Helene Stöcker Papers

Dr. Helene Stöcker (1869-1943) was born in Elberfeld, Germany. She was one of the first woman students to enter a German University, and also studied at the Universities of Glasgow and Berne, receiving her doctorate in 1901.

Stöcker's social activism began in 1902 when she helped found Germany's first woman suffrage organization. Three years later Stöcker was the driving force behind the Bund für Mutterschutz (Protection of Motherhood). She served as chair of this organization until 1933. The Bund was founded to assist unwed mothers and their children. It ultimately provided a forum for debate on sexuality, contraception and abortion, as well as establishing reform of laws in favor of all mothers and children. Dr. Stöcker was editor and founder of the monthly magazine The New Generation, which she published from 1905 until 1933.

Stöcker was active in the German and international peace movement from the World War I period onward. She attended the International Congress of Women at The Hague in 1919 and other early congresses of the Women's International League. Stöcker belonged to several other peace organizations including the War Resisters' International , Bund Neues Vaterland (New Fatherland League), Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (German Peace Society), and the International Peace Bureau. She was an associate of the Dr. Ludwig Quidde, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1927. Stöcker connected her work in pacifism with the work in sexual reform when Muttershutz added a pacifist plank to their platform calling for their supporters to work for "existing and flourishing life," and against brute force in war and the state.

Dr. Stöcker was driven out of Germany by the Nazis in 1933 and lived for periods in Switzerland, England, and Sweden. She immigrated to the United States in 1941, under the sponsorship of friends and colleagues in the peace movement, especially those in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She died in 1943 in New York City.

Books and pamphlets Stöcker wrote include: Leibe, Moderne Bevolkerungspolitik, Lieben oder Hassen, Krieg und Altruismus, Verkunder und Verwirklicher, Die Frau und die Heiligkeit des Lebens, Sexualpedagogik, Krieg und Mutterschutz, and Kriegsdienst Verweigerung.

Significant correspondents include: Gertrud Baer, Emily Greene Balch, Mary Ritter Beard, Fenner Brockway, Gertrude Bussey, Ruth Gage-Colby, Dorothy Detzer, Lida Gustave Heymann, Dr. Karen Horney, Jessie Wallace Hughan, Alexandra Kollontai, Frederick J. Libby, Lola Maverick Lloyd, A.J. Muste, Tracy D. Mygatt, Mildred Scott Olmsted, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Ludwig Quidde, Romain Rolland, Margaret Sanger, Rosika Schwimmer, Upton Sinclair, Agnes Smedley, and Bruno Springer.