The so-called sex reform movement of Weimar Germany , was dedicated to providing more sexual and, in turn, social freedoms to men and women. Its two major aims were to give working class men and women access to information about and means of birth control and to reform the Paragraphs and of the German Penal Code of that prohibited abortion and the help for it. The movement was supported by members of the liberal, social democratic, socialist and communist parties, by laymen and doctors, by writers and artist and became at the end of the Weimar Republic the largest non-party mass movement that include hundred-thousands of men and women.
It was composed of several smaller and larger associations on the local and national level that joined the cause and organized birth control clinics and information meetings, movie screenings and theater performances, protest actions and large demonstrations. The rise to power of the Nazi Party in January ended the movement. Many of its supporters were persecuted by the Nazis and imprisoned or had to migrate. The Institute of Sexual Research educated the public with the aim of a better understanding of sex and sexuality as a whole and offered in-depth education on the topic.
Further congresses were held in Copenhagen , London , Vienna , and Brno The fight for a reform of the regulation of prostitution also emerged as part of the struggle for sex reform during the Weimar Republic with the aim to prevent the persecution of the women.
These laws required that doctors begin treating women who came in with sexually transmitted diseases, even prostitutes, without persecuting them. The Weimar sex reform movement did not reach most of its aims until , but it changed the thinking of many contemporaries long-lastingly. Most of its aims for a legal reform were not realized before the s in West Germany. Skip to main content. Judith Friedlander et al. Kennedy, Hubert C. Roos, Julia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
