Nanna Conti, née Pauli (21 April 1881 – 30 December 1951) was a German midwife who headed the association of German midwives during the

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

and held the position of Reichshebammenführer from 1933. Her son

Leonardo Conti Leonardo Conti (; 24 August 1900 – 6 October 1945) was the Reich Health Leader and an SS-''Obergruppenführer'' in Nazi Germany. He was involved in the planning and execution of Action T4 that murdered hundreds of thousands of adults and chi ...

headed Nazi health programs.

Life and work

Conti was born in

Uelzen Uelzen (; ), officially the Hanseatic City of Uelzen (), is a town in northeast Lower Saxony, Germany, and capital of the district of Uelzen. It is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, a Hanseatic town and an independent municipality. Uelz ...

in a Prussian origin family and was politically influenced by her father Dr. Carl Eugen Pauli (1839–1901) who was associated with the

Pan-German League The Pan-German League () was a Pan-German nationalist organization which was officially founded in 1891, a year after the Zanzibar Treaty was signed. Primarily dedicated to the German question of the time, it held positions on German imperia ...

. Dr. Pauli was from West Pomerania and Conti's mother, Anna, was from Lebork, Pomerania. Conti also had two brothers, one older who emigrated to the United States as an adult, and the other a younger brother who died in childhood. An extramarital affair of Pauli led to the mother Anna Pauli née Isecke to separate and raise the children. In 1884 the family moved to Leipzig and in 1893 to Lugano. Nanna married Silvio Conti (1872–1964) in 1898 and they had three children, two boys and one girl, who survived into adulthood apart from several miscarriages. In 1902 she separated from her husband and moved to

Magdeburg Magdeburg (; ) is the Capital city, capital of the Germany, German States of Germany, state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is on the Elbe river. Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archbishopric of Mag ...

in 1902 and apprenticed as a midwife. She began working as a freelance midwife in Berlin in 1905. She then worked in

Charlottenburg Charlottenburg () is a Boroughs and localities of Berlin, locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a German town law, town in 1705 and named after Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Kingdom ...

and became a member of the Prussian association of midwives. The association worked for greater powers and worked for a law that made them responsible for childbirth, giving priority over physicians. Conti became a member of the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers ...

(Nazi Party) along with her sons in the 1930s and was appointed chairperson for the German midwives association. She wrote on midwife practice and promoted Nazi ideology and anti-Semitism. She was involved in the passing of laws that excluded Jewish midwives, which caused Jewish midwives to be almost nonexistent in Germany until the 1980s. She was involved in reducing maternal mortality and helped establish a school of midwifery in Berlin. She represented Germany at a conference in London in 1934 and hosting the 1936 meeting at Berlin and as chairperson of the Congress she was automatically declared president of the International Midwives Union (founded in 1919 and later becoming the International Confederation of Midwives) in 1936. Conti was also well respected for her improvement of maternal mortality rates. She was also involved in policies such as forced sterilization of women with disabilities or hereditary diseases. In 1938 she was involved, along with her son, in the passing of a law that mandated the presence of a midwife at every birth that happened Germany. In 1945 she fled to live in Schleswig-Holstein and escaped any punishment. She moved to Bielefeld in 1951 where she lived until her death. Her son Leonardo committed suicide in prison while another committed suicide before the end of the war.

References

External links

Dissertation on Conti by Anja Peters
(in German
Brief biography
(in English)
Biography in German

Archival photograph
{{DEFAULTSORT:Conti, Nanna 1881 births 1951 deaths Nazi Party officials German midwives People from Uelzen