.

[1] In 1906 she became deputy controlling editor for "Die Gleichheit" ("Equality"),[3] the women's magazine managed by Zetkin, under whose direction it had surged from obscurity to a distribution estimated in 1907 at 70,000 copies.

In 1911 Duncker gave a presentation to the SPD Party Conference, held that year in Jena, where, according to one source, she had her first encounter with Rosa Luxemburg.

[4] "Suddenly the entire weight and responsibility of such wide ranging and dangerous organisational work lay on the shoulders of this delicate woman.

Already sufficiently burdened by her domestic difficulties [possibly involving her sensitive elder son], unhesitatingly everything that the times and circumstances required."

"Plötzlich lag die ganze Last und Verantwortung der so umfassenden wie gefährlichen Organisationsarbeit auf den schwachen Schultern dieser zarten Frau.

[1] The news-sheet took its name from International Group which had been launched within the SPD on the initiative of Rosa Luxemburg at outbreak of the war and to which the Dunckers had been early recruits.

Duncker continued to campaign against the war, using her background on the party's education to locate and address youth groups, while also producing illegal "Spartacus Letters" ("Spartakusbriefe"), carrying the same pro-peace messages.

[3] Writing to her husband on 25 June 1919, she identified the peace terms imposed by US president, Woodrow Wilson as the "dictates of an imperialistic power, victorious following the downfall of its German rival" ("Diktat imperialistischer Siegermächte über den niedergeworfenen Konkurrenten Deutschland").

The two principal breakaway movements were the Spartacus League and the Independent Social Democratic Party ("Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / USPD).

Some of the contradictions inherent in these arrangements were addressed at a conference held in Berlin between 30 December 1918 and 1 January 1919 which gave structure to agreements entered into earlier in the month, in the process establishing the Communist Party of Germany.

[4] Käte Duncker returned from Sweden towards the end of 1919 and embarked on a brief series of lectures at the Workers' Education College ("Arbeiterbildungsschule") in Berlin,[1] also supporting herself with translation work.

In the aftermath of the violence the local left-wing district government resigned and Hermann Duncker, employed by it in a senior secretarial/administrative capacity, lost his job and was obliged to resort to his "fallback occupation" as a peripatetic teacher working for the Communist party,[12] which had a depressive impact on the family.

She addressed her parliamentary responsibilities with characteristic energy, her contributions focusing on issues involving childhood, and building on ideas that had originated during her time as a teacher in Eisenach and Friedrichroda.

As a result of her truncated teaching career Käte Duncker had become a proponent of the precepts developed by the education pioneer Maria Montessori, which led her to concern herself with enhancements to the professionalism of teacher training.

[3] Régime change in January 1933 signalled a rapid transition to one-party dictatorship, with communists high on the government enemies' list.

In November 1936, she emigrated to the United States where she lived in a New York apartment block and was able to find work as a cleaner and as a language teacher.

Her elder son was building a career as a notable Gestalt psychologist, by this time based at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia, and a couple of hours by train from New York.

[13] There are sources indicating that he had nevertheless been struggling with mental health issue of his own for some year: early in February 1940, shortly after his 37th birthday, following a series of "nervous breakdowns", Karl committed suicide.

Nevertheless, on 2 June 1948 she wrote to her old friend and comrade, Wilhelm Pieck, imploring him to use his personal influence to find out what had happened to her younger son, Wolfgang.

Like him, Wilhelm Pieck had moved to Moscow in 1935; unlike Wolfgang, he had survived, and was now a top German politician in the Soviet occupation zone.

[3] According to a detailed report submitted by his wife to the Central Committee of the exiled German Communist Party in Moscow on 22 September 1939, Wolfgang had been arrested on 21 March 1938 and interrogated.

Less than a year earlier she had called in a favour from another old comrade, writing on behalf of her friend, the journalist Jacob Walcher, to Walter Ulbricht.

[16] The East German state needed to find suitable heroes and heroines: Käte Duncker evidently satisfied the criteria.

In a public park ("Kurpark") in Friedrichroda the memorial statue showing Duncker as a teacher instructing three pupils was removed in 2009 in order to clear the way for a new walkway.

(Nevertheless, unconfirmed assurances from town officials, briefly reported in the local press, indicated that it would be restored to the park, in an alternative location, some time round 2018.