Trans History - Magnus Hirschfeld & the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
I intended to write a few articles throughout LGBT+ History Month, however the mental toll of dealing with the current state of anti-hostile hysteria in the UK has been too much to deal with, resulting in a mini-break to recentre myself.
Instead, I’m going to close out LGBT+ History month with a look at Magnus Hirschfeld & the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft - an early LGBT+ clinic and research institute, and some of the disturbing parallels with the current situation in the UK.
Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and early researcher in the field of “sexology”.
Hirschfeld was a Polish Jew, born in what is now Kołobrzeg, Poland in 1868. He was also gay.
In 1887–1888, he studied philosophy and philology in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland) during 1887 - 1888, and medicine at various locations in Germany from 1888 to 1892, where he earned his medical degree, and following his studies her spent almost a year touring the USA.
While in Chicago he became involved in the gay subculture there, and was struck by the similarities between the gay subcultures of both Chicago and Berlin, which led to him developing his theory about the universality of homosexuality across the world, as he researched in books and newspaper articles about the existence of gay subcultures in Rio de Janeiro, Tangier, and Tokyo.
He was also fascinated by sexuality, especially in other cultures.
He visited a number of “human zoos” in Berlin, where different peoples from various German colonies around the world were put on display. These “human zoos” were a feature of many German “industrial fairs” at the time, and it was during these visits he spoke to these people via interpreters about the status of sexuality in their own cultures. This led him to start writing what would eventually become his 1914 book Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes ("The Homosexuality of Men & Women"), which was an attempt to comprehensively survey homosexuality around the globe as part of an effort to prove that homosexuality occurred in every culture.
He also became active in what we would today call “gay rights activism”.
In 1897, he founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee , which aimed to undertake research to defend the rights of homosexuals and to repeal Paragraph 175, the section of the German penal code that had criminalized homosexuality since 1871. This was ultimately unsuccessful, and this law remained in force until 1994, despite this attempt being supported by such august figures as Albert Einstein.
During this time and as part of his efforts to counter popular prejudice, Hirschfeld spoke out about the taboo subject of suicide.
He was the first to present statistical evidence that homosexuals were more likely to commit suicide or attempt suicide than heterosexuals. He estimated that 3 out of every 100 gays committed suicide every year, that a quarter of gays had attempted suicide at some point in their lives and that the other three-quarters had had suicidal thoughts at some point.
He used his evidence to argue that, under current social conditions in Germany, life was literally unbearable for homosexuals.
As well as gay rights, Hirschfeld was also an ardent feminist, campaigning for the decriminalisation of abortion and against policies banning female teachers and civil servants from marrying or having children.
He believed that there was a close connection between the causes of gay rights and women's rights, which is widely acknowledged as still relevant today.
Following World War 1, he founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sexual Research) in Berlin, which opened on 6 July 1919.
Berlin was an important centre for LGBT people - due to shifting political tides and the advent of univseral sufferage (voting for all), Prussia (part of the Weimar Republic, which we now know as Germany) became a progressive stronghold where laws such as Paragraph 175, while still on the statute books, were not actively enforced.
Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
The Institute housed a research library and archive, medical, psychological, and ethnological divisions, and a marriage and sex counselling office. It also advocated sex education, contraception, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and women's rights.
It was visited by around 20,000 people each year, and conducted around 1,800 consultations, and became a central point of scientific and research interest in sexuality and social reform.
The Institute not only dealt with sexuality - it was the first establishment in the world to help and research transgender people. Hirschfeld himself coined the term “transsexualism”, which while generally loathed by the trans community today due to our mistreatment by the medical professions, still remains as a medical term.
The Institute employed transgender people as staff, in addition to being clients, and it pioneered various services. including both endocrinology (cross sex hormones) and surgery - indeed the clinic there was the first to offer modern gender affirmation surgeries in the 1930s.
A “Transvestite Pass” used in Berlin
Hirschfeld also worked with Berlin's police department to curtail the arrest of cross-dressed individuals.
