((Else Ida Pauline Kienle [birth name]; Else LaRoe [married name]; Else Kienle-Jakobowitz [married name]))
born on February 26, 1900 in Heidenheim, Germany
died on July 19, 1970 in New York City, United States
German doctor, women's rights and birth control advocate
125th birthday on February 26, 2025
55th anniversary of her death on July 19, 2025
Biography
It was the Stuttgart doctors Else Kienle and Friedrich Wolf, arrested in February 1931 for performing abortions, who transformed the campaign against the law that criminalized abortion (Paragraph 218) into a huge mass movement.
Demonstrations, marches and rallies took place across Germany, with the protesters demanding the acquittal of the doctors and the repeal of the “shameful” law. Unlike the communist writer Wolf, who was famous and soon released on bail, Else Kienle was unknown and spent six weeks in custody until she went on a seven-day hunger strike to force her release. The high point of the whole movement came on April 15, 1931, when Kienle spoke in front of over ten thousand people at the Sportpalast in Berlin.
Else Kienle was the first child of a strict Swabian secondary school teacher and a conventionally thinking, indulgent mother. Her parents recognized their daughter's unusual talent and sent her to “Gymnasium” (college preparatory high school), where she was the only girl and graduated top of her class. Her father regarded the study of medicine as “unwomanly,” but her grandmother approved and Else was able to become a doctor.
In 1928 she married the banker Stefan Jacobowitz, who gave her a horse and two cars and who also provided her with her own practice and a small clinic. She performed reconstructive surgeries and treated women who had become unintentionally pregnant.
Kienle recounted her career and explained her position on abortion in a book she began in prison that was published in 1932, Frauen – Aus dem Tagebuch einer Ärztin (t: Women: From a Woman Doctor’s Diary). Like many, she regarded the “obligation to give birth” as irresponsible given the social and economic pressures of massive unemployment. Unlike most, she emphasized the patriarchal character of the laws: “Our current law is everywhere and especially on this issue a male law.” Kienle thus viewed the campaign against Paragraph 218 as a fight for women's self-determination: “What use is the right to vote for a woman if she is nevertheless to remain a submissive birthing machine with no free will?”
In the fall of 1932, she feared being arrested again and fled to France. She divorced Jacobowitz. The two remained friends until Jacobowitz's death in 1946. On the Riviera, she met the American businessman George LaRoe, who became her second (of a total of four) husbands. They settled in New York City and Kienle worked hard to reestablish herself as a doctor. She opened her practice in 1935 and specialized increasingly in plastic surgery. She was professionally successful, but never again became actively involved in the sexual reform movement.
(Text from 2000; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2025.
Please consult the German version for additional information, pictures, sources, videos, and bibliography.)
Quotes
At that time it was simply inconceivable for a daughter from a good family to choose a profession, let alone to study medicine. The twentieth century… had already begun, but most of us still lived in the past, where everything had its proper place, and where a woman’s preordained place could not be changed. Since I wanted to become a doctor, I first had to become a rebel. (Else Kienle)
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