{{Short description|German sexology research institute (1919–33)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=May 2025}} {{Title language|de}} {{Infobox institute | name = Institut für Sexualwissenschaft | other_name = Institute for Sexual Science | motto = "Per scientiam ad justitiam" | mottoeng = "Through science to justice" | established = {{start date and age|1919|7|6}} | dissolved = {{end date|1934}} | founder = Magnus Hirschfeld | address = In den Zelten 9A-10, Beethovenstraße 3 | location = Tiergarten | city = Berlin | country = Germany | coordinates = {{coord|52.5189|13.3652}} | focus = Sexology<br>Transgender health care<br>Transgender studies }} [[File:Bucherverbrennung-book-burning-Nazi-1933-Institute.jpg|thumb|Members of the German Student Union, organized by the Nazi Party, parade in front of the institute ({{date|6 May 1933}}).]]
The '''Institut für Sexualwissenschaft''' ({{langx|en|Institute for Sexual Science|link=no}}) was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The name is variously translated as Institute for Sexual Research, Institute of Sexology, Institute for Sexology, or Institute for the Science of Sexuality. The Institute was a non-profit foundation situated in Tiergarten, Berlin. It was the first sexology research center in the world.{{sfn|Wolff|1986|p=180}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=O'Brien |first=Jodi |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_nyHS4WyUKEC&pg=PT457 |title=Encyclopedia of Gender and Society |date=2009 |publisher=SAGE Publications |isbn=978-1-4129-0916-7 |page=425 |language=en}}</ref>{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=160–161}}
The Institute was headed by Magnus Hirschfeld, who since 1897 had run the world's first homosexual organization Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee), which campaigned on progressive and rational grounds for LGBT rights and tolerance at the start of the first homosexual movement that would flourish in interwar Weimar culture. The Committee published the long-running journal ''Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen''.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/homosexualitymal0000unse |title=Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany |date=1991 |publisher=Harrington Park Press |others=Translated by Hubert C. Kennedy |isbn=978-1-56023-008-3 |editor-last=Oosterhuis |editor-first=Harry |editor-link=Harry Oosterhuis |language=en |url-access=registration }} [https://books.google.com/books?id=XPLZAAAAMAAJ Alt URL]</ref> Hirschfeld built a unique library at the institute on gender, same-sex love and eroticism.<ref name=":17">{{Cite news |last=Strochlic |first=Nina |date=28 June 2022 |title=The great hunt for the world's first LGBTQ archive |work=National Geographic |url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-great-hunt-for-the-worlds-first-lgbtq-archive |url-status=dead |access-date=9 October 2022 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20220705010757/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-great-hunt-for-the-worlds-first-lgbtq-archive |archive-date=5 July 2022}}</ref>
The institute's founding purpose was to create "scientific research on the entirety of sexual life" and educate German society on its findings.<ref name=":23">{{Cite journal |last=Trask |first=April |date=2018-04-27 |title=Remaking Men: Masculinity, Homosexuality and Constitutional Medicine in Germany, 1914–1933 |url=https://academic.oup.com/gh/article-abstract/36/2/181/4922530 |journal=German History |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=181–206 |doi=10.1093/gerhis/ghy013 |issn=0266-3554|url-access=subscription }}</ref> It pioneered research and treatment for various matters regarding gender and sexuality, including gay, transgender, and intersex topics. In addition, it offered various other services to the general public: this included treatment for alcoholism, gynecological examinations, marital and sex counseling, treatment for venereal diseases, and access to contraceptive treatment. It offered education on many of these matters to both health professionals and laypersons.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=160–164}}{{sfn|Wolff|1986|p=181}}
After the Nazis gained control of Germany in the 1930s, the institute and its libraries were destroyed as part of a Nazi government censorship program by youth brigades, who burned its books and documents in the street.<ref name="Qualia">{{cite web |title=Institute of Sexology |url=http://www.qualiafolk.com/2011/12/08/institute-of-sexology/ |publisher=Qualia Folk |access-date=18 January 2015 |date=8 December 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150118234328/http://www.qualiafolk.com/2011/12/08/institute-of-sexology/ |archive-date=18 January 2015 }}</ref><ref name=":15" /><ref>{{cite web |last=Marhoefer |first=Laurie |date=2023-09-21 |title=New Research Reveals How the Nazis Targeted Transgender People |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-research-reveals-how-the-nazis-targeted-transgender-people-180982931/ |access-date=2024-03-14 |website=Smithsonian Magazine}}</ref>
==Origins and purpose== [[Image:Vitahomosexualis.JPG|thumb|''Vita homosexualis'', a 1902 collection of August Fleischmann's popular pamphlets on third gender and against Paragraph 175, confiscated by Nazis on 6 May 1933]] The ''Institute of Sex Research'' was founded by Magnus Hirschfeld and his collaborators Arthur Kronfeld, a once famous psychotherapist and later professor at the Charité, and Friedrich Wertheim, a dermatologist.<ref name=":10">{{Cite book |last=Tamagne |first=Florence |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PW1GjP0_6Y4C |title=A History of Homosexuality in Europe, Vol. I & II: Berlin, London, Paris 1919–1939 |date=2007 |publisher=Algora Publishing |isbn=978-0-87586-357-3 |pages=59–104 |language=en |chapter=Liberation on the Move: The Golden Age of Homosexual Movements}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Arthur Kronfeld |url=https://www.sgipt.org/gesch/kronf/kronf_e.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220808154255/https://www.sgipt.org/gesch/kronf/kronf_e.htm |archive-date=8 August 2022 |access-date=2022-01-23 |website=Internet Publikation für Allgemeine und Integrative Psychotherapie}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Giami |first1=Alain |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XSs4EAAAQBAJ |title=Histories of Sexology: Between Science and Politics |last2=Levinson |first2=Sharman |year=2021 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-3-030-65813-7 |page=55 |language=en}}</ref> Hirschfeld gave a speech on 1 July 1919, when the institute was inaugurated.<ref name=":10" /> It opened on 6 July 1919.<ref name=":11" /><ref>{{cite web |last1=Jander |first1=Thomas |date=23 July 2019 |title=What's that for? A Licence to Be (Different) |url=https://www.dhm.de/blog/2019/07/23/whats-that-for-a-licence-to-be-different/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211121133358/https://www.dhm.de/blog/2019/07/23/whats-that-for-a-licence-to-be-different/ |archive-date=21 November 2021 |access-date=5 February 2021 |website=Deutsches Historisches Museum Blog}}</ref> The building, located in the Tiergarten district, was purchased by Hirschfeld from the government of the Free State of Prussia following World War I.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Grossmann |first=Atina |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bQp4WA6LrckC&pg=PA15 |title=Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920–1950 |date=1995 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-505672-3 |pages=15–17 |language=en |author-link=Atina Grossmann}}</ref><ref name=":7">{{Cite book |last=Bauer |first=Heike |title=Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary |date=2014 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vDNvBAAAQBAJ |pages=17–33 |editor-last=Partington |editor-first=Gill |chapter=Burning Sexual Subjects: Books, Homophobia and the Nazi Destruction of the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137367662_2 |place=London |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |language=en |doi=10.1057/9781137367662_2 |isbn=978-1-137-36766-2 |access-date=2022-10-07 |editor2-last=Smyth |editor2-first=Adam}}</ref> A neighboring building was purchased in 1921, adding more overall space to the institute.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=161}}{{sfn|Wolff|1986|p=182}}
