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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from Houstuffworks

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Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.

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Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Fryne. Today we are going to

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Speaker 1: talk about Magnus Hirshfeldt, who was a groundbreaking researcher into

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Speaker 1: gender and sexuality in Germany in the late nineteenth and

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Speaker 1: early twentieth centuries. His name and his work have come

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Speaker 1: up in a lot of past episodes, including Alan L.

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Speaker 1: Hart and the Compton's Cafeteria Riots, and Henry Gerber and

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Speaker 1: Chicago Society for Human Rights. I also know a lot

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Speaker 1: of listeners have requested this one, but when I went

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Speaker 1: into the email to try to figure out people's names,

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Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out who. So thanks to people who

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Speaker 1: did request this one. We are not going to be

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Speaker 1: talking about Hirschfeld's work in an explicit way, but the

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Speaker 1: subject matter does mean that there's going to be more

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Speaker 1: sex talk in today's episode than there typically is on

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Speaker 1: our show. We are also talking primarily about gay Jewish

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Speaker 1: men living at a time when homosexuality was outlawed in

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Speaker 1: Germany and when the Nazis were coming to power, So

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Speaker 1: there are a number of things that we're going to

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Speaker 1: get into that fall into the general umbrella of disturbing

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Speaker 1: and upsetting. Magnus Hirschfeld was born on May fourteenth, eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty eight, in Kohlburg, Prussia, to Hermann and Frederic Hirschfeld.

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Speaker 1: Today Kolberg is Kolobjig, Poland, and that's on the coast

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Speaker 1: of the Baltic Sea. The family was Jewish. Hermann was

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Speaker 1: a doctor, and Magnus was one of ten or possibly

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Speaker 1: eleven children. Magnus's father was really prominent and respected in

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Speaker 1: their community. Kohlberg had been home to a Prussian garrison.

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Speaker 1: It was basically a military town, and until about eighteen twelve,

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Speaker 1: Jews hadn't been allowed to live there at all. After

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Speaker 1: that changed, a small Jewish community formed, which was mostly

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Speaker 1: made up of merchants and their families. Magnus's father was

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Speaker 1: the most well educated man among this group, and consequently

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Speaker 1: he was elected the president of the Deputy Assembly, which

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Speaker 1: was sort of the Jewish communities organization of self government.

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Speaker 1: Magnus's father died when Magnus was seventeen, and he had

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Speaker 1: been so beloved by the community that a monument was

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Speaker 1: erected in his honor. This monument was unfortunately destroyed by

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Speaker 1: the Nazis. In nineteen thirty three, when Magnus was a teen,

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Speaker 1: he became involved with the Social Democratic Party, although he

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem to have taken an active part in party

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Speaker 1: politics beyond that point. After the Nazis came to power

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Speaker 1: in Germany, the Social Democratic Party was outlawed, but Hirschfeld's

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Speaker 1: name doesn't appear on lists of doctors who were part

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Speaker 1: of the party. Hirschfeld studied at a number of universities

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Speaker 1: before earning his MD in eighteen ninety two. He originally

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Speaker 1: wanted to study language and writing, and he described this

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Speaker 1: as his first real love, but for practical reasons, he

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Speaker 1: ultimately decided to become a doctor, although he was a

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Speaker 1: prolific writer for his entire career. During his university years,

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Speaker 1: Hirschfeld became increasingly secular. He stopped describing himself as Jewish

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Speaker 1: and started describing himself as a dissident. He joined the

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Speaker 1: Monist League during these years as well. If you're not

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Speaker 1: familiar with that term, Monism is the idea that there's

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Speaker 1: one single element or principle that's the fundamental basis of

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Speaker 1: all reality. It underpins a number of religions and philosophies,

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Speaker 1: and this was a huge influence on both Hirschfeld's secular

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Speaker 1: philosophy and his later research into sex and gender. After

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Speaker 1: completing his medical degree, Hirschfeld traveled for a while, including

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Speaker 1: going to Chicago to visit the World's Columbian Exposition and

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Speaker 1: to spend time with family members who had immigrated to

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Speaker 1: the United States. He paid for his trip by writing

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Speaker 1: newspaper reports. After he returned to Europe in eighteen ninety four,

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Speaker 1: he settled in Magdeborg, roughly between Hanover and Berlin. Hirschfeld

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Speaker 1: incorporated nature opathy into his medical practice. In Magorg, he

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Speaker 1: emphasized avoiding alcohol and drinking lots of water, taking lots

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Speaker 1: of walks in fresh air, and practicing good nutrition. This

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Speaker 1: put him a bit at odds with the rest of

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Speaker 1: the German medical community. There were plenty of other nature paths,

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Speaker 1: but they tended to be lay people. This wasn't common

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Speaker 1: at all for an MD in Germany to focus so

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Speaker 1: much on nature apathy rather than on conventional medicine. This

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Speaker 1: led to some of the other doctors nearby being really

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Speaker 1: critical of him and his work. After a year or

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Speaker 1: so in Magdeborg, Hirschfeld moved to Charlottenborg, not far from Berlin,

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Speaker 1: where he continued to work as a doctor, continuing to

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Speaker 1: have a focus in nature ropathy. It was about this

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Speaker 1: time that Hirschfeld started focusing his work on gender and sexuality.

