Marie Munk

Marie Munk, who lived from July 4, 1885, to January 17, 1978, was a German lawyer and judge who became the first female judge in Germany. Born in Berlin, she earned a Doctor of Laws degree from Heidelberg University in 1911 and was admitted to the German bar in 1924, among the first women permitted to practice law in the country; in 1914 she had co-founded the German Women Lawyers Association, later serving as its second chairwoman from 1919 to 1933. In 1930 she was appointed a district court councilor in Berlin, and throughout her career she pressed for family law reforms including equal spousal responsibilities, simplified divorce procedures, equal division of marital property, and equal citizenship rights for women. She was dismissed from her judicial post in 1933 under Nazi laws targeting people of Jewish descent, later emigrated to the United States, was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1943, and worked as a marriage counselor for a court in Toledo, Ohio, before settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts.