[citation needed] Znamierowska was the daughter of Stanisław, a customs officer, and Leokadia née Andrzejewski, a governess.

[1] While her family moved abroad for professional reasons (Russia, Romania),[2] she left in October 1915 for Kiev, where she stayed for nearly 3 years.

[5] Over the course of two years (1916-1918), she worked in relationship with the youth progress-independent movement "Filarecja" and the Polish Socialist Party (PPS).

[6] At the end of 1920, Maria Znamierowska settled in Vilnius, capital of the Polish-controlled puppet state of Central Lithuania.

In the Polish mountain resort, she met people like Michał Choromański, Henryk Worcell and Maria Kasprowiczowa.

[4] In Vilnius, Maria Znamierowska-Prüfferowa started ethnology studies in autumn 1926, under the direction of Cezaria Baudouin de Courtenay Ehrenkreutz Jędrzejewiczowa.

[3] She published her monograph in 1930, The fisheries of the Trakai lakes (Polish: Rybołówstwo jezior trockich),[1] and pursued research in the field of ethnology.

Later, once Maria moved to the Polish capital, her mentor was prof. Kazimierz Moszyński (1887–1959) who had been chairing since 1935 the Department of Ethnology in Warsaw.

[1] In 1936, she was employed as an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnology at the USB[9] and in 1939, she defended her doctorate dissertation[7] entitled Fishing bones.

[3] During the interwar period, Maria traveled abroad to hone her museology expertise: [3] France, Austria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Scandinavia and the Baltic States.

In addition, her publications related to ethnographic museology in Poland had a great influence on the development of other institutions (in Kluki, Szczecin, Gdynia or Białystok).

[16] The museum inventory realized by Znamierowska-Prüfferowa in Toruń comprised nearly 14 000 ethnographic pieces from northern Poland, including at that time the richest collection in traditional folk fishing.

After retirement, she published her last book, Traditional folk fishing against the background of the collections and research of the Ethnographic Museum in Toruń (Polish: Tradycyjne rybołówstwo ludowe na tle zbiorów i badań Muzeum Etnograficznego w Toruniu).

[1] Furthermore, she left a rich correspondence, with family, eminent ethnographers and people from the artistic world, such as Vilnius photographers Bolesława and Edmund Zdanowski, Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova and writer Maria Kasprowiczowa.