In the first part of 1945 Maria Schmitz joined the millions fleeing Berlin towards the west. She ended up in Recklinghausen (north of Essen and Dortmund) where she reorganised what briefly became a new (West) German national headquarters for the . (The 1937 ban had been lifted following the collapse of the Hitler régime.) Still under her chairmanship, the VkdL moved its national head office again, to a more permanent location in Essen, in 1949. Under Schmitz the VkdL developed from being an advocacy body to becoming an educational institution in its own right, creating programmes for training, education and schools policy. A particular priority for Schmitz involved the establishment of pedagogic academies as places for teacher training and, more specifically, backing the academic education of women.