Magnus Hirschfeld facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Magnus T. Hirschfeld
|
|
|---|---|
Hirschfeld in 1932
|
|
| Born | 14 May 1868 |
| Died | 14 May 1935 (aged 67) Nice, France
|
| Resting place | Body cremated; ashes interred in Caucade Cemetery in Nice |
| Citizenship | German (revoked by the Nazis) |
| Occupation | Physician |
| Partner(s) |
|
Magnus T. Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a Jewish German physician, whose citizenship was later revoked by the Nazi government. Hirschfeld was educated in philosophy, philology and medicine. Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. He based his practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg during the Weimar period. Performance Studies and Rhetoric Professor Dustin Goltz characterized the committee as having carried out "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights".
Hirschfeld was targeted by early fascists and later the Nazis for being Jewish and gay. He was forced into exile in France, where he died in 1935.
Contents
Early life
Hirschfeld was born in Kolberg in Pomerania (since 1945 Kołobrzeg in Poland), to an Ashkenazi Jewish family, the son of highly regarded physician and Senior Medical Officer Hermann Hirschfeld. As a youth he attended Kolberg Cathedral School, which at the time was a Protestant school. In 1887–1888, he studied philosophy and philology in Breslau, and then from 1888 to 1892 medicine in Straßburg, Munich, Heidelberg, and Berlin. In 1892, he earned his medical degree.
After his studies, he traveled through the United States for eight months, visiting the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and living from the proceeds of his writing for German journals. During his time in Chicago, Hirschfeld became involved with the homosexual subculture in that city. Struck by the essential similarities between the homosexual subcultures of Chicago and Berlin, Hirschfeld first developed his theory about the universality of homosexuality around the world, as he researched in books and newspaper articles about the existence of gay subcultures in Rio de Janeiro, Tangier, and Tokyo. Then he started a naturopathic practice in Magdeburg; in 1896, he moved his practice to Berlin-Charlottenburg. Hirschfeld became interested in gay rights.
Hirschfeld was greatly affected by the trial of Oscar Wilde, which he often referred to in his writings. Hirschfeld was struck by the number of his gay patients and often found himself trying to give his patients a reason to live.
Homosexual rights activism
Hirschfeld's work was revolutionary in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He argued that orientation was innate and not a deliberate choice, a view that was radically different from the traditional perspectives of his time. He coined the term "transvestite".
In 1897, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, the world's first gay rights organization, aiming to repeal Paragraph 175 of the German Imperial Penal Code, which criminalized homosexual acts between men.
Feminism
In 1905, Hirschfeld joined the Bund für Mutterschutz ('League for the Protection of Mothers'), the feminist organization founded by Helene Stöcker. He campaigned against policies that banned female teachers and civil servants from marrying or having children. Both Hirschfeld and Stöcker believed that there was a close connection between the causes of gay rights and women's rights. 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's position, that homosexuality was normal and natural, made him a highly controversial figure at the time, involving him in vigorous debates with other academics, who regarded homosexuality as unnatural and wrong. One of Hirschfeld's leading critics was Austrian Baron Christian von Ehrenfels, who argued that there were a few "biologically degenerate" homosexuals who lured otherwise "healthy boys" into their lifestyle, making homosexuality into both a choice and a wrong one at that time.
World War I
In 1914, Hirschfeld was swept up by the national enthusiasm of the Spirit of 1914, as the sense of national solidarity was known that at the outbreak of World War I rallied the majority of Germans to the defence of the Fatherland. Initially pro-war, Hirschfeld started to turn against the war in 1915, moving toward a pacifist position. In his 1915 pamphlet, Warum Hassen uns die Völker? ('Why do other nations hate us?'), Hirschfeld answered his own question by arguing that it was the greatness of Germany that excited envy from other nations, especially Great Britain, and so had supposedly caused them to come together to destroy the Reich. Hirschfeld accused Britain of starting the war in 1914 "out of envy at the development and size of the German Empire". Warum Hassen uns die Völker? was characterized by a chauvinist and ultra-nationalist tone, together with a crass Anglophobia that has often embarrassed Hirschfeld's modern admirers such as Charlotte Wolff, who called the pamphlet a "perversion of the values which Hirschfeld had always stood for".
