Else Kienle

Else Ida Pauline Kienle (born February 26, 1900 in Heidenheim an der Brenz ; † July 19, 1970 in New York ) was a German doctor and writer who was best known for her resistance to § 218 . In 1931 she was briefly detained on charges of commercial abortion .

Life

Childhood and youth

Else Kienle came as the daughter of the secondary school teacher Otto Konrad Kienle (1872–1946) and his wife Elisabeth, née. Zeller (1873–1944) to the world. She had a six years younger brother, Otto (born April 23, 1906 in Heidenheim an der Brenz , † April 9, 1997 in Stuttgart ). Her maternal grandfather, Rudolf Zeller, and his brother Albert had a major influence on the girl's development. The profession of medicine had a long tradition in the Zeller family. Her most famous representative, Else's great-grandfather Albert Zeller (1804–1877), headed the Winnental Sanatorium for the mentally ill in Winnenden near Stuttgart for many years . His work there was particularly characterized by the liberalization and further development of psychiatric treatment methods and made him a respected and valued man who was raised to the personal nobility and honored with the title of a councilor . He also became an honorary citizen of the city of Winnenden. His son Albert, Else's great-uncle, also became a doctor. He lived and practiced in Ludwigsburg , and Else and Otto occasionally spent their holidays with him. It soon became clear to Else that she wanted to become a doctor too.

She first attended school in Heidenheim for two years. When her father was transferred to the secondary school in Niederstetten as an upper secondary school teacher , she switched to this school. As the parents recognized their little daughter's talent early on, they sent her to the Progymnasium in nearby Bad Mergentheim . In 1916, the father , who was now promoted to a university degree , moved with his family to Esslingen . Else was able to attend the Georgii grammar school there.

Else Kienle was the first and only girl in high school. Her good knowledge of Latin and her fearless demeanor quickly earned her respect from her classmates. During her two-year stay at this school and her Abitur, she was top of the class. But before Else could start studying medicine, she had to fight hard for it. She countered her father's desire to study philology with her childhood wish for medical training. Looking back, she noted:

“At that time it was simply unthinkable that a daughter from a good family should take up a job, not to mention studying medicine. The twentieth century and its great changes had already begun, but most of us still lived in the past that did not promise the slightest change. It was an orderly past in which everything had its proper place, and the place that was assigned to women could not be shaken. Since I wanted to become a doctor, I first had to become a rebel. "

After a long struggle, as the day of matriculation approached, her grandmother managed to get Else to start studying medicine in Tübingen in October 1918 . She had a great ability to learn any material and was very assertive. These two character traits shaped her later life.

After five semesters, she passed the preliminary medical examination in March 1921. In addition to her studies, she enjoyed riding, playing tennis, singing, and seems to have been a very sociable person.

She continued her studies for two semesters at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel and then went to the University of Heidelberg for three semesters , where she applied for the state examination after the summer semester of 1923, which she passed on December 8 of the same year. She stayed in Heidelberg until 1924 for her doctorate . Her dissertation, a case of melanosarcoma of the choroid with perforation to the outside, dealt with an ophthalmic topic . Her interest in it had been piqued when her brother had developed the retina of the left eye in the year of her pre-medical examination , which could have led to his complete blindness. Despite successful treatment, his eyesight remained weak.

Else Kienle did not want to work in psychiatry like her ancestors , but in surgery , especially reconstructive surgery . After completing her doctorate, she went to Stuttgart and completed her internship there at various hospitals. She would have liked to open a private practice for reconstructive surgery afterwards, but she didn't have the money. Therefore, she first worked in the Department of Dermatology and Venereal Diseases at the Municipal Hospital , as surgery was still a male domain at the time. She then became an assistant doctor in the so-called "police station", the closed department for venereal diseases, in the Katharinenhospital in Stuttgart . Prostitutes who had been reported as sexually ill were treated here.

First marriage and settlement

In the spring of 1928 Else Kienle was called to see a friend who had found her father, who had hanged himself after a financial collapse. Here she met the dead man's main believer, the banker Stefan Jacobowitz (1886–1946). He was the owner of the Württemberg private bank. Jacobowitz must have been fascinated by the 14 years younger doctor and did everything to win her over. Else had a penchant for a lavish and glamorous lifestyle. In addition to a riding horse that he gave her as a present, he offered her to help her have her own practice. After his divorce, she married the father of four children on July 27, 1929 in Stuttgart.

