Else K. LaRoe (1900–1970)

Else K. LaRoe, née Kienle, was born in Heidenheim, Germany, into a family with a strong medical tradition. Her maternal great-grandfather Dr. Albert von Zeller was famous for pioneering humane treatment of the mentally ill. She and her brother often spent vacations with their great-uncle Dr. Albert von Zeller. Else became the first girl to attend the Georgii-Gymnasium in Esslingen, where she was top of her class. She determined to become a physician herself, and had to struggle with her family over what they considered an unfeminine choice of professions before being allowed to enroll at the University of Tübingen in 1918. She went on to study at the medical schools in Kiel and Heidelberg, where she earned her doctoral degree in 1924. She wanted to become a surgeon, but as this was still considered an exclusively male domain, she took a job as a junior doctor in the department of dermatology and sexually transmitted diseases at the Katharinenhospital in Stuttgart, where prostitutes were treated. In 1929, she married her first husband Stefan Jacobowitz, a wealthy banker 14 years her senior. Her husband helped her open her own medical practice and clinic where she performed reconstructive surgery for accidents, burn scars, cleft palate, and other disfiguring conditions. She also performed abortions, which were illegal at the time, because she believed it was a woman's right. She was arrested in 1930 but released after six weeks of detention. She moved to Frankfurt to open a new practice and continued to campaign for women's rights and birth control. At the Berlin Sports Palace in 1931, she spoke in front of tens of thousands of people. In 1932, after being notified that she would be arrested again, she fled to France. She published her prison diary as Frauen: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Arztin (Women: From the Diary of a Female Doctor). After a divorce from her first husband, she married George LaRoe, an American oil company representative, and moved with him to New York City. She earned a license to practice medicine in the USA, and opened her own office to offer reconstructive and plastic surgery. She was briefly married for a third time to a dentist. She went to Paris just before the start of World War II to try to persuade her first husband, who was fleeing the Nazis, to emigrate to the USA, but was unsuccessful. In 1950, she got married again to a Native American singer, with whom she lived partly in Cuernavaca, Mexico. In 1957, she published her autobiography, Woman Surgeon.