Marie Kuhn was born in Egelsbach, at that time a small town a short distance to the north of Darmstadt. Heinrich Kühn, her father was a farmer who became the father of seven daughters: Marie was the sixth. On 23 April 1914 Marie Kuhn married the plasterer Adolf Theodor Schmidt.
Politics
During the war which broke out a little more than three months later Marie and Adolf Schmidt were both deeply involved with the :de:Friedensbewegung#Erster Weltkrieg|"proletarian" peace movement. Marie Schmidt was an early member of the Communist Party of Germany which in 1918/19 emerged out of it. In her home community she was elected to membership of the Egelsbach local council. She also made her mark across Hesse more widely, gaining a reputation as an effective and aggressive public speaker representing the :de:KPD Hessen|Hesse Communist Party, and acquiring the soubriquet "Rote Marie". During 1931/32 Marie Schmidt served as one of :de:Liste der Mitglieder des Landtages |just three women members of the 70-seat :de:Landtag des Volksstaates Hessen|Hesse state parliament. Having secured her seat in the election of 15 November 1931 she made just one brief speech in the chamber. That was in February 1932 when she contributed in a debate over a government bill. Following the National Socialisttake-over in January 1933, in March 1933, Marie Schmidt and her husband were arrested in the aftermath of the Reichstag fire. They were detained for several weeks and then released. Under the dictatorship the Communist Party and political activism were banned. After 1945 Schmidt, by now a widow, rejoined the Communist Party, but with Communism now seen increasingly as a proxy for Sovietexpansionist ambitions the party no longer enjoyed significant support in what became, in 1949, the German Federal Republic. Marie Schmidt withdrew from public political engagement. Nevertheless, after the Communist Party had been banned by the West German Constitutional Court in 1956, and then, as Cold War concerns began to recede, quietly relaunched with a new name in 1968, Marie Schmidt joined the "new" party.
Theo
The couple's son Theo evidently shared their political convictions. In 1934 he fled to the Saarland which remained under :de:Regierungskommission des Saargebietes|French military occupation. That meant there was little likelihood of close surveillance or sudden arrest by the German Security Services. In 1936 Theo went to Spain to fight for the "antifascist" International Brigades, and was killed in 1937 during the fighting for Taragona.
