by Sophie Lucas
Magnus Hirschfeld was born May 14th, 1868, and died May 14th, 1935. He was a German physician who specialized in human gender and sexuality and was one of the most prominent gay activists of the 20th century. Due to being Jewish, gay, and a sexual liberation activist he eventually had to flee Germany after many years of having his lectures disrupted and being attacked and assaulted. He went to Switzerland and then eventually to France where he would spend his final years of life.
Hirschfeld was prompted into a life of activism after a soldier showed up on the doorstep of his practice explaining that he was a homosexual, he gave Hirschfeld his papers and a letter. Shortly after this encounter, the soldier took his own life, Hirschfeld was left heartbroken by the man, who considered himself a curse who only deserved to die. This inspired him to begin his work with gender and sexuality.
In 1919 he opened the Institute for Sexual Research which served as a place for his studies as well as a place for refuge for queer people from all walks of life. 11 years later in 1930, they performed the first modern-day gender-affirmation surgeries in the world. Hirschfeld provided sex education, health clinics, advice on contraception, and research into sex and gender, and he also attempted to overturn the law that made being LGBTQ+ illegal in Germany. It wasn’t enough as he was never able to overturn the law, but he was able to influence policies enough that trans people were allowed to walk the streets presenting how they wished without being arrested. His institute provided gender reassignment surgeries and hormone therapy for people and even employed some of his own patients after they struggled to find jobs because people didn’t accept them.
Unfortunately, this was the same time Adolf Hitler was rising to power in Germany, and by 1933, he was named chancellor of Germany. As many know, Hitler planned to wipe out people he deemed unfit to live in the entirety of Germany. This included Jewish people, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, Romani people, Polish people, and anyone who didn’t fit his Nazi ideology. Only a few months after his election, Hitler sent troops to the Institute for Sexual Research and raided the place. Luckily at this time, Hirschfield was not in Germany, but unluckily the place that had performed some of the first transitions in modern history would be the site of one of the first and largest book-burning events the Nazis did. 20,000 some books were burned in that fire, some very rare copies that gave so much history of gender nonconforming people of the ages.
Hirschfeld was one of the leading people in attempting to prove that being queer isn’t a choice, and his work with the LGBTQ+ will forever influence how we view queer history. Today Hirschfeld is celebrated as one of the most important pioneers of sexuality and gender theories.
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