Käthe Leichter

Marianne Katharina "Käthe" Leichter (20 August 1895 – February 1942) was an Austrian economist, women's rights activist, journalist and politician. She was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria and the Viennese Labour Chamber. She was detained in Ravensbrück concentration camp during the Nazi regime and executed in 1942.

Leichter was born Marianne Katharina Pick in 1895 in Vienna, the second daughter of lawyer Josef Pick and his wife Charlotte Rubinstein. She graduated from the Beamten-Töchter-Lyceum in 1914 and subsequently began studying political science at the University of Vienna. Since, at the time, Austrian women were not allowed to graduate, she transferred to the German Heidelberg University in 1917; she graduated in July 1918 before returning to Vienna to complete two further semesters at the university.

Leichter became involved in the Wiener Jugendbewegung (Viennese Youth Movement), a radical left-wing organisation, as a student prior to the outbreak of World War I, and was later a member of the Parteischüler-Bildungsverein Karl Marx (Karl Marx Association for Party Scholars and Education), a Marxist group for Social Democratic Party of Austria (SDAPÖ) members who opposed the war. When the Republic of Austria was founded in 1918, and as one of the first Austrian women political science graduates to have specialised in economics, she joined the Reichswirtschaftskommission der Arbeiterräte (State Economic Committee of the Workers' Councils), Sozialisierungskommission (State Committee for the Socialisation of Industry) and the Zentralverband für Gemeinwirtschaft (Central Organisation for Public Goods and Corporations), as well as working for the Federal Ministry of Finance.

Leichter joined the Frauenreferat der Wiener Arbeiterkammer (Women's Department of the Viennese Institutionalised Workers' Chamber) in 1925 and led the department until 1934. She was elected to the Betriebsrat der Wiener Arbeitkammer (Workers' Committee of the Viennese Institutionalised Workers' Chamber) in 1932. She published articles and reports based on statistical data that she gathered about women's work in Austria, and also gave lectures, school courses and radio broadcasts to advocate for women's rights. She argued for equal pay, the hiring of more women in social administration, and employment opportunities for university-educated women.

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