“if it were practical, we should certainly do well to eradicate the use of the word”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #quote
Figure timeline
Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician, sexologist, and LGBTQ advocate whose German citizenship was revoked in 1933 by the Nazi government due to his advocacy.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
science · German sexologist (1868–1935) · physician · psychologist · LGBTQ rights activist · writer · film director · author · screenwriter · sexologist · director · neurologist · also Magnus Hirschfeld, Th. Ramien, Hirschfeld
Born 14 May 1868 · Died 14 May 1935 · Q57592
44 published statements · 0 followers
See & hear
Photos & media
14 photos
Media from Wikimedia Commons, hotlinked at the source under its own licence — see each file for author and terms.
Live now
In the news
Pulling headlines from trusted outlets — this usually takes a few seconds
Checking the wires…
Feed scan
These are live links, not archived citations — they only join the timeline once a collect run verifies and archives them.
Live pulse
Recent highlights
Most recent outstanding titles, awards, and quotes
- Quote
- Quote
2026· 4 entries
“the average ethical and intellectual levels of the Egyptians was equal to that of the European nations”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #quote
“what is natural cannot be immoral”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #quote
“The differences appear minimal compared to what is shared”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #quote
2025· 1 entry
SBS: Magnus Hirschfeld: Pioneer of sex research whose heritage stretches all the way to Australia
- #news
- #headline
2007· 1 entry
Is named for Hirschfeld and lesbian activist FannyAnn Eddy
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1982· 1 entry
A group of German researchers and activists founded the Magnus Hirschfeld Society in West Berlin, in anticipation of the approaching 50th anniversary of the destruction of Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1979· 1 entry
The National LGBT Federation established the Hirschfeld Centre, Ireland's second gay and lesbian community centre
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1950· 1 entry
The first national homosexual rights organization to operate for many years in the United States
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1938· 1 entry
“the racial theory which underlines the doctrine of racial war”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #quote
1935· 1 entry
Died 1935-05-14.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #death
1934· 1 entry
Giese was involved in a dispute at a public bathhouse that Hirschfeld called "trifling", but it led French authorities to expel him
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1933· 4 entries
By the Nazi government due to his advocacy
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
When the manufacturer of the pills ceased using his endorsement in order to stay in the German market
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
And, in 1936, was made a professor of Japanese studies at the University of Hamburg and, in 1938, become the chancellor of Hamburg university, all the while denouncing his former friend Hirschfeld as a "pervert"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
As Die Weltreise eines Sexualforschers (Brugg, Switzerland: Bözberg-Verlag, 1933)
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1930· 1 entry
Hirschfeld predicted that there would be no future for people like himself in Germany, and he would have to move abroad
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1929· 1 entry
The Müller government had come very close to repealing Paragraph 175, when the Reichstag justice committee voted to repeal Paragraph 175
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1924· 1 entry
The first known gay rights organization in the nation
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1923· 1 entry
And popularized going unveiled which, for Hirschfeld, illustrated how gender roles could change
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1921· 1 entry
Hirschfeld organized the First Congress for Sexual Reform, which led to the formation of the World League for Sexual Reform
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1920· 2 entries
Hirschfeld was badly beaten by a group of völkisch activists who attacked him on the street; he was initially declared dead when the police arrived
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
And in 1933 his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was looted and its books burned by Nazis
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1915· 1 entry
Emphasizing the suffering and trauma caused by it
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1914· 2 entries
"out of envy at the development and size of the German Empire"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Hirschfeld was swept up by the national enthusiasm of the Spirit of 1914, as the sense of national solidarity was known that at the outbreak of World War I rallied the majority of Germans to the defence of the Fatherland
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1910· 3 entries
Known as Die Transvestiten: Eine Untersuchung über den Erotischen Verkleidungstrieb (Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress)
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
And those he described under the term transsexuals, a term he coined in 1923
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
To describe what today would be called transgender people, and the institution became a haven for transgender people, where Hirschfeld offered them shelter from abuse, performed surgeries, and gave otherwise unemployable
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1907· 1 entry
When General Kuno von Moltke sued the journalist Maximilian Harden, after the latter had run an article accusing Moltke of having a homosexual relationship with the politically powerful Prince Philipp von Eulenburg, who
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1906· 1 entry
Hirschfeld was asked as a doctor to examine a prisoner in Neumünster to see if he was suffering from "severe nervous disturbances caused by a combination of malaria, blackwater fever, and congenital sexual anomaly"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1905· 2 entries
Hirschfeld joined the Bund für Mutterschutz ('League for the Protection of Mothers'), the feminist organization founded by Helene Stöcker
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
To meet Wilde's son, Vyvyan Holland, who had changed his surname to avoid being associated with his father
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1904· 1 entry
The Herero and Nama peoples who had been steadily pushed off their land to make way for German settlers, had revolted, causing Kaiser Wilhelm II to dispatch General Lothar von Trotha to wage a "war of annihilation" to ex
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1898· 1 entry
But was supported only by a minority from the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1897· 1 entry
Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee with the publisher Max Spohr (1850–1905), the lawyer Eduard Oberg (1858–1917), and the writer Franz Joseph von Bülow (1861–1915)
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1896· 3 entries
Moved his practice to Berlin-Charlottenburg to pursue this passion and soon published his first work on the subject of homosexuality under the pseudonym Th
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
After talking to the people displayed in the "human zoos" at the Große Berliner Gewerbeausstellung, that Hirschfeld began writing what became his 1914 book Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes (The Homosexuality
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Had one of the most formative experiences of his career; In 1896, a young lieutenant whom Hirschfeld was treating for severe depression took his own life
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1895· 1 entry
Had been extensively covered by the German press
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1894· 1 entry
And opened a naturopathic practice in Magdeburg, where he would develop his lifelong commitment to homosexual rights advocacy
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1890· 1 entry
Where he continued his studies for a year before transferring to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 1891
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1885· 1 entry
Exposing rampant child prostitution in London as proving that sexuality in Britain could also be brutal and perverted: a matter which, he noted, did not interest Mayo in the slightest
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1868· 1 entry
Born 1868-05-14.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #birth