As a Jewish homosexual, Hirschfeld was acutely aware that many Germans did not consider him to be a "proper" German, or even a German at all; so, he reasoned that taking an ultra-patriotic stance might break down prejudices by showing that German Jews and/or homosexuals could also be good, patriotic Germans, rallying to the cry of the Fatherland. By 1916, Hirschfeld was writing pacifist pamphlets, calling for an immediate end to the war. In his 1916 pamphlet Kriegspsychologisches ('The Psychology of War'), Hirschfeld was far more critical of the war than he had been in 1915, emphasizing the suffering and trauma caused by it. He also expressed the opinion that nobody wanted to take responsibility for the war because its horrors were "superhuman in size". He declared that "it is not enough that the war ends with peace; it must end with reconciliation". 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".
Anders als die Andern
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. Hirschfeld played himself in Anders als die Andern, where the title cards have him say: "The persecution of homosexuals belongs to the same sad chapter of history in which the persecutions of witches and heretics is inscribed... Only with the French Revolution did a complete change come about. Everywhere where the Code Napoléon was introduced, the laws against homosexuals were repealed, for they were considered a violation of the rights of the individual... In Germany, however, despite more than fifty years of scientific research, legal discrimination against homosexuals continues unabated... May justice soon prevail over injustice in this area, science conquer superstition, love achieve victory over hatred!"
In May 1919, when the film premiered in Berlin, the First World War was still a very fresh memory and German conservatives, who already hated Hirschfeld, seized upon his Francophile speech in the film praising France for legalizing homosexuality in 1792 as evidence that gay rights were "un-German".
World tour
In March 1930, the Social Democratic chancellor Hermann Müller was overthrown by the intrigues of General Kurt von Schleicher. "Presidential" governments, responsible only to the President Paul von Hindenburg, pushed German politics in a more authoritarian direction. In 1929, the Müller government had come very close to repealing Paragraph 175, when the Reichstag justice committee voted to repeal Paragraph 175. However, the Müller government fell before it could submit the repeal motion to the floor of the Reichstag. Heinrich Brüning, a conservative Catholic on the right-wing of the Zentrum party replaced Müller in March 1930, and was openly hostile toward gay rights. Under the rule of Brüning as Chancellor and that of his successor, Franz von Papen, the state became increasingly hostile toward gay rights campaigners such as Hirschfeld, who began to spend more time abroad.
America and a "straight turn"
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, but in fact to see if it was possible for him to settle in the United States. Significantly, in his speeches on this American tour, Hirschfeld, when speaking in German, called for the legalization of homosexuality, but when speaking in English did not mention the subject of homosexuality. The New York Times described Hirschfeld as having come to America to "study the marriage question", while the German-language New Yorker Volkszeitung newspaper described Hirschfeld as wanting to "discuss love's natural turns" – the phrase "love's natural turns" was Hirschfeld's way of presenting his theory that there was a wide spectrum of human love, all of which were "natural". Hirschfeld realized that most Americans did not want to hear about his theory of homosexuality as natural. Aware of a strong xenophobic tendency in the United States, where foreigners seen as troublemakers were unwelcome, Hirschfeld tailored his message to American tastes.
Asia
After his American tour, Hirschfeld went to Asia in February 1931. Hirschfeld had been invited to Japan by Keizō Dohi, a German-educated Japanese doctor who spoke fluent German and who worked at Hirschfeld's institute for a time in the 1920s. In Japan, Hirchfeld again tailored his speeches to local tastes, saying nothing about gay rights. Hirschfeld sought out an old friend, S. Iwaya, a Japanese doctor who lived in Berlin in 1900–02 and who joined the Scientific-Humanitarian committee during his time there. Iwaya took Hirschfeld to the Meiji-za to introduce him to the Kabuki theater. Hirschfeld become interested in the Kabuki theater, where the female characters are played by men.
