The ideals of 1848 were celebrated: they were encouraged to shun group-think and work through issues for themselves[4] Her father died in 1880 and after she reached adulthood she helped her mother to look after her parents' younger children: the siblings would retain close interdependencies throughout their lives till 1936 when her younger brother, the theologian Dr. Reinhold Planck, died, leaving Mathilde the only survivor of them all.
[5] She then joined her sister Marie in taking a position with the "1st Württemberg Girls' Secondary school" ("1. württembergischen Mädchengymnasium") opened that year by Baroness Gertrud von Üxküll-Gyllenband with royal backing.
One issue on which she campaigned with particular urgency was what she termed the "sentence of celibacy", the convention whereby female teachers, if they married, were expected to resign their teaching jobs in order to devote themselves to their family duties.
[1] From 1890 she had been chair of the Stuttgart branch that had been founded by Baroness Gertrud von Üxküll-Gyllenband of the "Association for Women's Education and Study" ("Verein Frauenbildung und Frauenstudium").
At various times she headed up various other groups such as the Stuttgart Women's Club, a forum and networking structure for members various Stuttgart based women's associations and campaigning groups including the "Abolitionist League" ("Abolitionistische Verein") which campaigned (as it still does) against the moral double standard implicit in government policy on prostitution.
She joined with Frida Perlen, chair of the Stuttgart region association of the International Women's League for Peace and Liberty, to send a telegram to the Kaiser on 3 August 1914, requesting and inviting him to avoid the imminent war.
It was a remarkable step in the climate of patriotic war euphoria which political leaders across much of Europe had unleashed and encouraged over the previous few years.
This vegetarian non-smoking non-drinking campaigner made a point of wearing the Blue Cross throughout this time as testimony to her (in the context of the war more than usually unfashionable) condemnation of alcohol abuse.
She also belonged to the German branch of the "World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union" (WWCTU / "Weltbund Christlicher Abstinenter Frauen"), although she appreciated the "it would not make a person popular in Germany [to] speak out on certain evils that people preferred to keep hidden".
She was elected to the Constitutional Assembly for Württemberg, the body mandated to create a new political structure in the territory for the post-war republican reality.
Keen to back these aspirations with democratic underpinnings, she worked for a liberal future, with jobs for women able to benefit from equal legal rights and a more prominent role in public life.
Like many involved in the retirement home project, Planck had hoped that the coming to power of the Hitler government in 1933 might prove a short lived affair.
The "triumph of the base, the ugly and the mean" often drive her to the edge of melancholy because she had to experience how "self reliance, and fighting for what is good and beautiful" became increasingly difficult with her advancing years.
In 1947 she celebrated the collapse of the "horror regiment" ("Schreckensregiment") with two small written contributions, intended to demonstrate "the great importance of a system of law that matches up to the real simple realities of human rights".
[7] In his accompanying "Greeting address" the West German president expressed appreciation for her "truly patriotic and humanitarian work to which [she] as daughter and spiritual heir of a remarkable father had dedicated her life".
That honour fell to Mathilde Planck, a few months short of her ninety-second birthday and representing the Christian-Pacifist All-German People's Party ("Gesamtdeutsche Volkspartei" .