Magnus Hirschfeld (14.5.1868 Kolberg/Pomerania – 14.5.1935 Nice)

Magnus Hirschfeld grew up in a large Jewish family. His father was an esteemed physician and member of the Jewish congregation of Kolberg in Pomerania; he had been its chairperson since 1871. From 1887 to 1892, Magnus Hirschfeld first studied philology and then medicine in Breslau, Strasbourg, Munich, Würzburg, and Berlin.

He opened a practice for natural medicine in Berlin in 1896. At the same time, he was editor of the weekly journal "Der Hausdoktor” (The Family Doctor) and published a seminal study "Sappho and Socrates or How to Explain the Love of Men and Women for Persons of the Same Sex?" on the "sexual intermediate stages" of men and women. He published the Yearbook for Sexual Intermediate Stages from 1899 to 1923. In 1897, he founded the "Scientific-Humanitarian Committee" (WhK); he was its chair until 1929. It was the first organization worldwide that advocated for the decriminalization of homosexuality.

Hirschfeld served as a military hospital doctor during World War I. After his return, he founded the "Institute of Sexology" in Berlin in 1919; it had a comprehensive specialist library and an advisory center for people with sexual issues. From then on, Hirschfeld engaged with the public throughout Germany through publications, court expert opinions, and conventions.

As a Jew, homosexual, and socialist, he became the target of vicious hostility. On October 4, 1920, National Socialists attacked Magnus Hirschfeld after his lecture in the Munich Tonhalle and beat him unconscious. Starting in the mid-1920s, Magnus Hirschfeld spent time abroad on lecture trips. In 1930, he chose not to return to Germany from a journey to the USA and he relocated to Switzerland in 1932. During the book burnings in Berlin, the Nazis vandalized the Berlin Institute of Sexology in May 1933. Magnus Hirschfeld lived in Nice, France starting in 1934, and he died there in 1935.

After 1945, Magnus Hirschfeld and his work remained forgotten in Germany for decades. It was not until the homosexual emancipation movement began in the 1970s that the activist and sex researcher Hirschfeld was rediscovered in Germany. In 1982, members of the gay and lesbian movement in West Berlin founded the Magnus Hirschfeld Society, aiming to explore the Institute for Sexual Science and its founder, as well as advancing gender research. The Magnus Hirschfeld Federal Foundation was established in 2011 to research the social environment of lesbian women, gay men, and transgender individuals and to promote educational and public outreach work against discrimination against these people.