Because the legitimacy of a regime is linked to public acceptance of the central value system it represents, a peripheral group that successfully over- throws the government must embed its value system into the institutional structure of the nation. In order to do this, libraries may be purged or, at times, eliminated. Extremists in power maintain mindsets developed when they were on the periphery—they feel threatened, surrounded by those who would destroy them. Maintaining ideological orthodoxy and political advan- tage is an ongoing, high-stakes life-or-death battle that may be used to justify the imposition of a police state. Ideologues will seek to purify and reform society and to extinguish alternatives and any peripheral groups or ideas that might threaten their hegemony, because controlling the central belief system is key to attaining and holding on to power. To retain legitimacy, the regime confl ates its authority with the authority of the belief system and a challenge to one is perceived as a challenge to the other. Libraries become casualties of this embrace of totalitarianism.
National Socialism and the Destruction of Berlin’s
Institute for Sexual Science, 1933
The symbolism of fi re and fl ame dates back to primitive times. Fire and torch were used to fi ght demons, and the power of the fl ame derived from the fact that it linked earth and heaven.
—George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses In 1933, the National Socialists gained control of Germany, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. The republic, a product of the 1918 revolu- tion and the dissolution of the monarchy, had given Germans a new lease on life and allowed a brief experiment with modernity, liberalism, and individu- alism. But beneath the excitement and creativity was also “anxiety, fear, [and]
a rising sense of doom” (Gay 2001, xiv). Revolutionary National Socialism and fascism, packaged as a conservative backlash and return to familiar val- ues, spelled the end of the so-called Golden Twenties and the beginning of a period of severe repression for those whose lifestyle, beliefs, or race disquali- fi ed them for participation in the new order.
For homosexual men, an estimated two million or 2 percent of the popula- tion, it was the end of relative freedom and the beginning of a time when they
“lived like animals in a wild game park, always sensing the hunters” (Burleigh and Wipperman 1991, 194). After Hitler’s ascension to power, the Nazis, in suppression of corrupt modernity, quickly dismantled the gay-rights move- ment that had thrived during the Weimar Republic and closed down all orga- nizations, clubs, periodicals, fi lms, and institutions supporting this cause. An early target was the library of the Institute for Sexual Science, internationally known as a research and treatment center for all areas of sexual functioning—
a product of Weimar democracy that was created by outsiders (homosexuals
102 Burning Books and Leveling Libraries
and sexologists), who, for a brief moment, gained access to the inside (institu- tionalized respectability) (Gay 2001). The institute was quick to become a tar- get because of its status as a government agency that had legitimized alternate views of sexuality and because of its ties with founder and director Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935). Hirschfeld was a confi rmed enemy of the Nazi Party because he embodied all that the Nazis despised and vilifi ed. He was a Jew, a pacifi st and leftist, a political activist and social reformer, and an indepen- dent scholar, and was presumed to be homosexual. While Hirschfeld survived in exile, his institute was vandalized and dismantled, and the institute’s library and collections were burnt in the huge student bonfi res of May 10, 1933.
A bronze bust of Hirschfeld was also thrown into the fl ames.
Legal sanctions against homosexuals began in the Middle Ages, but in the nineteenth century, because of the impact of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, four German states (Bayern, Hanover, Württemberg, and Braunschweig) decriminalized homosexuality. This leniency began to erode in 1871, when Prussia’s harsh legislation was implemented throughout the reich in the form of Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code: unnatural sex acts between persons of the male sex or between humans and animals were pun- ishable by imprisonment and the loss of civil rights. On the average, 500 men a year were prosecuted for homosexual acts. This cast a pall over Germany, and blackmail and the threat of exposure led many to suicide. Legal conse- quences were reinforced by a climate of public intolerance. Homosexuality was met with disgust and perceived as a signifi cant mental, moral, economic, and political problem (Taeger 1998, 23). It was perceived by many as evidence of anarchy that threatened the stability of the state. Homosexuality and, indeed, all forms of unbridled sensuality undermined the basic unit of civil order, traditional marriage—a controllable, clearly arranged social unit that, in its nineteenth-century form, refl ected the hierarchical ruler-subject rela- tionship and thus supported the development of a powerful modern nation (Taeger 1998, 20).
