At the end of the eighties in a Hamburg rowing club on the Alster. After the annual meeting of a surgical society, people meet for the final dinner. Also present: the surgeon Doris Henne-Bruns, who gave a lecture herself. But when she wants to enter the dining room for speakers, she is stopped. They say they don’t have access there. According to the statutes of the professional society, access is only reserved for men. There were simply no plans for female speakers.

She should sit in the second dining room – with the wives. “I could certainly have just left,” says Henne-Bruns in an interview with ZEIT ONLINE today. But she decides to stay at that time, eats with her wives and then writes a letter to the professional society in which she calls for a change to the statutes. A year later, she is again standing in front of the dining room as a speaker – and enters.