Hope

“The question of women’s rights is also the question of men’s rights.”

Hope Bridges Adams Lehmann, born in London in 1855, died in Munich in 1916, was one of the first women to study and go on to practice medicine in Germany, which was incredibly difficult to do. She marries twice, pursues an enthusiastic sex life and encourages women to live out their own eroticism – beyond the role of mother that society has prescribed for them. She promotes the use of contraception and performs abortions. In 1914, several resentful midwives report her for “continued crimes against life”. The proceedings are found to be groundless, however, and are dropped. In fact, the opposite is true: Hope advocates a dignified and fulfilled life, is clear-sighted about the social traps that many women fall into and campaigns for motherhood not to be an obligation. In her two-volume handbook for women, she comments on questions of education and upbringing, recommends comfortable clothing instead of the traditional corsets and provides facts on women’s health. Hope translates August Bebel’s Woman and Socialism into English. She wants to change the life chances of women – for the better.