Helene Stöcker

Helene Stöcker (13 November 1869 in Wuppertal – 24 February 1943 in New York) was a German feminist, pacifist and sexual reformer. Stöcker was raised in a Calvinist household and attended a school for girls which emphasized rationality and morality. She moved to Berlin to continue her education and then she studied at the University of Bern, where she became one of the first German women to receive her doctorate. In 1905 she helped found the League for the Protection of Mothers (BfM, Bund für Mutterschutz), and she became the editor of the organization's magazine "Mutterschutz" (1905-1908) and then "Die Neue Generation" (1908-1932). Stöcker's influential new philosophy, called the New Ethic, advocated the equality of illegitimate children, legalization of abortion, and sexual education, all in the service of creating deeper relationships between men and women which would eventually achieve women's political and social equality.

During World War I and the Weimar period, Stöcker's interest shifted to activities in the peace movement. In 1921 in Bilthoven, together with Kees Boeke und Wilfred Wellock, she founded PACO (later known as: War Resisters' International, (WRI)the "Internationale der Kriegsdienstgegner"). She was also very active in the Weimar sexual reform movement. The Bund für Mutterschutz sponsored a number of sexual health clinics, which employed both lay and medical personnel, where women and men could go for contraception, marriage advice, and sometimes abortions and sterilization. From 1929 to 1932, she took one last stand for abortion rights. After a 1930 papal encyclical denounced sex without the intent to procreate, the radical sexual reform movement collaborated with the Socialist and Communist parties to launch one final campaign against paragraph 218, which prohibited abortion. Stöcker added her iconic voice to a campaign that ultimately failed.

When the Nazis came to power in Germany, Stöcker fled first to Switzerland and then to England when the Nazis invaded Austria. Stöcker was attending a PEN writers conference in Sweden when war broke out and remained there until the Nazis invaded Norway, at which point she took the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Japan and finally ended up in the United States in 1942. She moved into an apartment on Riverside Drive in NYC and died there of cancer in 1943.

Published works

Books

* 1906 - "Die Liebe und die Frauen. Ein Manifest der Emanzipation von Frau und Mann im deutschen Kaiserreich."
* 1928 - "Verkünder und Verwirklicher. Beiträge zum Gewaltproblem."

Papers

* Frauen-Rundschau, 1903-1922
* Mutterschutz, newspaper of the "Bund für Mutterschutz", published from 1905 to 1907.
* Die Neue Generation, 1908-1932.

References

* Atina Grossmann: "Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950." Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995. ISBN 0195121244
* Christl Wickert: "Helene Stöcker 1869 - 1943. Frauenrechtlerin, Sexualreformerin und Pazifistin." Dietz Verlag, Bonn, 1991. ISBN 3801201678
* Gudrun Hamelmann: "Helene Stöcker, der 'Bund für Mutterschutz' und 'Die Neue Generation'." Haag Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1998. ISBN 389228945X
* Rolf von Bockel: "Philosophin einer "neuen Ethik": Helene Stöcker (1869-1943)." 1991. ISBN 3928770470
* Annegret Stopczyk-Pfundstein: "Philosophin der Liebe. Helene Stöcker." BoD Norderstedt, 2003. ISBN 3831142122