Käthe Leichter

Marianne Katharina "Käthe" Leichter (20 August 1895 in Vienna, Austria – February 1942) was an Austrian Jewish economist, women's rights activist, journalist and politician.

[3] Leichter became involved in the Wiener Jugendbewegung (Viennese Youth Movement), a radical left-wing organisation, as a student prior to the outbreak of World War I, and was later a member of the Parteischüler-Bildungsverein Karl Marx (Karl Marx Association for Party Scholars and Education), a Marxist group for Social Democratic Party of Austria (SDAPÖ) members who opposed the war.

When the Republic of Austria was founded in 1918, and as one of the first Austrian women political science graduates to have specialised in economics, she joined the Reichswirtschaftskommission der Arbeiterräte (State Economic Committee of the Workers' Councils), Sozialisierungskommission [de] (State Committee for the Socialisation of Industry) and the Zentralverband für Gemeinwirtschaft (Central Organisation for Public Goods and Corporations), as well as working for the Ministry of Finance.

[2] She and her husband Otto migrated to Zürich in exile for six months in 1934, but returned to Vienna when she was elected the Revolutionary Socialists' chair of education.

She wrote anti-fascist pamphlets and published articles abroad under the pseudonyms Maria Mahler and Anna Gärtner.