Ernst Gräfenberg

Ernst Gräfenberg (b. 26 September 1881 in Adelebsen near Göttingen, Germany, d. 28 October 1957 in New York City, USA) was a German-born medical doctor and scientist. He is known for his work in the development of the intrauterine device (IUD) and for his studies of the role of the female urethra in orgasm.

Additional recommended knowledge

How to quickly check pipettes?

Daily Sensitivity Test

Essential Laboratory Skills Guide

Gräfenberg studied medicine in Göttingen and Munich, obtaining his doctorate on 10 March 1905. He began working as a doctor of ophthalmology at the university of Würzburg, but then moved to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Kiel, where he published papers on cancer metastasis (the "Gräfenberg theory"), and the physiology of egg implantation.

In 1910 Gräfenberg started work as a gynaecologist in Berlin and by 1920' was one of the most successful in town, with an office on the fashionable Kurfurstendamm. He also served as chief gynecologist of a municipal hospital in Britz, a district of Berlin mainly inhabited by a working-class population, as well as beginning scientific studies at the Berlin University on the physiology of human reproduction.

During the First World War, he served as a medical officer, and continued publishing papers, most of them on female physiology. In 1929 he published his studies of the Gräfenberg ring, the first IUD for which there are usage records.^[1]

As a result of the rise of Nazism in Germany, Gräfenberg, as a Jewish physician, was forced in 1933 to give up his post as head of the department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics in Berlin-Britz. In 1934, Hans Lehfeldt attempted to persuade Graefenberg to leave Germany, but he refused to do so, believing that since his patients included wives of high Nazi officials, he would be safe. He was wrong, and he was arrested in 1937, allegedly for having smuggled a valuable stamp out of Germany. His release from prison was negotiated by Margaret Sanger, who paid the Nazis a ransom for his release. He finally was allowed to leave Germany in 1940, whereupon he came to the United States and opened a practice in New York City.

Gräfenberg was briefly married to writer Rosie Waldeck.^[2]

He died on 28 October 1957 in New York.

The "G-spot"

He gained fame for studies of the female genitals, and female sexual physiology in general. His published papers include the seminal The Role of Urethra in Female Orgasm in 1950, in which he describes female ejaculation, and an erotic zone where the urethra is closest to the vaginal wall. In 1981 sexologists John D. Perry and Beverly Whipple named this area the Gräfenberg spot, or G-spot after him.