Remember Our History

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld was a pioneer in the field of sex orientation and gender identity. Hirschfeld was the first to popularize some of the most common terms used to describe the trans experience: Transvestite (Transvestitismus, 1910), Transgender (Transgesticismus, 1918) and Transsexual (Transsexualismus, 1923). Through his Institute of Sexology, Hirschfeld oversaw the first male-to-female sex reassignment surgery in 1920.

On May 6th, 1933 the Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science was raided and destroyed by Nazis. Writings on sexology were burnt, clients and sexologists were persecuted. Hirschfeld, in exile, died two years later.

On November 11, 1933, the Hamburg City Administration asked the Head of Police to “pay special attention to transvestites” and to “deliver them to the concentration camps.” In 1938 the Institute of Forensic Medicine recommended that the “phenomena of transvestism” be “exterminated from public life.” The author of these recommendations stated, “draconian measures by the government against stubborn and hard-headed transvestites are … adequate.” In Nazi Death Camps, interned homosexuals and transgendes were forced to wear upside-down pink triangles. On the 24th anniversary of the burning of the Hirschfeld’s Institute’s library, the post-Hitler German government upheld Nazi laws used to oppress the homosexual and transgender community stating that “homosexual acts unquestionably offend the moral feelings of the German people.”