She engaged with the philosophies of the German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, and published three books which contributed to the pessimism controversy in Germany.

[6][7] Plümacher later emigrated with her family to the United States and lived in Beersheba Springs, Tennessee, where she published three books in Germany that engaged with the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann: Der Kampf um's Unbewusste ("The Battle for the Unconscious"), Zwei Individualisten der Schopenhauer'schen Schule ("Two Individualists of the Schopenhauer School"), and Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart ("Pessimism in the Past and Present").

[9] Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart was influential on Friedrich Nietzsche, whose personal copy he annotated throughout.

His intense interest in the book led him to heavily annotate it throughout and add in blank pages for additional notes.

[12] Rolf Kieser, a professor of German at the State University of New York, published a biography of Plümacher in 1990, Olga Plümacher-Hünerwadel, eine gelehrte Frau des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts.