1924: Condom Vending Machines in Vienna

The difficulties of feeding a large family and similar existential fears that prevailed in the interwar period, particularly in Austria’s big cities, led to the increased use of contraceptives. Several organisations, such as Johann Ferch’s Association against Forced Motherhood (Bund gegen den Mutterschaftszwang), set themselves the goal of informing the Austrian population about these resources. The rubber condom therefore took on an important role, as it could also protect people from widespread sexually transmitted diseases. In Vienna in the 1920s – alongside the usual sales in drugstores, apothecaries and barber shops – condom vending machines were also installed for the first time. Vienna (along with Prague) thereby assumed a pioneering role in the automated sale of these products. The “morality ordinance” of the authoritarian Dollfuss government expurgated the unrestricted sale of contraceptives in March 1934 and finally, also forced the municipality of Vienna to explicitly ban the vending machines in 1936.