Otto Mainzer

Who is Otto Mainzer?

Otto Mainzer was a German-American writer. He was unconventional, and wrote about issues such as free love.

Mainzer was the son of Bertha Loeb. He graduated in Law in 1928 and received his doctorate in law. He then worked as a lawyer at the Berlin Court of Appeal. When he removed in 1933 because of his Jewish origin, he emigrated to Paris. There he made the acquaintance of André Gide, Heinrich Mann, Arnold Zweig and Erwin Piscator, who supported him financially. At the time of his Paris exile, Mainzer became acquainted with the writings of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. Under the influence of Reich's ideas about sex-economy, Mainzer produced some major works on sexual coercion. In 1941 Mainz continued his emigration, and went to the USA. There he met his girlfriend Ilse Wunsch and lived for 25 years, "unmarried, in two different apartments, but in an intimate love relationship" until they married. After his death in 1995 his wife established the Otto-Mainzer-Preis in New York for the science of love, worth 5,000 U.S. dollars. The last prize was awarded in 2004.