Studied art history in Berlin, Vienna and Münster; student internship in the Degenerate Art and Research Centre, Freie Universität Berlin; 2012/13 Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, German Sales 1930–1945: Art Works, Art Markets, and Cultural Policy database project; internship in the Provenance Research office and Zentralarchiv of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; 2015–18 employed in the provenance research department of the German Lost Art Foundation; since 2018 provenance research at Brücke-Museum, Berlin; until 2020 dissertation on Galerie Almas in Munich.
Maria Dietrich was born on 28 June 1892, the daughter of the butcher Heinrich Anton Georg Dietrich and Maria Dietrich, née Krach.