Anne-Marie Durand-Wever

Anne-Marie Durand-Wever (born Anne-Marie Wever: 30 October 1889 – 14 September 1970) was a German gynaecologist and co-founder of Pro Familia, the German branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Life Anne-Marie Wever's father, Walther Wever, was a diplomat and her childhood was correspondingly peripatetic. She was born in Paris and grew up successively in Bulgaria, Romania, Brazil and the United States. She had a younger sister and a brother who died in infancy. Her mother, born Anne-Marie von Harbou, is also known to have suffered two late-stage miscarriages. Anne-Marie Wever later recalled of her childhood that most of her early memories involved not her mother but her father, because of her mother's poor health. before moving on to study Chemistry. She received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Chicago in 1910. Between 1910 and 1915, she studied medicine at Marburg University, the University of Strasbourg and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), passing her state exams on 30 May 1915 and receiving her medical doctorate in 1917, ten days before the birth of her first child. She then worked as an assistant doctor at LMU's Women's Clinic (and elsewhere), specialising in gynaecology.

On 30 December 1916, Anne-Marie Wever married Wilhelm Durand, an architect. In 1927, she set up her own medical practice in Berlin-Schöneberg. That same year she opened a "Confidential Centre for engaged and married people" ("Vertrauenstelle für Verlobte und Eheleute") and became increasingly prominent as an advocate of improved sex education for girls. The context was one in which each year, during the 1920s and 1930s, approximately 10,000 women were dying in Germany as a result of illegal abortions.

War ended in May 1945 together with the Nazi regime and Durand-Wever resumed her public role. She chaired the committee that prepared the way for the foundation of the Democratic Women's League ("Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands" / DFD), which was formally established in March 1947. Increasingly, however, it became a creature of the newly formed ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the Soviet occupation zone (after 1949 East Germany): it was subsequently banned entirely in what became, after 1949, West Germany. In 1949 or early 1950 Durand-Wever resigned all her offices with the DFD on grounds of overwork and health, and later in 1950 she left the organisation.

At the end of 1952, she was a co-founder in Kassel of the "German Society for family planning and sex education and counselling" ("Deutschen Gesellschaft für Familienplanung, Sexualpädagogik und Sexualberatung" - also known as "Pro Familia"), serving as its deputy chair. In addition, she worked for its international counterpart, the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

During her final years Anne-Marie Durand-Wever continued to live in West Berlin. However, when she died on 14 September 1970, it was at her son's home in Overath-Heiligenhaus, just outside Cologne on its eastern side.