Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term transsexualism,[6] identifying the clinical category which his colleague Harry Benjamin would later develop in the United States. Transgender people were on the staff of the Institute, as well as being among the clients there. Various endocrinologic and surgical services were offered, including the first modern sex reassignment surgeries in the 1930s. Hirschfeld also worked with Berlin’s police department to curtail the arrest of cross-dressed individuals, including those suspected of wearing certain clothing in connection with sex work, through the creation of transvestite passes issued on behalf of the Institute to those who had a personal desire to wear clothing associated with a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth.[7][8]
Hirschfeld was a groundbreaking sexologist. Stonewall Society writes that Hirschfeld was Jewish, gay, liked wearing women’s clothing (and created the word “transvestitism”) and was a foot fetishist to boot. Hirschfeld saw sexuality as a natural phenomenon worthy of academic research, as opposed to a shameful thing.
During his lifetime, Hirschfeld wrote and collected a ton of texts about queer sexuality, including many works about trans identity. Hirschfeld’s colleagues practiced gender reassignment surgery.
The Institute of Sex Research was opened in 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld and his collaborator Arthur Kronfeld,[3] a once famous psychotherapist and later professor at the Charité. As well as being a research library and housing a large archive, the Institute also included medical, psychological, and ethnological divisions, and a marriage and sex counseling office. The Institute was visited by around 20,000 people each year, and conducted around 1,800 consultations. Poorer visitors were treated for free. In addition, the institute advocated sex education, contraception, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and women’s emancipation.
When Hirschfeld was out of Germany on tour, the Nazi student group marched on the Institute. Over 20,000 books were set aflame, as well as medical diagrams and photographs crucial to understanding sex reassignment surgery. Hirschfeld and his colleagues were Jewish.
The Institute became a point of scientific and research interest for many scientists of sexuality, as well as scientific, political and social reformers in Germany and Europe, particularly from socialist, liberal and social-democratic circles.
In 1923 the Institute was visited by Nikolai Semashko, Commissar for Health in the Soviet Union. This was followed by numerous visits and research trips by health officials, political, sexual and social reformers, and scientific researchers from the Soviet Union interested in the work of Hirschfeld.[4] In 1926 a delegation from the institute, led by Hirschfeld, reciprocated with a research visit to Moscow.
In 1929 Hirschfeld presided over the third international congress of the World League for Sexual Reform at Wigmore Hall.[5 In 1854, occultist and magician Eliphas Levi sketched Baphomet as a winged man with the head of a black goat. He wrote that it was an amalgamation of the supposed Templar idol, plus “the infernal goat” found in depictions of witches’ sabbats, the ancient Egyptian “phallic goat” god Banebdjedet, and the Devil tarot card. In his writings, Levi described his drawing as “the nightmare,” “the fantastic monster,” and “that phantom of all terrors.” His image of Baphomet (which would become the default) represented pure immorality, and it was inspired by base, unfeeling, and demanding deities.