Nevertheless, by the end of the nineteenth century, a recognizable subcul- ture existed, with 40 homosexual meeting places in Berlin alone (Burleigh and Wipperman 1991, 184). A gay-rights movement had surfaced and received support from the medical profession, most notably the neurologist Magnus Hirschfeld. In 1897, under Hirschfeld’s leadership, doctors and jurists began to challenge the practice of prosecuting homosexuals and founded the Scientifi c-Humanitarian Committee (SHC). The SHC would lobby continu- ously for reform of Paragraph 175 until the Nazis took over the government.
With the 1919 founding of the Institute for Sexual Science, also initiated by Hirschfeld, German intellectuals emerged as acknowledged leaders in an international movement for sexual reform and social equality for homo- sexuals. Indeed, Germany’s gay movement was considered to be the world’s most advanced (Guerin 1994, 14). With the relatively liberal interpretation of Paragraph 175 that followed World War I, momentum built within the
homosexual community until at least 25 homosexual organizations existed and some 30 periodicals for homosexuals appeared regularly. The Weimar era represented a “high-water mark for tolerance toward homosexual men”
(Lautmann 1998, 354).
Magnus Hirschfeld was a towering fi gure within this movement. Hirschfeld was profoundly infl uenced by his father, a prominent Jewish doctor and humanitarian whose memory was immortalized by a monument erected in his hometown in 1895 (this monument was demolished by the Nazis in 1933, the same year that Hirchfeld’s bust and library were publicly burned). Like his father, Hirschfeld specialized in public health until the 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde and the nonrelated suicide of a homosexual patient triggered a “life- long devotion to sexology in general, and homosexuality in particular” (Garde 1964, 674). Under a pseudonym, Hirschfeld published Sappho and Socrates, in which he argued that the homosexual urge, like the heterosexual, is inborn, not an acquired vice, and infl uenced by glands. Hirschfeld would develop this theme over the rest of his life and use it to undermine rationales behind the criminalization of homosexuality. After 1897, Hirschfeld gained national recognition by mobilizing the SHC to petition the Reichstag for repeal of Paragraph 175, and over the next 20 years, he would lead campaigns to over- turn this legislation. He achieved notoriety by serving as an expert witness in high-profi le court cases against homosexuals, including the 1909 Moltke- Eulenberg Trial, which transfi xed the nation with its revelations about sexual improprieties and intrigues in Kaiser Wilhelm II’s court. International stature was assured after he cofounded the World League for Sexual Reform, which eventually grew to 130,000 members, sponsored high-profi le conferences in Copenhagen, London, and Vienna, and promoted sexology and sexual reform worldwide.
Hirschfeld recognized the need for an objective and scientifi c approach to the question of human sexuality, and he collected empirical data through interviews, consultations, and ethnographic fi eldwork. More than 6,000 of his meticulously prepared psychobiological questionnaires, the world’s fi rst survey of its kind, were administered to Berlin students and factory workers;
2.2 percent of the German male population admitted to being homosexual.
The information he collected was the basis for both Hirschfeld’s theories and the popular psychosexual instruction that he promoted so extensively.
The collection and analysis of empirical data led to numerous publications as Hirschfeld developed into a prolifi c author and editor. He authored notable volumes on male and female homosexuality, transvestitism (in fact, he coined the term transvestite ), racism, and psychopathology. His annual Yearbook for Sexual Intermediaries, published from 1899 to 1923, was a previously unavail- able medium for the dissemination of cutting-edge articles by learned special- ists: jurists, ethnologists, biologists, physicians, psychoanalysts, and activists.
This series produced “the richest collection of homosexual studies of all time in the areas of history, literature, art, music and psychology” (Garde 1964, 675). Hirschfeld’s infl uence was immense. According to his contemporary,
104 Burning Books and Leveling Libraries
historian Max Hodann (1937, 73), he was the man who made the right of homosexuals to live, love, and survive according to their nature “a discussible and mentionable problem.”
In 1910, Hirschfeld moved to Berlin and became “Germany’s fi rst avowed specialist in the psychosexual [fi eld]” (Garde 1964, 675). He was recognized as a sociological pioneer for his merging of social medicine with social science.
Hirschfeld demonstrated a thoroughly modern commitment to inquiry—
a “continuing process of trial and error, acceptance and rejection, discovery and rediscovery, refi nement and re-defi nition, [through which] each new scientifi c breakthrough induces social changes that ramify throughout the entire culture”
(Shera 1965, 4). He sought to further the scientifi c study of homosexuality and related manifestations as well as the whole range of human emotions, and he sought to use studies to advance the progress and welfare of humanity (Hodann 1937, 38). In his campaign to make homosexuality acceptable, or at least toler- able, Hirschfeld developed graphic and practical materials for doctors and the legal profession and was known as “a great populizer of knowledge” because of frequent public lectures in which he discussed sexual issues in an understand- able and nonsensational manner (Hodann 1937, 50). He took great risks: in 1919, he appeared as himself in a feature-length silent fi lm, Anders al die Andern, the story of a homosexual victim of blackmail who turned to Hirschfeld for help (Steakley 1975, 88). It was an effort to infl uence public opinion and create sym- pathy for beleaguered homosexuals by humanizing their plight.
Hirschfeld was surrounded by adversaries. The doors of German universities were shut to him because of his efforts to make sexuality a respectable area of inquiry, to use science for purposes of political and social reform, and to popu- larize scientifi c knowledge. In addition, heterosexual academics asserted that his alleged homosexuality disqualifi ed him from objectivity and credibility. As historian of homosexuality Noel Garde (1964, 677) wryly commented, “This seems rather like saying that a naval offi cer with long service on submarines is much less qualifi ed to write about submarine warfare than a naval offi cer who has never been in a submarine.” Because of his race and high profi le as a homosexual activist, Hirschfeld was repeatedly the target of anti-Semitic and conservative right-wing interest groups who viewed homosexuality as a vice introduced and promoted by Jews intent on degrading the nation. In their eyes, sexology and related critical efforts, such as Freud’s psychoanalysis, were degen- erate “Jewish science” (Haeberle 1989, 371). During the 1909 trials, leafl ets were distributed in front of his house announcing: “Dr. Hirschfeld—A Public Danger. The Jews Are Our Undoing” (Wolff 1986, 74). Anders al die Andern was banned all over Germany and provoked widespread anti-Semitic demon- strations; it was attacked as “a piece of rampant obscenity” and as “a feast for degenerates which could ruin German youth” (Wolff 1986, 194). Hirschfeld was repeatedly criticized for causing or encouraging homosexuality, and he responded, “I do not encourage and propagate homosexuality: I only open the eyes of those who are homosexually inclined about themselves, and try to strug- gle against their social ostracization” (as quoted in Grau 1995a, 23).
As Hirschfeld explored sexual constitutions and proclivities that never before had been systematically studied or classifi ed, his fi ndings confi rmed his belief in the inborn nature of homosexuality (Hodann 1937, 45–46). He concluded that homosexuality was a constitutional variant, a middle ground between the male- female opposition, which in both psychological and physical respects placed homosexuality in the large domain of intersexuality (Grau 1995a, 23). Of course, this was antithetical to religious and cultural mores concerning the binary nature of female and male identities. And in the 1920s, despite the fact that Germany was a democracy, his positions repeatedly evoked verbal and physical public attacks by right-wing conservatives, especially the National Socialists, who were struggling for political power and control of the nation’s central belief system.
Danger was ever present as journalists and editors called Hirschfeld names such as “the big boss of the perverts” (Burleigh and Wipperman 1991, 187) and urged their readers to disrupt the lectures of “the Jew Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld” (Wolff 1986, 197). He was physically assaulted in Munich in 1920—attacked from behind, beaten, and left with a fractured skull: his death was announced mistak- enly, and he had the subsequent experience of reading his own obituary. His foes were disappointed by his survival, and one Nazi newspaper lamented: “Weeds never die. . . . We have no hesitation in saying that we regret that this shameless and horrible poisoner of our people has not found his well-deserved end” (Wolff 1986, 198). In Vienna in 1923, a troop of young Nazis threw stink-bombs at the stage where he was lecturing, fi red shots, and randomly beat members of the audience. It was the paradoxical nature of the Weimar Republic that the regime’s liberal approach to censorship made Hirschfeld’s activities possible, while the government would not or could not protect him.
The outrage engendered by Hirschfeld’s presumed (though never declared) homosexuality, his advocacy of sexual freedom, and his racial origins was com- pounded by his international stature as an intellectual. The growing fascist ele- ment in Germany was extremely nationalistic and appalled at the “rootlessness”
of those intellectuals who functioned in the cross-national arena of global schol- arship (Mosse 1970, 156). The fascists opposed ideas about the solidarity of all humankind (Buchheim 1968, 27) and believed that intellectuals lacked suffi cient patriotism. In addition, they were worthless and effeminate, too often Jewish, and utterly unrepresentative of the ideal man: masculine, virile, athletic, deci- sive, and committed to a new order based on instinct rather than reason. In their reverence for the physical and for brutal action, the fascists particularly despised “‘ dekadenten Zivilisationsliteratentums, ’ decadent literary people with the values of Western liberal civilization” (Hill 2001, 20). Nazi leaders, like Joseph Goebbels, who would ultimately serve as the Third Reich’s director of propaganda, spoke openly about the need to destroy the intellectual basis of the Weimar Republic as well as its political system (Frei 1993, 63). They hounded Hirschfeld because he epitomized the un-German spirit: “the ratio- nalism, materialism, cosmopolitanism, egalitarianism, parliamentarism, paci- fi sm, tolerance, assimilationism, ecumenism, and modernism [that] the Nazis detested” (Hill 2001, 11).
106 Burning Books and Leveling Libraries
Early in 1919, Hirschfeld acquired an elegant mansion in Berlin and estab- lished the world’s fi rst institute for sexual science. He announced at the opening that it was, fi rst, an institute for research, and second, a center for teaching and therapy (Wolff 1986, 79). Of particular interest to Hirschfeld was the study of endocrine glands and their involvement in sexual impulses.
In general, the archives and library were crucial in supporting studies of the biology of sexuality. The fundamental disciplines of the institute were biology, pathology, sociology, and ethnology, and research and educational activities focused on psychological and social issues of sexuality and forensic medicine (Wolff 1986, 175). The treatment services were comprehensive, and consultation was available to those with sexual diffi culties, including impotence. A state-of-the-art medical clinic provided treatment for venereal diseases and sex-related illnesses. Marriage and premarital counseling were available, as were family planning, abortion information, sex education, and treatment for transvestites, pedophiles, hermaphrodites, androynes, masoch- ists, those with endocrine dysfunctions, and, of course, homosexuals. The legal department advised men accused of homosexuality and represented them in court (Isherwood 1976, 19). Specialists visited from all over the world, and thousands of foreign students, doctors, visiting specialists, jurists, and curious members of the public attended lectures and courses. Lectures on sexual sociology encompassed relations between sex and society, eugenics, overpopulation, problems of abstinence, marriage, free love, prostitution, laws, and sexual hygiene (Biale 1997, 273). The auditorium where these lec- tures were held bore this inscription: “Not for its own sake is Science, but for all Humanity” (Hirschfeld 1936, 319). It was generally packed on evenings when discussion centered on anonymous written questions that the general public could deposit in a box. The institute served as a “visible guarantee of his [Hirschfeld’s] scientifi c respectability. . . . It was a place of education for the public, its lawmakers, and its police [especially pathologists]” (Isherwood 1976, 18).
