The Hirschfeld Archives: violence, death, and modern queer culture

Is violence an intrinsic part of modern queer culture? This book presents compelling new research on how homophobia, suicide, gender violence, abuse, racism, and the impact of war and colonialism shaped the emergence of modern homosexual rights activism. It examines forgotten writings by Magnus Hirschfeld, the influential sexologist who is best known today for his homosexual activism and foundational transgender work. In 1919 he opened the world’s first Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin. Attracting international visitors including doctors, artists, writers and political activists, it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933. Attacks against queer life play a formative role in modern same-sex culture. Yet remembering the victims is only part of the task of queer history. The Hirschfeld Archives attends to the queer dead and injured, but it also demonstrates that the development of homosexual rights politics in the West had gendered and racialized limits