Today the German government issued a postage stamp in honor of #MagnusHirschfeld. In 1897, Hirschfeld founded the first gay rights organization in the world in Germany. This year marks the 150th anniversary of Hirschfeld’s birth and 2019 will mark the centennial of the founding of his Institute of Sexual Research.
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#bisexual #bisexualpride #lesbian #lesbianrights #lesbianpride #trans #transgender #transrights #gay #gayrights #haveprideinhistory #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqi #lgbthistory #lgbtpride #lgbtrights #makinggayhistory #oralhistory #podcast #queer #queerhistory (at Germany)He was also Jewish. This is relevant and must be mentioned, because the Nazis conceived of homosexuality as a “Jewish invention” creates to destabilize white heterosexual society.
Please don’t erase Hirschfeld’s Jewishness.
He was also a vocal advocate for many other movements the Nazis condemned as “Jewish inventions”. He was also a feminist, campaigning for reproductive and political rights for women, and was one of the most prominent early researchers and advocates for transgender rights (albeit at the time under the label “transvestite”) and provided surgery, shelter, and employment to many vulnerable trans people. Whilst in exile in France, he also published a book on racism arguing that, rather than a drastic deviation from normalcy, the Nazis were just a more extreme version of prejudices ubiquitous in Europe and encouraged by the pseudoscientific race theory of the enlightenment.
As a queer Jewish feminist, it is no wonder that he has managed to simultaneously become iconic of Nazi anti-intellectualism (the most commonly used photo of a Nazi book burning is from the burning of Hirschfeld’s Institute für Sexualwissenschaft “institute for sex science” library) and be almost completely erased.
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