The activities were supported by a library and archives that eventually included an estimated 20,000 volumes and a unique collection of about 35,000 pictures. There were medical theses written by students at the institute, jour- nals, and informational materials in all formats. There were thousands of case studies and photographs of patients who were either borderline cases of sexual variants or people with psychosexual disorders; there were 3,000 microscopic slides of brain tissues, statistical tables, and a collection of fetishes (Wolff 1986, 189). Christopher Isherwood (1976, 16), the homosexual writer whose auto- biographical works inspired the movie Cabaret, a compelling picture of sexu- ally permissive post–World War I Berlin, described the institute’s archive and museum, which was under the supervision of Karl Geiss, Hirschfeld’s alleged longtime lover:
Here were whips and chains and torture instruments designed for the practitioners of pleasure-pain; high-heeled, intricately decorated boots for the fetishists; lacy female
undies which had been worn by ferociously masculine Prussian offi cers beneath their uniforms. . . . Here were fantasy pictures, drawn and painted by Hirschfeld’s patients.
Scenes from the court of a priapic king who sprawled on a throne with his own phallus for a scepter and watched the grotesque matings of his courtiers. Strange sad bedroom scenes in which the faces of the copulators expressed only dismay and agony. And here was a gallery of photographs, ranging in subject matter from the sexual organs of quasi-hermaphrodites to famous homosexual couples. . . . Christopher [Isherwood referred to himself] giggled because he was embarrassed. He was embarrassed because, at last, he was being brought face to face with his tribe.
Isherwood (1976, 15) observed that, in contrast, the public rooms had an atmo- sphere of the former owner, a famous musician and afi cionado of Brahms:
“Their furniture was classic, pillared, garlanded, their marble massive, their curtains solemnly sculpted, their engravings grave. Lunch was a meal of deco- rum and gracious smiles, presided over by a sweetly dignifi ed lady with silver hair: a living guarantee that sex, in this sanctuary, was being treated with seri- ousness.” Over the door an inscription in Latin read: “Sacred to Love and to Sorrow.” Isherwood (1976, 17) was at fi rst repulsed by Hirschfeld but would come to honor the “silly solemn old professor with his doggy mustache, thick peering spectacles, and clumsy German-Jewish boots” as a heroic leader of his “tribe.”
A German journalist who visited also expressed his surprise about the insti- tute’s intimate, as opposed to clinical or academic, atmosphere: “That—a sci- entifi c institute? No cold walls, no linoleum on the fl oors, no uncomfortable chairs and no smell of disinfectants. This is a private house: carpets, pictures on the walls, and nowhere a plate saying ‘No entrance.’ And it is full of life everywhere, with patients, doctors and other people who work here” (Wolff 1986, 177). The peacefulness found in spacious rooms with garden-view win- dows and comfortable sofas fostered an atmosphere of acceptance for homo- sexuals, a retreat from the harsh treatment they received in the outside world.
Patients reported that Hirschfeld would often take them for a walk and treat them with respect and love. He fostered self-confi dence, self-acceptance, a sense of biological normality, and the ability to take pleasure in oneself (Wolff 1986, 177). For many, the institute was an oasis of tolerance in an increasingly threatening world.
As the Nazis gained power, they found many ordinary citizens who shared their racist and homophobic attitudes and clamored for the institute’s destruc- tion. Tensions between the general public and urban homosexuals had been exacerbated by demographic concerns and by homosexuals’ “blatant” fl outing of norms. The depressive effect of homosexuality on the birth rate, acceptable during the nineteenth century, was less tolerable after the loss of two million men in World War I. By “choosing” not to reproduce, German homosexuals were lowering the birth rate and thus compromising the nation’s ability to fi eld armies and redress the disgraceful loss in World War I. To add insult to injury, recalcitrant homosexuals were fl outing norms in which reproduction,