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Speaker 1: One influence was probably the trial of Oscar Wilde for

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Speaker 1: gross indecency in eighteen ninety five. People in Germany knew

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Speaker 1: about this trial and it led to a lot of

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Speaker 1: discussions of homosexuality from both a medical and legal perspective.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety six, Hirschfeld gave up his practice as

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Speaker 1: a doctor and a nature of path and devoted himself

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Speaker 1: to the study of sexuality and gender. He told a

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Speaker 1: different story about how he came to this decision, though,

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Speaker 1: although it's one that might be apocryphal. He wrote that

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Speaker 1: he had a patient who was supposed to be getting married,

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Speaker 1: and the patient in question was a young homosexual man.

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Speaker 1: The night before the wedding, he took his own life

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Speaker 1: rather than having to marry a woman. But first this

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Speaker 1: patient wrote a suicide note to Hirschfeld, his doctor, asking

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Speaker 1: him to tell his story and to use it to

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Speaker 1: help change society's understanding of homosexuality so that homosexual men

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be forced to hide their identities and marry women.

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Speaker 1: Hirschfeld's first written work on this subject came out that

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Speaker 1: same year. It was titled Sapho and Socrates, or how

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Speaker 1: is the Love of Men and Women for Persons of

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Speaker 1: their own sex? To be Explained? Under the advice of

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Speaker 1: his publisher, he used the pseudonym Theodore Raymond. This is

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Speaker 1: the only time that he didn't publish his work under

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Speaker 1: his own name. But Hirschfeld also told the publisher that

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Speaker 1: if anyone asked who had really written it, they could

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Speaker 1: absolutely say it was him. A lot of the people

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Speaker 1: who tried to track down the author of Sappho and

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Speaker 1: Socrates are people that today would fall under the umbrella

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Speaker 1: of gender and sexual minorities. People we would describe in

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Speaker 1: terms like gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender today. These terms

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Speaker 1: weren't in use at all, or weren't in use in

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Speaker 1: quite the same way in eighteen ninety six, But that's

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Speaker 1: how we would describe folks in more modern times. As

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Speaker 1: a result of all these inquiries, in eighteen ninety seven,

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Speaker 1: Hirschfeld and other advocates established the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. The

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Speaker 1: Scientific Humanitarian Committee was one of the first, if not

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Speaker 1: the first, established gay rights organizations in the world, and

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk more about it and its work

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Speaker 1: after we first paused for a little sponsor break. The

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Speaker 1: motto of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee is translated as justice

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Speaker 1: through science or through science justice. It was dedicated to

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Speaker 1: scientific study of gender and sexuality with the hope of

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Speaker 1: dispelling stigma around homosexuality. The organization was an advocate for

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Speaker 1: other reforms as well, including contraception and an overhaul of

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Speaker 1: divorce law to make it easier to get a divorce,

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Speaker 1: But the biggest focus was homosexuality, and on that front,

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Speaker 1: the Scientific Humanitarian Committee had a very concrete goal, the

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Speaker 1: repeal of paragraph one seventy five of the German Imperial

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Speaker 1: Penal Code, which dated back to eighteen seventy one. Paragraph

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Speaker 1: one seventy five outlawed homosexual conduct among men. In addition

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Speaker 1: to criminalizing homosexual behavior, this law also led to a

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Speaker 1: huge culture of blackmail in Germany. Blackmailers would threaten to

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Speaker 1: expose someone's real or alleged violation of paragraph one seventy

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Speaker 1: five and then extort huge amounts of money from their victims.

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Speaker 1: This added to the climate of fear and persecution of

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Speaker 1: gay men in Germany at the time. Added to the

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Speaker 1: repeal of paragraph one seventy five, Hirschfeld also wanted to

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Speaker 1: raise the age of consent in Germany from fourteen to sixteen.

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Speaker 1: He thought that it was only with some additional maturity

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Speaker 1: that a person could really know they were ready to

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Speaker 1: be sexually active and know with whom they were ready

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Speaker 1: to be sexually active. On top of that, raising the

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Speaker 1: age of consent would mean that pederasts wouldn't have a

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Speaker 1: loophole to get away with their crimes if paragraph one

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Speaker 1: seventy five was abolished. Hirschfeld was not the first person

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Speaker 1: to advocate for the reform of these laws in Germany.

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Speaker 1: That credit usually goes to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, who gave

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Speaker 1: an address on the subject at the sixth Congress of

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Speaker 1: German Jurists in Munich in eighteen sixty seven, thirty years

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Speaker 1: before the establishment of the Scientific Humanitarian can and the

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Speaker 1: word homosexual had not been coined when Uleris made his speech,

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Speaker 1: and he was using completely different terminology that really isn't

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Speaker 1: in use today. But this is generally regarded as the

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Speaker 1: first time a gay person gave a speech on the

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Speaker 1: subject of gay rights. Ulrichs continued to campaign against paragraph

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Speaker 1: one seventy five until he finally had to leave Germany

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Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty. Yeah, his advocacy against laws that criminalized

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Speaker 1: homosexuality goes back even before paragraph one seventy five was

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Speaker 1: written into the code, So in a lot of ways,

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Speaker 1: Hirschfeld and the Scientific Humanitarian Committee were picking up where

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Speaker 1: Orrix had left off. The organization drafted a petition arguing

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Speaker 1: for the removal of paragraph one seventy five from the

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Speaker 1: Penal Code, and they circulated it for the next thirty

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Speaker 1: three years, from eighteen ninety seven to nineteen thirty They

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Speaker 1: got thousands of signatures from well known prominent people, and

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Speaker 1: at its peak, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee had seven hundred

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Speaker 1: members the committee. He also published pamphlets and other informational material,

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Speaker 1: including sex education and education about homosexuality. One very popular

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Speaker 1: pamphlet was what must our Nation Know About the Third Sex?

