[2] She joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1908, more than ten years before women acquired the right to vote, and pursued a career that included politics, becoming, in 1919, the first female Reichstag member to address a German parliament.

[4] After finishing at the local school in Landsberg an der Warthe, Juchacz, whose beliefs were Protestant, began work in 1893, first as a maid, and then, briefly, in a factory that made curtains and fishing nets.

[1] Looking back on the long hours of poorly paid shift work at the institution she recalled that she had soon become used to "sleeping while sitting on a hard rigid chairs ("..im Sitzen auf harten, steifen Stuhlen zu schlafen...").

[5] Their second child, Paul, was born in 1905, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1906 and Marie Juchacz moved to Berlin,[5] accompanied by her two children, her younger sister, Elisabeth Kirschmann-Röhl (1888–1930).

In a campaign headed up by August Bebel the SPD had called for women to be permitted to join political parties in 1879, but they were nevertheless excluded until the repeal of the old Prussian Association Law in 1908.

[1] There was disagreement over a range of domestic issues and over opposition to the war by the "anti-revisionist" wing that included high-profile party leaders such as Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

[3] She was also the only woman on the "National Assembly Advisory Board to Draft a Constitution for the German state" (Ausschuß zur Vorberatung des Entwurfs einer Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs)[11][12] In the election of 6 June 1920 Juchacz (unlike her sister Elisabeth) retained a seat in the national Reichstag, now representing the SPD for the Potsdam electoral district, and she remained a Reichstag member until 1933.

[3][6] Having made her mark with her first speech to the National Assembly, Juchacz's powerful oratory was again on display with her final contribution,[13] in the turbulent Reichstag debate that followed the Presidential Election in April 1932.

Friedrich Ebert, the SPD (party) leader and by now Germany's chancellor summed up the organisation's mission and its approach with the slogan, "The Workers' Welfare [committee] is the Self-help of the Workforce."

[14] The AWO was suppressed under the Nazis but resurrected in 1946, now independent of any political party, and is today an important element in Germany's decentralised welfare infrastructure, employing across the country 145,000 people plus around another 100,000 volunteers, and with approximately 400,000 members.

[15] Despite her membership of the Reichstag, it was the AWO that was increasingly the focus of Juchacz's activities during the 1920s, as she found the party political mandate and functions less important than coordinating support for people needing help.

[1] After the 1932 presidential election, Marie Juchacz spoke defiantly against the Nazi tide in her final speech[13] to the Reichstag[9] On 30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed Reichs Chancellor.

[5] The Saarland (including Saarbrücken) had been occupied by French troops under terms imposed by the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which had also required that after fifteen years the inhabitants of the region should be permitted a vote on their future citizenship.

[5] She learned English[17] and, in 1945, directly following the end of World War II, established "Arbeiterwohlfahrt USA – Hilfe für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus", a New York-based equivalent of the AWO with its focus on support for victims of Nazism, sending parcels of food and other essentials to a destroyed Germany.