She settled down at Marienstraße 25 in Stuttgart as a specialist doctor with a practice for skin and urinary disorders, leg problems and cosmetics . A small ward with six to eight beds was attached to the practice and a nurse was on duty. Here Else was able to perform small operations in the field of reconstructive surgery. These were accident or burn scars, children with cleft lip and palate and disfiguring war scars, but also protruding ears or actors who wanted to have their nose or chest beautified.

Fight against Section 218 and imprisonment

As a result of the global economic crisis and the looming banking crisis , Stefan Jacobowitz had to sell the Württembergische Privatbank in 1930. He went to Berlin . Since Else Kienle had carried out illegal commercial abortions, she was reported anonymously in mid-December 1930 and arrested on February 19, 1931 together with the doctor and writer Friedrich Wolf . She was held in solitary confinement and questioned on 210 cases, for several hours each day. On March 21st, she started a hunger strike . On the morning of March 27, she passed out for a long time due to the lack of food. After refusing to be hospitalized, after many phone calls between the coroner and the chief prosecutor, she was released at 4:00 pm the next day for incapacity. She decided to open a new practice in Frankfurt am Main , as two acquaintances lived in this city. First, however, Else Kienle and Friedrich Wolf were captured by the movement against Paragraph 218 after their release . You spoke for the "Combat Committee" at many meetings across the country. On April 15, 1931, the largest of these rallies took place in the Berlin Sports Palace with well over 100,000 people.

In May 1931, both were invited to the Soviet Union by the Soviet doctors and writers' organization . After her return, Else Kienle opened her practice in Frankfurt at Bockenheimer Landstrasse 63. She continued to take part in the fight against the abortion law and also carried out abortions. In 1932 her first book Women - From the diary of a doctor was published . In the course of 1932 she was divorced from Stefan Jacobowitz. In the autumn of 1932 she received a tip that she would have to expect another arrest. She no longer felt safe and fled to France via Saarbrücken . The reason for her escape was most likely that she had aborted the young Jew Edith Hofmann on March 16, 1932 and the girl had died on April 6, 1932 in the Langen hospital for unexplained reasons.

Exile, second marriage and settlement in New York

After Else Kienle went into hiding in the autumn of 1932, she was wanted in a wanted list for years. The last known wanted poster is dated April 5, 1940. In January 1933 the Stuttgart proceedings against her and Friedrich Wolf were temporarily suspended, the struggle of women for “human dignity and women's dignity” was lost under National Socialism .

On a trip to the French Riviera, Else Kienle met and fell in love with the American George LaRoe. He was the European representative of the Socony Oil Company and was on vacation on the Côte d'Azur. Her marriage to him opened up the possibility of a new beginning in the USA. Except for visits, she never returned to Germany.

The LaRoe couple moved into an apartment in New York . Else improved her English skills and applied for the American medical diploma and admission as a doctor because she wanted to reopen a practice. Until then, she worked in a beauty institute that worked on a medical basis. Here she benefited from her knowledge as a dermatologist. As soon as she got her medical license and permission to practice, she opened a practice on Park Avenue with financial help from her husband . There they also lived in an elegant apartment on two floors. Over time, she specialized in plastic surgery (cosmetic surgery ). Not long after arriving in New York, Else discovered that her husband was an alcoholic . After he had taken several withdrawal cures without success and had not been able to start a new career because of the alcohol, the couple probably divorced in 1936. However, Else kept the name LaRoe until the end of her life. She moved her practice and residence to 62nd Street in the elegant medical district on the East Side.

Third marriage, war and post-war period

Else LaRoe met the dentist Ernest C. Gierding at a golf club. He became her third husband in 1937. However, Else separated from him after a short time. After her divorce, she received a visit from her brother Otto and her parents in New York in 1938. It was the last time she saw her parents. Her first husband, Stefan Jacobowitz, had to flee National Socialist Germany because of his Jewish origins and went to Paris . He could not do his job there. In 1939, before the outbreak of World War II , Else also traveled to Paris to meet her brother again. The former married couple met there. She tried to persuade Jacobowitz to leave for the States because he was safer there. But Jacobowitz was only able to take this step at the end of 1940. Franz Werfel , whom he met while on the run, processed his adventurous escape into the play Jacobowsky and the Colonel , which was staged on Broadway and filmed in 1958 by Peter Glenville with Danny Kaye and Curd Jürgens in the leading roles ( Jakobowsky and the Colonel ) .

