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Institut Fr SexualwissenschaftThe Institut fr Sexualwissenschaft (Variously translated as 'Institute of Sex Research' or 'Institute for Sexology') (Germany, 1919-1933) was an early sexology research institute. The infamous Nazi book-burnings (bcherbrennung) in Berlin were of the archives of the Institute of Sex Research. The Institute was headed by Jewish doctor Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935). Since 1897 he had run the Wissenschaftlich-humanitre Komitee (Scientific Humanitarian Committee), which campaigned on conservative and rational grounds for gay legal reform and tolerance. The Committee published the long-running journal Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen. Hirshfeld was also a researcher; he collected questionnaires from 10,000 people, informing his book Die Homosexualitt des Mannes und des Weibes (1914). He built a unique library on same-sex love and eroticism; and in 1919 Hirschfeld opened the Institute of Sex Research to house this. It was situated on the In den Zelten. As well as being a research library, the Institute also advocated wider sexual education, contraception, the treatment of sexually-transmitted diseases, and women's emancipation. The Institute was visited by around 20,000 people each year, and conducted around 1,800 consultations. Poorer visitors were treated for free. In late February 1933, as the moderating influence of Ernst Rhm weakened, the Nazi Party launched its purge of homosexual (gay, lesbian, and bisexual; then known as homophile) clubs in Berlin, outlawed sex publications, and banned organised gay groups. As a consequence, many fled Germany (e.g.: Erika Mann). In March 1933 the Institute's main administrator, Kurt Hiller, had been sent to a concentration camp. On 6th May 1933, while Hirschfeld was on a lecture-tour of the USA, Nazi youth of the Deutsche Studentenschaft made an organised attack on the Institute of Sex Research. A few days later the Institute's library and archives were publically hauled out and burned in the streets of the Opernplatz. Around 20,000 books and journals, and 5,000 images, were destroyed. Also seized were the Institute's extensive lists of names & addresses. In the midst of the burning Joseph Goebbels gave a political speech to a crowd of around 40,000 people. The leaders of the Deutsche Studentenschaft also proclaimed their own Feuerspruche ('fire decrees against the un-German spirit'). Jewish books from local public libraries and the Humboldt University were also burned. There were many other small book-burnings organised around Germany on the same night; including at Munich's Konigplatz. By the 22nd May book-burnings had happened in Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Gttingen, Cologne, Hamburg, Dortmund, Halle, Nuremberg, Wrzburg, Hannover, Mnster, Knigsberg, Koblenz, and Salzburg - and the Gestapo were confiscating public and private libraries to be destroyed in paper mills. The buildings were later taken over by the Nazis for their own purposes. They were a bombing ruin by 1944, and were demolished sometime in the mid 1950s. Hirschfeld tried, in vain, to re-establish his Institute in Paris, but he died in France in 1935. He left money in his will for the Institute; but those to whom it was left had destroyed their identity documents on fleeing Germany and thus could not legally claim the money. While many fled into exile, the radical activist Adolf Brand made a brave stand in Germany for five months after the book burnings, Finally the persecution became too much, and in November 1933 he was forced to announce the formal end of the organised gay emancipation movement in Germany. On June 28 1934 Hitler conducted a murderous purge of gay men in the ranks of the S.A. wing of the Nazis, and this was followed by stricter laws on homosexuality and the round-up of homosexuals - it is hard to imagine that the address lists seized from the Institute did not aid Hitler in these actions. Many ten of thousands of arrestees found themselves, ultimately, in slave-labour or death camps. Others, such as John Henry Mackay, committed suicide. One of the books known to have been burned on the Opernplatz was the works of the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine; one of his most famous lines is now: "Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too" (1822). Further reading - John Lauritsen and David Thorstad. The Early Homosexual Rights Movement, 1864-1935. (Second Edition revised)
- Gnter Grau (ed.). Hidden Holocaust? Gay and lesbian persecution in Germany 1933-45. (1995).
- Charlotte Wolff. Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology. (1986).
- James D. Steakley. The Early Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany. (1975).
- Mark Blasins & Shane Phelan. (Eds.) We Are Everywhere: A Historical Source Book of Gay and Lesbian Politics (See chapter: The Emergence of a Gay and Lesbian Political Culture in Germany).
- Harry Oosterhuis. (Ed.) Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany: The Youth Movement, the Gay Movement, and Male Bonding Before Hitlers Rise: Original Transcripts from Der Eigene, the First Gay Journal in the World. (1991).
- Leonidas Hill. "The Nazi Attack on 'Un-German' Literature, 1933-1945." In: The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation (2001). (Places the book-burning in the wider context of publishing & censorship in pre-Nazi Germany.)
Documentaries - Rosa von Praunheim (Dir.) The Einstein of Sex (Germany, 2001). (About Magnus Hirschfeld - English subtitled version available).
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