Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) 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.
Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
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. Hirschfeld built a unique library at the institute on gender, same-sex love and eroticism.
Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
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.
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