The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft () was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The name is variously translated as Institute for Sexual Research, Institute of Sexology, Institute for Sexology, or Institute for the Science of Sexuality. The Institute was a non-profit foundation situated in Tiergarten, Berlin. It was the first sexology research center in the world.
The Institute was headed by Magnus Hirschfeld, who since 1897 had run the world's first homosexual organization Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee), which campaigned on progressive and rational grounds for LGBT rights and tolerance at the start of the first homosexual movement that would flourish in interwar Weimar culture. The Committee published the long-running journal Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen. Alt URL Hirschfeld built a unique library at the institute on gender, same-sex love and eroticism.
The institute's founding purpose was to create "scientific research on the entirety of sexual life" and educate German society on its findings. It pioneered research and treatment for various matters regarding gender and sexuality, including gay, transgender, and intersex topics. In addition, it offered various other services to the general public: this included treatment for alcoholism, gynecological examinations, marital and sex counseling, treatment for venereal diseases, and access to contraceptive treatment. It offered education on many of these matters to both health professionals and laypersons.
After the Nazis gained control of Germany in the 1930s, the institute and its libraries were destroyed as part of a Nazi government censorship program by youth brigades, who burned its books and documents in the street.
Origins and purpose
The Institute of Sex Research was founded by Magnus Hirschfeld and his collaborators Arthur Kronfeld, a once famous psychotherapist and later professor at the Charité, and Friedrich Wertheim, a dermatologist. Hirschfeld gave a speech on 1 July 1919, when the institute was inaugurated. It opened on 6 July 1919. The building, located in the Tiergarten district, was purchased by Hirschfeld from the government of the Free State of Prussia following World War I. A neighboring building was purchased in 1921, adding more overall space to the institute.
As well as being a research library and housing a large archive, the institute also included medical, psychological, and ethnological divisions, and a marriage and sex counseling office. Other fixtures at the institute included a museum for sexual artifacts, medical exam rooms, and a lecture hall. The institute conducted around 18,000 consultations for 3,500 people in its first year. Clients often received advice for free. Poorer visitors also received medical treatment for free. According to Hirschfeld, about 1,250 lectures had been held in the first year.
In addition, the institute advocated sex education, contraception, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and women's emancipation. Inscribed on the building was the phrase per scientiam ad justitiam (translated as "through science to justice"). This was also the personal motto of Hirschfeld as well as the slogan of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee.
Organization The institute was financed by the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Foundation, a charity which itself was funded by private donations. Along with Magnus Hirschfeld, a number of others (including many professional specialists) worked on the staff of the institute at different points in time, including:
– psychiatrist August Bessunger – radiologist Karl Giese – archivist Berndt Götz – psychiatrist Hans Graaz – naturopath, medical doctor Friedrich Hauptstein – administrative director Kurt Hiller – lawyer Max Hodann – sex educator – anthropologist Hans Kreiselmaier – gynecologist Arthur Kronfeld – psychiatrist, psychologist
Ewald Lausch – medical assistant Ludwig Levy-Lenz – gynecologist Eugen Littaur – otolaryngologist Franz Prange – endocrinologist – ethnologist Adelheid Rennhack – housekeeper Arthur Röser – librarian Bernard Schapiro – dermatologist, andrologist Arthur Weil – neuroendocrinologist, neuropathologist Friedrich Wertheim – dermatologist
Some others worked for the institute in various domestic affairs. Some of the people who worked at the institute simultaneously lived there, including Hirschfeld and Giese. Affiliated groups held offices at the institute. This included the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, Helene Stöcker's , and the World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR). The WLSR has been described as the "international face" of the institute. In 1929 Hirschfeld presided over the third international congress of the WLSR at Wigmore Hall. During his address there, he stated that "A sexual impulse based on science is the only sound system of ethics."
Divisions for the institute included ones dedicated to sexual biology, pathology, sociology and ethnography. Plans were allotted for the institute to both research and practice medicine in equal measure, though by 1925 a lack of funding meant the institute had to cut its medical research. This was to include matters of sexuality, gender, venereal disease, and birth control.
Activity
Public education The institute aimed to educate both the general public and specialists on its topics of focus. It became a point of scientific and research interest for many scientists of sexuality, as well as intellectuals and reformers from all over the world. Visitors included René Crevel, Christopher Isherwood, Harry Benjamin, Édouard Bourdet, Margaret Sanger, Francis Turville-Petre, André Gide and Jawaharlal Nehru.
