The Google Doodle for November 13th celebrates Helene Stöcker, the 20th century German feminist and social reformer, on what would have been her 148th birthday.
Who is Helene Stöcker?
Born on 13th November in 1869, Helene Stöcker defied societal conventions throughout her life. She was one of the first German women to obtain a doctorate and for nearly 30 years she promoted the New Ethic philosophy, which sought to protect the rights of illegitimate children, improve sex education and access to contraceptives.
In many ways, Stöcker was ahead of her time. Noting in her 1893 essay, The Modern Woman, “the modern woman does not as yet belong in this century”, Stöcker goes on to define a woman who has the freedom to pursue intellectual and cultural endeavours and who “wants to do more than listen in silence when clever men speak”.
Helene Stöcker was one of the first women in Germany to receive her doctoral degree
In 1905, Stöcker co-founded The League for the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Reform and edited the League’s magazine. In 1909, she and German Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld successfully prevented the German parliament from including lesbian women in a law criminalising homosexuality.
When the Nazis came to power, Stöcker fled to Switzerland and, after the Nazis invaded Austria, to England. Later, she took the Trans-Siberian railroad to Japan and finally ended up in the US in 1942. She died of cancer in New York in 1943.
Cynthia Kittler’s Google Doodle celebrates Helene Stöcker, the 20th century social reformer
What is a Google Doodle?
Started in 1998 by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were at Burning Man Festival, the Google Doodles soon started celebrating cultural events on a daily basis after it became clear users enjoyed the regular changes to the Google homepage.
Today, there is a team of ‘Doodler’ illustrators, graphic designers, animators and artists who create Google Doodles and the logos are hyperlinked to provide readers with more information. The latest Google Doodle, remembering Helene Stöcker, was created by artist Cynthia Kittler.