Else Kienle
physician (1900–1970)
Else Kienle (1900–1970), later publishing in the United States as Else K. La Roe, was a German physician, author, and sexual-reform advocate. Her 1931 arrest alongside the physician-playwright Friedrich Wolf helped spark a nationwide mass movement for abortion law reform during the late Weimar Republic.
Life
Kienle and Friedrich Wolf were arrested on 19 February 1931 for providing abortions. Their arrests led to popular demonstrations against Paragraph 218, which criminalized abortion in Germany. While the Communist Party of Germany submitted a motion for her release, it objected to her feminist beliefs and gave her considerably less support than it gave Wolf. The Nazi Party supported the imprisonment of Kienle and Wolf because they were Jewish. During her imprisonment, Kienle participated in a hunger strike that brought her near death. She was released from prison on 28 March 1931. In 1932, Kienle published the book Frauen: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Ärztin (transl. Women: From a Woman Doctor's Diary) to criticize Paragraph 218. Kienle believed that it was immoral to force birth into a society that lacked gender equality and social security.
The public source identifies “Else Kienle” as physician (1900–1970). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Else, Kienle and physician.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1333650. VIAF identifies the subject as 22939716. The Library of Congress control number is n93111439. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1900, 1970, 1931 and 1932.
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This entry incorporates text from “Else Kienle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.