Fritz Brupbacher

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Fritz Brupbacher
Born(1874-06-30)30 June 1874
Zürich, Switzerland
Died1 January 1945(1945-01-01) (aged 70)
Zürich, Switzerland
Resting placeHönggerberg cemetery
NationalitySwiss
EducationUniversity of Zurich
OccupationPhysician
Years active1900–1943
Political partySDP (1900–1921)
KP (1921–1933)

Fritz Brupbacher (30 June 1874 – 1 January 1945) was a

libertarian socialist
and writer.

Biography

Youth and study time

His father managed to achieve social advancement from a poor orphan to hotel owner of

bourgeois circles in which the intellectual liberalism of the 1830s ("Vormärz") was still alive. In high school, Fritz Brupbacher's liberal worldview was shaped, which he retained through his life. After a lecture by Auguste Forel, he and Max Huber founded the temperant
grammar school association Progress.

From 1893 he studied medicine in Geneva and Zürich. In 1896 he became president of the Zürich section of the Swiss academic temperance association. This association served him as a platform for literary and socio-ethical debates. With the essay Our colleague, Brupbacher advocated the right to vote for women studying at the University of Zurich. In 1897 he met his future wife, the Russian student Lidiya Petrovna Kochetkova (1872–1921) from Samara on the Volga, who was committed to socialism. After the state examination in 1898, Brupbacher turned to psychiatry, encouraged by Auguste Forel, the head of the Burghölzli psychiatric clinic. In 1899 he therefore went to the renowned Hôpital Salpêtrière in Paris for further training. During his stay in Paris he met the German writers Oskar Panizza and Frank Wedekind.

Workers' doctor and social democrat

In 1901 Brupbacher opened his medical practice at Kasernenstrasse 17 in the Zürich workers' quarter

German-speaking countries
and had a circulation of 500,000 copies in 20 years.

In addition to his medical work, he devoted himself to the propaganda of a

revolutionary syndicalism. In the same year he founded the Zürich Antimilitarist League. In 1907 he took up Vera Figner when she came to the West after 22 years in the Tsar's prison. In 1911 he traveled to Russia twice to visit his wife, who suffered from famine and was arrested by the Okhrana and exiled in Mesen. Their partnership failed in 1916 because of differing views on the decisive force for the revolutionary process in Europe. While Petrovna saw it in the Russian peasantry, Brupbacher held fast to internationalism.[1]

Political activities

With his friend

Trotsky, was expelled from the Communist Party for "completely anti-Marxist anarchist attitudes".[2]

Sex education with Paulette Brupbacher

In 1922 Fritz Brupbacher met the Russian doctor

contraceptives by the health insurance company. After a lecture in 1936, the government council of the canton of Solothurn imposed a ban on public speaking, which was finally upheld by the federal court after an objection.[4][5] The doctor summarized her experiences in 1953 in the book My Patients.[6]

Freedom fighter and humanist

The grave of Fritz and Paulette Brupbacher at the cemetery of Hönggerberg in Zürich. The tombstone bears the inscription: "AERZTE DER ARMEN" ("Doctors of the poor")

Brupbacher's struggle for legal abortion was a continuation of his earlier efforts at birth control. During

totalitarian forces
. With this he wanted to promote the keeping of the democratic idea and help to continue the traditions of intellectual freedom and independence of Switzerland. His last book, The Meaning of Life, was his testament "after the bankruptcy of socialism", the balance sheet of his own work "for the common man who wants to think for himself, who wants to inherit from us, to whom he builds wants to learn from what we have learned."

Honors

There is a memorial for Fritz and Paulette Brupbacher at the Hönggerberg cemetery.[7] In today's Zürich city district 3, to which the former workers' quarter Aussersihl belongs, a square was named "Brupbacherplatz" in 2009, with one half of the square being dedicated to Fritz Brupbacher and the other to Paulette Brupbacher-Raygrodski.[8]

References

  1. OCLC 470044783
    .
  2. ^ "Fritz Brupbacher" (in French). L'Éphéméride anarchiste. Retrieved 10 May 2021.
  3. ^ Jagella Denoth, Caroline (25 November 2016). "Brupbacher, Paulette". Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (in German). Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences. Retrieved 10 May 2021.
  4. OCLC 243819391
    .
  5. OCLC 1060572915
    .
  6. OCLC 14672293
    .
  7. OCLC 231848784
    .
  8. ^ "Der Brupbacherplatz". gebrueder-duerst.ch. 23 September 2009. Retrieved 10 May 2021.
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