After 1945 she became a public official in the Soviet occupation zone (relaunched in October 1949 as the German Democratic Republic (East Germany)).
When the USPD itself split apart, in 1920 she was part of the left wing majority that moved across to join the recently launched Communist Party of Germany.
[2] During the Spanish Civil War she was able to provide both administrative backup and political support to party comrades.
She was also able to establish contact with the nearby Camp Vernet internment camp, originally constructed to accommodate fighters returning from the Spanish Civil War and now used to house large numbers of German political exiles previously settled in Paris - mostly communists - who following the outbreak of war in September 1939 had been identified as enemy aliens and arrested.
[4] After the German invasion in May/June 1940 the southern part of France came under the control of a puppet government and inmates at Camp Vernet enjoyed considerable freedom, but as the war dragged on security at the camp was progressively tightened, and in the end Jewish and other politically significant German inmates were handed over to the Gestapo and shipped to Germany.
[2] After - possibly even before - the Liberation of Paris in August 1944 she was listed as organisation secretary for the western version of the Soviet sponsored National Committee for a Free Germany (in French "CALPO").
In March 1947 she was a founder member of the Democratic Women's League ("Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands" / DFD) which under the Leninist constitutional structure being rolled out for East Germany quickly became one of officially sanctioned Mass movements controlled, in many respects by the ruling party and given an allocation of seats in the national legislature in order to broaden the political base and legitimacy of the government.
[2] It is impossible to measure the overall impact of her intervention, but Franz Dahlem was spared a show trial (unlike Paul Merker who was caught up in a similar set of circumstances around the same time[8]) and indeed officially rehabilitated a few years later, though he never regained his position in the upper echelons of the ruling party.