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Speaker 1: Which people would ask to have male to their family

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Speaker 1: members or would casually leave on public transportation to try

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Speaker 1: to educate others. So at this point in his work,

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Speaker 1: Hirshfeld and others were framing homosexuality as being part of

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Speaker 1: a third sex. This was also how Orix had framed

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Speaker 1: his theories, and Hirschfeld was basically building off of that

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Speaker 1: previous work. So the basic idea was that homosexuals and

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Speaker 1: bisexuals all belonged to a third sex, which was different

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Speaker 1: from male or female. Hirshfeld did not stick with this

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Speaker 1: third sex idea for long, though. He conducted at least

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Speaker 1: thirty thousand interviews and extensive physical examinations of gay men

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Speaker 1: and lesbians, and toured places like gay communities and bars

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Speaker 1: all over Africa, North America, and Europe, and all of

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Speaker 1: this work led him to a totally different conclusion what

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Speaker 1: he described as sexual intermediaries. Essentially, according to Hirschfeld, everyone

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Speaker 1: was some mix of masculine, feminine, and in some cases

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Speaker 1: androgenous traits. So in this model, there were not just

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Speaker 1: two types of human being, male and female, who were

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Speaker 1: sexually dimorphic and sorted into matching binary genders. There were

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Speaker 1: more than forty three million possible combinations of a whole

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Speaker 1: range of indicators. This made gender and sexual orientation a

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Speaker 1: colossally large spectrum and not a matter of a binary

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Speaker 1: even though he was conceiving of all of this as

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Speaker 1: a seemingly infinite range of sexual orientations and genders. Hirschfeld

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Speaker 1: still tried to develop taxonomies that incorporated homosexuals, bisexuals, and

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Speaker 1: the like. In eighteen ninety nine, he published his first

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Speaker 1: Yearbook of Intermediate Sexual Types, something he continued to publish

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Speaker 1: annually until nineteen twenty three. One of the things that

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Speaker 1: Hirschfeld was trying to do, and all of this study

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Speaker 1: and all of this taxonomizing, was to establish the idea

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Speaker 1: that homosexuality was inborn and unchangeable. He thought that if

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Speaker 1: he made it clear that people were born this way,

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Speaker 1: that it would dispel stigma and it would provide a

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Speaker 1: strong argument for the repeal of paragraph one seventy five.

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Speaker 1: Over the next few years, Hirschfeld established himself as such

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Speaker 1: a renowned expert engender and sexuality that he was called

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Speaker 1: on as an expert witness in court cases related to homosexuality.

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Speaker 1: Some of his colleagues at the Scientific Humanitarian Committee advocated

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Speaker 1: releasing the names of prominent gay people to try to

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Speaker 1: undermine the legitimacy of paragraph one seventy five, what we

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Speaker 1: would describe as outing today, and Hirschfeld never agreed with

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Speaker 1: this strategy, but when he was called on to be

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Speaker 1: an expert witness. He tried to frame his testimony in

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Speaker 1: a way that he hoped would have the same general

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Speaker 1: outcome of dismantling paragraph one seventy five. These intentions had

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Speaker 1: the opposite effect in nineteen oh seven, when Hirschfeld was

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Speaker 1: called on as an expert witness during the Yulenberg affair.

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Speaker 1: This was part of a huge scandal and press campaign

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Speaker 1: that was led by journalist Maximilian Harden. Harden alleged that

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Speaker 1: German Emperor Kaiser Wilhem the second was surrounded by a

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Speaker 1: quote degenerated homosexual Camilla, and that that degenerated group was

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Speaker 1: led by Prince Philip Ulenberg. The Ulenberg affair went on

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Speaker 1: from nineteen oh six to nineteen oh nine, and in

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Speaker 1: nineteen oh seven, high ranking Prussian general Kunomultke accused Harden

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Speaker 1: of libel, saying that Harden was spreading lies about Moltke

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Speaker 1: being a homosexual. A civil trial followed and Hirschfeld was

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Speaker 1: a witness. One of the things that had to be

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Speaker 1: established at this trial was whether what Harden was saying

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Speaker 1: about Moltke was true, because if it was true, it

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Speaker 1: wasn't libel. Hirschfeld's testimony, which was founded on his idea

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Speaker 1: that homosexuality wasn't deviant and wasn't a pathology. Was that

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Speaker 1: Moltke was an unconscious homosexual, whether he knew it or not.

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Speaker 1: The conservative press was outraged over these statements. Even though

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Speaker 1: Hirschfeld himself did not believe homosexuality was pathological, deviant, or criminal,

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Speaker 1: much of the rest of Germany believed the exact opposite.

