![]() The first was the trial and subsequent imprisonment of the playwright Oscar Wilde in 1895, on the charge of sodomy, something he believed was a horrifying act of injustice. Once qualified as a doctor in the mid-1890s, his resolve to specialise in treating what he referred to as “sexual suffering” was strengthened by two events. Magnus Hirschfeld, whose work has gone on to transform the way we view sexual minorities. Hirschfeld was revolted at this degrading treatment of a patient, describing it as being tantamount to that of a lab animal. While many gay men at the time accepted their second-class legal status, Hirschfeld, himself a secret homosexual, was appalled at the prevailing attitudes of society and the medical community towards what was then termed “sexual degeneracy”.’ In one medical school lecture he attended, a man who had been imprisoned in an asylum for 30 years for committing homosexual acts was paraded naked in front of the students. He grew up intending to study literature before turning to medicine as it provided better career prospects. Hirschfeld was born on in the city of Kolberg, in what was then Prussia. But through colleagues and pupils, his work has gone on to transform the way we view sexual minorities and has helped make gender reassignment surgery the widely accepted procedure it is today. As both a Jew and gay activist, much of his legacy was burnt to ashes when his Institute for Sexual Research was targeted by a Nazi attack in 1933. While Elbe’s posthumous 1933 biography, “Man into Woman: The First Sex Change”, made her story internationally famous, Hirschfeld is a less well-known figure today. Photograph: Photo The Royal Library, DenmarkĮlbe’s revolutionary transition would not have been possible without the contribution of the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, a man who had become both renowned and notorious across Europe for his groundbreaking research into human gender and sexuality. ![]() ![]() Gerda and Einar Wegener in front of Gerda’s painting Sur la route d’Anacapri. ![]()
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