Calvert, K.E. (2022) MAKING THE CASE AGAINST PARAGRAPH 218: NARRATIVE AND DISCURSIVE STRATEGIES IN ELSE KIENLE'S FRAUEN : AUS DEM TAGEBUCH EINER ÄRZTIN★. German Life and Letters, 75 (1). pp. 40-58. ISSN 0016-8777
Abstract
This article analyses Dr Else Kienle's 1932 text Frauen: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Ärztin within the context of the debates around women's access to abortion in Weimar Germany. Access to abortion was a widely debated topic in Weimar Germany and public demonstrations against Paragraph 218 of the Weimar penal code, which outlawed abortion, occurred following the 1931 arrest of Dr Kienle. I argue that, as a non-partisan work written from the perspective of a practising doctor, Kienle's text offers an innovative contribution to these debates. While Kienle's arrest is frequently cited as a key moment in the Weimar abortion debates, her writing has received limited critical attention. My analysis of the literary and discursive strategies employed by Kienle in Frauen: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Ärztin reveals that Kienle goes beyond the arguments of the women's and socialist movements. Kienle's text should be read as an attempt to broaden the reach of the campaign against Paragraph 218. The book adopts an innovative and experience-led approach, which reveals the medical, psychological, and social implications of limiting women's access to abortion, and which only re-emerged in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Authors. German Life and Letters published by Editorial Board and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of Languages and Cultures (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 12 Jan 2022 11:12 |
Last Modified: | 15 Mar 2022 12:00 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/glal.12327 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:182288 |