Communist sexologist and secretary of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee who won the KPD over to the repeal of Paragraph 175
He is credited with persuading the KPD to adopt the committee’s goal and push it through the Reichstag penal code committee in 1929.
A communist sexologist from Wedding, Berlin. Active in the Red Front Fighters’ League and the KPD’s secret intelligence service, he became secretary of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in 1926 and is credited with persuading the KPD in 1929 to adopt the committee’s goal of repealing Paragraph 175 and push it through the Reichstag penal code committee. The same year he led the opponents who forced Hirschfeld to resign, and left the committee. He died of pneumonia in February 1933.
Activities and affiliations
-
1926–1929
Social movements and organizing
-
Communist Party of Germany (KPD)Main
Social movements and organizing -
Red Front Fighters' League (RFB)
Social movements and organizing
Related historical events
Committee secretary and communist
Born in Wedding, Berlin, he grew up in Munich and trained in commerce. He joined the Communist Party of Germany and was also active in the Red Front Fighters’ League and the party’s secret intelligence service, the AM-Apparat. At 22 he tried to found a Munich branch of the Bund für Menschenrecht but was blocked by the Bavarian authorities; Kurt Hiller, whom he met there, found him a post as assistant secretary of Hirschfeld’s Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, and he became its secretary in 1926. He co-wrote the counter-draft to the government’s 1927 sexual criminal law bill, and in 1929 is credited with persuading the KPD to make the committee’s goal its own and push it through the Reichstag penal code committee. That November he led the opponents who forced Hirschfeld to resign, and in December he left the committee to found an Archive for Sexual Science with Max Hodann and others. He nonetheless wrote books with Hirschfeld on contraception and aphrodisiacs in 1929–1930, edited a volume on male prostitution (1929) and published Kabale und Liebe (1931). He died of neglected pneumonia in a Berlin-Lichterfelde hospital in February 1933.