Marie Munk

Marie Munk (July 4, 1885, in Berlin – January 17, 1978, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States) was a German-American lawyer.

She prepared for the Abitur and passed the university entrance exam at the Leibniz-Gymnasium in Berlin as an external student.

From 1907 Marie Munk studied law, philosophy, psychology and logic in Berlin, Freiburg im Breisgau, Bonn and Heidelberg.

Since women were denied access to the administration of justice (judges, lawyers, public prosecutors, administrative lawyers) in the German Empire, Marie Munk began to work as an assistant in a law firm and for a legal advice center for women.

During the First World War she worked for the German Red Cross, for the Berlin Social Welfare Office and for the National Women's Service.

After women were also admitted to the legal state exams in the Weimar Republic, Marie Munk completed them and became a consultant at the Preuss in 1924.

Of special interest are manuscripts on the position of women before and after World War I, written for the International Federation of Business and Professional Women; Munk's reminiscences of her experiences as a judge in pre-Hitler Germany (1945); and a proposal by Munk to reunify East and West Berlin (1948).