Ludwig Levy-Lenz

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Ludwig Levy-Lenz (born 1 December 1892 in Poznań, Deutsches Reich; died 30 October 1966 in Munich) was a German medicine doctor and sexual reformer.

Life[]

Ludwig Levy took on the double name Ludwig Levy-Lenz early on, and after the Second World War and his return to Germany he published under the name Ludwig L. Lenz. He came from a wealthy middle-class family. In 1909 he went to Heidelberg with his younger brother Siegbert to study medicine and from there to Munich and Breslau. At the beginning of the First World War he was stationed as a soldier in Poznan in a special hospital for reconstructive surgery and orthopedics that he set up himself. On behalf of his military superiors, he set up a war brothel and was responsible for the health care of the women who worked there.

After the war, with the financial support of his parents, he opened a medical practice in Berlin on Rosenthaler Platz, adjacent to the proletarian-Jewish quarter Scheunenviertel. Around 1926, after divorcing his first wife Denise, a dancer, he moved to the middle-class Westend of Berlin at Ahornallee 51. His second marriage to Elma Wilhelm lasted until 1932. In 1933, when power was passed to the National Socialists, Levy-Lenz married Marya Goldwasser, who was twenty years younger than her, had to flee with her to Paris because of the German persecution of Jews. In the run-up to the Olympic Games, he believed that German anti-Semitic politics would relax and returned to Germany, only to emigrate to Egypt in 1937. There he was able to open a cosmetic surgery practice. In 1939 he was expatriated from the Greater German Reich, and in 1944 his second divorced wife was expropriated in Berlin. Levy-Lenz's works have also been translated into other languages, and a translation was even printed in France during the German occupation in 1943. After the end of the war, Lenz worked seasonally alternately in Baden-Baden and Cairo and finally returned to Berlin in 1965.

Levy-Lenz has worked in various interconnected medical fields of venereology, gynecology, surgery, and sexology. He wrote a number of popular writings, such as the 1919 brochure How do I protect myself from sexually transmitted diseases? (Wie schütze ich mich vor Geschlechtskrankheiten?), which was advertised and sold in public toilets, which earned him the ridicule (and envy) of the medical profession. Since the propagation of contraception was considered immoral and under threat of punishment, the educational courses on "sexual hygiene" offered by Levy-Lenz had to cover up their actual topic. There was a close connection between the association “Die Ehe” he founded, the sex counseling center he maintained and the magazine “Die Ehe” on the one hand, and the Institute for Sexology, headed by Magnus Hirschfeld, on the other. He was also able to win over authors such as Kurt Tucholsky and Thomas Mann and illustrators such as Otto Dix for the magazine. Levy-Lenz published educational pamphlets under popular scientific titles - with a scientific claim.

Since 1925 he was a member of the medical staff at Hirschfeld's institute, where he performed surgical operations such as castration and gender reassignment, the latter in collaboration with Erwin Gohrbandt; his patients included Dora Richter^[1] and Lili Elbe.^[2]

In 1930 he compiled the first medical book on the subject of abortion.^[3]

After he and Peter Schmidt had participated in the experiments with rejuvenation operations using the method propagated by Eugen Steinach, Levy-Lenz later left the field to Schmidt.^[4] After emigrating, he was forced to increasingly focus on cosmetic surgery. In post-war Germany he was able to reissue some revised writings and publish an autobiography.

Works[]

• Ludwig Levy: Kriegsgemäße Orthopädie der Extremitäten, DMW – Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, V.41, Nr.15 S. 436–439.
• Wie schütze ich mich vor Geschlechtskrankheiten?, 1919.
• Peter Schmidt; Ludwig Levy-Lenz: Die Erfolge der Steinachbehandlung beim Menschen, Berlin: G. Ziemsen, 1921.
• Sexual-Katastrophen : Bilder aus dem modernen Geschlechts- und Eheleben. Leipzig 1926.
  • Darin: Die Geächteten. S. 259–332.
• Maria Winter; Ludwig Levy-Lenz: Abtreibung oder Verhütung der Schwangerschaft?, Berlin-Hessenwinkel: Verlag d. Neuen Gesellschaft, 1928.
• Die aufgeklärte Frau : ein Buch für alle Frauen, 1928.
• Janine : Tagebuch einer Verjüngten, Berlin: Man Verlag, 1928.
• Wenn Frauen nicht gebären dürfen : Bedeutg u. Methode d. Empfängnisverhütg gemeinverst. dargest., Berlin-Hessenwinkel: Verlag d. Neuen Gesellschaft 1928.
• Kurt Bendix; Johannes Werthauer; Sophie Lützenkirchen; Ludwig Levy-Lenz: Die Schwangerschaftsunterbrechung ihre Voraussetzung und ihre Technik. Bedeutung, rechtliche Grundlage, Indikationen und Technik des indizierten Abortes in den ersten drei Schwangerschaftsmonaten ; ein kurzgefaßter Leitfaden für Ärzte und Studierende, Berlin-Hessenwinkel: Baumeister 1930.
• Hexenkessel der Liebe, Leipzig: Lykeion, Kulturwiss. Verlagsges., 1931.
  • Liebesleben der Wilden und Erotik der Naiven, Lieferung 1, Leipzig: Lykeion Verlag, 1931.
  • Liebesleben der Perversen, Lieferung 2, Leipzig: Lykeion Verlag, 1931.
  • Kranke Liebe und Liebeskrankheiten, Lieferung 3, Leipzig: Lykeion Verlag, 1931.
• mit Arthur Koestler, A. Willy: Encyclopédie de la vie sexuelle, Paris, Aldor 1934.
• La femme initiée, Le Caire, R. Schindler, 1943.
• Diskretes und Indiskretes; Memoiren eines Sexualarztes, Schmiden b. Stuttgart: Treya-Verl. 1950.
• Praxis der kosmetischen Chirurgie : Fortschritte u. Gefahren, 1954.
• Madeleine: Tagebuch einer Verjüngten, Konstanz: Exakt-Verlag, 1964.

Literature[]

• Volkmar Sigusch, Günter Grau (Hg.): Personenlexikon der Sexualforschung, Campus, Frankfurt a. M. 2009, S. 418–423 ISBN 978-3-593-39049-9

Weblinks[]

• Literature by and about Ludwig Levy-Lenz in the German National Library catalogue

References[]

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