Description:
Pamphlet with cover image of pregnant woman holding her belly with lowered head knocking on a door; pregnancy; abortion; communism; WWII: medical
Label Text:
Martha Ruben-Wolf, - Abtreibung oder Verhütung? (Abortion or Prevention) Berlin, Internationaler Arbeiter Verlag, 1931.
This small informational Communist flyer was published in 1931 by Martha Ruben-Wolf, a doctor and member of the German Communist Party. During WWI she worked as a doctor in the army hospitals and after the war became a gynecologist. The flyer offered women information about their options in regards to pregnancy, however it simultaneously made women aware of the Communist prochoice state funded view on abortion.
Kollwitz cover image was originally created in 1909 for the German satirical weekly Simplicissimus and was titled: At the Doctor’s, a work which was part of a series titled: Pictures of Misery.
Martha and her family had to flee Germany in 1933 and ended up in Moscow where her husband was arrested in 1938 as a “Gestapo spy”. Disillusioned she committed suicide in 1939.
Label from Kollwitz exhibition Spring 2016 (hkdv)
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+MP+7856 |
