Pride Month: The Institute of Sexual Science (1919-1933)
Hello everyone. For Pride Month, I am highlight various aspects of queer history. This week, I want to talk about one of the first institutes which studied human sexuality, The Institute of Sexual Science. Founded by Magnus Hirschfeld (and sometimes known as the Hirschfeld Clinic), this was an important first step in the international understanding of LGBTQIA+ identities as well as an important part of the LGBTQIA+ civil rights movement.
But first, an update: Last week, in my article on early people who received gender affirming surgery, I mentioned that Dora Richter probably was killed by the Nazis. Apparently, I was wrong. She survived and died, peacefully, in her 70s in Nuremberg. According to one person on Bluesky who read the article above:
The Institute of Sexual Science:
(A costume party at the Hirschfield Clinic)
The Hirschfeld Clinic is known for a lot of reasons, including but not limited to:
It was the home of the first LGBTQIA+ (also known as sexual inversion at the time) rights advocacy groups, the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (or Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee in German). Founded in 1897, this organization fought for LGBTQIA+ rights, even getting the German Parliament to considering repealing a law that criminalized homosexuality (Article 135). There were, at one point, 25 chapters across Europe.
Discussed nonbinary identities in the West earlier than many others.
They helped print the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen newsletter, a quarterly report. You can actually purchase the English translation of the newsletter on Amazon!
On 10 May 1933, Nazi youth set fire to the Institute and burned 20,000 books in the institute. Hirschfeld was in France at the time, where he remained until his death in 1935. Though cut short by the Nazis, Hirschfeld and his clinic were an important part in the early LGBTQIA+ movement and provided some of the groundwork for the current state of gender affirming care.