This is the very first book to offer a meticulously detailed report of the three years leading up to Hirschfeld’s death in 1935 and, especially, the seven years following.
Numerous, hitherto untapped archival sources are used to reveal vital new facts. On their basis, this book puts forward original explanations touching on the various fates of the remnants of Hirschfeld’s Institute. It also offers the first account of the “miraculous rescue” of Hirschfeld’s guestbook (Magnus Hirschfelds Exil-Gästebuch 1933–1935) from an old paper container in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1942. This seminal, generously illustrated book picks up the thread where Rainer Herrn’s Der Liebe und dem Leid: Das Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (2022), a history of Hirschfeld and his Institute from 1919 to 1933, left off. Its thorough documentation provides essential context for the facsimile edition of Hirschfeld’s guestbook, published in 2019 by Hans Bergemann, Ralf Dose, Marita Keilson-Lauritz and Kevin Dubout. Hans P. Soetaert, MA (b. 1968), studied philosophy at Ghent university and also holds a professional librarian degree. He is co-founder as well as former board member and former volunteer of the Fonds Suzan Daniel, the Belgian LGBT archive and documentation center, founded in 1996. Photo author: in the background, the art work “Singularidade” (2011) by the Spanish artist Alicia Martín.
ISBN: 978-3-8382-1895-3
Hans P. Soetaert
THE SCATTERED LIBRARY The Various Fates of the Remnants of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science Collection in France and Czechoslovakia, 1932–1942
THE SCATTERED LIBRARY
This book is also the first biography of Karl Giese (1898–1938) and Karl Fein (1894–1942), the main players in the afterlife of Magnus Hirschfeld in France and Czechoslovakia, focusing on their dealings with the surviving materials of Hirschfeld’s Institute, and the consequences of the decisions they made – or may have made – as Nazi terror deepened.
Hans P. Soetaert
The National Socialists’ May 1933 Berlin book burning and, to a growing extent, their looting of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) are part and parcel of memorial culture in Germany and around the world. Thanks to the ongoing rehabilitation of Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935), and the revival of interest in his work, more people are now aware that this pioneering Jewish sexologist and LGBT-rights activist died in exile in Nice, France, profoundly traumatized by the destruction of his life’s work.
Distributed by
ibidem
ibidem
ibidem
THE SCATTERED LIBRARY
Hans P. Soetaert
THE SCATTERED LIBRARY The Various Fates of the Remnants of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science Collection in France and Czechoslovakia, 1932–1942
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
This book was produced with the generous support of the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft e.V., Berlin. Dieses Buch wurde mit großzügiger Unterstützung der MagnusHirschfeld-Gesellschaft e.V., Berlin, hergestellt.
https://magnus-hirschfeld.de/
Cover picture: Bundesarchiv, Berlin, picture n° 183-R70391. Book design: Typeface nv, Leuven, Belgium – www.boekopmaak.be ISBN (Print): 978-3-8382-1895-3 ISBN (E-Book [PDF]): 978-3-8382-7895-7 © ibidem-Verlag, Hannover • