Dr. Margarete Berent

Margarete Berent was born into a Jewish family in Berlin on July 9, 1887. After her teacher's examination, she worked as a teacher and passed her university entrance examination in 1910. She studied law and political science in Berlin, where women had been allowed to study since 1908, but were not admitted to the state law examinations until 1922. In 1913, Berent completed her studies with a dissertation on "Die Zugewinngemeinschaft der Ehegatten". This work laid the foundation for the reorganization of matrimonial property law in 1958. Until then, the husband could dispose of all of his wife's property. As women were not admitted to the bar until 1922, Berent worked as a legal assistant. She ran the Charlottenburg legal aid office for women and represented called-up lawyers. In 1914, she co-founded the German Women Lawyers' Association, which in 1919 obtained the admission of women to take legal examinations. In 1925, she was finally admitted to the bar and became one of the first Prussian women lawyers to specialize in matrimonial property law. She was active in numerous associations to translate the needs of women into applicable law. From 1919 to 1929, Berent taught family law and youth welfare at the Social Women's School in Berlin, and from 1926 to 1933 she was a lecturer at the German Academy for Social and Educational Women's Work.

In 1933, she was disbarred by the Berlin Bar Association. She worked at the Central Welfare Office for Jews in Germany, where she advised those wishing to emigrate and organized further education courses for women, until she left Germany in 1939 and emigrated to the USA. As her studies were not recognized there, she worked as a housekeeper and paralegal and studied in the evenings. At the age of 62, she was finally admitted to the bar in New York, where she worked in the legal department of the city administration until her death on June 23, 1965.