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Speaker 1: So while Hirschfeld hoped that his testimony would help normalize

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Speaker 1: the idea of homosexuality in the minds of many, he

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Speaker 1: was just committing slander, and in a second trial Hirschfeld

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Speaker 1: had to recant his original testimony. The Scientific Humanitarian Committee

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Speaker 1: started losing support and members, and Hirschfeld himself became the

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Speaker 1: target of both anti semitism and homophobia. In defiance of

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Speaker 1: all of that criticism, Hirschfeld continued working. In nineteen ten,

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Speaker 1: he published a work called The Transvestites, coining that term

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Speaker 1: as well as the term trans Neither of those terms

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Speaker 1: is really the preferred term today, but at the time

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Speaker 1: he was creating language for something that nobody had really

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Speaker 1: named yet. In The Transvestites, he'd tried to make it

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Speaker 1: clear that there was a distinction between cross dressing and homosexuality,

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Speaker 1: as well as between cross dressers and other people who

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Speaker 1: were at the time considered to be deviant, and once

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Speaker 1: again his goal was ending stigma. Cross dressing was not

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Speaker 1: outlawed under paragraph one seventy five, and when people were

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Speaker 1: arrested for cross dressing, the charges were usually vague offenses

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Speaker 1: like creating a disturbance. So he was hoping that by

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Speaker 1: drawing this very clear line dividing cross dressing from homosexuality,

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Speaker 1: that he would protect cross dressers from stigma and arrest

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Speaker 1: at the same time the transvestites. While groundbreaking, is also

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Speaker 1: kind of muddled by today's standards. His descriptions assumed that

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Speaker 1: all the people in his case studies in the work

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Speaker 1: are people that we would describe as cisgender today, that

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Speaker 1: they were the same gender as the sex that they

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Speaker 1: were assigned at birth. So the idea of being transgender,

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Speaker 1: which also wasn't a term that existed yet, does not

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Speaker 1: play a part in this at all, even though when

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Speaker 1: you read the case studies it's clear that some of

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Speaker 1: the people in them probably would have described themselves as

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Speaker 1: transgender if they lived today. In nineteen thirteen, Hirschfeld helped

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Speaker 1: establish the Medical Society for Sexual Science and eugenics. Hirschfeld

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Speaker 1: was vehemently against racial eugenics, but like a lot of

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Speaker 1: people at the time, he was in favor of the

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Speaker 1: idea of using eugenics to stop hereditary disease and improve

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Speaker 1: humanity in general. As we have discussed on the show before,

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Speaker 1: eugenics was an extremely mainstream concept at this point, and

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Speaker 1: the field of sexual science, which was brand new at

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Speaker 1: the time, was all tangled up with it. Yes, when

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Speaker 1: you look at this sort of newly developing field of

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Speaker 1: sexual science, there is a whole huge spectrum of how

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Speaker 1: people thought that eugenics canted to all of it, and

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Speaker 1: it's on the spectrum fum, oh, we could make humanity

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Speaker 1: a little better, to oh, we need to stop the

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Speaker 1: bad people from breeding. It's really all over the place

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Speaker 1: and it's tangled together. In nineteen fourteen, Hirschfeld published The

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Speaker 1: Homosexuality of Men and Women, which was a huge compendium

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Speaker 1: of research. At the time. This was the largest collection

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Speaker 1: of available research on gender and sexuality, and really, in

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Speaker 1: terms of just the sheer amount of information it collected

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Speaker 1: into one work, it might still be. In this work,

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Speaker 1: Hirschfeld continued his argument that homosexuality was not a pathology.

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Speaker 1: He argued that the psychiatric and interpersonal issues that gay

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Speaker 1: people faced were not a product of their sexuality, but

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Speaker 1: of the immense stress of trying to keep it a

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Speaker 1: secret and of living under so much stigma and discrimination.

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Speaker 1: He described it as quote the eternal battle between willing

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Speaker 1: spirit and weak flesh. That the perpetual fear of being discovered,

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Speaker 1: of blackmail, arrest, short sentences, loss of social status and

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Speaker 1: respect from family and friends greatly affects one's disposition, must

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Speaker 1: surely be nerve racking and could bring on a nervous breakdown, depression,

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Speaker 1: and thoughts of suicide. He also concluded that the reason

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Speaker 1: that homosexuality was so connected with deviance and medical literature

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Speaker 1: was that healthy and generally well adjusted homosexuals were able

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Speaker 1: to keep their sexual orientation a secret from their doctors.

