GHDI logo


Magnus Hirschfeld Archive in the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin (1925)

The Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin was founded in 1919 by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a physician, sexologist, sexual reformer, and the author of Sexual Pathology: A Textbook for Physicians and Students [Sexualpathologie: Ein Lehrbuch für Ärzte und Studierende]. Hirschfeld was one of the most influential contributors to turn-of-the-century theories of sexuality. He maintained that homosexuality was an innate condition, i.e., that it was a matter of nature versus nurture. He also advocated the theory of the "third sex," whereby homosexuality was understood not as a perverse deviation from "standard" male or female heterosexuality, but rather as another legitimate sexual identity. Hirschfeld, who wrote at a time when many modern categories of sexual identity were being constructed, is credited with defining two categories that continue to exist today: transvestite and transsexual. Hirschfeld’s institute included medical, psychological, and ethnological divisions; it provided counseling services and was the site of the first modern sex-change operations. In May 1933, the institute was attacked and its archive and library were burned in the first wave of Nazi book burnings.

print version     return to image list previous image      next image

Magnus Hirschfeld Archive in the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin (1925)

© Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz