Trans+ History Week 2025 has begun, and its founder Marty Davies wants everyone to know that trans people are always there.
During the Weimar Republic, a period of German history after World War I before the rise of the Nazis, the country was the epicenter of LGBTQ+ people, and there was a movement to support transgender and genderless people.
That all changed when Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933.
On May 6, a fanatic Nazi student attacked Institutfürsiconwissenschaftroughly translated as the Institute of Sexualology. Tens of thousands of books, papers and research have been taken from the shelves; But.
The Institute, led by Magnus Hirschfeld, was an academic foundation dedicated to sexual research and the research into the experiences of transgender people. It also provided some of the world’s first modern gender-affirming surgeries.
Tragically, the large list of patients’ names and addresses at the institute are believed to have been seized during the attack and contributed to thousands of people and subsequent deportation to intensive camps.
Hirschfeld ran away as he was talking about Europe. He never returned to Germany and died in France in 1935.
The Nazis continued target Transgender and genderless people, along with other groups whom they believed were threatening their ideology and domination. During the subsequent horrifying years, transgender people are sent to the centre of camps and other deaths, along with Jews, disabled people, cisgender strangers, members of the Roman and Sinti communities, and other groups deemed regression or waste.
The Nazis misused existing laws, including the infamous paragraph 175, part of German criminal law that made homosexuality illegal, attacked transgender and queer men and women. In 2023, the German Parliament focused the events of the anniversary on those targeted by the Nazis for the first time because of gender identity and sexual orientation.
Historian Dr. Bodhiy Ashton is one of those studying how Hitler deported transgender people to concentration camps and wiped out the once vibrant support structures.
He told Pink News that the Weimar Republic is “a moment of massive transition and rupture in German society.” This was a time when World War I began to trigger “everything that existed beforehand was questioned.”
“For example, there are things that can be considered Germany’s first gay rights movement, established in the last decade of the 19th century. wissenschaftlich-humanitäreskomiteethe Commission on Science and Humanism, directed by sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld,” says Ashton.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Hirschfeld, a cisgender gay man, began his scientific research. Die TranvestitenAshton added, “It’s incomplete, but roughly mapped to what we now call transgender.”
Hirschfeld has opened Institutfürsiconwissenschaft In 1919, he began building a library of works centered around the experiences of trans people.
“He considers what’s related to so-called crossdressing and realizes that they have a very difficult position in society because gay sex is illegal. [under] Paragraph 175, he sees specifically those who were assigned men at birth.
“They have great difficulty presenting them as genders they want to present or more closely identify in public due to the fact that they are read by the police as being gay men.”
This was dangerous as transgender people could be seen as a 175-paragraph foul decline that had assumed that transgender women were “looking for gay sex.”
However, Hirschfeld has taken evidence from the Berlin police that show that trans people have an “inner drive” as real selves and not “seeking sex.”
In partnership with the police, he created it. Tranvestitenscheina type of state license for trans people.
Dr. Jake Newsom, a scholar and author of German and American LGBTQ+ history, describes these documents as “essentially gender-affirming identification cards that trans people can carry. [to] Recognise their true identity.”
That was unprecedented at the time, he says. “Some new research is happening and we are trying to figure out how many of these certificates have been issued, whom they cost, and what costs.”
Magnus Hirschfeld stands as an important figure in advance of knowledge and understanding of the trans community, but his personal views complicate his place in history. He held what we know today Racist and sexist views And he was a supporter of Eugenics.
It is important to remember that for Ashton, Hirschfeld was “a person of a certain time and context.” He “had a terrible position and interests for us now,” but that “the person and society he was in is totally expected at the time.”
Historians have revealed the stories of many trans people, including performers Liddy Baclov, gerd rcafe owner Toni SimonFritz Kitts and Carpenters GERD KATTER Who is I suffered Under the Third Reich in 12 years.
Dr. Newsom says it is important for the Nazis to remember the names of these trans individuals as they restore humanity after the Nazis have diminished into a singular aspect of their lives that is thought to be considered deviant.
On a massive scale, recalling the persecution of trans people between 1933 and 1945 is important in the understanding that “the attacks, lies, and stereotypes we are experiencing today are not new.”
“Some of these come from mostly copy-and-paste playbooks from the extreme right. Much of the debate used by the US right today is largely dependent on the Nazi Party, which is used in Germany in the 1930s.
“Knowing this history also provides a historical warning that progress is fragile. We saw the Weimar Republic, built for ourselves the strange people of this vibrant culture, and within a few weeks they were destroyed and returned to the underground.
“To me, that’s a warning that just because marginalized communities have acquired rights today doesn’t mean they can’t be taken away.”
Source: PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news – www.thepinknews.com
