In Celebration of Pride Month
You Will Never Guess Where The First Institute of Sexology Was Founded
Spoiler: There are Nazis in this story, and no, it doesn't end well
On May 6, 1933, rowdy fascist students ransacked the Institute for Sexual Research [Institut für Sexualwissenschaft] in Berlin. Looters raided the entire contents of the institute's library and burned its books in a public conflagration at Berlin's opera square.
Into the fire, the students threw the bust of Magnus Hirschfeld — the founder of The Institute for Sexual Research.
Luckily, the real Hirschfeld was still on tour during the lootings. He watched the demolition on newsreels from the safety of a Paris theater.
But as Hirshfeld's life work went up in flames, the end had already begun. In March of 1933, Dachau, the first concentration camp, opened to 200 prisoners. Contrary to popular belief, those first prisoners were not Jews. They were opponents of the Nazi regime — German Communists, Social Democrats, and trade unionists.
The second round of prisoners included very few Jews too. Those prisoners were the LBGTQ community. In 1935, 10–15,000 gay men were deported to concentration camps. They were forced to wear a pink triangle, and…