After staying in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia), Hirschfeld arrived in India in September 1931. In Allahabad, Hirschfeld met Jawaharlal Nehru and gave speeches supporting the Indian independence movement, stating "it is one of the biggest injustices in the world that one of the oldest civilized nations... cannot rule independently". However, Hirschfeld's Indian speeches were mainly concerned with attacking the 1927 book Mother India by the white supremacist American author Katherine Mayo.
Later life and exile
On 20 July 1932, the Chancellor Franz von Papen carried out a coup that deposed the Braun government in Prussia, and appointed himself the Reich commissioner for the state. A conservative Catholic who had long been a vocal critic of homosexuality, Papen ordered the Prussian police to crack down in general on homosexuals in Prussia. On 30 January 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as chancellor. 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 German Students' 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. In the evening, the Berlin Police arrived at the institution and announced that it was closed forever.
By the time of the book burning, Hirschfeld had long since left Germany for a speaking tour that took him around the world; he never returned to Germany. Hirschfeld stayed near Germany, hoping that he would be able to return to Berlin if the country's political situation improved. With the Nazi regime's unequivocal rise to power coinciding with the completion of his work on his tour book, he decided to go into exile in France. On his 65th birthday, 14 May 1933, Hirschfeld arrived in Paris, where he lived in a luxury apartment building on 24 Avenue Charles Floquet, facing the Champ de Mars. Hirschfeld lived with Li and Giese. In 1934, Giese was involved in a dispute at a public bathhouse that Hirschfeld called "trifling", but it led French authorities to expel him. Giese's fate left Hirschfeld very depressed.
A year-and-a-half after arriving in France, in November 1934, Hirschfeld moved south to Nice, a seaside resort on the Mediterranean coast. He lived in a luxurious apartment building with a view of the sea across an enormous garden on the Promenade des Anglais. Throughout his stay in France, he continued researching, writing, campaigning and working to establish a French successor to his lost institute in Berlin.
Death
.jpg)
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. His body was cremated, and the ashes interred in a simple tomb in the Caucade Cemetery in Nice. The upright headstone in gray granite is inset with a bronze bas-relief portrait of Hirschfeld in profile by German sculptor and decorative artist Arnold Zadikow (1884–1943), who like Hirschfeld was a native of the town of Kolberg. The slab covering the tomb is engraved with Hirschfeld's Latin motto, "Per Scientiam ad Justitiam" ("through science to justice").
On 14 May 2010, to mark the 75th anniversary of Hirschfeld's death, a French national organization, the Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle (MDH), in partnership with the new LGBT Community Center of Nice (Centre LGBT Côte d'Azur), organized a formal delegation to the cemetery. Speakers recalled Hirschfeld's life and work and laid a large bouquet of pink flowers on his tomb; the ribbon on the bouquet was inscribed "Au pionnier de nos causes. Le MDH et le Centre LGBT" ('To the pioneer of our causes. The MDH and the LGBT Center').
Legacy
Hirschfeld's work laid the foundation for modern LGBTQ+ rights movements. Various institutions and awards have been established in his name, including the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal and the Magnus Hirschfeld National Foundation.
_Erste_Homosexuelle_Emanzipationsbewegung_1.jpg)
-
Hirschfeld's tomb in the Caucade Cemetery in Nice, France, photographed the day before the 75th anniversary of his death
-
Bust of Magnus Hirschfeld in the Schwules Museum, Berlin
.jpg)
See also
- Harry Benjamin, an associate of Hirschfeld who brought his theories to the United States
- Der Eigene: world's first gay journal, Berlin, 1896–1932
- First homosexual movement
- Willi Pape, a famous cabaret performer who appeared in Hirschfeld's 1912 book on transvestites
