Magnus Hirschfield

Born in Kolberg, Prussia (today Kołobrzeg, Poland), Magnus Hirschfeld received his medical degree in that city in 1892. After moving to Berlin, Hirschfeld helped form the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in 1897, created to abolish a provision in the German Imperial Penal Code that criminalized sex between men. Over the following decades, Hirschfeld published extensively on the science of sexuality; his work for the civil rights of gay and transgender people, social and legal equality of all genders, contraceptive health care, and sex education was pathbreaking and reflected a growing cosmopolitan and feminist humanism in Germany. The Institute for Sexual Science, founded by Hirschfeld in 1919, was burned to the ground, along with its irreplaceable collection of research on sexuality, by Nazi attackers in 1933.