As well as being a research library and housing a large archive, the institute also included medical, psychological, and ethnological divisions, and a marriage and sex counseling office.<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal |last=Matte |first=Nicholas |date=2005-10-01 |title=International Sexual Reform and Sexology in Europe, 1897–1933 |journal=Canadian Bulletin of Medical History |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=253–270 |doi=10.3138/cbmh.22.2.253 |pmid=16482697 |issn=2816-6469|doi-access=free }}</ref> Other fixtures at the institute included a museum for sexual artifacts, medical exam rooms, and a lecture hall.<ref name=":10" />{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=ix}} The institute conducted around 18,000 consultations for 3,500 people in its first year.<ref name=":10" /> Clients often received advice for free.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Marcuse |first=Max |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OPd-Ujotsi0C |title=Handwörterbuch der Sexualwissenschaft: Enzyklopädie der natur- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Sexualkunde des Menschen |date=2011|publisher=De Gruyter |isbn=978-3-11-088786-0 |page=xi |language=de |trans-title=Hand Dictionary of Sexology: Encyclopedia of Natural and Cultural-Scientific Sex Education in Humans}}</ref> Poorer visitors also received medical treatment for free.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.exberliner.com/politics/magnus-hirschfeld/ | title=The queer crusader | date=10 May 2017 }}</ref> According to Hirschfeld, about 1,250 lectures had been held in the first year.{{sfn|Wolff|1986|p=177}}
In addition, the institute advocated sex education, contraception, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and women's emancipation. Inscribed on the building was the phrase ''per scientiam ad justitiam'' (translated as "through science to justice").<ref name=":14">{{Cite book |last=Weeks |first=Jeffrey |url=https://archive.org/details/newsexualagendas0000unse |title=New Sexual Agendas |date=1997 |publisher=New York University Press |isbn=0-8147-8076-8 |editor-last=Segal |editor-first=Lynne |pages=48–49 |doi=10.1007/978-1-349-25549-8 |s2cid=142426128 |oclc=35646591 |ol=19515251W |author-link=Jeffrey Weeks (sociologist) |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=86}} This was also the personal motto of Hirschfeld as well as the slogan of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee.<ref name=":15">{{Cite web |title=Magnus Hirschfeld |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/magnus-hirschfeld-2 |access-date=8 October 2022 |website=Holocaust Encyclopedia|publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}}</ref>{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=86}}
==Organization== The institute was financed by the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Foundation, a charity which itself was funded by private donations.<ref name=":7" /> Along with Magnus Hirschfeld, a number of others (including many professional specialists) worked on the staff of the institute at different points in time, including:{{sfn|Dose|2014|pp=53–55}} {{col-begin|width=60%}}{{col-break}} * {{Interlanguage link|Felix Abraham|de|Felix Abraham}} – psychiatrist * August Bessunger – radiologist * Karl Giese – archivist * Berndt Götz – psychiatrist * Hans Graaz – naturopath, medical doctor<ref>{{Cite web |title=Hans Graaz, M.D. |url=https://www.hirschfeld.in-berlin.de/institut/en/personen/pers_07.html |access-date=December 4, 2022 |website=Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft}}</ref> * Friedrich Hauptstein – administrative director * Kurt Hiller – lawyer<ref name=":13">{{Cite book |last1=Kraß |first1=Andreas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rMpSEAAAQBAJ&dq=%22kurt+hiller%22+institute+of+sex+research&pg=PA35 |title=Queer Jewish Lives Between Central Europe and Mandatory Palestine: Biographies and Geographies |last2=Sluhovsky |first2=Moshe |last3=Yonay |first3=Yuval |date=2021|publisher=transcript Verlag |isbn=978-3-8394-5332-2 |pages=34–36 |language=en}}</ref> * Max Hodann – sex educator * {{Interlanguage link|Hans Wilhelm Carl Friedenthal|de|Hans Wilhelm Carl Friedenthal}} – anthropologist * Hans Kreiselmaier – gynecologist * Arthur Kronfeld – psychiatrist, psychologist {{col-break}} * Ewald Lausch – medical assistant * Ludwig Levy-Lenz – gynecologist * Eugen Littaur – otolaryngologist * Franz Prange – endocrinologist * {{Interlanguage link|Ferdinand von Reitzenstein|de|Ferdinand von Reitzenstein (Sexualwissenschaftler)|lt=Ferdinand von Reitzenstein}} – ethnologist * Adelheid Rennhack – housekeeper * Arthur Röser – librarian * Bernard Schapiro – dermatologist, andrologist<ref>{{cite journal|title=Bernard Schapiro|year=2002 |pmid=12703271 |last1=Borgwardt |first1=G. |journal=Sudhoffs Archiv |volume=86 |issue=2 |pages=181–197 }}</ref> * Arthur Weil – neuroendocrinologist, neuropathologist * Friedrich Wertheim – dermatologist {{col-end}}
Some others worked for the institute in various domestic affairs.{{sfn|Dose|2014|pp=53–55}} Some of the people who worked at the institute simultaneously lived there, including Hirschfeld and Giese.<ref name=":7" /> Affiliated groups held offices at the institute. This included the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, Helene Stöcker's ''{{Interlanguage link|Deutscher Bund für Mutterschutz und Sexualreform|lt=League for the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Reform|de|Deutscher Bund für Mutterschutz und Sexualreform}}'', and the World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR).{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=163}}<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":7" /> The WLSR has been described as the "international face" of the institute.<ref name=":16" /> In 1929 Hirschfeld presided over the third international congress of the WLSR at Wigmore Hall.<ref>{{Cite news |date=9 September 1929 |title=League for Sexual Reform: International Congress Opened |work=The Times |issue=45303 |url=https://www.gale.com/c/the-times-digital-archive |access-date=8 October 2022}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |date=19 October 1929 |title=League for Sexual Reform |url=https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/271198 |url-status=bot: unknown |journal=The Journal of the American Medical Association |volume=93 |issue=16 |pages=1234–1235 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221009023141/https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/271198 |archive-date=9 October 2022 |access-date=9 October 2022 }}</ref> During his address there, he stated that "A sexual impulse based on science is the only sound system of ethics."<ref name=":14" />
Divisions for the institute included ones dedicated to sexual biology, pathology, sociology and ethnography. Plans were allotted for the institute to both research and practice medicine in equal measure, though by 1925 a lack of funding meant the institute had to cut its medical research. This was to include matters of sexuality, gender, venereal disease, and birth control.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=161–162}}
