Magnus Hirschfeld - Legacy

Legacy

American Henry Gerber, attached to the Allied Army of Occupation following World War I, became impressed by Hirschfeld and absorbed many of Hirschfeld's ideas. Upon his return to the United States, Gerber was inspired to form the short-lived Chicago-based Society for Human Rights in 1924, the first known gay rights organization in the nation. In turn, a partner of one of the former members of the Society communicated the existence of the society to Los Angeles resident Harry Hay in 1929; Hay would go on to help establish the first long-term national homosexual rights organization in the United States, the Mattachine Society, in 1950.

In 1982, a group of German researchers and activists founded the Magnus Hirschfeld Society (Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft e.V.) in West Berlin, in anticipation of the then-approaching 50th anniversary of the destruction of the Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science; ten years later, the society established a Berlin-based center for research on the history of sexology. The society's stated goals are the following:

• To study the history of research on sexuality and gender, of the sexual reform movement and of related scholarly disciplines and life reform movements.
• To help establish research on sexuality and gender within academic institutions.

In the past three decades, researchers associated with the Magnus Hirschfeld Society have succeeded in tracking down previously dispersed and lost records and artifacts of Hirschfeld's life and work and have brought together many of these materials at the society's archives in Berlin. At an exhibition at the Schwules Museum in Berlin in from 7 Dec 2011, to 31 March 2012, the society publicly displayed a selection of these collections for the first time.

The German Society for Social-Scientific Sexuality Research established the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal in 1990. The Society awards the Medal in two categories, contributions to sexual research and contributions to sexual reform.

The Hirschfeld Eddy Foundation, established in Germany in 2007, is named for Hirschfeld and lesbian activist FannyAnn Eddy.

In August 2011, after 30 years of advocacy by the Magnus Hirschfeld Society and other associations and individuals, the Federal Cabinet of Germany granted 10 million euros to establish the Magnus Hirschfeld National Foundation (Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld), a foundation to support research and education about the life and work of Magnus Hirschfeld, the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, German LGBT culture and community, and ways to counteract prejudice against LGBT people; the Federal Ministry of Justice (Germany) was expected to contribute an additional 5 million euros, bringing the initial endowment of the foundation to a total of 15 million euros.