In 1927, at the age of 14, she met her future husband Herbert Baum while attending the Jewish youth group Deutsch-Jüdische Jugendgemeinschaft.

[1] The Herbert Baum Group became a successful resistance organization separate from the mainstream communist party,[1] and planned and executed a successful attack on an anti-Communist propaganda exhibition in Berlin titled "Soviet Paradise".

Marianne Baum and eight other activists were sentenced to death for treason,[2] and were executed by guillotine on August 18, 1942, at the Berlin-Plötzensee penitentiary.

In Berlin's Lustgarten, a monument designed by Jürgen Raue was erected in 1981 commemorating the 1942 attack.

The East German government, which established these memorials, emphasized Baum's allegiance to Communism.