ALICE SOPHIE SCHWARZER, born on this date, is a German journalist and prominent feminist. She is founder and publisher of the German feminist journal EMMA. Beginning in France, she became a forerunner of feminist positions against anti-abortion laws, for economic self-sufficiency for women, against pornography, prostitution, female genital mutilation, and for a fair position of women in Islam. She authored many books, including biographies of Romy Schneider, Marion Dönhoff, and herself.

Schwarzer was born in Wuppertal, the daughter of a young single mother, and was raised by her grandparents in Wuppertal; she described them as anti-Nazis. During World War II, they were evacuated to Bavaria, only returning to the Ruhr district in 1950. After learning French in Paris, Schwarzer began a trainee job in journalism in Düsseldorf in 1966, and was sent to Paris as a correspondent.

From 1970 to 1974, she worked as a freelancer for different media outlets in Paris. At the same time, she studied psychology and sociology in classes lectured by Michel Foucault, among others. Schwarzer met Jean-Paul Sartre and Daniel Cohn-Bendit. She was one of the founders of the Feminist Movement in Paris (Mouvement de libération des femmes, MLF), and also spread their ideas to Germany. In April 1971, Schwarzer joined Simone de Beauvoir, Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, and 340 French women in publicly announcing that they had had illegal abortions, in a successful campaign to legalize abortion in France.

She convinced the Stern magazine to do something similar in Germany; and in June 1971, Schwarzer and 374 German women, including Romy Schneider and Senta Berger, confessed that they had an abortion in a successful campaign to legalize abortion in Germany. Decades later, Schwarzer revealed she had never had an abortion. She called her project Frauen gegen den § 218 (“Women against Section 218”, which was the section of the German Penal Code that makes abortion illegal). In autumn 1971, Schwarzer released her first book of the same title. The illegality of abortion was upheld by the German Constitutional Court abortion decision, 1975.

One of Schwarzer’s best-known books is Der kleine Unterschied und seine großen Folgen (“The little difference and its great consequences”), which was released in 1975 and made her famous beyond Germany. It was translated into eleven languages. Since its release, Schwarzer has become Germany’s most high-profile but also most controversial feminist. She has written in favor of the continued legality of circumcision of male children.

With her PorNo campaign, started in 1987, she advocated the banning of pornography in Germany, arguing that pornography violates the dignity of women, constitutes a form of media violence against them, and contributes to misogyny and physical violence against women. The ongoing campaign has not been met with much success.

Regarding prostitution in Germany, she campaigned against the law of 2002 that fully legalized brothels. She views prostitution as violence against women, and favors laws like those in Sweden, where the sale of sexual acts is legal, but their purchase is not. She published an autobiography, Lebenslauf (Curriculum vitae), in 2011.

Her most recent book, Transsexualität. Was ist eine Frau? Was ist ein Mann? Eine Streitschrift (2022), she criticised transgenderism as a trend and advocates for retaining protections exclusively for biological women. For this, she has been criticised as “transphobic”.

In June 2018, Schwarzer married her long-time life and business partner Bettina Flitner.