Baum, Marie (1874–1964)

German-Jewish pioneer of social-work theory and practice, and one of the first German women to receive a doctoral degree in social work. Born in Germany on March 23, 1874; died in Heidelberg, Germany, on August 8, 1964.

A descendent of Felix Mendelssohn through her mother's family, Marie Baum was born into an assimilated German-Jewish family on March 23, 1874. A lifelong Lutheran, she thought of herself as a loyal German and dedicated her life to the cause of social reform among her country's poor and neglected. With an acute political sense as well as a strong social conscience, Baum entered politics when the regime of Imperial Germany collapsed in November 1918. Elected as a Reichstag deputy on the German Democratic party ticket in 1919, she represented Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck from January 1919 through February 1921, when a less liberal spirit swept through her middle-class constituency.

Marie Baum believed that social reforms could significantly improve the lives of millions of poor people in Germany, particularly women and children who suffered most from the catastrophes of war, moral collapse, unemployment and inflation. An innovative thinker in the field of social work, she combined theory with practice, beginning with a job as a factory inspector in 1902. By the 1920s, she had achieved a national reputation in her field, and in 1928 was appointed to a lectureship at the University of Heidelberg. The Nazi takeover of January-March 1933 resulted in the anti-Semitic "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" of April 1933 which cost Baum her Heidelberg teaching position on July 28 of that year. Although she was interrogated by the Gestapo, who also maintained surveillance over her daily doings, she refused to be cowed by these measures, spending much of her time instead assisting those individuals who were persecuted by the regime for racial or political reasons. On trips to Great Britain and Switzerland in the late 1930s, she read avidly in the uncensored press about Nazi atrocities she had heard about in Germany only as rumors. In July 1939, she published for her closest friends a private printing of her autobiography, Rückblick auf mein Leben (Looking Back at My Life). Refusing to leave Germany despite the clear danger presented by her Jewish ancestry, she was one of a handful of Germans of Jewish origin to survive the war without deportation to a concentration or extermination camp. A November 1941 police search of her home cost her part of her library and her correspondence and research files, but it did not break her spirit. After surviving the Holocaust, Marie Baum lived almost two decades following the defeat of the Third Reich and enjoyed the resumption of her teaching duties at the University of Heidelberg in 1947. In 1950, she saw the publication of her autobiography in a commercial edition. Baum reached her elder years amidst an admiring circle of colleagues, students and friends. She died in Heidelberg on August 8, 1964.

sources:

Otto, Hans-Uwe, and Heinz Sünker, eds. Soziale Arbeit und Faschismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1989.

Schumacher, Martin ed. M.d.R. Die Reichstagsabgeordneten der Weimarer Republik in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus: Politische Verfolgung, Emigration und Ausbürgerung 1933–1945. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1991.

Walk, Joseph. Kurzbiographien zur Geschichte der Juden 1918–1945. Munich: K.G. Saur, 1988.

John Haag , Athens, Georgia