Marianne Beth

Marianne Beth (March 6, 1889, Vienna – August 19, 1984, New York City) was a Jewish Austrian lawyer and feminist. In 1921, she was the first Austrian woman to earn a doctorate in law.

Life She was born Marianne Weisl into a bourgeois Viennese family. Her father, Ernst Franz von Weisl, was a jurist. Her brother was the Orientalist and Zionist leader Wolfgang von Weisl. In 1906, she married the Berlin theologian Karl Beth and converted from Judaism to Protestantism.

When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938 (Anschluss), her name was removed from the registry of attorneys and Beth and her husband emigrated to the United States.