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Students organized by the Nazi party in 1933 parade in front of the Institute for Sexual Research, founded by Magnus Hirschfeld, inset. (Wikimedia) |
It was a pioneering trans library – until the Nazis burned it
Within months of Hitler becoming chancellor of Germany in 1933, pro-Nazi students publicly burned books by Jewish authors. Troves of research on sexuality also smoldered in those piles. Our culture reporter Irene Katz Connelly has the details…
Doctor is in: The Institute for Sexual Research, housed in a Berlin mansion, was the first medical center devoted to the study of gender and sexuality. It was founded by the pioneering sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, a gay Jewish doctor and activist who lobbied against the criminalization of homosexuality.
Library is open: The Institute offered medical care and health education, printed scientific journals, hosted lectures and screened films. Hirschfeld and his colleagues also developed an enormous library of rare texts and notes on gender-affirming surgery.
Setting it ablaze: Joseph Goebbels drew on pro-Nazi student organizations to purge cultural institutions of “degenerate” art, and on May 6, 1933, students broke into and occupied the Institute. Four days later, they burned its entire library. Though much of his research was destroyed, Hirschfeld nonetheless helped pave the way for today’s LGBTQ+ rights movement.
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Patrons at the Eldorado, a popular LGBTQ+ cabaret in Berlin during the Weimar years. (Getty) |
Opinion | Historians are learning more about how the Nazis targeted trans people: Toni Simon, a transgender woman, was “the sassy proprietor of an underground club where LGBTQ people gathered,” writes Laurie Marhoefer, a historian of queer people in the Weimar and Nazi eras. Simon was deemed “a danger to youth” and a Gestapo officer suggested she be sent to a concentration camp. Simon’s story is but one of many trans people whose stories are now coming to light. Read the essay ➤
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