==Activity==
=== Public education === The institute aimed to educate both the general public and specialists on its topics of focus.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=160–164}} It became a point of scientific and research interest for many scientists of sexuality, as well as intellectuals and reformers from all over the world.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":10" /> Visitors included René Crevel, Christopher Isherwood, Harry Benjamin, Édouard Bourdet, Margaret Sanger, Francis Turville-Petre, André Gide and Jawaharlal Nehru.<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":7" />
The institute also received visits from national governments; in 1923 the institute was for instance visited by Nikolai Semashko, Commissar for Health in the Soviet Union.<ref name=":6" /> This was followed by numerous visits and research trips by health officials, political, sexual and social reformers, and scientific researchers from the Soviet Union interested in the work of Hirschfeld.<ref name=":16" /> In June 1926 a delegation from the institute, led by Hirschfeld, reciprocated with a research visit to Moscow and Leningrad.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mancini |first=Elena |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230114395 |title=Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom: A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement |date=2010 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-0-230-11439-5 |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=151–152 |chapter=Back Matter: Appendix 1 |doi=10.1057/9780230114395 |oclc=696313936 |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bbm%3A978-0-230-11439-5%2F1}}</ref><ref name=":16">{{Cite book |last=Healey |first=Dan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MT9bEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA133 |title=Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent |date=2012-04-26 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-92254-6 |pages=132–138 |language=en |author-link=Dan Healey}}</ref>
One particular fixture at the institute which aided its popularity was its museum of sexual subjects. This was built with both education and entertainment in mind. There were ethnographic displays about different sexual norms across different cultures internationally. It included exhibits about sexual fetishism and sadomasochism. A collection of phallic artifacts from around the world was also exhibited. Additionally, there were presentations regarding the diversity of human sexual orientation, particularly with regards to homosexuality.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=162–164}} Upon visiting the institute, Dora Russell reflected that it was "where the results of researches into various sex problems and perversions could be seen in records and photographs."{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=162}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Dora |url=http://archive.org/details/tamarisktree00dora |title=The Tamarisk Tree: My Quest for Liberty and Love |date=1975 |publisher=Putnam |isbn=978-0-399-11576-9 |page=206 |author-link=Dora Russell |url-access=registration |via=the Internet Archive}}</ref>
The neighboring property purchased in 1922 by the institute had an opening ceremony on 5 March 1922, after which it became a place for the institute's staff to interact with the public in an educational capacity.{{sfn|Wolff|1986|p=182}} Lectures and question-and-answer sessions were held there to inform laypersons on topics of sexuality.{{sfn|Wolff|1986|p=182}}{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=183–184}} The public especially tended to ask questions regarding contraception.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=183–184}}
=== Sexual and reproductive health === One focus of the institute's research and services was sexual and reproductive health. A subdivision of the institute called the Eugenics Department for Mother and Child offered marital counseling services, and the Center of Sexual Counseling for Married Couples provided access to contraception.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brennan |first=Toni |title=The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality |date=2015-04-20 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118896877 |pages=325–368 |editor-last=Bolin |editor-first=Anne |chapter=Eugenics and sexology |chapter-url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118896877.wbiehs139 |place=Oxford, UK |publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Ltd |language=en |doi=10.1002/9781118896877.wbiehs139 |isbn=978-1-118-89687-7 |access-date=2022-10-06 |editor2-last=Whelehan |editor2-first=Patricia}}</ref>{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=182}} It was especially a goal of the institute to make contraceptive services accessible to the poor and working-class of Germany. This was despite a prohibition on advertising birth control in the Weimar Republic's constitution.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=182}} Following looser regulation on advertising contraceptive methods, the institute published an educational pamphlet on the matter in 1928 which ultimately reached a distribution of about 100,000 copies by 1932.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=184}} Hirschfeld and Hodann developed pioneering strategies for sex counseling services that would inspire later practices.<ref name=":2" />{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=161}} The institute also offered general gynecology services and treatment for venereal diseases.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":17" /> Experimental treatments for impotence were also implemented.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=163}}
=== Sexual intermediacy === At the institute, Magnus Hirschfeld championed the doctrine of sexual intermediacy. This proposed form of classification said that every human trait existed on a scale from masculine to feminine. Masculine traits were characterized as dominant and active while feminine traits were passive and perceptive (an idea similar to those also commonly held by his contemporaries). The classification was further divided into the subgroups of sex organs, physical characteristics, sex drive or sexuality, and psychological characteristics. Hirschfeld's belief was that all human beings possess both masculine and feminine traits regardless of their sex. In fact, he believed that no one was fully masculine or fully feminine but rather a blend of the two. A man with a female sex drive, for example, would be homosexual, whereas someone with male sex organs and mostly female psychological characteristics would likely be transgender (see also the concepts of sexual inversion and eonism). Someone with exceptionally androgynous sex organs would be intersex.{{sfn|Dose|2014|pp=68–69}} Hirschfeld originally used the term "sexual intermediaries" in the late nineteenth century to refer mostly to homosexual men and lesbians. However, this later expanded to include intersex people, cross-dressers, and transsexuals.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=169–170}} His concept of broad sexual intermediacy among humans has been traced to roughly similar ideas held by Charles Darwin and Galen of Pergamon.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Green |first=Jamison |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-29093-1 |title=Gender Confirmation Surgery: Principles and Techniques for an Emerging Field |date=2020 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-3-030-29093-1 |editor-last=Schechter |editor-first=Loren S. |pages=1–22 |language=en |chapter=History, Societal Attitudes, and Contexts |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-29093-1 |s2cid=210986290 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5qbNDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA2}}</ref>
