Max Hodann

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Dr. med. Max Hodann, alias Martin Hansen, was a German-born doctor turned journalist and writer on sexuality with long-term international Communist and possible Soviet intelligence contacts.

Max Julius Carl Alexander Hodann (30 August 1894 – 17 December 1946) was a physician, eugenicist, writer, sex educator and Marxist, "controversial medical sex educationalist in the Weimar Republic".[1] He wrote for a working-class readership (e.g. Guy and Gal, 1924) and for children (e.g. Where Children Come From, 1926). After 1933, as a refugee from National Socialist Germany, he lived predominantly in Norway and Sweden.

Life

What does a woman cost? by Dr. Max Hodann. He wrote countless articles for the magazine A-I-Z. The "Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung", published by the Communist Workers Party of Germany, emerged in 1924 from the monthly magazine "Soviet Russia in Pictures". In addition to global reporting, reports, and the publication of poems and stories, it was the first to focus on the working class life. It also became famous for its modern imagery, which is primarily associated with John Heartfield. In 1931, the circulation of the A-I-Z was 500,000 copies per week.

Max Hodann was born in Neisse, Upper Silesia, the son of a military doctor Oberstabsarzt (equivalent to a Major), Dr. med. Carl Hodann. Max Hodann was educated at an elementary school in 1903 Meran and later at the humanistic Gymnasium of Berlin-Friedenau. He studied medicine at the University of Berlin.[2] Some sources claim that he was Jewish.[3][4][5] Other sources believes he was not.[6]

During his studies, he was particularly interested in social hygiene (Alfred Grotjahn), anthropology (Felix von Luschan) and genetics (Heinrich Poll). In 1915, he also met the sexual reformer Magnus Hirschfeld, who had a significant influence on his further development. Through discussions in the house of Luise and Karl Kautsky, whom he had met through his friend Benedikt Kautsky, Hodann's interest in socialism was awakened.

He paused his studies from 1917 to November 1918 and served in a military hospital of the Imperial German Army during World War I. He then became a member of a communist workers' and soldiers' council. He received his doctorate in 1919 (with the dissertation Die sozialhygienische Bedeutung der Beratungsstellen für Geschlechtskranke, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Beratungsstelle der Landesversicherungsanstalt Berlin; published 1920) and his license to practice medicine in the same year.

From 1922 to 1933, Hodann was appointed Stadtarzt (city doctor) in Berlin-Reinickendorf. He was a member of the Medical Association from 1922 to 1933. He was also on the board of the Association of Socialist Doctors and took on leading roles in the Proletarian Health Service in 1923. In 1928 he became the first chairman of the Association of Friends of the Soviet Union and in 1929/30 he was editor of the magazine Friend of the Soviets. In Moscow he took part in the "Celebrations of the Tenth Anniversary of the October Revolution". From 1927 he was a member of the Reich Executive Committee of the International Workers' Aid, but was expelled from this organization in 1931 for criticizing the Soviet Union. From 1932 he was a member of the leadership of the Combat Committee against the Imperialist War.

Hodann also worked at Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science from 1926 to 1929 as head of sexual counseling and the "eugenic department for mother and child". He organized public question-and-answer sex education evenings, and wrote several sex education publications which were temporarily banned. He was a member of the Association of Socialist Physicians and the National League for Birth Control and Sexual Hygiene in Weimar Germany.[7]

Hodann was arrested in February 1933, and detained without trial for several months. He crossed the border to Switzerland, staying briefly in France, the Netherlands and Denmark before living in England,[2] where he was unsuccessful in efforts to set up an Institute.[7] Moving to Norway, where he was financially supported by the Norwegian workers' organization Workers' Justice Fund (Arbeidernes justisfond), he published articles on family and sexuality in the Norwegian workers' press.

After visiting Palestine in 1934, he co-authored a book with Lise Lindbæk about the Jewish return to Palestine. He worked as a military doctor in Spain during the Civil War from 1937 to 1938, returning to Norway and publishing a children's novel in Norwegian under the pseudonym Henry M. Dawes. Shortly before the Operation Weserübung (de) in 1940, he moved to Sweden. There he published a novel worked with German military deserters,[2] as well as with the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU).[8]

Death

Hodann died from an asthma attack in Stockholm on 17 December 1946.

Family

On 24 December 1919, Hodann married his fiancée medical student and later journalist Maria Martha Saran, since 1918 a centrist Marxist member of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. They divorced on 13 July 1926. Eight months later, Hodann married Gertrud "Traute" Neumann (née Herrlich) on 3 March 1927. He lived with his family at Wiesenerstraße 34 in Neu-Tempelhof from 1928 until his emigration in 1933; the couple separated in 1934. He was the father of a daughter from his first marriage and a daughter from his second marriage. His third marriage was with Rosa "Ruzena" Franziska Kacerovsky/Kazerowsky, in Stockholm on 12 February 1940. His last marriage produced a son.

Works (excerpt)

  • (ed.) Die Jugend zum Sexualproblem (Young people and the sexual problem), Leipzig, 1916.
  • (ed.) Schriften zur Jugendbewegung (Publications on the youth movement), Leipzig: Radelli & Hille, 1916.
  • (ed. with Walther Koch) Die Urburschenschaft als Jugendbewegung; in zeitgenössischen Berichten zur Jahrhundertfeier des Wartburgfestes (The first student fraternity as a youth movement; in contemporary reports on the centenary of the Wartburg Festival), Jena: E. Diederichs, 1917
  • Die sozialhygienische Bedeutung der Beratungsstellen für Geschlechtskranke: unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Beratungsstelle der Landesversicherungsanstalt Berlin (The importance for social hygiene of counselling centres for venereal diseases: with special reference to the Advisory Board of the National Insurance Institute Berlin), Leipzig: Vogel, 1919. Doctoral dissertation, Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin
  • Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, Vol. 45, No. 50 (1919), p. 1389
  • 'Aus den Parlamenten' (From parliaments), Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, Vol. 45, No. 51 (1919), p. 1423
  • "Hygienische Maßnahmen in Sowjet-Rußland" (Hygiene measures in Soviet Russia), Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, Vol. 45, No. 52 (1919), p. 1442-3
  • Erziehungsarbeit und Klassenkampf (Educational work and class struggle), Jena, Thür. Verlagsanstalt und Druckerei
  • Eltern und Kleinkinder-Hygiene (Eugenik) (Parents and toddler-hygiene (eugenics)), Leipzig: Oldenburg, 1923.
  • Bub und Mädel. Gespräche unter Kameraden über die Geschlechterfrage (Guy and gal. Conversations among comrades on the gender question), Leipzig: Oldenburg, 1924. Foreword by Paul Oestreich.
    • Translated by Boris Osipovich Finkelʹshteĭn into Russian, 1925; translated into Ukrainian, 1925.
    • Translated into Swedish as Saker som man inte talar om (Things we don't talk about), Stockholm: Arbetarkultur, 1934.
  • (ed. with Heinrich Müller) Der jugendliche Mensch und der Erzieher (The young man and the educator), Berlin, 1925.
  • Woher die Kinden kommen: Ein Lehrbuch, für Kinder lesbar (Where babies come from: a textbook for children to read), Rudolstadt: Greifenverlag, 1926. Illustrated by Willi Geißler. New edition (1928) as Bringt uns wirklich der Klapperstorch? Ein Lehrbuch, für Kinder lesbar (Does the stork really bring us? A textbook for children to read)
  • Geschlecht und Liebe in biologischer und gesellschaftlicher Beziehung (Sex and love in their biological and social relationship), Rudolstadt: Greifenverl., 1927.
    • Translated by Jerome Gibbs as Sex life in Europe: A biological and sociological survey, New York: The Gargoyle Press, 1932.
  • Der Mensch, sein Körper und seine Lebenstätigkeit (Man: his body and his life activity), München: Birk, 1927.
  • Sexualpädagogik: Erziehungshygiene und Gesundheitspolitik. Gesammelte Aufsätze u. Vortr. (1916–1927) (Sex education: hygiene education and health policies), Rudolstadt/Thür.: Greifenverl., 1928.
  • Elternhygiene : Eugenik für Erzieher (Parental hygiene: eugenics for educators), Rudolstadt: Greifenverl., 1928.
  • Von der Kunst des Liebesverkehrs, Rudolstadt i. Thür.: Greifenverl., 1928
  • Die Sexualnot der Erwachsenen (The sexual frustration of adults), Rudolstadt: Greifenverl., 1928.
  • Sexualelend und Sexualberatung (Sexual misery and sexual counselling), Thür. Rudolstadt, 1928
  • Unzucht! Unzucht! Herr Staatsanwalt! zur Naturgeschichte des deutschen Schamgefühls (Fornication! Fornication! Mr. Prosecutor! The natural history of German shame), Rudolstadt: Greifenverlag, 1928
  • Onanie: weder Laster noch Krankheit (Masturbation: neither wicked nor illness), Berlin: Universitas, 1929
  • Sowjetunion: Gestern, Heute, Morgen (Soviet Union: yesterday, today, tomorrow), Berlin: Universitas, 1931
  • Der slawische Gürtel um Deutschland; Polen, die Tschechoslowakei und die deutschen Ostprobleme (The Slavic girdle of Germany: Poland, Czechoslovakia and the problem of the German East), Berlin: Universitas, 1932
  • (with Lise Lindbaek) Jødene vender hjem (Jews returning home), Oslo: Aschehoug, 1934.
  • (ed.) The New Birth Control and Abortion Law in Iceland. (10 December 1934.) Reprinted from the Marriage Hygiene, etc., Bombay, 1936.
  • Sex and Modern Morality. Reprinted from the "Marriage Hygiene," etc., Bombay, 1936. Translated by Stella Browne.
  • History of modern morals, London, W. Heinemann ltd, 1937. Translated by Stella Browne from the unpublished German original.
  • (as Henry M. Dawes) Jakob går over grensen, Oslo: Tiden Norsk Forlag, 1938.

References

  1. ↑ Lutz D. H. Sauerteig (1999). "Sex education in Germany from the eighteenth to the twentieth century", in Franx X. Eder, Lesley Hall & Gert Hekma: Sexual Cultures in Europe: Themes in Sexuality. Manchester University Press, 21–2. ISBN 978-0-7190-5321-4. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Zlata Fuss Phillips (2001). German Children's and Youth Literature in Exile 1933–1950: Biographies and Bibliographies. Walter de Gruyter, 55–6. ISBN 978-3-11-095285-8. 
  3. ↑ Page 13 - Jewish Domination Of Weimar Germany 1919-1932
  4. ↑ Germany and the Jewish Problem (1939) by Dr. F. K. Wiebe
  5. ↑ The Influence of German National Socialism and Italian Fascism on the Nasjonal Samling, 1933–1936
  6. ↑ Liat Kozma: Sexology in the Yishuv – The rise and decline of sexual consultation in Tel Aviv, 1930–39, Cambridge University Press, 13 April 2010
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Online-Exhibition by the Magnus-Hirschfield Society
  8. ↑ Lena Lenerhed (2009). "Taking the Middle Way: Sex Education Debates in Sweden in the Early Twentieth Century", in Lutz D. H. Sauerteig & Roger Davidson: Shaping sexual knowledge: a cultural history of sex education in 20th century Europe. Taylor & Francis, 60–1. ISBN 978-0-415-41114-1. 
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