[1][2][3][4][5] Marie Karoline Oestreicher grew up in what was then the Bohemian monarchy Karlsbad, the daughter of Austrian doctor Karl, who died young (1864 – March 1915) and his wife Clara, née Kisch (1871–1945), sibling of the older Felix (1894–1945) and Lisbeth (1902–1989).

She bought a Leica and a Rolleiflex and began a three-year apprenticeship as a photographer on September 18 the Graphic Teaching and Research Institute Vienna - Department of Photography and Reproduction Processes, including an internship from February 1934 to July 1935 in the Viennese Willinger's photo studio on Kärntnerstrasse.

In the summer of 1937 she left Austria because of the increasing influence of the Nazi Germany and the growing anti-Semitism and moved to the Netherlands to live with her sister Lisbeth, who, after training as a textile designer at the Bauhaus Dessau had settled in Amsterdam.

As she was affected by the occupational ban for Jewish photographers, Austria had to give up her job in May 1941 and began working as a nurse in the Portuguese-Israelite Hospital[8] on the Rapenburg peninsula in the Jodenbuurt, and as a photography teacher for the Judenrat of Amsterdam.

During this time, while hiding in the attic of the house at Vondelstraat 110 in Amsterdam, she met her future husband Hendrik (“Henk”) Pieter Jonker, whom she taught to take photographs.

Together with him and other Jewish photographers such as Éva Besnyö, they produced false identity cards for the resistance and Maria took on courier services under the pseudonym Elizabeth Huijnen.

[6] After the war she accepted commissions for fashion reports and founded the photo agency Particam (Partisan Camera) at Willemsparkweg 120, Amsterdam with Henk Jonker, Aart Klein and Wim Zilver on 4 May 1945.

With the permission of the National Armed Forces, socially critical photo stories on the reconstruction and misery amongst the population were produced for the Dutch free press.

On 1 September 1945 Emmy Andriesse, Maria Austria, Eva Besnyö, Carel Blazer, Charles Breijer, Violette Cornelius, Es Elenbaas, Cok de Graaff, Paul Huf, Henk Jonker, Aart Klein, Cas Oorthuys, Sem Presser, Annelies Romein, Hans Sibbelee, Kryn Taconis, Ad Windig and Hans Wolf founded the Department of Photographers of the GKf ; the Vereniging van Beoefenaars der Gebonden Kunsten (Association of Practitioners of the Bonded Arts).

In 1954 with Cas Oorthuys, Emmy Andriesse, Carl Blazer, Ed van der Elsken, Henk Jonker and several others Maria met MoMA curator of photography Edward Steichen in the studio of photographer Paul Huf in which Steichen outlined plans for his global exhibition The Family of Man and looked at their photographs.

Six Dutch photographers who had attended the meeting at Paul Huf's studio were included in The Family of Man, but not Maria Austria, despite the humanist ethos of her imagery and although her work had appeared in Steichen's 1953 Post-war European Photography.

After Wim Zilver Rupe and Aart Klein left in 1956 and Henk Jonker divorced in 1963, she continued to run the Particam office on her own, employing assistants and apprentices including Vincent Mentzel, Jaap Pieper and Bob van Dantzig.

Until her death in 1975, she was the in-house photographer at the Mickery Theatre[12] which had been based in Amsterdam since 1972, a venue for international, alternative experimental theater and one of the most important stages for free ensembles in Europe.

For the Holland Festival and Mickery Theater, she photographed the receptions and rehearsals during the day, the performances or concerts in the evening and then developed the photos in order to deliver them to the national newspapers and agencies in the morning before going to press.

[9] Uninfluenced by avant-garde trends, she renounced artistic alienation and created "straight photographs that capture the social contradictions of the post-war period".

In addition to social reports, in the years after the war she took many portrait photos of intellectuals and artists of her time, including Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky, Mstislav Rostropovich, James Baldwin.

Increasingly she devoted herself to theatre, music, dance and circus photography, concentrating on reporting on theatrical performances and experimental music and dance performances, photographing many opera and ballet productions, famous guest conductors and soloists, most notably at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam and as in-house photographer of the experimental Mickery Theater.