Marie Wackwitz

Marie Wackwitz (born Johanna Marie Louise Zinske: 11 January 1865 – 23 November 1930) was a German socialist politician, women's rights activist and journalist.

Biography Provenance and early years Marie Louise Zinske was born slightly more than five years before unification, in Löbau, a small industrial town dominated at that time by the textiles industry, located to the south of Cottbus and to the north of the Saxon frontier with Bohemia. Her father was a building worker.

SPD At the start of 1890 the Reichstag refused to renew Chancellor Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws and what now became the Social Democratic Party was effectively unbanned, rebranded and relaunched. The 1850 Prussian Association Law prohibiting "female persons, school children and pupils" ("Frauenpersonen, Schülern und Lehrlingen") from membership of political organisations had been adopted across Germany following unification and would remain in force till 1908, but outside the old Prussian heartland it was enforced and interpreted with varying levels of conviction. Marie Louise Zinske had married Adolf Clemens Wackwitz in 1889,

During the early part of 1922 the KAG merged with what was left of the USPD, meaning that in April 1922 Wackwitz rejoined the USPD. However, the war funding issue which back in 1917 had led to the original split between the SPD and the USPD no longer featured significantly on the political agenda of either party. Following the assassination by right-wing extremists of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau in June 1922, the SPD and the USPD were increasingly working together in the Reichstag. In September 1922 they formally merged, meaning that Marie Wackwitz was now back in the party from which she had broken five years earlier. She continued to sit as a member of the Reichstag till 1924.

Final years There were two general elections in 1924. Marie Wackwitz stood unsuccessfully as an SPD candidate in both of them. She stood for election again in 1928 but was no more successful than before. Meanwhile she continued to live in Weißenfels, supporting herself as a journalist-commentator.

Marie Wackwitz died at Dresden on 23 November 1930.