As a young woman, Martha Tausk was among the female champions of socialism in Austria. From 1919 to 1927, she served on both the Graz city council and in the Styrian Parliament as a social democrat. Tausk founded and became the editor of the journal Frauenrecht. She worked for the Sozialistische Arbeiter Internationale until 1934.
Eventually, the Anschluss with Nazi Germany forced her to leave Austria. Martha Tausk moved in with her eldest son in Nijmegen, Holland. Between 1945 and 1948 Martha Tausk defended the interests of Austrian émigrés in the Netherlands. Austrian nationals were required to leave the Netherlands after the war, unless they had been favourably disposed toward the Dutch people.
Martha Tausk died at age 76 on 20 October 1957.
In 2005 the IISH received a valuable accrual from her granddaughter Annabet Tausk to the archive previously deposited here. It includes her correspondence from 1947-1956 with the prominent Austrian social democrats Gabriella Proft (1879-1971) and Marianne Pollak (1891-1963), of the journal Die Frau, as well as her correspondence with Otto Neurath (1882-1945).
Text was taken from On the Waterfront - newsletter of the Friends of the IISH Issue 10 (pdf, 1572 Kb).