How Jewish were the Staff at Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Research?

Magnus Hirschfeld, his crusade to legalize as well as promote male and female homosexuality and the institute that he set up to push this agenda (the ‘Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft’ which translates as the ‘Institute for Sexual Research’) is now both extremely famous but also often misrepresented.

The misrepresentation of Hirschfeld’s institute has to do with the claim – which has as its origin Ben Shapiro’s patsy Matt Walsh – that it was a ‘Nazi institution’ and ‘associated with the NSDAP’ which Walsh presumably made to allow him to avoid dealing with the fact that the Institute was both overwhelmingly jewish and communist in both leadership and staff. (1)

Naturally Walsh also forgot to mention that Hirschfeld’s institute was destroyed by the Third Reich in early May 1933 as a priority target due to the fact it was both the centre of the homosexual movement in Germany at the time (and to an extent all of Europe) but was also teeming with jews who were also often communists and/or social democrats. (2) The result of this led to the famous images of ‘book burning’ at Berlin’s Opernplatz taken on 10^th May 1933 that are frequently trumpeted as demonstrating ‘Nazi anti-intellectualism’ and ‘how the Nazis hated learning’, but in fact show the SA and National Socialist students burning the contents (books, exhibits and often pornographic photographs) of the library of Hirschfeld’s Institute and its associated free-to-the-public ‘Museum of Sex’. (3)

In so doing the nascent Third Reich fulfilled a promise to Hirschfeld made by Alfred Rosenberg in 1930 following Hirschfeld’s success in getting a German parliamentary committee to recommend striking down Paragraph 175 – the German law criminalizing homosexuality – and legalizing homosexuality in German.

Rosenberg declared in the ‘Völkischer Beobachter’ that:

‘We congratulate, Mr. Hirschfeld, on the victory in committee. But don’t think we Germans will allow these laws to stand for a single day after we have come to power. Among the many evil instincts that characterize the Jewish race, one that is especially pernicious has to do with sexual relationships. The Jews are forever trying to propagandize sexual relations between siblings, men and animals, and men and men. We National Socialists will soon unmask and condemn them by law. These efforts are nothing but vulgar, perverted crimes and we will punish them by banishment or hanging.’ (4)

But how jewish were the staff at Hirschfeld’s Institute in actuality?

Happily, Ralf Dose has provided a list of known employees of the Institute, which is as follows (alphabetically by surname): (5)

Magnus Hirschfeld – Founder

Felix Abraham – Psychiatrist

August Bessunger – Radiologist, Urologist

Karl Giese – Archivist also Hirschfeld’s sexual partner along with his other ‘boyfriend’ Li Shiu Tong.

Berndt Goetz – Psychiatrist

Hans Graaz – Naturopath, Medical Doctor

Friedrich Hauptstein – Administrative Director

Kurt Hiller – Lawyer

Max Hodann – Sex Educator

Hans Wilhelm Carl Friedenthal – Anthropologist

Johannes ‘Hans’ Kreiselmaier – Gynecologist

Arthur Kronfeld – Psychiatrist

Ludwig Levy-Lenz – Gynecologist

Eugen Littaur – Otolaryngologist

Franz Prange – Endocrinologist

Ferdinand von Reitzenstein – Ethnologist

Bernard Schapiro – Dermatologist, Andrologist, Deputy Director of the Institute

Arthur Weil – Neuroendocrinologist, Neuropathologist

Friedrich Wertheim – Dermatologist

Of these the following 19 individuals the following were jewish:

Magnus Hirschfeld – Founder

Felix Abraham – Psychiatrist (6)

Berndt Goetz – Psychiatrist (7)

Kurt Hiller – Lawyer (8)

Max Hodann – Sex Educator (9)

Hans Wilhelm Carl Friedenthal – Anthropologist (10)

Arthur Kronfeld – Psychiatrist (11)

Ludwig Levy-Lenz – Gynecologist (12)

Bernard Schapiro – Dermatologist, Andrologist, Deputy Director of the Institute (13)

Arthur Weil – Neuroendocrinologist, Neuropathologist (14)

Friedrich Wertheim – Dermatologist (15)

From this we can see that 11 (57.9 percent) of the 19 main players and employees at Hirschfeld’s institute were jewish, which is 7.9 percent greater than the number of doctors in Berlin during the Weimar Republic who were jewish which was 50 percent (16) despite jewish writers trying to poohpooh the idea in the 1930s. (17)

Oh, and did I forget to mention?

Jews were only 1 percent of the population. (18)

So, jews were fifty times overrepresented among the doctors in Berlin from circa 1919 to 1933, while jews were nearly fifty-eight times overrepresented among the personnel of Hirschfeld’s institute.

Thus we can see that Matt Walsh’s claim that Hirschfeld’s institute was in some way associated with National Socialism or the NSDAP is completely and utterly bogus as it was largely staffed by jews and had direct associations with both the Socialist Party of Germany (SPD) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

References

(1) For example, see: Ralf Dose, 2014, ‘Magnus Hirschfeld and the Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement’, 1st Edition, Monthly Review Press: New York, p. 7; Sean McMeekin, 2003, ‘The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Munzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West’, 1^st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, pp. 204-205, 347 n.2

(2) For example, see: Richard Plant, 1986, ‘The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals’, 1^st Edition, Henry Holt: New York, pp. 45-49

(3) I have told the story of these events in my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/what-books-did-the-nazis-burn

(4) Quoted in Plant, Op. Cit., p. 49

(5) Compiled from Dose, Op. Cit., pp. 53-55; checked against https://www.magnus-hirschfeld.de/institute-for-sexual-science-1919-1933/personnel/forensic-experts/

(6) https://zagria.blogspot.com/2022/09/felix-abraham-1901-1937-doctor.html; https://www.queer.de/bild-des-tages.php?einzel=1693

(7) https://www.magnus-hirschfeld.de/institute-for-sexual-science-1919-1933/personnel/forensic-experts/ and any missing individuals added

(8) https://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/klmno/Kurt%20Hiller.html; https://community-languages.org.uk/?p=248

(9) https://www.nli.org.il/en/a-topic/987007262624805171

(10) https://www.geni.com/people/Dr-Hans-Friedenthal/6000000036919551839

(11) https://www.magnus-hirschfeld.de/institute-for-sexual-science-1919-1933/personnel/dr-med-et-phil-arthur-kronfeld/

(12) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ludwig-Levy-Lenz

(13) https://www.hirschfeld.in-berlin.de/institut/en/ifsframe.html?personen/pers_06.html

(14) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388110442_Jewish_Transgender_Pioneers_-_Hirschfeld_Kronfeld_Abraham_Hiller_Levy-Lenz_Weil_and_Schapiro

(15) https://www.encyclopedia.com/media/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/wertham-fredric-1895-1981

(16) Catrine Clay, Michael Leapman, 1995, ‘Master Race: The Lebensborn Experiment in Nazi Germany’, 1st Edition, BCA: London, p. 46

(17) For example: Sidney Osborne, 1939, ‘Germany and Her Jews’, 1st Edition, Soncino Press: London, p. 21

(18) Clay, Leapman, Op. Cit., p. 46