was caused, according to him, by hormonal problems.
In 1919, Hirschfeld founded the Institute of Sexual Science, the first in history for the scientific study of human sexuality.
The German doctor launched a campaign to decri-minalize homosexuality, conducted surveys on sexuality, offered support therapy to the community, and for years tried to change attitudes in German society.
Thanks to his work, Berlin became the gay capital of Europe, with bars like Eldorado rivaling those of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States.
The Eldorado Bar, also known as Eldorado Nachtlokal or simply Eldorado, was a famous LGBTQ+
establishment located in Berlin, Germany. It opened in 1926 and became one of the most popular gay bars in the city during the 1920s and 1930s. The Eldorado played a significant role in Berlin’s vibrant queer culture at the time and attracted a diverse crowd of artists, intellectuals, and LGBTQ+ individuals from all walks of life. However, with the rise of the Nazi party and the subsequent persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals, the Eldorado Bar was forced to close its doors in 1933.
Then the Nazis arrived and destroyed the Institute.
In 1933, Hirschfeld who was Jewish was in a cinema in France when he saw hthe building go up in flames.
The famous book burning by the Nazis was nothing more than the destruction of his institute and the thousands of works on homosexuality. This was like the burning of the Library of Babel that destroyed 99
ancient history. The Nazis began sending homosexuals to prisons and concentration camps. Around 100,000
would be arrested, 50,000 sent to prisons, and 15,000
to extermination camps.
Later, refugees from the Nazis, many of them like Hirschfeld, brought their ideas and theses against the pathology of homosexuality to the United States.
There, in 1950, Henry Hay, who was familiar with Hirschfeld’s work, would find the Mattachine Society, the first permanent organization for gay rights.
Another organization also influenced by the German movement was the Chicago Rights Society, but it had a very short duration.
However, Hay in Los Angeles did not receive much support, and it was not until 1961 that Frank Kameny, another Jew familiar with Hirschfeld’s work, would open his version in Washington D.C.
In 1957, Kameny was fired from his position as an astronomer at the U.S. Army Map Service in Washington, D.C., because of his homosexuality, which led him to begin “a Herculean struggle with the American establishment” that “would lead a new period of militancy in the early 1960s gay rights movement.”
Kameny formally appealed his dismissal by the U.S.
Civil Service Commission. Although he was not successful, the procedure stood out as the first known civil rights claim based on sexual orientation filed before a 100
U.S. court. The first protest march, in 1965, would take place in front of the White House.
The Mattachine Society initiated awareness in the community. However, it had no numbers, no strength to change American society’s homophobia. Frank would spend his time suing the federal government and was ruined by it. He failed to get the courts to support him. So, it was urgently needed for the middle class to hear the message. It was necessary to combine the ten years of activism experience of the Mattachine with the fury of Stonewall. How to do it?
It was not easy at all. The gay bars of the middle class would not be the source of the uprising. They had positions to lose. Nor would it come from black or Latino bars because for them, civil rights were a priority.
“Larry, where will the gay mass come from? I don’t see where what you call the numbers can come from.”
“I have an idea. In the United States, no political project will succeed if it is not led by the middle class.
The only place where the middle class exists, educated, without jobs to lose, and with the support of their family’s money, is the university. That’s where the numbers will come from.”
“But which one?”
“You are at the most radical university on the entire East Coast of the United States. The numbers will come from here.”