Norbert Bartošek

Austrian doctor and libertarian promoter of voluntary sterilisation by vasectomy in France and Spain.
His brother, doctor and clinic manager in Gratz (Austria) was with Professor Scherz the inventor of a new method to practice the vasectomy (male sterilization). The two brothers will put this process into practice, but they are then prosecuted by the court for "sterilization not allowed." Norbert fled Austria in 1932, and fled go to Spain (where he would have performed vasectomies among the CNT activists). In 1933, he arrives in France, recommended by comrades of "Solidarid Obrera", he found refuge in Lyons in the anarchist militants. It is in this libertarian environment and neo-Malthusian that he will continue his operations and his Promotion of the vasectomy. He then operates in all discretion a certain number of companions (Spanish and Italian for the most part), in the back room of a flow of drink belonging to Antoine Lagrange, then Secretary of the Union Lyonnaise from the CGT-SR.

After six months in Lyon, he was then invited by the anarchist group of Bordeaux, where he pursues clandestine medical activity assisted by Louis Harel, and a Spanish anarchist worker named Jean Baeza. But after having operated on about fifteen volunteers anarchists and free-thinkers such as Aristide Lapeyre, André Prévotel, Caballero, Pauly, Larrère, Hernandez and Bielle, a denunciation reveal the case to the authorities who Stop the protagonists: André and Andrée Prevosal (in whom the operations had place), Aristide Lapeyre and Louis Harel (Jean Baeza will manage to flee).
Bartosek, who was then in Belgium, will be arrested and extradited. Good that the 1920 law that suppresses contraception and its promotion does not mention the vasectomy, the accused are still condemned, on May 2, 1936, for "castrations and violence" (inappropriate procedure for a voluntary sterilization). Bartosek receives Three years in prison, Baeza at two years (in absentia) and two of his co-indicts Harel and André Prévotel for six months; sentences that will be reduced on appeal. Bartozek released after 15 months in prison will then settle in Vendée, in La Faute-sur-Mer, where he will continue to carry out clandestine operations on a number important of activists.
He is the author of a brochure published in Brussels by Hem Day (sterilized himself by Bartosek): "Sexual sterilization, its eugenic, medical, social importance" (1937).