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Speaker 1: So doctors only encountered homosexuals that they knew about when

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Speaker 1: there was some kind of physical or psychological problem going on,

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Speaker 1: or when they had been contacted by police to examine

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Speaker 1: someone who had been arrested for a crime. World War

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Speaker 1: One also began in nineteen fourteen, and much of the

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Speaker 1: work of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee turned to focus on

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Speaker 1: the war, like delivering care packages to troops. Hirschfeld was

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Speaker 1: called on to be an expert witness when servicemen were

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Speaker 1: suspected of homosexuality or cross dressing, but otherwise the World

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Speaker 1: War One years were something of a pause, and so

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Speaker 1: while they pause, we are going to pause and have

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a sponsor break. The period between

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Speaker 1: the end of World War One and the rise of

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Speaker 1: the Nazi Party in Germany is known as the Weimar Republic,

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Speaker 1: and the field of sexual science flourished in both Germany

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Speaker 1: and Austria during these years. It was a turbulent time,

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Speaker 1: but also one of some social progress and a whole

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Speaker 1: sexual revolution. Lots of other groups formed to advocate for

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Speaker 1: the legalization of homosexuality and for rights and protections for

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Speaker 1: gay people. In nineteen nineteen, using his own money, Magnus

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Speaker 1: Hirschfeld established the Institute for Sexual Science, also called the

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Speaker 1: Institute for Sexology. Initially, the institute was dedicated to mainly

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Speaker 1: scientific research and training related to sexuality and gender, but

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Speaker 1: it soon expanded to include marriage counseling, counseling related to

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Speaker 1: sexual identity and orientation, a medical facility, and a massive

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Speaker 1: library on gender and sexuality. When we say that it

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Speaker 1: is massive, it was incredibly huge. It encompassed basically everything

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Speaker 1: that was known about gender and sexuality in the early

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Speaker 1: twentieth century, including tens of thousands of books, original photographs,

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Speaker 1: and letters, and all of Hirschfeld's extensive collection of primary

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Speaker 1: data from all of the studies that he had been doing.

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Speaker 1: The Institute saw four thousand patients in its first year alone.

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Speaker 1: The Scientific Humanitarian Committee was folded into the Institute as

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Speaker 1: its Sex education division. The institute's research continued on the

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Speaker 1: same tack that Hirschfeld had been pursuing earlier, in looking

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Speaker 1: for some kind of evidence that homosexuality was inborn and

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Speaker 1: had a biological basis. A lot of the ways that

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Speaker 1: we might do this today, like brain scans and hormone study,

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00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:04,520
Speaker 1: didn't exist yet, so he was looking at people's observable traits,

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Speaker 1: such as in four hundred sixty three homosexual men, one

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Speaker 1: hundred twenty eight had undeveloped Adams apples, two hundred nineteen

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00:21:13,080 --> 00:21:16,600
Speaker 1: had poorly developed ones, and only one hundred sixteen had

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Speaker 1: quote unquote normal ones. Or in five hundred homosexual men,

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Speaker 1: most had less to no body hair or very fine

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Speaker 1: body hair or in gay men, the width of the

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Speaker 1: hips tended to be about the same as the width

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Speaker 1: of the shoulders, whereas non gay men generally had broader

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Speaker 1: shoulders than their hips. And basically he was trying to

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Speaker 1: figure out what the norm was and figure out if

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Speaker 1: homosexuals deviated from that norm, and looking at just about

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Speaker 1: every physical trait you could think of to make these comparisons.

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Speaker 1: He also supported the work of Austrian researcher Eugen Steinach, who,

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Speaker 1: along with other research was building off the discovery of

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Speaker 1: sex hormones with the idea of transplanting gonadal tissue for

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Speaker 1: one person to another. This unfortunately did not work, and

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Speaker 1: in some cases it caused serious problems when the transplanted

355
00:22:06,920 --> 00:22:10,639
Speaker 1: tissue became necrotic, but Sinak is viewed as one of

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Speaker 1: the early pioneers of indercronology. Also in nineteen nineteen, Hirscheld

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Speaker 1: participated in the creation of a film called Different from

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Speaker 1: the Others, which was the first film to call for

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Speaker 1: decriminalization of homosexuality. The film was almost immediately banned and

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Speaker 1: it was later burned by Nazis. Was probably while working

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Speaker 1: on this film that Hirschfeld met Karl Giza, which is

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Speaker 1: one of only a couple of long term relationships in

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Speaker 1: his life that we really know about. Hirschfeld was very

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Speaker 1: private about his personal life, and for a lot of

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Speaker 1: it he seems to have lived alone. That sets him

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Speaker 1: apart from Karl Heinrich Rix, who publicly talked about his

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Speaker 1: own homosexuality, while Hirschfeld never publicly discussed himself as a

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Speaker 1: gay man. Giza moved in with Hirschfeld in nineteen nineteen.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty eight, Hirschfeld co founded the World League

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Speaker 1: for Sexual Reform, which had existed in some form since

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six but wasn't formally chartered until two years later.

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Speaker 1: The World League hosted large conferences on the subject of

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Speaker 1: sexual reform, everything from women's rights to contraception to homosexual rights.

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Speaker 1: Throughout all of this, Hirschfield was still doing all this research,

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Speaker 1: and he was still advocating for the repeal of paragraph

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Speaker 1: one seventy five, and in late nineteen twenty nine it

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Speaker 1: looked like that was probably going to happen. A Penal

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Speaker 1: Code Reform Committee voted to remove the paragraph, with three exceptions.

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Speaker 1: One was if one party was under twenty one and

380
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Speaker 1: the other wasn't another was if one party quote used

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Speaker 1: a position of influence to pressure the other, and the

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Speaker 1: third was if it was a commercial relationship, in other words,

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Speaker 1: if it was sex work. Within the movement to abolish

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Speaker 1: paragraph one seventy five, this was really controversial to some.

