THE RELEVANT QUEER: Magnus Hirschfeld, Physician and Sexologist known as the “Einstein of Sex”

“The women who needs to be liberated most is the women in every man, and a man who needs to be liberated most is the man in every woman.”

TRQ: Magnus Hirschfeld, Born May 14, 1868

Physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, once known as the “Einstein of Sex,” was born on May 14, 1868. With his ground-breaking work on sexual diversity, Hirschfeld was one of the earliest advocates for gay and transgender rights. A contemporary of Sigmund Freud, Hirschfeld’s research predated the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research. In 1930, he supervised the gender conformation surgery for Lili Elbe, which was portrayed in the 2015 film The Danish Girl starring Eddie Redmayne. 

Hirschfeld was born into a Jewish family in Kolberg in Prussia, on the Baltic sea. His father was a highly respected physician. In 19867 he studied philosophy and languages in Breslau and then medicine in Strasbourg, München, Heidelberg and Berlin, where he graduated in 1892. 

In 1893, Hirschfeld travelled to America and visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Although he considered his own sexuality a private matter, Hirschfeld took part in Chicago’s gay culture. In doing so, he noticed similarities with Berlin’s gay scene and speculated on a universal gay culture. 

In 1896, Hirschfeld opened his practice in Berlin. Impacted by both Oscar Wilde’s trial and the suicides of many of his gay patients, Hirschfeld became Germany’s most prominent gay rights activist. Confident that science would lead the way for tolerance, he worked to promote understanding and systems of support for sexual minorities. Hirschfeld argued that sexual orientation was not a choice. 

In 1897, he joined lawyer Eduard Oberg, publisher Max Spohr and writer Franz Josef von Bülow in founding the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee (“Scientific-Humanitarian Committee”). Their first goal was to repeal anti-homosexual Paragraph 175 of the Imperial Penal Code of 1871. Albert Einstein, Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann were among the 6,000 prominent Germans who signed the committee’s petition unsuccessfully calling for the appeal. 

Two years later, Hirschfeld launched the scientific journal Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook of Intermediate Sexual Types), the first to deal with sexual diversity. It was published from 1899 to 1923. He met Freud in Vienna in 1908 and helped establish the Viennese Psychoanalytical Union in Berlin. 

Hirschfeld left the union after Freud and C. G. Jung found his research methodology problematic. Breaking with psychoanalytic talk therapy, Hirschfeld distributed questionnaires to gay men to build the statistical case that life in Germany was unbearable for gay men: of every100 gay men, 3 were committing suicide every year, 25 had attempted suicide at some point in their life, and 75 had suicidal thoughts. 

In 1913, he founded the Medical Society for Sexual Science and Eugenics with Iwan Bloch and Heinrich Körber. In 1919 he founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (“Institute for Sexual Science”), a centre for studying sexuality that preceded the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research. 

Over the course of his career, Hirschfeld wrote over 500 articles, books and treatises. Work like Die Transvestiten (Transvestites) (1910), Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes (Homosexuality of Men and Women) (1914), Sexualpathologie (Sexual Pathology) (1917) and Geschlechtskunde (Sexual Science) (1926 – 1930) used biology to argue against simplistic notions of male and female. 

In 1920, right-wing German nationalists attacked Hirschfeld, a Jewish activist for progressive causes, on the streets of Munich. In 1921, he suffered a fractured skull after another attack. Nazi assaults on Hirschfield escalated until 1930, when he undertook a lecture tour of the United States that was extended to include Japan, China, Indonesia and Egypt. 

In 1930, he oversaw Lili Elbe’s gender conformation surgery. Elbe’s story was told in two books, Man into Woman (1933) and The Danish Girl (2000). Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander and Ben Whishaw starred in the 2015 film The Danish Girl. Hirschfeld himself appeared in Anders als die Ander (Different from the Others) (1919), a gay liberation film banned by the German government a year later. 

When Hirschfeld returned to Europe, he did not return to Germany. In 1933, Hirschfeld saw news footage playing in a Paris cinema of Nazis destroying Sexualwissenschaft. He lived in Switzerland, Paris and Nice, where he died on May 14, 1935. It was his 67th birthday. 

About the Authors

Troy Wise is currently a PhD student at UAL Central St Martins and teaches fashion and graphic design at London College of Contemporary Arts. His background is in marketing and is founder and co-editor of Image Amplified. He lives in, and is continually fascinated by, the city of London.

Rick Guzman earned his most recent MA at UAL Central St Martins in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries. He currently holds two MA’s and an MBA in the New Media, Journalism and International Business fields. Co-editor at Image Amplified since its start, he lives in London, is fascinated by history and is motivated by continuing to learn and explore. 

Sources:

Britannica

GLBTQ Archive

Making Gay History

Queer Portraits

WoW