Hansine Johanne Marie Jacobsen grew up in a skipper’s home in the provinces, studied psychoanalysis in Berlin and Vienna from 1933 to 1938, and was married from 1906 to 1918 to the director of the Carlsberg Breweries, Vagn Carl Jacobsen. Together with Ellen Siersted, Ellen Hørup, and Fanny Miranda, she was one of the women associated with the Danish radical sexual movement in the 1930s in connection with the periodical Sex og Samfund.
She made her debut as a fiction author in 1924 with her novel Hjertets Køn. In both her fiction and works on sexual politics, she highlighted women as the hardest hit victims of social oppression, who hold the key to the oppression or liberation of their children. Her commitment was strong and controversial; see the pamphlet entitled Fosterfordrivelsesparagraffen 241 – Tvangsfødsel eller Forebyggelse, 1930. In Seksualreform, 1932, and in her novel Det er ikke til at vide, 1935, issued under the pseudonym Frese Olsen, she spoke out in favour of sex education and modern, non-repressive parenting. Her sex education publications for children were ridiculed by Hans Kirk, writing under the pseudonym Olaf Rye, in his novel Mørkets Magter, published in serial form in the newspaper Arbejderbladet in 1939-1940.
