May

6

‘Sex Burns’ to Commemorate Nazi Era Sex-researcher and Gay-rights Activist

Filed Under Arts, Exhibits, Gay Events, Sex, Sexual Bigotry 

Sex Burns / Sex Brennt ExhibitBerlin, Germany - On 10 May 2008 the book burning will be remembered for the 75th time: An event of great consequence for the entire intellectual and cultural life of Europe. In commemoration, the exhibition “Sex burns” (”Sex brennt”) will showcase the sexual researcher Magnus Hirschfeld as an example of the Nazis’ staged annihilation of a tradition of humanistic and liberal thought, including its political and cultural representatives.

Hirschfeld’s role as representative of modernization in the Weimar era and the destruction of his institute as the opening round for the book burning has received inadequate attention up to this time. This exhibition – to be shown in the Berlin Medical Historical Museum of the Charité from 6 May to 14 September – will provide a new focus using artistic and educational materials.

Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was a key figure in social modernization during the first third of the 20th century. His Institute for Sexual Science, founded in 1919 in Berlin-Tiergarten, was a unique institution that exercised great attraction and formed the sexual-political center of the Weimar Republic. The Hirschfeld Institute was one of the first institutions that was branded as immoral, plundered and closed by the Nazis. The plundering of the institute on 6 May 1933 by students at the Hochschule für Leibesübungen (Academy for Athletics) and the School of Veterinary Medicine was the opening note for book burning by the Deutsche Studentenschaft, staged well to attract the attention of the journalists. The daily press ran the headline, “Clear-out at Magnus Hirschfeld’s”.

During the march to the book burning at Berlin’s Opernplatz on 10 May 1933, “the head of a broken bust of Magnus Hirschfeld…” swayed “on a long stick … high over the silent mass of people”. Erich Kästner, whose books were also burned, wrote these lines as an eyewitness. The words illustrate how Hirschfeld had become the ideological hate figure. His works were consigned to the flames along with those of Sigmund Freud to the cry of “down with the destruction of souls through the overvaluation of sexual drive”.

The exhibition “Sex burns - Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science and the Book Burning” follows a concept that joins artistic and educational aspects: In five separate artistic works, positions are formulated that deal in a specific way with aspects of Hirschfeld’s work, person and the book burning from today’s perspective. Seven internationally renowned artists have been chosen for this part: Arnold Dreyblatt (New York), Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz (Lausanne, Berlin), Henrik Olesen (Copenhagen), Ulrike Ottinger (Berlin) and Eran Schaerf and Eva Meyer (Tel Aviv, Berlin).

On the informative and educational level of the exhibition, a thematic framework has been created with a rich array of pictorial material, objects and books from the institute and Hirschfeld’s private possessions. This section outlines the content and fields of conflict in Magnus Hirschfeld’s sexual-scientific and -political activity. Precisely these themes are the ones used by the Nazis prior to the book burning to construct the enemy image “Magnus Hirschfeld”. Furthermore, an installation of an historical work about his guest book during emigration by Marita Keilson-Lauritz will be shown that focuses on Hirschfeld’s role as intellectual and scientist in Swiss and later French exile.

The informative as well as artistic levels of representation examine the question of why especially Hirschfeld and his institute were such prominent targets for the campaign “against the un-German spirit”. In addition, they make the losses through the plundering, destruction and closing of the Institute for Sexual Science and the book burning very clear. Form and content of the exhibition are thus associated with a culture of recollection, but also reactivate past events for today’s cultural and political consciousness.

The exhibition has been financed through support from the “Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin”.

Sex Burns - Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science and the Book Burning:
Location: Medical Historical Museum of the Charité
Opening: 6 May 2008
Duration of the exhibition: 7 May – 14 September 2008

Related Links:
- JPOST.com: 2 tributes unveiled in Germany to gay-rights activist persecuted by Nazis
- The Hirschfeld-Eddy Foundation for the Human Rights of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender People

AddThis Social Bookmark Button