Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement

This volume is the first full-length study on pioneering sexologist and sexual rights activist, Magnus Hirschfeld, that examines his impact on the politics and culture of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Germany and the value of his rationalist humanist approach for contemporary debates on sexual rights.

PART I: EARLY YEARS AND CULTURAL CONTEXT * Hirschfeld's University Years, Early Travels and Encounters with the Literary World * Urban Culture and Homosexuality * Jewish Identity and Medicine * PART II: EVOLUTION OF HIRSCHFELD'S SCIENTIFIC OUTLOOK * Research Methods and Philosophy * Hirschfeld and the Importance of Sexology * The Third Sex Theory and its Cultural and Scientific Reception * Sexual Intermediacy and Transvestitism * Hirschfeld and Psychoanalysis * Hirschfeld and Degeneracy * Hirschfeld as a Clinician * PART III: POLITICS, ACTIVISM, AND WAR * Hirschfeld, the Social Democrats and Wilhelmine Sexual Politics * Homosexuality and the Politics of Effeminacy in Wilhelmine Germany: The "Liebenberg" Affair * Misogyny and the Anti-feminist Substrate of Homophobia * Hirschfeld and the Women's Movement * Hirschfeld and WWI * The Weimar Years * The Ernst Röhm Affair * PART IV: PANHUMANISTIC COSMOPOLITANISM, EXILE AND FINAL YEARS * World Voyage and Sexual Ethnography * Jewish Identity and Race Discourse * Exile and Final Years * Epilogue