==== Transsexuality and transvestism ==== thumb|right|upright|Herbert W. (left) was a transgender friend of Magnus Hirschfeld, and lived for two years in Berlin under his chosen name. This photo is from Hirschfeld's ''Sexual Intermediates'' (1922). Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term transsexual in the 1923 essay ''Die Intersexuelle Konstitution''.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Ekins |first1=Richard |last2=King |first2=Dave |date=April 2001 |title=Pioneers of Transgendering: The Popular Sexology of David O. Cauldwell |url=http://www.symposion.com/ijt/cauldwell/cauldwell_01.htm |journal=The International Journal of Transgenderism |volume=5 |issue=2 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060428021447/http://www.symposion.com/ijt/cauldwell/cauldwell_01.htm |archive-date=28 April 2006}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Crocq |first=Marc-Antoine |date=2021-01-01 |title=How gender dysphoria and incongruence became medical diagnoses – a historical review |journal=Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience |language=en |volume=23 |issue=1 |pages=44–51 |doi=10.1080/19585969.2022.2042166 |pmid=35860172 |pmc=9286744 |issn=1958-5969 |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name=":1" /> This identified the clinical category which his colleague Harry Benjamin would later develop in the United States; only about thirty years after its coining by Hirschfeld did the term enter wider use, with Benjamin's work.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> Hirschfeld also originally coined the term transvestite in 1910, and he sometimes used the term "extreme transvestites" or "total transvestites" to refer to transsexuals.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Holmes |first=Morgan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pIkGDAAAQBAJ&dq=%22hirschfeld%22+%22intersex%22&pg=PT192 |title=Critical Intersex |date=2016|publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-15730-4 |pages=132, 176 |language=en |author-link=Morgan Holmes}}</ref><ref name=":4">{{Cite book |last=Mak |first=Geertje |url=https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-981-15-4106-3 |title=The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences |date=2022|publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-981-16-7255-2 |editor-last=McCallum |editor-first=David |pages=423–433 |language=en |chapter=The Sex of the Self and Its Ambiguities, 1899–1964 |doi=10.1007/978-981-15-4106-3 |s2cid=242987098 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hIuFEAAAQBAJ&dq=%22hirschfeld%22+%22intersex%22&pg=PA431}}</ref>{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=177–178}} Other descriptions "in the modern medical sense"<ref name="Schechter-2016">{{Cite book |last=Schechter |first=Loren S. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eGkgDQAAQBAJ |title=Surgical Management of the Transgender Patient |date=2016-09-22 |publisher=Elsevier Health Sciences |isbn=978-0-323-48408-4 |pages=4 |language=en}} Though Friedreich's paper is clearly alluded to in the text, the book mistakenly cites a 1931 paper by Felix Abraham that does not mention Friedreich's work.</ref> also appeared in earlier German medical literature,<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":25">{{Cite journal |last=Janssen |first=Diederik F |date=September 2021 |title=Melancholia Scytharum: the early modern psychiatry of transgender identification |journal=History of Psychiatry |language=en |volume=32 |issue=3 |pages=270–288 |doi=10.1177/0957154X211006253 |issn=0957-154X |pmc=8339897 |pmid=33855893}}</ref> such as Johann Baptist Friedreich's 1829–1830 work.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bodlund|first=Owe|date=1994|title=Transsexualism and Personality|url=https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:793000/FULLTEXT01.pdf|department=Department of Psychiatry|journal=Umeå University|pages=1|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230528161708/https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:793000/FULLTEXT01.pdf|archive-date=May 28, 2023|url-status=dead|quote=The earliest description of the disorder was given by a German, Friedreich in 1830 and in 1910 Hirschfeldt {{sic}} titled it "transvestism".}}</ref><ref name=":25" /><ref name="Schechter-2016" />
Transgender people were on the staff of the institute as receptionists and maids, as well as being among the clients there.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Stryker |first=Susan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xEfiDQAAQBAJ |title=Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution |date=2017 |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-1-58005-690-8 |edition=2nd |language=en |chapter=A Hundred-Plus Years of Transgender History |author-link=Susan Stryker |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230220200532/https://books.google.com/books?id=xEfiDQAAQBAJ |archive-date=20 February 2023 |url-status=bot: unknown |access-date=10 October 2022 }}</ref> Various endocrinologic and surgical services were offered, including an early modern sex reassignment surgery in 1931.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" />{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=176–178}} Hirschfeld originally advised against sexual reassignment surgeries, but came to support them as a means of preventing suicide among transsexual patients.<ref name=":4" />
Ludwig Levy-Lenz, and surgeon Erwin Gohrbandt performed male-to-female surgery called ''Genitalumwandlung''—literally, "transformation of genitals." This occurred in stages: castration, penectomy and vaginoplasty. (The institute treated only trans women at this time; female-to-male phalloplasty would not be practiced until the late 1940s.) Patients would also be prescribed feminizing hormone therapy, allowing them to grow natural breasts and softer features.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Schillace |first=Brandy |date=2021-08-01 |title=The Forgotten History of the World's First Trans Clinic |url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/ |access-date=2025-03-25 |website=Scientific American |language=en}}</ref> Testosterone had never been synthesized until 1935 (after the institute closed), so masculinizing hormone therapy was never available at the institute.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bryan-Quamina |first=Gabrielle |date=February 29, 2024 |title=Magnus Hirschfeld and the Institute for Sexual Science |url=https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/magnus-hirschfeld-and-the-institute-for-sexual-science/ |access-date=September 13, 2025 |website=Science Museum, London}}</ref>
Ludwig Levy-Lenz, the institute's primary surgeon for transsexual patients, also implemented an early form of facial feminization surgery and facial masculinization surgery.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=176–178}} Additionally, hair removal treatments using the institute's X-ray facility were developed, though this caused some side effects such as skin burns.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=176–178}} Professor of history Robert M. Beachy stated that, "Although experimental and, ultimately, dangerous, these sex-reassignment procedures were developed largely in response to the ardent requests of patients."{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=178}} Levy-Lenz commented, "[N]ever have I operated upon more grateful patients."{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=178}}
