Mezzo-soprano.

Born on 24 April 1891. Daughter of the chemist and botanist Lorenz Janke. She had a sister, Luise.

She married Walter Georg Neitzel and were parents of three children: Wolf, Walter and Bernhard. Sister-in-law of Otto Neitzel, composer, pianist and orchestra director, from whom she received formation. She began her music education in Neuchâtel, and later expanded her singing studies in Baviera. Her interest in culture led her to study folklore and popular music.

Neitzel gave a series of highly successful recitals in Austria, Switzerland and Germany during the 1920s and 30s, where she frequently performed works by Georg Philipp Telemann, Ludwig van Beethoven, Christoph Willibald Gluck and Richard Strauss. In 1925, while performing Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice" in Munich, she met the Austrian painter Louis Christian Hess and initiated a relationship with him. One year later, she sang at the Staatsoper Berlin. On 25 January 1933, she wrote to Manuel de Falla from Munich, enclosing a brochure with some press reviews of her performances, and informed him that "Psyché" (1924) would be broadcast from the Bayerische Rundfunk on 10 February of that year. During World War II, she remained in Munich. She wrote "Zirkus Pfundig. Ein Spiel für Kinder" and "Schäferreigen. Ein Singspiel für Kinder", both with music by Alfred von Beckerath.

El Museo Estatal del Tirol en Austria conserva correspondencia entre Louis Christian Hess y Marya Neitzel.