Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian (2 April 164713 January 1717) was a German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator, a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family. Merian was one of the first naturalists to observe insects directly.
Maria Reese
Maria Meyer was born at Michelbach, a village in the hills north of Trier, on the western edge of the Prussian Rhine province. Her father, Anton Meyer, was a primary/middle school teacher. Maria attended school locally and moved into a teachers' training college in Bonn. She took a permanent teaching post at in her home region. Early on she came into conflict with a schools inspector who asserted that she was not qualified to do the work of a chaplain because she was female. She increasingly came to reject the Catholicism with which she had grown up, turning to politics instead. The outbreak of war and the accompanying conscription of male teachers created a desperate shortage, and she took a new teaching post at Schladt in 1914. However, after three years she found herself condemned by a military court to dismissal from the profession and a five-month prison term because she was found to have been employing French prisoners of war. By the time the war ended in 1918 she was writing that she had a yearning for socialism which "might rescue humanity from penury and misery and more war". (""...die Sehnsucht nach dem Sozialismus, der die Menschheit von Not und Elend und vor weiteren Kriegen erretten sollte."")