Hirschfeld worked with Berlin's police department to curtail the arrest of cross-dressers and transgender people, through the creation of transvestite passes. These were issued on behalf of the institute to those who had a personal desire to wear clothing associated with a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=106}}<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Beachy |first1=Robert |author-link=Robert M. Beachy |last2=Gross |first2=Terry |author-link2=Terry Gross |date=17 December 2014 |title=Between World Wars, Gay Culture Flourished In Berlin |language=en |work=NPR |url=https://www.npr.org/2014/12/17/371424790/between-world-wars-gay-culture-flourished-in-berlin |access-date=2017-09-13}}</ref><ref name=":6" />
==== Homosexuality ==== Works about homosexuality could be found at the institute. The institute's collections included the first comprehensive such compilation of works about sexuality.<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":12">{{Cite book |last=Ridinger |first=Rob B. |url=https://archive.org/details/readersguidetole0000unse |title=Reader's Guide to Lesbian and Gay Studies |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=2000 |isbn=978-1-135-94241-0 |editor-last=Murphy |editor-first=Timothy F. |pages=51–52 |chapter=Archives, Institutes, Libraries, and History Projects |doi=10.4324/9781315062518 |url-access=registration }} [https://books.google.com/books?id=RBO6fSGuj34C Alt URL]</ref> ''Different from the Others'', a film co-written by Hirschfeld that advocated greater tolerance for homosexuals, was screened at the institute in 1920 to audiences of statesmen.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=164–167}} It also received a screening at the institute before a Soviet delegation in 1923, who responded with "amazement" that the film had been considered scandalous enough to censor.<ref name=":16" /> It has been categorized alongside other films, such as ''Der Steinach''-''Film'', as one of the interwar period's educational "enlightenment films".<ref name=":23" />
The researchers at the institute advocated the theory that homosexuality had an innate, biological origin.<ref name=":23" /> Working off of the research of Eugen Steinach, who had recently succeeded in reversing the sexual behavior of animal test subjects,{{sfn|Dose|2014|pp=73–74}} Steinach's Institute for Experimental Biology<ref name=":24">{{Cite journal |last=Sengoopta |first=Chandak |date=1998 |title=Glandular Politics: Experimental Biology, Clinical Medicine, and Homosexual Emancipation in Fin-de-Siecle Central Europe |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/384073 |journal=Isis |volume=89 |issue=3 |pages=445–473 |doi=10.1086/384073 |issn=0021-1753|url-access=subscription }}</ref> once tested whether or not transplanting the testicles from a heterosexual man to a homosexual man would cure homosexuality. This method of "curing" homosexuality more often than not grew necrotized and resulted in the testicles having to be castrated. The practice was abandoned by 1924.{{sfn|Dose|2014|pp=73–74}} Hirschfeld, who initially supported some of these experiments, questioned whether such practices were medically ethical, and was concerned with the potential they could have for reducing the diversity of natural human phenomena.<ref name=":23" /> However, it was considered a potential alternative to self-castration that had previously been performed by some homosexual men.<ref name=":23" /> Hirschfeld – who was homosexual himself – viewed homosexuality as natural and inborn, rather than an illness.<ref name=":18">{{Cite book |last1=Bullough |first1=Vern L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-cqlAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA274 |title=Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia |last2=Bullough |first2=Bonnie |date=2014|publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-82502-7 |page=274 |language=en}}</ref>{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=150–151}} The experiments were in fact intended to demonstrate the biological basis of homosexuality in the influence of sex hormones.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=175}}<ref name=":24" />
The institute put adaption therapy into practice as a far more humane and effective method than conversion therapy, as a means of helping patients cope with their sexuality. Rather than attempting to cure a patient's homosexuality, the focus was instead placed on helping the patient learn to navigate a homophobic society with the least discomfort possible. While the doctors at the institute could not outright recommend illegal practices (and, at this time, most all homosexual acts were illegal in Germany), they also did not promote abstinence. They made an effort to help their gay patients find a sense of community, either with other patients, through the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, or through a network of venues known to the institute that were aimed at gay men, lesbians, and cross-dressers.{{sfn|Dose|2014|p=75}}<ref name=":10" />{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=180}} Additionally, the institute offered them general psychological and medical assistance.<ref name=":10" />
==== Intersexuality ==== The institute presented expert reports about cases of intersex conditions.<ref name=":11">{{Cite web |title=Magnus Hirschfeld and HKW |url=https://www.hkw.de/en/hkw/geschichte/ort_geschichte/magnus_hirschfeld.php |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211109005623/https://www.hkw.de/en/hkw/geschichte/ort_geschichte/magnus_hirschfeld.php |archive-date=9 November 2021 |access-date=October 7, 2022 |website=Haus der Kulturen der Welt}}</ref><ref name=":4" /> Hirschfeld is considered to have been a pioneer in this area of study.<ref name=":3" /> He advocated for the right of intersex individuals born with ambiguous genitalia to choose their own sex upon reaching the age of eighteen, and indeed assisted intersex people in attaining sex reassignment surgeries.<ref name=":5">{{Cite book |last1=Davies |first1=B. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dySGDAAAQBAJ&dq=%22hirschfeld%22+%22intersex%22&pg=PA136 |title=Sex, Gender and Time in Fiction and Culture |last2=Funke |first2=J. |date=2011|publisher=Springer |isbn=978-0-230-30708-7 |page=136 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Wallach |first=Kerry |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FppFDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22hirschfeld%22+%22intersex%22&pg=PA171 |title=Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany |date=2017 |publisher=University of Michigan Press |isbn=978-0-472-12300-1 |page=171 |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230618181555/https://books.google.com/books?id=FppFDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22hirschfeld%22+%22intersex%22&pg=PA171 |archive-date=18 June 2023 |url-status=bot: unknown |access-date=9 October 2022 }}</ref> However, he sometimes also advocated strategic sex assignment at birth, on a scientific basis.<ref name=":5" /> Photographs of intersex cases were among the collections at the institute – these were used as part of an effort to demonstrate sexual intermediacy to the average layperson.<ref name=":7" />
==Nazi era== {{See also|Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany|Transgender people in Nazi Germany|Lesbians in Nazi Germany|Twelve Theses (leaflet)|Nazi book burnings}} [[File:Institut für Sexualwissenschaft - Bibliothek 1933.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|German students and Nazi SA members plunder the library of Magnus Hirschfeld, director of the institute.]]
