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Alice Sophie Schwarzer (born 3 December 1942) is a German journalist and prominent Feminism. 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 position on women in Islam. She authored many books, including biographies of Romy Schneider, Marion Dönhoff, and herself.
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 Strafgesetzbuch 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.
One of her goals was the realization of economic self-sufficiency for women. She argued against the law that required married women to obtain permission from their husbands before beginning paid work outside the home. This provision was removed in 1976.
In January 1977, the first issue of her magazine EMMA was published, her focus of work as chief editor and publisher for the following years.
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. Zauberhafte Zeiten (interview in German with Lore Maria Peschel-Gutzeit) in Emma, Mai/Juni 2009, retrieved 13 August 2012.
From 1992 to 1993, Schwarzer was host of the TV show Zeil um Zehn on German TV channel Hessischer Rundfunk. With her frequent appearances in German TV talk shows, she has become an institution on German television in all matters related to feminism.Kuzmany, Stefan (3 February 2014). " Steuersünderin Alice Schwarzer: Die Einzige und ihr Eigentum". Spiegel Online. spiegel.de. Retrieved 16 September 2017. "Seit Menschengedenken wird Alice Schwarzer zu jeder Talksendung eingeladen, in der auch nur im Entferntesten über so etwas wie Frauenrechte geredet wird.... Alice Schwarzer hält das Monopol auf die mediale Vermittlung des Feminismus in Deutschland." (Since time immemorial, Alice Schwarzer has been invited to every talk show in which women's rights are being discussed in even the slightest connection... Alice Schwarzer has a monopoly on the presentation of feminism in the German media.)
When EMMA changed to bimonthly release in 1993, she continued to write an increasing number of books, among them one about Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian, called Eine tödliche Liebe (Deadly Love), and biographies of Romy Schneider and Marion Dönhoff. In total, she has released 19 books as a writer, and 21 as publisher, as of 2014.
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.
She has been highly critical of political Islamism and the position of women in Islam; she favors prohibitions against women in public schools or other public settings wearing the hijab, which she considers a symbol of oppression. She is also a believer in the Eurabia conspiracy theory, a conspiracy theory popular among far-right activists and neo-nazis.
Schwarzer, Alice: Fereshta Ludin – die Machtprobe / Die Kopftuch-Entscheidung des Verfassungsgerichtes ist für uns alle von großer Bedeutung. (editorial, in German) in Emma, Juli/August 2003.
She has written in favor of the continued legality of circumcision of male children. (Automated English translation via Google Translate: "Should circumcision be banned?")
In June 2018, Schwarzer married her long-time life and business partner Bettina Flitner.
Her most recent book, Transsexualität. Was ist eine Frau? Was ist ein Mann? Eine Streitschrift (2022), she claims that transgender people, which she calls "transgenderism", are a trend and advocates for retaining protections exclusively for cisgender women. For this, she has been criticised as transphobic.
Furthermore, she claims that transgender people are homosexual people that do not want to be homosexual and promotes the rapid-onset gender dysphoria theory, which has been widely criticized for being scientifically unsupported.
She has also been called a TERF for these reasons.
In February 2023, she and Sahra Wagenknecht wrote the Manifest für Frieden (), a petition against the delivery of weapons to Ukraine.
According to Section 371 of the German tax code ("Abgabenordnung"), the perpetrator of a tax fraud may avoid punishment if he or she admits to the offence and provides full disclosure of unpaid taxes to the authorities (German: strafbefreiende Selbstanzeige). Schwarzer attempted to make such disclosure in secret to German tax authorities. However, in February 2014, the German newspaper Der Spiegel wrote an investigative article on the topic, turning the whole affair public.
As a reaction, Schwarzer made a statement on her private webpage on the matter. See also Under the heading " In eigener Sache" ("on one's own account"), Schwarzer admitted to being a tax fraudster. In that statement, Schwarzer tried to self-exculpate her crimes by claiming that in the past, she had been scared of political opponents in Germany and "was honestly afraid" that she might have to leave the country and thus needed to be financially prepared. "Ich habe in Deutschland versteuerte Einnahmen darauf eingezahlt in einer Zeit, in der die Hatz gegen mich solche Ausmaße annahm, dass ich ernsthaft dachte: Vielleicht muss ich ins Ausland gehen."
In May 2014, German tax authorities and criminal prosecutors raided a number of properties owned by Schwarzer. At the same time, judge-issued search warrants on several of Schwarzer's banking accounts were executed. It turned out that Schwarzer's initial voluntary disclosure submitted to German tax authorities was incorrect and she had in fact never admitted the whole amount of her unpaid taxes. In such cases, voluntary disclosures do not have any exculpatory effect under German tax law. Consequently, in July 2016, Schwarzer was fined for tax fraud with a penalty of a six-figure amount by the Amtsgericht (local court) of Cologne.
Tax fraud
In the 1980s, Schwarzer set up an account at the Zürich-based private bank Lienhardt & Partner to keep her assets hidden from German tax authorities. During the following years, Schwarzer transferred earnings gained from book sales and public presentations to this Swiss bank account, thus avoiding taxation in Germany. Including interest and compound interest, her illegal assets piled up to an amount of 4 million euros.
Awards
Publications
In English
External links
Categories: Official Website, 20th-century German Journalists, 20th-century German Women Writers, 21st-century German Women Writers, 21st-century German Criminals, 21st-century German Journalists, 21st-century German Women Journalists, 20th-century German Women Journalists, 1942 Births, German Abortion-rights Activists, German Women Activists, Anti-pornography Feminists, Anti-prostitution Feminists, Bisexual Women Writers, Bisexual Journalists, Criminals From North Rhine-westphalia, German Critics Of Islam, German Feminists, German Magazine Founders, German People Convicted Of Tax Crimes, German White-collar Criminals, German Women Journalists, German Lgbtq Journalists, German Bisexual Women, German Bisexual Writers, Living People, People From The Rhine Province, Writers From Wuppertal, 20th-century German Lgbtq People, 21st-century German Lgbtq People
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