Democracy Destroyed The First 100 Days of Nazi Rule

Day 97, Saturday 6 May 1933: Students ransack Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science

Day 97 of 100

Students ransack Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science

On Saturday morning about a hundred students of the Berlin College of Physical Education, with a brass band and SA students, occupied and wrecked Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science and carted off its books and archives for burning. Student squads went on to purge Berlin’s public lending libraries. The Centre Party elected the former Chancellor Brüning as its leader in place of Prelate Kaas, and the censors passed the Joseph Schmidt film “Ein Lied geht um die Welt”.

Young men in white shirts drawn up in ranks in front of a villa, with a lorry and a banner
Students of the College of Physical Education line up in front of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin before plundering it on 6 May 1933. The individuals are not identified. Photographed on this day Unknown author Unknown author. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Magnus Hirschfeld had founded his Institute for Sexual Science in 1919 in the former villa of the violinist Joseph Joachim. It served research, practical counselling, public education and politics, above all the campaign to decriminalise sex between men, and held a large library and archive. Hirschfeld had been attacked from the right since his first publications.

The raid opened the Berlin students’ action against “un-German” literature. In the afternoon students of the Veterinary College came back and took a further load of material from the cellar to the Student House in Oranienburger Straße. Part of the library was burned on the Opernplatz four days later. The institute never reopened, and its staff were driven into exile.

Politics and power

Government, terror and persecution

  1. Terror morning, Berlin-Tiergarten, Beethovenstraße 3

    The Institute for Sexual Science stormed

    In the morning some hundred gymnastics students of the College of Physical Education (Hochschule für Leibesübungen) marched with a brass band and SA students to the institute at Beethovenstraße 3, broke in and wrecked it. An eyewitness described them pouring ink over carpets and files and kicking pictures and charts about like footballs before throwing them into the street; books, papers and photographs were loaded onto a removal lorry. The student leader Herbert Gutjahr declared the institute closed, and the students sang and marched off. A second group came in the afternoon.1,2

  2. Propaganda Berlin

    Student squads purge Berlin’s lending libraries

    On the orders of the students’ “Committee against the Un-German Spirit” for Berlin and Brandenburg, five student “shock troops” set out in lorries to purge all of Berlin’s public lending libraries; libraries serving scholarship alone were to be spared. The books they removed were to be burned on the Opernplatz on Wednesday, 10 May.3,4

  3. Opposition Berlin

    Brüning elected leader of the Centre Party

    After two days of meetings in Berlin, the Centre Party’s executive and its Reichstag and Prussian Landtag groups elected the former Chancellor Brüning as party leader, succeeding Prelate Kaas. Brüning was given the right to reappoint all party offices; the parliamentarians offered to place their seats at his disposal. A resolution declared the party ready to work for “national reconstruction”.5,6

Everyday life

What else was happening in Germany

  1. Film Berlin

    Censors pass “Ein Lied geht um die Welt”

    The Berlin film censorship office approved “Ein Lied geht um die Welt” (A Song Goes Round the World), starring the tenor Joseph Schmidt and directed by Richard Oswald, with music by Hans May, for screening; its premiere was set for 9 May. In 1937 the film was banned.7

  2. Society

    Rules for killing fish and lobsters

    Under the new Reich slaughter law, the Prussian interior ministry issued a police ordinance on killing fish, crayfish, lobsters and frogs. Fish for human consumption were to be stunned with a heavy blow to the head and then bled before being handed to the buyer; crayfish and lobsters were to be thrown one at a time into fiercely boiling water, and putting them into cold or warm water to be brought to the boil was forbidden; frogs were to be stunned before being cut up.6

Voices

…the German Student Union would no longer allow the German people to be poisoned from here through supposedly scientific lectures and supposedly scientific books.

Herbert Gutjahr, leader of District X (Berlin–Brandenburg) of the German Student Union Speech outside the plundered Institute for Sexual Science on 6 May 1933, declaring it closed, as reported by the Berliner Volks-Zeitung and quoted by verbrannte-buecher.de Translated by this site.1

In Berlin today

A rust-brown metal stele with an inscribed panel beside a riverside path lined with trees
The memorial stele by Georg Seibert (1994) for the Institute for Sexual Science and Magnus Hirschfeld, on the Spree bank at Bettina-von-Arnim-Ufer, photographed in August 2016. Babewyn / CC BY-SA 4.0. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Site of the Institute for Sexual Science

Bettina-von-Arnim-Ufer, near the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 10557 Berlin-Tiergarten

Then
On the morning of 6 May 1933 students occupied and plundered Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science at Beethovenstraße 3 and declared it closed.8,2
Today
Since July 1994 a memorial stele on the Spree bank (Bettina-von-Arnim-Ufer), near the former Congress Hall, recalls the institute; since September 2011 two stelae on the opposite Magnus-Hirschfeld-Ufer commemorate the first homosexual emancipation movement.

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More pictures

Two young men, one in a black uniform, sorting through a large heap of books, journals and papers
Two young men, one in SS uniform, look through papers taken from the institute’s library on 6 May 1933, among them copies of the journal Die Ehe. They are not identified. Photographed on this day Unknown author Unknown author. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A room with loose papers and pamphlets strewn across the floor beneath a wall of posters, notices and a radiator
Papers and publications from the Institute for Sexual Science heaped on the floor after the raid of 6 May 1933, below a board listing the institute’s rooms and a poster bearing Magnus Hirschfeld’s name and portrait. Photographed on this day Unidentified (unknown, uncredited or anonymous) photographer. Photo agency: Robert Sennecke, Internationaler Illustrations-Verlag Berlin SW 11 / CC BY-SA 4.0. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sources

  1. Die Plünderung des Berliner Instituts für Sexualwissenschaft verbrannte-buecher.de
  2. Das Institut für Sexualwissenschaft Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft
  3. Sächsische Volkszeitung, 7 May 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 2, "Das Institut für Sexualwissenschaft geschlossen" (Berlin, 6 May)
  4. Hohenstein-Ernstthaler Tageblatt und Anzeiger, 8 May 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 1, report from Berlin, 7 May, on Saturday's action
  5. Hamburgischer Correspondent, 7 May 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 1, report from Berlin, 6 May, on the Centre Party
  6. Hamburger Fremdenblatt, Reichsausgabe, 7 May 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 2, "Erlaß über die Tötung von Fischen, Krebsen und Fröschen" (Berlin, 6 May)
  7. Ein Lied geht um die Welt (1933) filmportal.de (Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum), censorship and premiere data
  8. Gedenktafeln in Berlin: Magnus Hirschfeld Aktives Museum Faschismus und Widerstand in Berlin, Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Holger Hübner

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