=== Background === From about the early 1920s onward, Hirschfeld became a target of the far-right in Germany, including the Nazi Party. He was physically attacked during multiple incidents, including an incident in Munich on 4 October 1920 in which he was badly injured. ''Deutschnationale Jugendzeitung'', a nationalist paper, commented that it was "regrettable" Hirschfeld had not died. In another incident in Vienna, he was shot at. By 1929, frequent targeting by Nazis made it difficult for Hirschfeld to continue with his appearances in public.<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":15" /> A caricature of him appeared on the front page of {{lang|de|Der Stürmer}} in February 1929; the Nazi Party attacked his Jewish ancestry as well as his theories about sex, gender, and sexuality.<ref name=":15" />
In late February 1933, the Nazi Party launched its purge of gay (then known as ''homophile'') clubs in Berlin, outlawed sex publications, and banned organised gay groups.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Neumann |first=Boaz |date=24 January 2019 |title=The Nazis tolerated gays. Then everything changed |language=en |newspaper=Haaretz |url=https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/2019-01-24/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/the-nazis-tolerated-gays-then-everything-changed/0000017f-f71c-ddde-abff-ff7df0b00000 |url-status=live |access-date=2020-08-05 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20200607041920/https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-nazis-tolerated-gays-then-everything-changed-1.6869815 |archive-date=7 June 2020}}</ref> As a consequence, many fled Germany (including, for instance, Erika Mann). In March 1933 Kurt Hiller, a lawyer affiliated with the institute, was sent to a concentration camp, where he was tortured, though he later fled Germany and survived the war.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Melching |first=Willem |date=1990 |title='A New Morality': Left-Wing Intellectuals on Sexuality in Weimar Germany |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=69–85 |doi=10.1177/002200949002500103 |jstor=260721 |s2cid=145767149 |issn=0022-0094}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Plant |first=Richard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oQeradc0pusC |title=The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals |date=2011 |publisher=Henry Holt and Company |isbn=978-1-4299-3693-4 |pages=106–107 |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221027024350/https://books.google.com/books?id=oQeradc0pusC |archive-date=2022-10-27 |url-status=bot: unknown |access-date=2022-10-08 }}</ref><ref name=":13" />
=== Raids and book burnings === thumb|Nazi Party members at the Opernplatz book burning in Berlin
On 8 April 1933, the Main Office for Press and Propaganda of the German Student Union (DSt) proclaimed a nationwide "Action against the Un-German Spirit", which was to climax in a literary purge or "cleansing" ({{lang|de|Säuberung}}) by fire. According to historian Karl Dietrich Bracher:
<blockquote>[T]he exclusion of "Left", democratic, and Jewish literature took precedence over everything else. The black-lists ... ranged from Bebel, Bernstein, Preuss, and Rathenau through Einstein, Freud, Brecht, Brod, Döblin, Kaiser, the Mann brothers, Zweig, Plievier, Ossietzky, Remarque, Schnitzler, and Tucholsky, to Barlach, Bergengruen, Broch, Hoffmannsthal, Kästner, Kasack, Kesten, Kraus, Lasker-Schüler, Unruh, Werfel, Zuckmayer, and Hesse. The catalogue went back far enough to include literature from Heine and Marx to Kafka.<ref name="bracher">{{cite book |last=Bracher |first=Karl Dietrich |author-link=Karl Dietrich Bracher |url=https://archive.org/details/germandictatorsh0000brac_e9i0/page/325/mode/1up |title=The German Dictatorship |title-link= |publisher=Penguin Books |year=1970 |isbn=0-14-013724-6 |location=New York |page=325 |translator=Jean Steinberg}}</ref></blockquote>
On 6 May 1933, while Hirschfeld was in Ascona, Switzerland, the {{lang|de|Deutsche Studentenschaft}} made an organised attack on the Institute of Sex Research.<ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /> A brass band accompanied them as they arrived in the morning. After breaking into the building, the students destroyed much of what was inside, and looted tens of thousands of items – including works by authors who had been blacklisted in Nazi Germany. Following this, the leader of the students gave a speech before the institute, and the students sang {{lang|de|Horst-Wessel-Lied}}.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=241–242}} Members of the {{lang|de|Sturmabteilung}} (SA) appeared later in the day to continue looting the institute.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=241–242}}
Four days later, the institute's remaining library and archives were publicly hauled out and burned in the streets of the Opernplatz by members of SA alongside the students. A bronze bust of Hirschfeld, taken from the institute, was placed on top of the bonfire.<ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /> One estimate says that between 12,000 to 20,000 books and journals, and even larger number of images and sex subjects, were destroyed.<ref name=":8">{{Cite book |last=Evans, Richard J. |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781594200045 |title=The Coming of the Third Reich |date=2004 |publisher=Penguin Press |isbn=1-59420-004-1 |edition=1st American |series=The Third Reich Trilogy |volume=1 |location=New York |pages=375–377, 429–430 |oclc=53186626 |author-link=Richard J. Evans |url-access=registration}}</ref> Another estimate says that about 25,000 books were destroyed.<ref name=":9">{{Cite book |last1=Bartrop |first1=Paul R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u4I2DwAAQBAJ |title=The Holocaust: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection [4 volumes] |last2=Dickerman |first2=Michael |date=2017 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-4408-4084-5 |pages=457–458 |language=en |author-link=Paul R. Bartrop}}</ref>
[[File:Burnt remains of book, Le Marquis de Sade et Son Temps.jpg|thumb|Burnt remains of a book-burning target, {{lang|fr|Le Marquis de Sade et Son Temps}} (''Marquis de Sade and his times''). Part of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection.]]
