Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
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The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The name is variously translated as Institute of Sex Research, Institute for Sexology or Institute for the Science of Sexuality. The infamous Nazi book-burnings (Bücherverbrennung) in Berlin included the archives of the Institute.
The Institute was a non-profit foundation situated in the Tiergarten in Berlin's In den Zelten. It was headed by Jewish doctor Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935). Since 1897 he had run the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee), which campaigned on conservative and rational grounds for gay legal reform and tolerance. The Committee published the long-running journal Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen. Hirschfeld was also a researcher; he collected questionnaires from 10,000 people, informing his book Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes (1914). He built a unique library on same-sex love and eroticism.
After the Nazis gained control of Germany in the 1930s, the institute and its libraries were destroyed as part of a government censorship program.
