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From Wikipedia:

Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a German physician and sexologist.

Hirschfeld became interested in gay rights because many of his gay patients took their own lives. In the German language, the word for suicide is Selbstmord (’self-murder’), which carried more judgmental and condemnatory connotations than its English language equivalent, making the subject of suicide a taboo in 19th century Germany.

In particular, Hirschfeld cited the story of one of his patients as a reason for his gay rights activism: a young army officer suffering from depression who killed himself in 1896, leaving behind a suicide note saying that despite his best efforts, he could not end his desires for other men, and so had ended his life out of his guilt and shame. In his suicide note, the officer wrote that he lacked the “strength” to tell his parents the “truth”, and spoke of his shame of “that which nearly strangled my heart”. The officer could not even bring himself to use the word “homosexuality”, which he instead conspicuously referred to as “that” in his note. However, the officer mentioned at the end of his suicide note: “The thought that you [Hirschfeld] could contribute a future when the German fatherland will think of us in more just terms sweetens the hour of my death.”

Hirschfeld was struck by the number of his gay patients who had Suizidalnarben (’scars left by suicide attempts’), and often found himself trying to give his patients a reason to live.

It was in 1896, after talking to the people displayed in the “human zoos” at the Große Berliner Gewerbeausstellung, that Hirschfeld began writing what became his 1914 book Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes (’The Homosexuality of Men and Women’), an attempt to comprehensively survey homosexuality around the world, as part of an effort to prove that homosexuality occurred in every culture. In the book, Hirschfeld found that many homosexuals considered England to be the country with the highest rate of homosexuality.

In 1897, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee with the publisher Max Spohr (1850–1905), the lawyer Eduard Oberg (1858–1917), and the writer Franz Joseph von Bülow (1861–1915). The group aimed to undertake research to defend the rights of homosexuals and to repeal Paragraph 175, the section of the German penal code that, since 1871, had criminalized homosexuality. They argued that the law encouraged blackmail.

Under Hirschfeld’s leadership, the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee gathered 6000 signatures from prominent Germans on a petition to overturn Paragraph 175. Signatories included Albert Einstein, Hermann Hesse...

The bill was brought before the Reichstag in 1898, but was supported only by a minority from the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Hirschfeld considered what would, in a later era, be described as “outing”: forcing out of the closet some of the prominent and secretly homosexual lawmakers who had remained silent on the bill.

Hirschfeld prepared questionnaires that gay men could answer anonymously about homosexuality and suicide. Collating his results, Hirschfeld estimated that 3 out of every 100 gays committed suicide every year, that a quarter of gays had attempted suicide at some point in their lives and that the other three-quarters had had suicidal thoughts at some point. He used his evidence to argue that, under current social conditions in Germany, life was literally unbearable for homosexuals.

A figure frequently mentioned by Hirschfeld to illustrate the “hell experienced by homosexuals” was Oscar Wilde.

In 1905, Hirschfeld joined the Bund für Mutterschutz (’League for the Protection of Mothers’), the feminist organization founded by Helene Stöcker. He campaigned for the decriminalisation of abortion, and against policies that banned female teachers and civil servants from marrying or having children.[further explanation needed] Both Hirschfeld and Stöcker believed that there was a close connection between the causes of gay rights and women’s rights, and Stöcker was much involved in the campaign to repeal Paragraph 175 while Hirschfeld campaigned for the repeal of Paragraph 218, which had banned abortion. From 1909 to 1912, Stöcker, Hirschfeld, Hedwig Dohm, and others successfully campaigned against an extension to Paragraph 175 which would have criminalised female homosexuality.

Hirschfeld played a prominent role in the Harden–Eulenburg affair of 1906–09, which became the most widely publicized sex scandal in Imperial Germany. During the libel trial in 1907, when General Kuno von Moltke sued the journalist Maximilian Harden, after the latter had run an article accusing Moltke of having a homosexual relationship with the politically powerful Prince Philipp von Eulenburg, who was the Kaiser’s best friend, Hirschfeld testified for Harden. In his role as an expert witness, Hirschfeld testified that Moltke was gay and, thus, what Harden had written was true. Hirschfeld – who wanted to make homosexuality legal in Germany – believed that proving Army officers like Moltke were gay would help his case for legalization. He also testified that he believed there was nothing wrong with Moltke.

Most notably, Hirschfeld testified that “homosexuality was part of the plan of nature and creation just like normal love.” Hirschfeld’s testimony caused outrage all over Germany. The Vossische Zeitung newspaper condemned Hirschfeld in an editorial as “a freak who acted for freaks in the name of pseudoscience”.

