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Contested Healthcare Politics in the Weimar Republic

For a New Sexual Understanding: Dr Else Kienle

Portrait of Else Kienle, 1927 | <span class=prov>Private archive of Mascha Riepl-Schmidt, Stuttgart</span>
Portrait of Else Kienle, 1927 | Private archive of Mascha Riepl-Schmidt, Stuttgart

Born in Heidenheim, southern Germany, Else Kienle (1900–70) came from a respectable middle-class family. After completing her medical studies in 1924, she interned at Stuttgart’s Katharinen Hospital, working in the venereal disease department. In 1928, she opened her own clinic for skin disorders and varicose veins.

Together with Jewish doctor and playwright Friedrich Wolf, Kienle publicly campaigned for a new understanding of sexuality and against the general prohibition of abortion laid out in Paragraph 218. The pursuit of their political beliefs resulted in criminal investigations against both of them in 1931. Kienle was charged with over two hundred counts of abortion. Although the case was suspended, she could no longer work in Stuttgart. After briefly practicing in Frankfurt, she fled via France and England to the United States in 1932.
In New York, she found success as a plastic surgeon.

Dr Else Kienle, Frauen: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Ärztin [1932], Stuttgart 1989, 2nd ed., p. 153<span class=prov></span>
Dr Else Kienle, Frauen: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Ärztin [1932], Stuttgart 1989, 2nd ed., p. 153
<i>Die Aufklärung: Monatsschrift für Sexual- und Lebensreform</i>, 3/10 (October 1931), cover page. The journal was founded by Dr Magnus Hirschfeld.<span class=prov></span>
Die Aufklärung: Monatsschrift für Sexual- und Lebensreform, 3/10 (October 1931), cover page. The journal was founded by Dr Magnus Hirschfeld.

Fields of Contention: Sexual Hygiene, Sexual Reform, Self-Determination

Healthcare politics generated a great deal of controversy during the Weimar Republic. The main points of contention concerned population and social policy, birth control, sexual counselling, and abortion laws. It was only after a verdict by the Reich’s highest court on 11 March 1927 that exceptions to the abortion ban were allowed if a doctor found a medical reason for it—but this regulation was hotly debated amongst doctors themselves.

From 1919 to 1932, over four hundred sexual counselling centres were opened in Germany, with forty of them in Berlin alone. Important organizations included the League for Maternity Protections and Sexual Reform, founded in 1905 by women’s rights activist Dr Helene Stöcker, the Society for Sexual Reform, founded in 1913 by Dr Felix A. Theilhaber, and the Imperial Society for Birth Control and Sexual Hygiene, whose sex counselling centre in Stuttgart was led by Dr Else Kienle on a volunteer basis.

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