Institute for Sexual Science
성과학 연구소
The world’s first institute of sexology, founded in Berlin-Tiergarten by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1919. It served as a counselling and treatment centre for sexual problems, an archive and museum, and the organising hub of the sexual reform movement. Nazi students and stormtroopers looted it on 6 May 1933 and burned its library.
In depth
Building on a foundation he set up in 1918, Hirschfeld opened it on 6 July 1919 with the dermatologist Friedrich Wertheim and the neurologist Arthur Kronfeld. Though meant as a research institution, it was in practice an outpatient centre for counselling, examination, expert opinion and treatment of sexual problems, a museum and archive of sexological material, and a place for training doctors and lecturing the public. It first dealt mainly with venereal disease among soldiers returning from the First World War, and from the mid-1920s with public education such as question evenings at which anonymous questions were answered. One of the few places to deal with intersex and transgender people, it issued transvestite certificates and medical attestations for changes of first name, and took part in Lili Elbe’s gender-affirming surgery in 1930. Max Hodann ran its sexual counselling service, Karl Giese its archive, and the World League for Sexual Reform had its central office there. The eugenics and biologism of the age also marked its work. From the mid-1920s the press made it a target, and on 6 May 1933 students and then the SA looted it, carrying off its library, research material and a bust of Hirschfeld. More than 10,000 of its books burned in the book burning on Berlin’s Opernplatz on 10 May, and what remained was lost to auction and the Battle of Berlin.