Gay History Month: Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld was a doctor in the late 19th and early 20th century that contributed greatly to the sexual emancipation movement in Europe.
Hirschfeld was a homosexual, born to Jewish parents in Germany.
He founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in 1897 to defend gay rights and to repeal a section of the German imperial penal code of 1871, paragraph 175, which criminalized sex between men.
In 1919, he opened the Institute for Sexual Science and became a highly recognized public speaker and writer.
In 1921, he formed a congress for sexual reform which led to the World League for Sexual Reform. Throughout his campaigns in the 1920s, he was attacked many times but continued to lead the way for gay rights.
In 1930, he began his international tour for the league. During that time, he was forced into exile, but had already made up his mind that he would not return to Germany.
When the Nazi regime came to power in 1933, they repeatedly attacked Hirschfeld and interrupted his lectures.
In May 1933, the Nazis raided the Institute and destroyed all of the research that Hirschfeld had collected over the years in a bonfire.
The Nazis put an end to the homosexual emancipation movement and destroyed all documentation that would reveal how many homosexuals were killed in the Holocaust.
In 1934, the Nazis stripped Hirschfeld of his German citizenship and year later he died of a heart attack in France.
A mayor of San Fransciso has informally allocated Hirschfeld’s birthday, May 14, as “Magnus Hirschfeld Day,” in honor of him.
