4 . Darkroom with fetishized elements of a former persecution . Still from Great Freedom ( 2021 )
Thomas Edison and William Dickson make one of the first movies ever , featuring two men dancing with one another , and a third guy playing his violin . That was in 1895 .
Two years later , a young doctor named Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee ( WhK ) in Berlin , the world ’ s first movement for homosexual rights . The doctor and his students chose a catchy motto : Per scientiam ad justitiam ( Latin for “ Justice through science ”). With scientific research into homosexuality as the basis for media-effective , political actions , they endeavoured to achieve legal progress . This was followed by extensive publishing activity , not only of scientific papers , but also of simple educational pamphlets , of which almost 100,000 ( by 1914 ) were sent specifically to newspapers , civil servants , lawyers , doctors , university professors , church dignitaries and teachers .
It is amazing how freely and unhindered the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was able to operate in Germany . Similar journalistic activity would have been unthinkable in Britain , for example – there , around that time , the trials surrounding the famous writer Oscar Wilde were making waves . In France , on the other hand , homosexuality had already been decriminalized and censorship was relatively mild . The portrayal of homosexuality in literature was often direct and blunt . Nevertheless , the discourse of academia and homosexual subculture was nonexistent , or characterized by ignorance .
Hirschfeld succeeded in winning over the leadership of the Social Democratic Party to support a petition against Paragraph 175 . The proposal was considered in the Reichstag in 1898 , but failed . Undeterred , the WhK continued its propagandistic activities . Dozens of public lectures in Berlin and other German cities were held to inform the people . They would collect statistics on the proportion of homosexuals in the German population . This earned Hirschfeld criminal charges for defamation .
In the early 20 th century , Berlin was something of a laboratory for sexual deviance . The media presence reinforced Berlin ’ s reputation as a gay Eldorado . In Italy , people used “ berlinese ” synonymously with homosexual , the French knew a “ vice allemand ”, and the English agreed on “ German custom ”.
In 1919 , Hirschfeld opened his Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin , the first institution of its kind in the world . This Institute was dedicated not only to providing medical and psychological counselling to both homosexual and heterosexual people , but also sought to further establish sexology as an academic field of research .
That very same year , Magnus Hirschfeld and
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Observing Memories Issue 6