The institute also received visits from national governments; in 1923 the institute was for instance visited by Nikolai Semashko, Commissar for Health in the Soviet Union. This was followed by numerous visits and research trips by health officials, political, sexual and social reformers, and scientific researchers from the Soviet Union interested in the work of Hirschfeld. In June 1926 a delegation from the institute, led by Hirschfeld, reciprocated with a research visit to Moscow and Leningrad.
One particular fixture at the institute which aided its popularity was its museum of sexual subjects. This was built with both education and entertainment in mind. There were ethnographic displays about different sexual norms across different cultures internationally. It included exhibits about sexual fetishism and sadomasochism. A collection of phallic artifacts from around the world was also exhibited. Additionally, there were presentations regarding the diversity of human sexual orientation, particularly with regards to homosexuality. Upon visiting the institute, Dora Russell reflected that it was "where the results of researches into various sex problems and perversions could be seen in records and photographs."
The neighboring property purchased in 1922 by the institute had an opening ceremony on 5 March 1922, after which it became a place for the institute's staff to interact with the public in an educational capacity. Lectures and question-and-answer sessions were held there to inform laypersons on topics of sexuality. The public especially tended to ask questions regarding contraception.
Sexual and reproductive health One focus of the institute's research and services was sexual and reproductive health. A subdivision of the institute called the Eugenics Department for Mother and Child offered marital counseling services, and the Center of Sexual Counseling for Married Couples provided access to contraception. It was especially a goal of the institute to make contraceptive services accessible to the poor and working-class of Germany. This was despite a prohibition on advertising birth control in the Weimar Republic's constitution. Following looser regulation on advertising contraceptive methods, the institute published an educational pamphlet on the matter in 1928 which ultimately reached a distribution of about 100,000 copies by 1932. Hirschfeld and Hodann developed pioneering strategies for sex counseling services that would inspire later practices. The institute also offered general gynecology services and treatment for venereal diseases. Experimental treatments for impotence were also implemented.
Sexual intermediacy At the institute, Magnus Hirschfeld championed the doctrine of sexual intermediacy. This proposed form of classification said that every human trait existed on a scale from masculine to feminine. Masculine traits were characterized as dominant and active while feminine traits were passive and perceptive (an idea similar to those also commonly held by his contemporaries). The classification was further divided into the subgroups of sex organs, physical characteristics, sex drive or sexuality, and psychological characteristics. Hirschfeld's belief was that all human beings possess both masculine and feminine traits regardless of their sex. In fact, he believed that no one was fully masculine or fully feminine but rather a blend of the two. A man with a female sex drive, for example, would be homosexual, whereas someone with male sex organs and mostly female psychological characteristics would likely be transgender (see also the concepts of sexual inversion and eonism). Someone with exceptionally androgynous sex organs would be intersex. Hirschfeld originally used the term "sexual intermediaries" in the late nineteenth century to refer mostly to homosexual men and lesbians. However, this later expanded to include intersex people, cross-dressers, and transsexuals. His concept of broad sexual intermediacy among humans has been traced to roughly similar ideas held by Charles Darwin and Galen of Pergamon.
Transsexuality and transvestism
Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term transsexual in the 1923 essay Die Intersexuelle Konstitution. This identified the clinical category which his colleague Harry Benjamin would later develop in the United States; only about thirty years after its coining by Hirschfeld did the term enter wider use, with Benjamin's work. Hirschfeld also originally coined the term transvestite in 1910, and he sometimes used the term "extreme transvestites" or "total transvestites" to refer to transsexuals. Other descriptions "in the modern medical sense" Though Friedreich's paper is clearly alluded to in the text, the book mistakenly cites a 1931 paper by Felix Abraham that does not mention Friedreich's work. also appeared in earlier German medical literature, such as Johann Baptist Friedreich's 1829–1830 work.
Transgender people were on the staff of the institute as receptionists and maids, as well as being among the clients there. Various endocrinologic and surgical services were offered, including an early modern sex reassignment surgery in 1931. Hirschfeld originally advised against sexual reassignment surgeries, but came to support them as a means of preventing suicide among transsexual patients.
Ludwig Levy-Lenz, and surgeon Erwin Gohrbandt performed male-to-female surgery called Genitalumwandlung—literally, "transformation of genitals." This occurred in stages: castration, penectomy and vaginoplasty. (The institute treated only trans women at this time; female-to-male phalloplasty would not be practiced until the late 1940s.) Patients would also be prescribed feminizing hormone therapy, allowing them to grow natural breasts and softer features. Masculinizing hormone therapy was never available at the institute, as testosterone was only synthesised for the first time in 1935, after the institute closed.