The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) was founded in Berlin in 1919 by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld—an openly gay and Jewish physician. His vision was to create an academic institution that focused on nonconforming sexualities and genders, not as a deviation but as a natural variation of human identity.

The Institute was expansive in it’s offerings. At a time when gender and sexuality were aggressively tethered by moral and legal constraints, the Institute carved out a space for research, community, and resistance. It provided gender-affirming treatments, STI testing, and contraceptive advice. It was a site of legal advocacy—working to decriminalize homosexuality and offering documentation and support for gender transition. It was also a site of preservation—housing a vast library filled with rare books, diagrams, letters, medical studies, and queer histories.

The visibility of the institute was both its strength and its vulnerability. Its existence was precariously balanced on the precipice of an encroaching Third Reich. In 1933, with the rise of the Nazi regime, the Institute was destroyed and its archives ransacked and burned.

The violent dismantling of the institute wasn’t just a loss of physical materials, but a calculated erasure— a history, painstakingly documented, turned to ashes. The often circulated image of Nazis burning books in Berlin is, in fact, a photo of the Institute’s library going up in flames.

Hirschfeld believed that “Love is as varied as people are.” The Institute embodied that belief—a space that refused to pathologize nonconformity in gender and sexuality, instead embracing the experiences of trans and homosexual individuals as part of the natural world. This belief, to this day, stands in stark contrast to the dictates of fascism. Authoritarian structures reliably begin by criminalizing and persecuting those who refuse to conform. Yet, as history—and this exhibition—remind us, these communities endure long after those regimes fall.

Endnotes

1. Schillace, Brandy. “The World’s First Trans Clinic.” Scientific American 325, no. 2
   (August 2021): 74.