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On the rainy night of May 10, 1933, a chaotic procession of Nazi students, SA stormtroopers, and SS guards marched into the Opernplatz in Berlin. Illuminated by floodlights and accompanied by brass bands playing patriotic anthems, they gathered around a massive pyre. Into the flames, they hurled some 20,000 books and manuscripts, designated as undeutsch (un-German). While works by Marx, Freud, and Remarque were consumed, a specific fury was directed at the archives looted four days earlier from a grand villa in the Tiergarten district: the library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research).
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This article examines the work of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institute for Sexual Science as the most radical embodiment of Weimar Germany’s experiment with social modernity. It argues that Hirschfeld’s campaign for the rights of sexual minorities represented a fundamental challenge to traditional conceptions of citizenship, seeking to expand its definition beyond the political to encompass what this article terms “sexual citizenship.” Through analysis of Hirschfeld’s scientific theories, his political activism, and the institutional history of his Institute, this article demonstrates how the Weimar period created an unprecedented, though ultimately fragile, space for reimagining gender and sexuality. The Institute…