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Speaker 1: It was a win, but the proposed change effectively raised

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Speaker 1: the age of consent for gay meen to twenty one,

387
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Speaker 1: which was higher than it was for anyone else. It

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Speaker 1: also made the punishments for homosexual acts that were still

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Speaker 1: illegal much harsher than they had been before, so in

390
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Speaker 1: the minds of others, it actually did more harm than good.

391
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Speaker 1: In spite of this vote, though a new penal code

392
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Speaker 1: did not go into effect, the revised code didn't make

393
00:24:21,520 --> 00:24:24,199
Speaker 1: it through the legislature before the rise of the Nazi Party.

394
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Speaker 1: In late nineteen thirty Mangus Hirschfeld left Germany on a

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Speaker 1: speaking and fundraising tour. He traveled all over the world.

396
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Speaker 1: Press in the US called him the Einstein of sex.

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Speaker 1: In Shanghai in nineteen thirty one, he met and began

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Speaker 1: a relationship with a man named Lee Chu Tong. Hirschfeld

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Speaker 1: and Carl Giza were still a couple as well at

400
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Speaker 1: this point. While in India, Hirschfeld started hearing rumors that

401
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Speaker 1: he was being targeted by the Nazis. He had also

402
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:55,680
Speaker 1: started to experience a range of health issues. He contracted

403
00:24:55,760 --> 00:24:58,320
Speaker 1: malaria while he was on his tour. He also had

404
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 1: diabetes and a nerve disorder in a series of heart attacks.

405
00:25:02,119 --> 00:25:04,800
Speaker 1: The stress of not knowing for sure what was going

406
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:07,439
Speaker 1: on back home in Germany made all of this a

407
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 1: lot worse, and he never went back to Germany after

408
00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:13,800
Speaker 1: starting that tour in nineteen thirty On May sixth, nineteen

409
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Speaker 1: thirty three, Nazis destroyed the Institute of Sexual Science. Copies

410
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Speaker 1: of a lot of Hirschfeld's published papers and books still exist,

411
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Speaker 1: but most of his primary data was destroyed in this attack.

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Speaker 1: On May tenth, material taken from the institute was burned

413
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Speaker 1: in Opera Square, along with other books that were declared

414
00:25:32,840 --> 00:25:37,040
Speaker 1: to be anti German. Hirschfeld also became a part of

415
00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:40,879
Speaker 1: Nazi propaganda as an example of from the Nazi perspective,

416
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:45,280
Speaker 1: an evil degenerate Jew. The distraction of the Institute of

417
00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 1: Sexual Science and this ongoing persecution by the Nazis led

418
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:51,720
Speaker 1: Hirschfeld to start considering how he should think about his

419
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:55,719
Speaker 1: own identity. He had been the target of anti Semitism

420
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Speaker 1: for his entire career, including being beaten so badly an

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Speaker 1: anti Semitic attack in nineteen twenty that he was reported

422
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Speaker 1: to have been killed. This was particularly disturbing to him

423
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Speaker 1: because it was happening in spite of the fact that

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Speaker 1: he hadn't been an observant Jew since he was a child.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty three, he wrote, quote, the question where

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Speaker 1: do you belong? What are you? Really? Tortures me. If

427
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:23,600
Speaker 1: I frame the question as are you a German, a Jew,

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00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:27,520
Speaker 1: or a world citizen? Then my answer as always world

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00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:31,960
Speaker 1: citizen or all three. On November fourteenth, nineteen thirty three,

430
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 1: everything from the institute that hadn't been destroyed was sold

431
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:40,159
Speaker 1: at auction. Herscheld wrote quote, today November fourteenth, it has

432
00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,160
Speaker 1: been three years since I left Berlin and never returned.

433
00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:46,800
Speaker 1: Today in my former home begins the auction of my

434
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:51,560
Speaker 1: remaining books, materials, furniture. The last act for now of

435
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:57,000
Speaker 1: a fateful tragedy that comprises a terrible psychological martyrdom. Everyone

436
00:26:57,119 --> 00:27:00,200
Speaker 1: turned out of the house, even my sisters. As a

437
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:04,080
Speaker 1: bar association took possession of the house. I was completely

438
00:27:04,119 --> 00:27:07,800
Speaker 1: stripped of all my rights persecuted, a bounty put on

439
00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:12,200
Speaker 1: my head and insulted. Hirschfeld was able to buy back

440
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:14,760
Speaker 1: a few things from the institute, and with that he

441
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 1: hoped to start a new French institute of sexual science.

442
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty three. Carl Guiso was supposed to be

443
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 1: part of this new institute, but he was arrested in

444
00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:28,760
Speaker 1: a bathhouse and deported from France. The French institute soon closed.

445
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:31,919
Speaker 1: Toward the very end of his life, Hirschfeld wrote a

446
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:35,440
Speaker 1: study of racism, which he had started on after leaving Germany.

447
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:39,280
Speaker 1: It was first published as an English translation in nineteen

448
00:27:39,320 --> 00:27:42,200
Speaker 1: thirty eight, and it was a response to Nazi ideology.

449
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 1: Hirschfeld also sent a copy to a friend of his

450
00:27:45,520 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: who had become a strong supporter of the Nazis, in

451
00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 1: the hope that his work would change this person's mind.

