1933-05-05

On this date in Berlin, the Nazi Youth of the Deutsche Studentenschaft made an organized attack on Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sex Research. The “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft” or Institute for Sexology was a private sexology research institute which included a research library and a large archive, and included a marriage and sex counseling office. In addition, the institute was a pioneer worldwide in the call for civil rights and social acceptance for Homosexual and Transgender people. A few days later the Institute’s library and archives were publicly hauled out and burned in the streets of the Opernplatz. Around 20,000 books and journals, and 5,000 images, were destroyed. Also seized were the Institute’s extensive lists of names and addresses of LGBT people. In the midst of the burning, Joseph Goebbels gave a political speech to a crowd of around 40,000 people.