Provenance and early years Maria Saran was born in
Cranz, a small seaside town in what was then
East Prussia. She was the seventh of ten recorded children born to the busy architect
Richard Saran and his wife. On her mother's side Maria was a niece of the diplomat
Johannes Kriege, and thereby a first cousin of the lawyer
Walter Kriege and a remoter kinswoman of the early socialist
Hermann Kriege. She married a young doctor called
Max Hodann on 24 December 1919, by which time the couple's daughter, Renate, had been born, and left-wing politics had replaced medicine as the other focus of Maria's life.
Politics As
war gave way to searing austerity and a year of
revolutions, Maria and
Max Hodann became increasingly involved with the
International Association for Socialist Struggle ("Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund" / ISK ), which had been set up in 1918 by the charismatic
Göttingen-based philosopher
Leonard Nelson. She also worked in adult education in
Berlin and engaged in social work. During the early months of 1933, the
Hitler government lost little time
in creating a
post-democratic German state.
Emergency powers opened the way for attacks against, and mass arrests of, high-profile left-wing activists, Jews, and others identified by government as enemies. Maria Saran escaped with her twelve-year-old daughter Renate (Rene), initially to France and, for some months,
Denmark. By the end of 1933 they had arrived as refugees in England, she worked with in the
Socialist Vanguard Group (SVG), which was effectively the British branch of the
ISK. In 1941 she became editor of the group's monthly publication, retaining the editorship (latterly jointly with
Rita Hinden) until 1955. During the 1930s she had obtained British citizenship, in 1935/36
briefly marrying a fellow socialist,
Allan Flanders, in support of her citizenship application. War ended in defeat for the
Nazi régime in May 1945. Many of the socialist refugees from Nazism, who had lived in England since the 1930s now returned to
Germany, including
Minna Specht with whom Saran had at times worked closely in London. Mary Saran stayed on in England, working as a freelance journalist, contributing particularly (but not exclusively) to socialist and women's publications. She also worked with the
UNESCO, focusing on women's issues. 1976 was also the year in which she died. Her English language memoir was translated by her friend, the historian
Susanne Miller, and published privately in Germany under the title "Gib niemals auf. Erinnerungen" in 1979. == Selected bibliography ==