452
00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 1: Mangus Hirschfeld died on his sixty seventh birthday, May fourteenth,

453
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, in Niice, France. At the time, Carl

454
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: Giso was in Vienna and Lishutong was studying in Zurich.

455
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 1: Hirschfeld left his remaining work to these two men, but

456
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:10,679
Speaker 1: Giza wasn't able to collect his inheritance, because doing so

457
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:13,360
Speaker 1: would have required him to go to the German embassy,

458
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 1: which for obvious reasons, he could not do. He took

459
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:20,160
Speaker 1: his own life in nineteen thirty eight. Lischu Tong lived

460
00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:22,480
Speaker 1: until nineteen ninety three, and he kept up with the

461
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:24,879
Speaker 1: materials that Hirschfeld had left him for the rest of

462
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:27,639
Speaker 1: his life, although some of these belongings were found in

463
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:31,240
Speaker 1: a trash heap after his death. A number of materials

464
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:33,800
Speaker 1: he had kept were handed over to the Magnus Hirschfeld

465
00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 1: Society in two thousand and three. Although some of Hirschfeld's

466
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:40,880
Speaker 1: family members and colleagues at the Institute of Sexual Science

467
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:43,880
Speaker 1: were able to get out of Germany, others did not

468
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:48,160
Speaker 1: survive the Holocaust. Even after his death, the Nazi Party

469
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 1: continued using Magnus Hirschfeld in anti Semitic and anti homosexual propaganda.

470
00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:56,040
Speaker 1: There was a bust of him placed in the Museum

471
00:28:56,040 --> 00:28:59,560
Speaker 1: of the Revolution in Nuremberg with a really disparaging sign,

472
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:03,400
Speaker 1: and his head was carried through the streets in effigy

473
00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:07,600
Speaker 1: during rallies. When Hirschfeld was making his arguments that homosexuality

474
00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: was inborn and unchangeable, it was controversial. He hoped that

475
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: proving that people were born gay or lesbian would end

476
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:17,800
Speaker 1: stigma in persecution. But to some the idea of being

477
00:29:17,840 --> 00:29:21,720
Speaker 1: born this way was just too restrictive, and others feared

478
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:25,520
Speaker 1: that proving that homosexuality was inborn and finding physical markers

479
00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 1: that correlated to it would just lead to more persecution.

480
00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:34,000
Speaker 1: This fear was, and frankly continues to be absolutely justified.

481
00:29:34,600 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 1: Not long after Magnus Hirschfeld's death, on June twenty eighth,

482
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, the Nazi Party expanded paragraph one seventy five.

483
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:46,880
Speaker 1: It broadened the definition of criminally indecent activities between men

484
00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:50,600
Speaker 1: to include anything that could be interpreted as homosexual in

485
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 1: any way. Later on, German courts upheld the idea that

486
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:58,680
Speaker 1: this applied to even thinking about it. SS Chief Heinrich

487
00:29:58,720 --> 00:30:02,480
Speaker 1: Himmler established the Right Central Office for Combating Abortion and

488
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:07,240
Speaker 1: Homosexuality on October twenty sixth, nineteen thirty six, and its

489
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 1: officers had almost unlimited power to arrest anyone considered to

490
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:15,440
Speaker 1: be in violation of the law and held without trial indefinitely.

491
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:18,760
Speaker 1: Roughly one hundred thousand gay men were arrested for their

492
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:23,200
Speaker 1: sexual orientation in Germany. In German occupied territories. Between nineteen

493
00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 1: thirty three and nineteen forty five, about fifty thousand men

494
00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:30,280
Speaker 1: were imprisoned, and somewhere between five thousand and fifteen thousand

495
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:34,560
Speaker 1: were sent to concentration camps. Lesbians were not targeted nearly

496
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:36,680
Speaker 1: as much because they were not considered to be as

497
00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 1: much of a threat to the idea of Aryan purity.

498
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 1: The Nazi Party also put an end to the field

499
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:45,680
Speaker 1: of sex research that had been flourishing in Germany and

500
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:49,760
Speaker 1: Austria during the Weimar era. Paragraph one seventy five was

501
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:53,200
Speaker 1: removed from the Penal Code in East Germany in nineteen fifty,

502
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 1: but it remained part of the code in West Germany

503
00:30:56,240 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 1: until after German reunification was formally removed in nineteen ninety four.

504
00:31:02,240 --> 00:31:05,720
Speaker 1: In the two thousands, the German parliament annulled the convictions

505
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:08,640
Speaker 1: of gay men who had been convicted under Nazi rule,

506
00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:12,360
Speaker 1: and then just very recently, in twenty seventeen, Germany announced

507
00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 1: that roughly fifty thousand other men would be pardoned, including

508
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: men who were convicted after the end of World War Two.

509
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 1: After World War Two, Magnus Hirschfeld really fell into almost

510
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 1: total obscurity. He was remembered only by people who had

511
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 1: personally known and worked with him, but his work was

512
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:34,080
Speaker 1: rediscovered during the nineteen eighties. The Magnus Hirschfeld Federal Foundation

513
00:31:34,360 --> 00:31:37,760
Speaker 1: was founded in twenty eleven, devoted to research and advocacy

514
00:31:37,800 --> 00:31:42,200
Speaker 1: on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Today,

515
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:44,760
Speaker 1: a lot of Hirschfeld's surviving research and notes are in

516
00:31:44,800 --> 00:31:48,440
Speaker 1: the Kinsey Institute for Research and Sex, Gender and Reproduction.