A notable witness at the trial was Lilly von Elbe, former wife of Moltke, who testified that her husband had only had sex with her twice in their entire marriage. Elbe spoke with remarkable openness for the period of her sexual desires and her frustration with a husband who was only interested in having sex with Eulenburg. Elbe’s testimony was marked by moments of low comedy when it emerged that she had taken to attacking Moltke with a frying pan in vain attempts to make him have sex with her. The fact that General von Moltke was unable to defend himself from his wife’s attacks was taken as proof that he was deficient in his masculinity, which many saw as confirming his homosexuality. At the time, the subject of female sexuality was taboo, and Elbe’s testimony was controversial, with many saying that Elbe must be mentally ill because of her willingness to acknowledge her sexuality. Letters to the newspapers at the time, from both men and women, overwhelmingly condemned Elbe for her “disgusting” testimony concerning her sexuality. As an expert witness, Hirschfeld also testified that female sexuality was natural, and Elbe was just a normal woman who was in no way mentally ill. After the jury ruled in favor of Harden, Judge Hugo Isenbiel was enraged by the jury’s decision, which he saw as expressing approval for Hirschfeld. He overturned the verdict under the grounds that homosexuals “have the morals of dogs”, and insisted that this verdict could not be allowed to stand.

After the verdict was overturned, a second trial found Harden guilty of libel. At the second trial, Hirschfeld again testified as an expert witness, but this time, he was much less certain than he had been at the first trial about Moltke’s homosexuality. Hirschfeld testified that Moltke and Eulenburg had an “intimate” friendship that was homoerotic in nature but not sexual, as he had testified at the first trial.

Because Eulenburg was a prominent anti-Semite and Hirschfeld was a Jew, during the affair, the völkisch movement came out in support of Eulenburg, whom they portrayed as an Aryan heterosexual, framed by false allegations of homosexuality by Hirschfeld and Harden. Various völkisch leaders, most notably the radical anti-Semitic journalist Theodor Fritsch, used the Eulenburg affair as a chance to “settle the accounts” with the Jews. As a gay Jew, Hirschfeld was relentlessly vilified by the völkisch newspapers...After the scandal had ended, Hirschfeld concluded that, far from helping the gay rights movement as he had hoped, the ensuing backlash set the movement back.

In late 1918, Hirschfeld together with his sister, Franziska Mann, co-wrote a pamphlet Was jede Frau vom Wahlrecht wissen muß! (’What every woman needs to know about the right to vote!’) hailing the November Revolution for granting German women the right to vote and announced the “eyes of the world are now resting on German women”.

In 1920, Hirschfeld was badly beaten by a group of völkisch activists who attacked him on the street; he was initially declared dead when the police arrived.

Hirschfeld co-wrote and acted in the 1919 film Anders als die Andern (’Different From the Others’), in which Conrad Veidt played one of the first homosexual characters ever written for cinema. The film had a specific gay rights law reform agenda; after Veidt’s character is blackmailed by a male prostitute, he eventually comes out rather than continuing to make the blackmail payments.

Under the more liberal atmosphere of the newly founded Weimar Republic, Hirschfeld purchased a villa not far from the Reichstag building in Berlin for his new Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (’Institute of Sexual Research’), which opened on 6 July 1919. In Germany, the Reich government made laws, but the Länder governments enforced the laws, meaning it was up to the Länder governments to enforce Paragraph 175. Until the November Revolution of 1918, Prussia had a three-class voting system that effectively disfranchised most ordinary people, and allowed the Junkers to dominate Prussia. After the November Revolution, universal suffrage came to Prussia, which became a stronghold of the Social Democrats. The SPD believed in repealing Paragraph 175, and the Social Democratic Prussian government headed by Otto Braun ordered the Prussian police not to enforce Paragraph 175, making Prussia into a haven for homosexuals all over Germany.

Hirschfeld had coined the term transvestite in 1910 to describe what today would be called transgender people, and the institution became a haven for transgender people, where Hirschfeld offered them shelter from abuse, performed surgeries, and gave otherwise unemployable transgender people jobs, albeit of a menial type, mostly as “maids”.

In 1930, Hirschfeld predicted that there would be no future for people like himself in Germany, and he would have to move abroad. In November 1930, Hirschfeld arrived in New York City, ostensibly on a speaking tour about sex....

Unfortunately for Hirschfeld, the Hearst newspapers, which specialized in taking a sensationalist, right-wing, populist line on the news, dug up his statements in Germany calling for gay rights, causing a sudden shift in tone from more or less friendly to hostile, effectively ending any chance of Hirschfeld being allowed to stay in the United States.

Hirschfeld’s Indian speeches were mainly concerned with attacking the 1927 book Mother India by the white supremacist American author Katherine Mayo, where she painted an unflattering picture of sexuality in India as brutal and perverted

Less than four months after the Nazis took power, Hirschfeld’s Institute was sacked. On the morning of 6 May, a group of university students belonging to the National Socialist Student League stormed the institution, shouting “Brenne Hirschfeld!” (’Burn Hirschfeld!’) and began to beat up its staff and smash up the premises. In the afternoon, the SA came to the institute, carrying out a more systematic attack, removing all volumes from the library and storing them for a book-burning event which was to be held four days later.

On his 67th birthday, 14 May 1935, Hirschfeld died of a heart attack in his apartment at the Gloria Mansions I building at 63 Promenade des Anglais in Nice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld