Despite her national role in the BDF, she continued to be active in poverty relief in Mannheim, retaining membership of various welfare related local organisations and initiatives, and as a member of the . During the First World War, which erupted at the end of July 1914, she took over leadership of the previously prosperous city's "Centre for War Welfare" ("Zentrale für Kriegsfürsorge"). After the war and the ensuing revolutionary events that followed, in 1922 she founded and thereafter, through the so-called "Weimar years" till 1933, headed up, the "Mannheimer Notgesellschaft" which was a drawing together of associations committed to public welfare and poverty relief in a city where, thanks to the disastrous war, unsupported widows and orphans were now commonplace. She also sustained her support for various other local projects: she was involved in 1916 with the foundation by the Mannheim "Verein Frauenbildung – Frauenstudium" in 1916 of the "Social Women's School for the Training of Care givers and Related Female Professions" (Soziale Frauenschule also known sometimes simply as the "Welfare School / "Wohlfahrtsschule"), one of the first institutions of its kind in the German empire. Elisabeth Altmann-Gottheiner, herself a teacher, who taught at the city's , was installed as executive-chair of the administrative board at the new school, while Marie Bernays was appointed to the headship.