This included artistic works, rare medical and anthropological documents, and charts concerning cases of intersexuality which were prepared for the International Medical Congress, among other things.<ref name=":6" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Stewart |first=Chuck |url=https://archive.org/details/gaylesbianissues0000stew |title=Gay and Lesbian Issues: A Reference Handbook |date=2003 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-85109-372-4 |pages=2–3, 81 |language=en |url-access=registration }} [https://books.google.com/books?id=sdKvt-GoidYC Alt URL]</ref> A collection of works about sexuality, in any one place, similar to the one stored at the institute was not compiled until the founding of the Kinsey Institute in 1947.<ref name=":12" /> Also seized were the institute's extensive lists of names and addresses. In the midst of the burning, Joseph Goebbels gave a political speech to a crowd of around 40,000 people.<ref>{{Cite web |title=1933 Book Burnings |url=https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/1933-book-burnings |access-date=7 October 2022 |website=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}}</ref><ref name=":9" /> The leaders of the {{lang|de|Deutsche Studentenschaft}} proclaimed their own {{lang|de|Feuersprüche}} (fire decrees). Books burned at the Opernplatz at this time were not solely looted from the institute. Also burned were books by Jewish writers, and pacifists such as Erich Maria Remarque that were removed from local public libraries, bookshops, and the Humboldt University.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hill |first=Leonidas E. |url=https://archive.org/details/holocaustbook00jona |title=The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation |date=2001 |publisher=University of Massachusetts Press |isbn=978-1-55849-253-0 |pages=9–46 |language=en |chapter=The Nazi Attack on 'Un-German' Literature, 1933–1945 |jstor=j.ctt5vk42x |oclc=43662080 |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref name=":8" />
The bronze bust of Hirschfeld survived. A street cleaner salvaged and stored it the day after the burnings, and it was donated to the Berlin Academy of Arts after World War II.<ref name=":7" /> Reportedly also spared from the destruction were a large collection of psycho-biological questionnaires, pertaining to Hirschfeld's research of homosexuality. The Nazis were assured that these were simple medical histories.<ref name=":7" /> However, few of these have since been rediscovered.<ref name=":17" />
=== Aftermath of initial raids === On 10 May 1933, Nazi book burnings extended to libraries across dozens of university towns in Germany.<ref name=":20">{{Cite news |title=Book Burnings in Germany, 1933 |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-burnings/ |access-date=September 13, 2025 |work=American Experience |publisher=PBS}}</ref><ref name=":21">{{Cite journal |last=Ritchie |first=J. M. |date=1988 |title=The Nazi Book-Burning |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3731288 |journal=The Modern Language Review |volume=83 |issue=3 |pages=627–643 |doi=10.2307/3731288 |jstor=3731288 |issn=0026-7937|url-access=subscription }}</ref> According to the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, "100 book burnings were recorded in seventy cities" between March and October 1933.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Book Burnings in Germany and in Munich |url=https://www.nsdoku.de/en/historic-site/koenigsplatz/book-burnings-1933 |access-date=September 13, 2025 |website=Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism}}</ref> The events were widely noted abroad.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Stern |first=Guy |title=Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual |publisher=Museum of Tolerance (A Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum) |chapter=The Burning of the Books in Nazi Germany, 1933: The American Response |quote=German newspapers reported in triumph that Germany was beginning to purge itself of the alien and decadent corrupters of the German spirit, while newspapers and magazines abroad, from as far away as China and Japan, responded in surprise and shock. |chapter-url=https://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/archives-and-reference-library/online-resources/simon-wiesenthal-center-annual-volume-2/annual-2-chapter-5.html}}</ref><ref name=":22" /> In the United States, mass protests against censorship in Germany occurred. Prominent American authors such as Faith Baldwin, Helen Keller, Sinclair Lewis, and Sherwood Anderson denounced the censorship.<ref name=":20" /><ref name=":22">{{Cite web |title=Immediate American Responses to the Nazi Book Burnings |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/immediate-american-responses-to-the-nazi-book-burnings |access-date=September 13, 2025 |website=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}}</ref> Many commentators referenced German writer Heinrich Heine's prediction a century earlier that "where one burns books, one will soon burn people."<ref name=":20" />
German novelist and Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Thomas Mann denounced the book burnings as a "stupid ceremony" that represented "national drunkenness".<ref name=":22" /> Some German academics, such as Gerhard Schumann, opposed the book burning campaign.<ref name=":21" /> Some older professors who were strong supporters of the Nazi Party, like {{interlanguage link|Eduard Kohlrausch|lt=Eduard Kohlrausch|de}} (rector of the University of Berlin), opposed the anti-intellectual campaigns of young Nazi students. Kohlrausch wrote to Adolf Hitler to complain that the "immature misguided idealists" were putting "valuable German cultural assets" at risk.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Telegram Regarding the 'Action against the Un-German Spirit' |url=https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/telegram-regarding-the-action-against-the-un-german-spirit |access-date=September 13, 2025 |website=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}}</ref> In Nazi leadership, there were some doubts about the symbolism of burning books, which had caused accusations that Nazi Germany had descended into "cultural barbarism".<ref name=":21" />
A German newspaper headline soon after the raids declared the "un-German Spirit" (or ''undeutschen Geist'') of the institute. It was forced to shut down.<ref name=":15" /> The Nazis took control of the buildings for their own purposes.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|pp=241–242}} The destruction of the institute preceded a wider campaign against sexual reform and contraception, which were perceived as a threat to the German birth rate.<ref name=":8" /> While many fled into exile, the radical activist Adolf Brand made a stand in Germany for five months after the book burnings, but in November 1933 he had given up gay activism.<ref>{{Cite web|last=LaVey|first=Simon|author-link=Simon LeVay|date=1996|title=Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/queerscience.htm|access-date=August 17, 2020|publisher=MIT Press|via=The Washington Post}}</ref>
[[Image:Berlin hirschfeld gedenktafel.jpg|right|upright|thumb|Memorial to Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institute for Sex Research, Berlin Tiergarten, 2005]] On 28 June 1934, Hitler conducted a purge of gay men in the ranks of the SA wing of the Nazis, which involved murdering them in the Night of the Long Knives. This was then followed by stricter laws on homosexuality and the round-up of gay men. The address lists seized from the Institute are believed to have aided Hitler in these actions. Many tens of thousands of arrestees found themselves, ultimately, in slave-labour or death camps. That included some of the institute's staff, such as August Bessunger.<ref name=":19">{{Cite book |last1=Taylor |first1=Michael Thomas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WS9ADwAAQBAJ&pg=PA68 |title=Not Straight from Germany: Sexual Publics and Sexual Citizenship Since Magnus Hirschfeld |last2=Timm |first2=Annette |last3=Herrn |first3=Rainer |date=2017|publisher=University of Michigan Press |isbn=978-0-472-13035-1 |page=68 |language=en}}</ref> Karl Giese committed suicide in 1938 when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia; his heir, lawyer Karl Fein, was murdered in 1942 during deportation. Arthur Kronfeld and Felix Abraham also committed suicide.<ref name=":19" /> Many survived by fleeing Germany. Among them were Berndt Götz, Ludwig Levy-Lenz, Bernard Schapiro, and Max Hodann.<ref name=":19" />
