Magnus Hirschfeld

Magnus Hirschfeld (* 14 May 1868 in Kolberg; † 14 May 1935 in Nice), German physician in Berlin, sexual researcher and empiricist, gay, socialist, Jewish and co-Founder of the first worldwide homosexual movement (WhK). Online dossier on the 80th anniversary of the plundering of the Institute for Sexual Science on 6 May 1933.

At any rate, he was not modest when it came to describing the effects of his work, as can be seen in this quote for an article for the Berlin gay magazine “Die Freundschaft” in 1922. Magnus Hirschfeld had succeeded in convincing the Berlin CID that homosexuality was not an “acquired vice” but rather “ineradicable” and the officials had then recognised it would be easier to keep the “Uranians” under control if they were given freedom to be themselves. To this extent, he as a physician and acknowledged expert in questions of sexuality as well as his political comrades-in-arms in the “Scientific-Humanitarian Committee” (WhK), already established in 1897, did indeed have their share in the flourishing homosexual subculture. But all of this was soon ground into the dust again by National Socialist jackboots.

If one wanted to assign Hirschfeld a place in contemporary terminology, one could say he was a gay man who fully endorsed the concept of diversity. And who at least laid a small building block of current queer theory, according to which, apart from biological gender, there are also elements, which independent of social norming, result in the highly varied (sexual) identity of a person. This is the case even if the mortar for this building block – a purely medical-biological categorisation – did not prove to be viable in the long term. Hirschfeld’s views no longer played much of a role in sexual science after the Second World War.

But until this time, tireless work was devoted to developing the theory of “sexual intermediate stages” with empirical methods. To this end, Hirschfeld and his staff compiled a 20,000-page text collection between 1899 and 1923. The “Yearbooks for Sexual Intermediate Stages” were intended to demonstrate that there was an endless number of levels and mixes between “complete man” and “complete woman”. Hermaphrodites, transvestites, inverts represented the naturally essential connection between the two poles of man and woman. The homosexual represented a kind of “third gender”. His inauguration of the “Institute for Sexual Science” in 1919 was also intended to provide the research with a permanent framework. But it also became an advisory centre for people facing difficulties with their sexuality and an extensive archive for sexual science literature. However, the Institute and its inventories were destroyed on 6 May 1933 as part of the National Socialists’ book-burning. Hirschfeld was then already in exile.

Along with Hirschfeld the sexual scientist, there was also Hirschfeld the sexual reformer. The WhK, founded by him and the publisher Max Spohr, the lawyer Eduard Oberg and the author Franz Joseph von Bulow in Berlin, was intended to achieve the decriminalisation of homosexuality. The activities of the WhK were closely interlocked with Hirschfeld’s medical practice and later also with the Institute for Sexual Science. The primary goal was the abolition of paragraph 175 RStGB, which penalised sexual acts between men. The first petition for the abolition of 175 was submitted one year after its foundation, but in vain. The WhK made renewed attempts in 1922 and 1925. And a coalition of various sexual reformers did in fact succeed through their lobbying in getting the Reichstag Committee to decide in 1929 to abolish the special penal paragraph. But this motion no longer reached the Reichstag in time. Once the NSDAP took office, it vanished.

In the person of Hirschfeld the WhK not only boasted a prominent lobbyist but also a PR expert. His indefatigable production of newspaper articles, academic papers, newspapers and talks ensured prominence beyond academic circles too. He also recognised the effect of a then new and modern medium. The 1919 silent film “Different from the Others”, produced by Richard Oswald, also featured contributions by Hirschfeld. The “social-hygienic film” was the first to deal openly with homosexuality. Hirschfeld played himself in it and delivered a passionate plea in court against paragraph 175. The film triggered a lively debate in politics and the media and it was banned in 1920. It released similar feelings of liberation among homosexuals who were able to experience it in the cinema as Rosa von Praunheims agitprop documentary in 1973 “It is not the homosexual who is perverse…”

The destruction of the Institute for Social Science by the Nazis also put an end to the career of “Aunt Magnesia”, as he was affectionately known in the scene. A life in exile began with interludes in Zurich, Ascona, Paris and Nice. He also died in this last location on the very day of his 67th birthday.

Author: Christian Scheuß/Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld