Anna Fischer-Dückelmann

Anna Fischer-Dückelmann

Anna Clara Theresia Fischer-Dückelmann (* July 5 or July 7, 1856 in Wadowice , Austrian Empire ; † November 5 or November 13, 1917 in Ascona , Switzerland) was an Austro-Hungarian life reformer , doctor and author .

Life

Anna Dückelmann was the daughter of the Austro-Hungarian military doctor and landowner Friedrich Dückelmann and spent her youth in Vienna and Tragwein . Because of her early interest in medicine, she was allowed to accompany her father on visits to garrison hospitals. In her memoirs she wrote: “I was already enthusiastic about the water treatment when I was fifteen, and I also curated pets, when I was sixteen, my first hygienic article against the corset appeared. During this time, the thought of studying medicine came to my mind for the first time. "

In 1880 she married the philosopher Arnold Fischer against her parents' wishes in Graz and moved with him to Frankfurt am Main . She decided to keep her maiden name, which was not common in the 1870s. Arnold Fischer worked for the Frankfurter Tagblatt , and the couple founded the weekly Volkswohl newspaper , in which Fischer-Dückelmann wrote about medical topics and also criticized the lack of female doctors: “It remains embarrassing for many women that they ask men about the most delicate things should be instructed. How immature our sex is until it is able to protect itself from such male interventions in its inner affairs by female doctors. ”In Frankfurt she met the first female gynecologist in Germany, Hope Bridges Adams Lehmann .

As the mother of three children, she moved to Zurich with her entire family at the age of 34 , studied medicine there from 1890 to 1896 and received her doctorate with the dissertation The cases of puerperal fever observed in the Zurich Women's Clinic from April 1888 to January 1895 . She was one of the first women to study medicine, which was not without controversy and led to discussions in the specialist press. Early on, Fischer-Dückelmann criticized the use of barely proven methods in gynecology, as a result of which many women died of bleeding. She asked for a better distinction between new and actually meaningful methods and began to deal with naturopathy.

In the Bilz sanatorium in Oberlößnitz (today Radebeul ) she acquired the practice as an assistant doctor for practicing the medical profession.

Her doctor's practice was set up in the Loschwitz Villa Artushof .

From 1897 to 1914 she ran a doctor's practice for gynecology and paediatrics in the Villa Artushof in Oberloschwitz near Dresden and was the first and for a long time only doctor who dealt with naturopathy .

When the First World War broke out, she moved to Monte Verità near Ascona in the canton of Ticino , where in 1913 she had already acquired an estate near the local naturopathic institution on a cooperative basis.

In 1900 and 1901 she published her bestsellers The Sexual Life of Woman and The Woman as a Family Doctor , for which Fischer-Dückelmann was also criticized - mainly because of her liberal attitude to sexuality and contraception. For example, she wrote: "Women are no longer a willless birth machine." And also: "Equality of women is the key to a new heaven of love!" Her most important work is probably the popular scientific reference work Die Frau, published for the first time in 1901, with more than a thousand pages as a family doctor , which reached millions in circulation in 1913, was translated into 13 languages ​​and, after being revised and expanded several times, was repeatedly reissued and marketed until the 1980s.

Publications

• On reform of female clothing. Berlin 1890.
• Today's treatment methods for women's diseases for doctors and educated people of all classes. Berlin 1898.
• Development, prevention and cure of gynecological diseases of all ages for women and adult daughters. Berlin 1898. (5th edition. 1919)
• The woman as a family doctor. 1901.
• The Sexual Life of Women - A Physiological-Social Study with Medical Advice. Berlin 1900. (19th edition. 1919)
• The decline in the birth rate - causes and control from the point of view of women. Stuttgart 1914.
• What does war teach us - wartime home nursing. Stuttgart 1916.

literature

• Annemarie Körner-Peth: Anna Fischer-Dückelmann. A woman as a pioneer at the turn of the century - a champion for the medical study of women. In: German sister newspaper . Volume 11, 1958, p. 344 f.
• Eva Geber: The woman as the family doctor of Dr. med. Anna Fischer-Dückelmann. In: AUF - A women's magazine . H. 121, 2003, pp. 22-24.
• Street names in Dresden - a man's business? Part II, Dresden 2004, p. 14.
• Paulette Meyer: Physiatry and German Maternal Feminism: Dr. Anna Fischer-Dückelmann Critiques Academic Medicine. In: Canadian Bulletin of Medical History / Bulletin canadien d'histoire de la médicine. Volume 23, H. 1, 2006, pp. 145-182. (on-line)
• David Oels: A bestseller in self-care. The guide "The woman as a family doctor". In: Contemporary historical research . Volume 10, H. 3, 2013, pp. 515-523.
• Patrick Bochmann: Women in the naturopathic movement. Anna Fischer-Dückelmann and Klara Muche. Your life, medical and especially gynecological views . Publishing house Dr. Kovač, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-339-10264-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Max Neweklowsky: Four hundred years house history. A chronicle of the house Tragwein Nr. 2 and its inhabitants. (= Contributions to regional studies of Upper Austria. Historical series 1. 4). Linz 1977.
2. ↑ Early gynecologist and best-selling feminist author. In: the standard . March 29, 2015, accessed April 1, 2015.
3. ↑ Anna Fischer-Dückelmann. In: Life Reform in Switzerland ( Memento from June 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
4. ^ Anna-Maria Blosse: Anna Fischer-Dückelmann (1856 to 1917). The first natural doctor and her health bestseller 1901. In: Naturel. 12/2002, online ( Memento from September 5, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ).

Web links

• Anna Fischer-Dückelmann in the database Women in Motion 1848–1938 of the Austrian National Library