The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin

This vital biography from journalist Brook (The Accident of Color) shines a light on forward-thinking German physician Magnus Hirschfeld, who was born in 1868. As a gay Jewish boy in Kolberg, Prussia, Hirschfeld grew up amid a rising tide of bigotry; Germany criminalized homosexuality in 1871 and Christian conservative groups petitioned to repeal the country’s religious freedom law in 1880. After earning his medical degree in 1892, Hirschfeld moved to Chicago and immersed himself in the city’s queer scene. His experiences there informed the theories he published after returning to Germany two years later. He argued that homosexuality was an innate quality and that gender existed on a spectrum, claiming that there are millions of ways in which masculinity and femininity might present in individuals. By the 1930s, such heterodox thinking, as well as his Jewish ancestry, put him in the crosshairs of Nazis who burned his books and ransacked his Institute for Sexual Science. Exiled to France in 1932, Hirschfeld died of natural causes three years later. Brook’s elegant elucidation of Hirschfeld’s theories proves that there’s nothing new about the idea that gender and sexuality exist on a spectrum, and the chilling account of the persecution Hirschfeld faced shows the disturbing ways in which authoritarian leaders stigmatize queerness. This will stick with readers long after they finish the last page. Photos. (May)