Her work was too difficult for the art patrons of the time and when she was nominated for the silver medal of the Große Kunstausstellung in Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm II withheld his permission.
She was a committed socialist and pacifist, and in 1993 the Nazi Party forced her to resign her place on the faculty of the Academy of Arts. She was banned from exhibiting, but some of her work was used by the Nazis for propaganda. She survived her husband (died in 1940 from illness), and her grandson, Peter, who died in action in 1941.
She evacuated Berlin in 1943, and moved to a town near Dresden. She died just before the end of the Second World War.