An educator and activist central in the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (Workers Welfare Institution) movement, and she was under scrutiny of the Nazi Party during the 1930s and 1940s for her socialist positions.

[6] Her father, an early participant in Socialist politics,[6] was a construction worker; her mother worked in a vegetable shop.

She was engaged in the Socialist labour movement from early on and joined the SPD party in 1910, where she dedicated herself to social policy and equal rights for women.

From 1946 to 1951 she was joint editor with Otto Suhr in Berlin of a theoretical fortnightly publication entitled Das sozialistische Jahrhundert (The Socialist Century).

Due to various tensions in town councils and municipalities, the first postwar mayor Otto Ostrowski stepped down from his position, allowing for Ernst Reuter to be elected into office in June 1947.