A handful of staff for the institute stayed behind during Nazi rule, such as Hans Graaz. Friedrich Hauptstein, Arthur Röser and Ewald Lausch even became Nazi collaborators. It is suspected that these may have been spies.<ref name=":19" />{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=242}} Helene Helling, a tenant and receptionist, became a Nazi sympathizer following the raid and occupied the building for some time after it.{{sfn|Beachy|2014|p=242}}<ref>{{Cite news |title=Institute Employees and Domestic Personnel |work=Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft |url=https://magnus-hirschfeld.de/institute-for-sexual-science-1919-1933/personnel/institute-employees-and-domestic-personnel/ |access-date=December 4, 2022}}</ref> However, the institute's buildings were a bombed-out ruin by 1944, and were demolished sometime in the mid-1950s. Hirschfeld tried to reestablish his institute in Paris as the ''Institut Français des Sciences Sexologiques'', but dissolved it in 1934 after it failed to gain traction.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The first Institute for Sexual Science (1919–1933) |url=https://www.magnus-hirschfeld.de/ausstellungen/institute/ |access-date=2023-02-09 |website=www.magnus-hirschfeld.de}}</ref> He moved to Nice, and died in France in 1935. He was buried at the ''Cimetière orthodoxe de Caucade''.<ref name=":18" />
==After World War II== The charter of the institute had specified that in the event of dissolution, any assets of the Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation (which had sponsored the institute since 1924) were to be donated to the Humboldt University of Berlin. Hirschfeld also wrote a personal will while in exile in Paris, leaving any remaining assets to his students and heirs Karl Giese and Li Shiu Tong (Tao Li) for the continuation of his work. However, neither stipulation was carried out. The West German courts found that the foundation's dissolution and the seizure of property by the Nazis in 1934 was legal. The West German legislature also retained the Nazi amendments to Paragraph 175, making it impossible for surviving gay men to claim restitution for the destroyed cultural center.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Steakley |first=James D. |url=http://archive.org/details/homosexualemanci0000stea |title=The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany |date=1975 |publisher=Arno Press |isbn=978-0-405-07366-3 |editor-last=Katz |editor-first=Jonathan |series=The Arno Series on Homosexuality |oclc=1500143 |url-access=registration |via=the Internet Archive}}</ref>
Li Shiu Tong lived in Switzerland and the United States until 1956, but as far as is known, he did not attempt to continue Hirschfeld's work. Some remaining materials from the institute's library were later collected by W. Dorr Legg and ONE, Inc. in the United States in the 1950s.
On the ground of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was built the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. A bar with the name ''Magnus Hirschfeld Bar'' and a garden is named ''Lili Elbe'' garden.<ref>[https://taz.de/Zum-ersten-Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gedenktag/!6007407/ taz.de: Zum ersten Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gedenktag: „Eine Ikone der queeren Geschichte“ ], 13 May, 2024 </ref>
== Later developments == In 1973, a new Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was opened at the University of Frankfurt am Main (director: Volkmar Sigusch), and 1996 at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
== See also == *Destruction of Warsaw § Burning of libraries *German bombing of Belgrade − included the deliberate destruction of the National Library of Serbia *List of libraries damaged during World War II *State Archives of Naples − Italian historical archive that was deliberately destroyed by German soldiers during World War II
==References== '''Notes''' {{reflist}}
'''Bibliography''' * {{Cite book|last=Dose|first=Ralf|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9eHOAgAAQBAJ|title=Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement|date=2014|isbn=978-1-58367-439-0|publisher=New York University Press|oclc=870272914|jstor=j.ctt9qg6t2}} * {{Cite book|last=Beachy|first=Robert|author-link=Robert Beachy|url=https://archive.org/details/gayberlinbirthpl0000beac|title=Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity |date=2014|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-307-47313-4|url-access=registration|language=en}} * {{Cite book|last=Wolff|first=Charlotte|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wwEdAAAAYAAJ|title=Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology|date=1986|publisher=Quartet Books|isbn=978-0-7043-2569-2|language=en|oclc=16923065|id=USHMM: [https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/bib31255 bib31255]|author-link=Charlotte Wolff}}
'''Further reading''' * Isherwood, Christopher. (1976) ''Christopher and His Kind, 1929–1939'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux. [https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4899070M/Christopher_and_his_kind_1929-1939 Full text] on OpenLibrary. * Blasius, Mark and Phelan, Shane ed. (1997) ''We Are Everywhere: A Historical Source Book of Gay and Lesbian Politics'' (See the chapter: "The Emergence of a Gay and Lesbian Political Culture in Germany" by James D. Steakley). * Grau, Günter ed. (1995) ''Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany 1933–45''. * Lauritsen, John and Thorstad, David (1995) ''The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864–1935)''. (2nd ed. revised) * Steakley, James D. (9 June 1983) "Anniversary of a Book Burning". pp. 18–19, 57. ''The Advocate'' (Los Angeles) * Marhoefer, Laurie. (2015) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=tpGhCgAAQBAJ Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis]''. University of Toronto Press. * Taylor, Michael Thomas; Timm, Annette F.; Herrn, Rainer eds. (2017) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=WS9ADwAAQBAJ Not Straight From Germany: Sexual Publics and Sexual Citizenship Since Magnus Hirschfeld]''. {{JSTOR|10.3998/mpub.9238370|10.3998/mpub.9238370}}.
'''Film''' * Rosa von Praunheim, director (Germany, 2001) ''The Einstein of Sex'' (A biographical drama about Magnus Hirschfeld – English subtitled version available).
==External links== {{commons category}} * [https://www.hirschfeld.in-berlin.de/institut/en/ifsframe.html "Institute for Sexual Science (1919–1933)"] Online exhibition of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society – warning, complex JavaScript and pop-up windows. * [https://web.archive.org/web/20051126071922/http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/MHINS.HTM Documentation in the ''Archive for Sexology'', Berlin] * [http://www.library.arizona.edu/images/burnedbooks/indexpage.htm When Books Burn] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180412205211/http://www.library.arizona.edu/images/burnedbooks/indexpage.htm |date=2018-04-12 }} – University of Arizona multimedia exhibit. {{persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany}} {{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft}} Category:First homosexual movement Category:Magnus Hirschfeld Category:Sexology organizations Category:Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany Category:Transgender studies Category:Sexual orientation and medicine Category:Scientific organizations established in 1919 Category:1919 establishments in Germany Category:Organizations disestablished in 1933 Category:1933 disestablishments in Germany Category:Medical research institutes in Germany Category:Medical and health organisations based in Berlin Category:Education in Nazi Germany Category:Research institutes established in 1919 Category:Research institutes in Berlin Category:Companies confiscated from Jews under Nazi rule Category:Destroyed libraries Category:LGBTQ libraries Category:LGBTQ museums and archives