Else LaRoe made a name for herself in New York as a dermatologist and cosmetic surgeon. Since all ties to her family had been severed during the war, she tried to re-establish contact immediately after the war ended and received news from her father that her mother had died in 1944. It proved impossible to get a visa for occupied Germany; therefore she could not see her father again before his death in 1946. It was not until 1949 that she was able to visit her brother in Stuttgart. Another stroke of fate struck Else in 1946: Stefan Jacobowitz called her over after a heart attack. She could not save his life despite the help of a cardiac specialist called in.

Fourth marriage

About twelve years after her brief marriage to Gierding, Else LaRoe met an unusual man at a colleague's. His name was Ish-Ti-Opi, a member of the Choctaw tribe in Oklahoma . This man, whose real name was Wesley L. Robertson, had been a concert singer until the war. Due to a serious wound, he was unable to resume concert tours after the war and now worked as a fashion illustrator. Despite their different origins, the two shared many common interests. They married in 1950. They had a happy marriage.

Else and her husband were increasingly drawn to Mexico . After various trips, especially to the west coast of Mexico, she bought a house in Cuernavaca , where they spent a lot of time. Else LaRoe only traveled to New York to attend the surgery appointments made by her secretary. However, she lost a lot of money to speculative investments through fraudulent middlemen and eventually had to sell her house in Cuernavaca.

In 1957 Else wrote her second book Woman Surgeon , the German edition of which was published in 1968 under the title Mit Scalpell und Nadel . In 1957 and 1958 Else and Wesley visited their brother and his wife in Stuttgart. In 1966 Else traveled to Germany for the last time. At that time her health was very bad and the long journey made her very uncomfortable.

death

In 1968 Wesley Robertson died. Only two years after her husband, on July 19, 1970, Else Kienle died in New York. Like her husband, she was cremated and buried in Oklahoma, his home.

Honors

In Neumünster (Schleswig-Holstein) and Hemmingen (Württemberg) a street was named after her.

In the east of Stuttgart, a long stairway was given the name Else-Kienle-Staffel on March 7, 2016.

Works

• Else Kienle: women. From a doctor's diary. Kiepenheuer, Berlin 1932; 2nd edition, with historical explanations by Maja (d. I. Mascha) Riepl-Schmidt : Schmetterling, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-926369-10-8 .
• Else K. LaRoe: The breast beautiful. House of Field, New York 1940.asc
• Else K. LaRoe: Woman surgeon. Autobiography. Dial Press, New York 1957.
  • German: With scalpel and needle. The adventurous life of a surgeon. Translated by Ursula von Wiese . Albert Müller, Rüschlikon 1968.

literature

• Maja (d. I. Mascha) Riepl-Schmidt , Else Kienle - For a new sexual ethic, in: diess., Against the over-cooked and ironed-out life, women's emancipation in Stuttgart since 1800, Stuttgart / Tübingen 1990 a. 1998, pp. 255-265.
• Mascha Riepl-Schmidt: Else Kienle. The defense of women against the law and the judgment of men. In: Birgitt Knorr, Rosemarie Wehling (ed.): Women in the German Southwest. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1993, pp. 269-274.
• Mascha Riepl-Schmidt: Else Kienle. In: Florence Hervé , Ingeborg Nödinger (Hrsg.): Lexikon der Rebellinnen. Edition Ebersbach, Dortmund 1996, p. 139.
• Verena Steinecke: I had to become a rebel first. Despite the threat and danger - the good and wonderful life of doctor Else Kienle. Butterfly, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-926369-16-7 .
• Jörg Schweigard, Kienle, Else Ida Pauline, doctor, opponent of § 218, in: Fred Ludwig Sepaintner (Ed.,): Baden-Württembergische Biographien, Volume VI, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, pp. 245–248.

Web links

• Literature by and about Else Kienle in the catalog of the German National Library
• Else Kienle. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).
• Museum for Contraception and Abortion: Biography of Else Kienle

Footnotes

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Verena Steinecke: I had to become a rebel first
2. ↑ In the biographer Verena Steinecke is Ish-tai Opai