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 Wiedmaier
Maria Siegloch was born in Zuffenhausen, a quarter of Stuttgart on the city's north side. The third of her parents' seven recorded children, she was born into a "railway family". Between 1910 and 1916 she worked at the shoe factory in nearby Kornwestheim. Meanwhile, war broke out in 1914, and from 1916 she was working at a munitions factory in Feuerbach. It was here that she met Albert Volz, a co-worker whom she married that same year.
At the end of 1918 she joined the Independent Social Democratic Party (""Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands"" / USPD) which had broken away from the mainstream Social Democratic Party (SPD) following vigorous internal party disagreement over whether or not to support funding for the war. When the USPD in turn splintered she was a member of the left wing majority who moved across to the newly emerging Communist Party. Together with Heinrich Rau and she was a co-founder, in 1923, of the Communist Party's Zuffenhausen branch.