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The importance of her work was only recognised much later on, and possibly her impact never valued enough. Aside from her work into reducing
housework for women, another result of her research was the invention of the ‘cooking box’, a piece of equipment that cooked food slowly, a process that is popular today with
the sustainably minded cook. This technique has been used by ancient mountain farmers cooking in the embers of a fire, whilst also adopted by a modern conscious cook.
In later years, Margarete met her husband Wilhelm in Istanbul, where many artists and intellectuals were enjoying life in exile. Drawn back to Austria to
be involved in the Nazi resistance, on arrival she was immediately arrested and sentenced to death. Fortuitously, Wilhelm had previously acquired some writing paper from
the German Embassy (for graphic study) and used this to forge some letters that postponed the final sentence until the Russian Army liberated the territory.
