Magnus Hirschfeld

Magnus Hirschfeld (1868 to 1935) was a German physician and sexologist who campaigned for the rights of sexual minorities. He was educated in philosophy, philology and medicine, and in the 1920s he based his medical practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and the World League for Sexual Reform, and his committee carried out what has been described as the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights. He is regarded as one of the most influential sexologists of the twentieth century. He was beaten by volkisch activists in 1920, and in 1933 his Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft was looted and its books burned by the Nazis, who also revoked his German citizenship. He died in exile in France in 1935.