Institut für Sexualwissenschaft

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. Hirschfeld gave a speech on 1 July 1919, when the institute was inaugurated. The building, located in the Tiergarten district, was purchased by Hirschfeld from the government of the Free State of Prussia following World War I. A neighboring building was purchased in 1921, adding more overall space to the institute. 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. Other fixtures at the institute included a museum for sexual artifacts, medical exam rooms, and a lecture hall. Poorer visitors also received medical treatment for free. According to Hirschfeld, about 1,250 lectures had been held in the first year. 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"). This was also the personal motto of Hirschfeld as well as the slogan of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. ==Organization==

The institute was financed by the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Foundation, a charity which itself was funded by private donations. • Friedrich Hauptstein – administrative director • Kurt Hiller – lawyer • Max Hodann – sex educator • – anthropologist • Hans Kreiselmaier – gynecologist • Arthur Kronfeld – psychiatrist, psychologist • Ewald Lausch – medical assistant • Ludwig Levy-Lenz – gynecologist • Eugen Littaur – otolaryngologist • Franz Prange – endocrinologist • – ethnologist • Adelheid Rennhack – housekeeper • Arthur Röser – librarian • Bernard Schapiro – dermatologist, andrologist • Arthur Weil – neuroendocrinologist, neuropathologist • Friedrich Wertheim – dermatologist Some others worked for the institute in various domestic affairs. Some of the people who worked at the institute simultaneously lived there, including Hirschfeld and Giese. During his address there, he stated that "A sexual impulse based on science is the only sound system of ethics." 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. ==Activity==

Public education The institute aimed to educate both the general public and specialists on its topics of focus. 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. 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. 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." 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. Lectures and question-and-answer sessions were held there to inform laypersons on topics of sexuality. The public especially tended to ask questions regarding contraception. 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. 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. 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. Hirschfeld and Hodann developed pioneering strategies for sex counseling services that would inspire later practices. Transsexuality and transvestism Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term transsexual in the 1923 essay Die Intersexuelle Konstitution. Other descriptions "in the modern medical sense" also appeared in earlier German medical literature, such as Johann Baptist Friedreich's 1829–1830 work. Various endocrinologic and surgical services were offered, including an early modern sex reassignment surgery in 1931. Testosterone had never been synthesized until 1935 (after the institute closed), so masculinizing hormone therapy was never available at the institute. Ludwig Levy-Lenz, the institute's primary surgeon for transsexual patients, also implemented an early form of facial feminization surgery and facial masculinization surgery. Additionally, hair removal treatments using the institute's X-ray facility were developed, though this caused some side effects such as skin burns. 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." Levy-Lenz commented, "[N]ever have I operated upon more grateful patients." 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. The experiments were in fact intended to demonstrate the biological basis of homosexuality in the influence of sex hormones. However, he sometimes also advocated strategic sex assignment at birth, on a scientific basis. 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. ==Nazi era==

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. 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. On 6 May 1933, while Hirschfeld was in Ascona, Switzerland, the made an organised attack on the Institute of Sex Research. Another estimate says that about 25,000 books were destroyed. 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. 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. 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. The events were widely noted abroad. Many commentators referenced German writer Heinrich Heine's prediction a century earlier that "where one burns books, one will soon burn people." 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". 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. 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. 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. He moved to Nice, and died in France in 1935. He was buried at the Cimetière orthodoxe de Caucade. ==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. 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. == 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 ==