Berlin Names Street After Gay Rights Activist
Magnus Hirschfeld, the "Einstein of Sex"
In early May 1933, the "Einstein of Sex"'s Institute for Sexual Research was raided by the Nazi regime. 75 years later, on the 7th of May 2008, a street on the banks of the river Spree was renamed after Magnus Hirschfeld, the prominent sex-researcher and gay-rights activist.
Magnus Hirschfeld was a Jewish homosexual doctor who dedicated his life to the study of homosexuality and to the campaigning of equal rights. Through the Scientific Humanitarian Committee which he founded in 1897, Hirschfeld aimed at procuring the abolition of paragraph 175 in the German penal code which stated that homosexuality was a crime.
In 1919, the sexologist founded the Institute for Sexual Research (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) in Berlin which housed an extensive library specialised in erotic science and sexual research. Hirschfeld is responsible for coining the term "transexual" when he studied the natural realm which lay between men and women.
In May 1933 his institute was ransacked by the Nazis who burnt his collection of books and records on sexology. Fortunately, Hirschfeld was in France at the time of the raid, and wisely decided to stay there, where he died two years later.
The Magnus-Hirschfeld-Ufer is near the researchers former institute, north of Tiergarten and closeby to the Lutherbrücke (S-bahn station Bellevue). A bronze bust of the scientist is due to be put around that area soon.
