Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a Jewish physician and sexologist.
Hirschfeld testified that "homosexuality was part of the plan of nature and creation just like normal love." Hirschfeld's testimony caused outrage all over Germany. The Vossische Zeitung newspaper condemned Hirschfeld in an editorial as "a freak who acted for freaks in the name of pseudoscience". The Münchener Neuesten Nachrichten newspaper declared in an editorial: "Dr. Hirschfeld makes public propaganda under the cover of science, which does nothing but poison our people. Real science should fight against this!"
Hirschfeld purchased a villa not far from the Reichstag building in Berlin for his new Institut für Sexualwissenschaft ('Institute for Sexual Science'), which opened on 6 July 1919.
The Institute housed Hirschfeld's immense archives and library on sexuality and provided "educational" services and "medical" consultations; the clinical staff included Jewish psychiatrists Felix Abraham and Arthur Kronfeld, Jewish gynecologist Ludwig Levy-Lenz, Jewish dermatologist and endocrinologist Bernhard Schapiro, and Jewish dermatologist Friedrich Wertheim. The Institute also housed the Museum of Sex which is reported to have been visited by school classes (non-Jew children).
Hirschfeld coined the term transvestite in 1910 to describe what today would be called transgender people, and at the Institute Hirschfeld offered sex-mutilation surgeries and gave transgender people jobs, albeit of a menial type, mostly as "maids".
