Late at night, just barely into the 20th Century, Magnus Hirschfeld, a young Jewish doctor in Germany, found a soldier on the doorstep of his practice. The man was distraught and had come to confess that he was an Urning - a term for homosexual men during that time. (see Karl Heinrich Ulrichs) the soldier was nervous - "Paragraph 175" of the German criminal code made homosexuality illegal. He could be stripped of his rank and imprisoned. Hirschfeld understood the soldier's plight- he was gay as well - and did his best to offer comfort to the soldier. But the soldier had already made up his mind. It was the eve of his wedding, an event he could not face. Shortly after, he shot himself. The soldier left his private papers to Hirschfeld, along with a letter: “The thought that you could contribute to [a future] when the German fatherland will think of us in more just terms,” he wrote, “sweetens the hour of death.”

Hirschfeld would be forever haunted by this needless loss; the soldier had called himself a “curse,” fit only to die, because the expectations of heterosexual norms, reinforced by marriage and law, made no room for his kind. These heartbreaking stories, Hirschfeld wrote in The Sexual History of the World War, “bring before us the whole tragedy [in Germany]; what fatherland did they have, and for what freedom were they fighting?” In the aftermath of this lonely death, Hirschfeld left his medical practice and began a crusade for justice that would alter the course of queer history.

The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or Institute of Sex Research,  was opened in 1919 by Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, a psychotherapist, and housed an extensive research library, provided medical, psychological, marriage, and sex counseling.

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. The institute also received visits from national governments; in 1923 the institute was for instance visited by Nikolai Semashko, Commissar for Health in the Soviet Union. This was followed by numerous visits and research trips by health officials, political, sexual and social reformers, and scientific researchers from the Soviet Union interested in the work of Hirschfeld. (Homosexuality was allowed and accepted in the early years of the Soviet Union, but sharply repressed (like everything else) under Stalin).

• Sexual and Reproductive Health - One focus of the institute's research and services was sexual and reproductive health. A subdivision of the institute offered marital counseling services and access to contraception with the goal of making those services accessible to the poor and working-classes. The Institute offered gynecological services and treatment for STD's as well.

• "Sexual Intermediacy" - Hirschfeld championed the doctrine of sexual intermediacy. This proposed form of classification said that every human trait existed on a scale from masculine to feminine. Masculine traits were characterized as dominant and active while feminine traits were passive and perceptive. The classification was further divided into the subgroups of sex organs, physical characteristics, sex drive or sexuality, and psychological characteristics. Hirschfeld's belief was that all human beings possess both masculine and feminine traits regardless of their sex. In fact, he believed that no one was fully masculine or fully feminine but rather a blend of the two. A man with a female sex drive, for example, would be homosexual, whereas someone with male sex organs and mostly female psychological characteristics would likely be transgender. Hirschfeld originally used the term "sexual intermediaries" in the late nineteenth century to refer mostly to homosexual men and lesbians. However, this later expanded to include intersex people, cross-dressers, and transsexuals. His concept of broad sexual intermediacy among humans has been traced to roughly similar ideas held by Charles Darwin and Galen of Pergamon.

• Transgender People and Transvestism - Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term transsexual in a 1923 essay, Die Intersexuelle Konstitution. This identified the clinical category which his colleague Harry Benjamin would later develop in the United States; only about thirty years after its coining by Hirschfeld did the term enter wider use, with Benjamin's work. Hirschfeld also originally coined the term transvestite in 1910, and he sometimes used the term "extreme transvestites" or "total transvestites" to refer to transsexuals. Transgender people were on the staff of the institute as receptionists and maids, as well as being among the clients there. Various endocrinologic and surgical services were offered, including an early modern sex reassignment surgery in 1931.  In fact, "a majority" of transvestites expressed "the wish to be castrated", according to one PhD student that studied there. Hirschfeld originally advised against sexual reassignment surgeries, but came to support them as a means of preventing suicide among transsexual patients. 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, "Never 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.

• Homosexuality - A compilation of works about homosexuality could be found at the institute. The institute's collections included the first comprehensive such compilation of works about sexuality. 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. Hirschfeld — who was homosexual himself — viewed homosexuality as natural and inborn, rather than an illness. Experiments were performed by the Institute, which intended to demonstrate the biological basis of homosexuality in the influence of sex hormones. The institute put adaption therapy into practice as a far more humane and effective method than conversion therapy, as a means of helping patients cope with their sexuality. Rather than attempting to cure a patient's homosexuality, the focus was instead placed on helping the patient learn to navigate a homophobic society with the least discomfort possible. While the doctors at the institute could not outright recommend illegal practices (and, at this time, most all homosexual acts were illegal in Germany), they also did not promote abstinence. They made an effort to help their gay patients find a sense of community, either with other patients, through the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, or through a network of venues known to the institute that were aimed at gay men, lesbians, and cross-dressers. Additionally, the institute offered them general psychological and medical assistance.

• Intersexuality - The Institute presented expert reports about cases of intersex conditions. Hirschfeld is considered to have been a pioneer in this area of study. He advocated for the right of intersex individuals born with ambiguous genitalia to choose their own sex upon reaching the age of eighteen (a practice intersex people still call for today), and indeed assisted intersex people in attaining sex reassignment surgeries. 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.

However, as part of the larger effort to destroy “Un-German” literature, the Deutsche Studentschaft, or German Student Union, staged an organized attack, murdering Dora "Dörchen" Richter, the first known person to undergo “complete” Gender Confirmation surgery, in the process, May 6, 1933. A brass band accompanied them as they arrived in the morning. After breaking into the building, the students destroyed much of what was inside, and looted tens of thousands of items. A few days later, the bulk of the Institute’s library and archives were hauled out an publicly burned while Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, gave a speech to a crowd of 40,000. The carnage flickered over German newsreels. It was among the first and largest of the Nazi book burnings. Nazi youth, students and soldiers participated in the destruction, while voiceovers of the footage declared that the German state had committed “the intellectual garbage of the past” to the flames. The collection was irreplaceable - 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.

The loss of all that research and knowledge set back the scientific and medical community’s understanding of gender related care by decades and the patient lists were used in later years to identify people to be sent to camps.

What I want to impress upon everyone is that one of the reasons that it seems like trans people are a new phenomenon is because, as you can see, there was a focused effort by powerful forces to erase information and knowledge about us in a very literal sense. I also want to emphasize these events illustrate that amazing progress and advancement in acceptance and understanding of Queer people can be - and has been - rolled back in a relatively short amount of time. Simply because we've made great strides in the last 10-15 years does not mean that we are safe, the implications of which we're seeing play out in local, state, and soon, federal legislative bodies every day.

Photos: 1) Hirscheld is seated on the right, with glasses and healthy moustache. 2) A group of trans people, outside the Institute, sometime in the 1920's 3 & 4) Some of our most iconic images of the Nazi book burnings are of the destruction of the Institute's library