Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-85745-166-8
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, Band 17, 296 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 435 g

Reihe: Monographs in German History

Abortion in the Weimar Republic is a compelling subject since it provoked public debates and campaigns of an intensity rarely matched elsewhere. It proved so explosive because populationist, ecclesiastical and political concerns were heightened by cultural anxieties of a modernity in crisis. Based on an exceptionally rich source material (e.g., criminal court cases, doctors’ case books, personal diaries, feature films, plays and literary works), this study explores different attitudes and experiences of those women who sought to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and those who helped or hindered them. It analyzes the dichotomy between medical theory and practice, and questions common assumptions, i.e. that abortion was “a necessary evil,” which needed strict regulation and medical control; or that all back-street abortions were dangerous and bad. Above all, the book reveals women’s own voices, frequently contradictory and ambiguous: having internalized medical ideas they often also adhered to older notions of reproduction which opposed scientific approaches.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Usborne, Cornelie

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Plates

Preface

Chapter 1. Towards a Cultural History of Abortion

Historical perspectives

Cultures of abortion in Weimar Germany

Chapter 2. Cultural Representation: Abortion on Stage, Screen and in Fiction

Abortion in the movies

The novel Gilgi and the female reader and spectator

Socialist plays and novels

Abortion pathologized

Chapter 3. Medical Termination of Pregnancy: Theory and Practice

The case of Dr Hartmann

Abortion in the medical discourse

Divided opinion within the medical profession

Medical blunders and legal practice

The case of Dr Hope Bridges Adams Lehmann

Financial considerations

Medical attitude and medical power

Women’s experience

Chapter 4. Abortion in the Marketplace: Lay Practitioners and Doctors Compete

The anti-quackery campaign

Self-induced abortions

Lay abortionists

Gender and the abortionist

The careers of ‘wise women’

The safety record of quack abortionists

Methods and money

Class differences and shared culture

Chapter 5. Women’s Own Voices: Female Perceptions of Abortion

The construction of the criminal in abortion trials

The experience of abortion

‘Blocked menses’ (Blutstockung) as a popular lay concept

Advertising abortifacients

Women’s sensory perceptions

Chapter 6. Abortion as an Everyday Experience in Village Life: A Case Study from Hesse

Rural communities in decline

Female communication networks

Reproductive Eigensinn

Rebellious women and men

Relations between the sexes

The career of a successful abortionist

Denunciation

Conclusions

Chapter 7. Abortion in Early Twentieth-century Germany: Continuity and Change

Gender roles and gender relations

The blurring of boundaries

Continuity and change

Abortion in Nazi Germany

Continuity with Imperial Germany

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Usborne, Cornelie
Cornelie Usborne is Professor emerita of History at Roehampton University and Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, London.  She has published widely on the history of women, reproduction, birth control, sexuality and medicine in Modern Germany. She is the author of The Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany. Women¹s Reproductive Rights and Duties (London: Macmillan and Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992) and she edited, amongst others, `Picturing the Past', the special issue of the journal  Cultural  and Social History (with Charlotte Behr and Sabine Wieber,  December 2010);   Cultural Approaches to the History of Medicine. Mediating Medicine in Early Modern and Modern Europe (with Willem de Blécourt, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and Gender and Crime in Modern Europe (edited with Margaret L.Arnot, London: UCL Press, 1999).