This included those suspected of wearing certain clothing in connection with sex work. This was done through the creation of “transvestite passes”, which 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.
The Rise of the Nazis and Fall of the Institute.
In the early 1930s the Nazi Party began to gain some serious power, and in early 1933 launched a purge of Berlin’s gay clubs in Berlin and outlawing both sex publications and organised gay groups. Many LGBT people fled Germany as a result.
On 6 May 1933, while Hirschfeld was visiting Switzerland, the German Student Union, otherwise known as the Nazi Youth, made an organised attack on the Institute, which lasted for several days.
During this attack, Dora Richter (below, left), the first known person to undergo complete male-to-female gender reassignment surgery, was murdered, and the Institute's library and archives were burned in the streets (below, right).
Between 12,000 to 20,000 books and journals, and even larger number of images and sex subjects, were destroyed, erasing the only real body of research of LGBT people in the world, putting back LGBT rights, knowledge and understanding by at least 50 years.
The Institute's extensive lists of client names and addresses were also seized but not destroyed, and were later used in rounding up LGBT people for the concentration, slave labour and extermination camps.
Disturbing Parallels in 21st Century UK.
An objective look at the situation with regards to transgender people shows some stark parallels today with 1930s Germany.
Transgender people here have been subjected to a sustained, 4 year media campaign that has propagated numerous lies and misinformation. Evidence suggests this initially started as a middle class backlash & moral panic against social progress as a way to generate outrage and profit for the UK Press, but has since been co-opted as a “culture war” by various factions on the political right, and has included interference in UK politics by groups funded, founded and linked to by various US Religious Right organisations.
We now have a hard right UK Government which is desperate to divert attention from its failures with regards to both Brexit and managing the Covid 19 Pandemic, and is using this “moral panic” to try and remove existing rights for transgender people - rights which have been in place in various forms for literally half a century.
The current government has shelved Gender Recognition reform while lying about the results of the consultation which was overwhelmingly in favour of change, has an “Equalities” minister (Liz Truss), who has removed schools guidance on sexuality and gender identity (and also, interestingly, has links with the US Religious Right in the form of The Heritage Foundation), and is currently trying to pass a “bathroom bill” which would prevent transgender people using facilities congruent with our identities - facilities we have been legally using for decades without incident.
It has completely neglected to reform trans healthcare in the UK, which is now all but inaccessible, and is also attacking the foundations of free speech in universities and academia - again with the aid of the US Religious Right in the form of the “Alliance Defending Freedom”.
The Rise of UK Fascism in 2020 / 2021
It is not hyperbole to suggest that the UK is well on the way to becoming a fascist state.
The US Holocaust Museum has the following sign which lists the early warning signs of fascism.
Powerful and Continuing Nationalism (Brexit, Festival of Brexit)
Disdain for Human Rights (Moves to revoke human rights acts under consideration)
Identification of Enemies as a Unifying Cause (Immigrants, Transgender People, Unemployed, Disabled People)
Supremacy of the Military
Rampant Sexism (Still prevalent and very prominent in Government)
Controlled Media (BBC controlled by Conservative appointees, UK Press is right wing controlled and rarely criticises UK Government)
Obsession with National Security
Religion and Government Intertwined (Interference & links with US Religious Right)
Corporate Power Protected (Conservative Policy)
Labour Power Supressed (Conservative Policy)
Disdain for Intellectuals & The Arts (“Sick of Experts”, ignoring scientific advice during pandemic, allowing arts to die off during pandemic & ignoring arts in Brexit)
Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Rampant Cronyism & Corruption (Ongoing PPE Procurement scandals, Serco Test & Trace)
Fraudulent Elections (current moves to restrict voting under the false premise of fraud)
The UK currently meets 12 of these 14 signs, in whole or in part, as noted above.
Much of this government’s actions against transgender people also meet the definition of genocide.
If we look at the actual definition of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide it states:
“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy a group, as such:
a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
”
We can clearly see that the UK Government is engaged in activities that fall within categories B) and C) above.
Many transgender people are currently looking to leave the UK.
This is why.