517
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:52,280
Speaker 1: I feel like the idea that he based so much

518
00:31:52,280 --> 00:31:56,480
Speaker 1: of his work on, that sexual orientation is inborn, has

519
00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:00,760
Speaker 1: come and gone out of favor in the years since then.

520
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 1: Like it was a controversial idea when he was advocating

521
00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:05,480
Speaker 1: for it. I know, when I was growing up in

522
00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties and nineties, it was almost universally accepted

523
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:16,040
Speaker 1: as common knowledge within the community. And now I feel

524
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:17,840
Speaker 1: like it's evolved a little bit to be that, Like

525
00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 1: it's a person can't really consciously change their sexual orientation,

526
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:26,280
Speaker 1: but it is possible for people to understand their identity

527
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:30,920
Speaker 1: differently in different parts of their life. Yeah, it's a

528
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:33,479
Speaker 1: little more nuanced, it is, and it can I mean,

529
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:38,040
Speaker 1: the whole idea of identity and gender continues to evolve.

530
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:41,480
Speaker 1: So yeah, where we're at now is probably not the

531
00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 1: place we will be even in a year or two,

532
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 1: and certainly not in another five to ten. So it

533
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:51,080
Speaker 1: is pretty fascinating that this was going on way before.

534
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 1: We often think of these concepts as having been developed. Yeah, well,

535
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:57,320
Speaker 1: like I know a lot of folks think of and

536
00:32:57,360 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 1: we've talked about this on the show before, like a

537
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:02,040
Speaker 1: lot of people will sort of imagine the gay rights

538
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:04,720
Speaker 1: movement starting with the Stonewall Riots, and really there was

539
00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:07,720
Speaker 1: a lot going on way before that, and in the

540
00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: case of in Germany, way way way before that. Do

541
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:14,560
Speaker 1: you have some listener mail, I do it the correction.

542
00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:17,760
Speaker 1: It is from Alicia, and Alicia said, I just listened

543
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 1: to your Ambos Noogles episode, which was fantastic. One glaring

544
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:28,560
Speaker 1: air was Glasden. It is Gadsden Purchase named after James Gadsden.

545
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:31,400
Speaker 1: I love listening to your shows about Mexican, American and

546
00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 1: Southwest related history. My father's paternal side of the family

547
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:37,280
Speaker 1: has been in Arizona since the days of the Spanish

548
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: Presidio and Tucson. His mother's family fled Mexico during the

549
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 1: Revolution when my grandmother was a baby, so We've been

550
00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:48,040
Speaker 1: here under many flags. I discovered many historical events that

551
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:50,880
Speaker 1: were intertwined with our history. My dad loved telling these

552
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:54,560
Speaker 1: family stories, and I loved listening. With his recent passing,

553
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:57,880
Speaker 1: these stories have become that much more important to me.

554
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:00,360
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your shows that bring to

555
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 1: life these lesser known events. Keep up the great work, Alisha.

556
00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 1: Thank you Alicia for pointing that out. I made a

557
00:34:07,600 --> 00:34:10,480
Speaker 1: typo that not only did I make the typo in

558
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:13,319
Speaker 1: the script and we said it wrong like that same

559
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:16,120
Speaker 1: typo we then picked up and like put other places

560
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:17,640
Speaker 1: and had to fix it later. And it was one

561
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:22,920
Speaker 1: hundred percent my fumble fingers. Also, gadsden is a weirdly

562
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:27,839
Speaker 1: difficult word to say. I have realized I think more

563
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:31,800
Speaker 1: than likely my typo just came because my brain was like, oh,

564
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:37,080
Speaker 1: that seems way too tricky, but glass didn't seems way

565
00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:38,959
Speaker 1: more like what it should be as a word, which

566
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,800
Speaker 1: was not correct, So thank you. A couple other people

567
00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:44,399
Speaker 1: sent us various notes and tweets about that as well,

568
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:48,160
Speaker 1: so I apologize for that error. If you would like

569
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:50,279
Speaker 1: to send us a note about this or any other

570
00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:54,319
Speaker 1: podcast where History podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com, we are

571
00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:56,719
Speaker 1: all over social media at missed in History. That's where

572
00:34:56,760 --> 00:34:58,920
Speaker 1: you'll find our Facebook and our Twitter, and our pinterests

573
00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:01,839
Speaker 1: and our Instagram. You can come to our website, which

574
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:04,840
Speaker 1: is Missed Inhistory dot com, where you can find the

575
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 1: show notes on all the episodes that Holly and I

576
00:35:06,760 --> 00:35:09,799
Speaker 1: have worked on together, and a searchable archive of every

577
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:13,600
Speaker 1: episode before. And you can subscribe to our show on

578
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:17,080
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts and Google podcasts and wherever else you'd like

579
00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: to get your podcasts. For more on this and thousands

580
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:32,240
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit Houstuffworks dot com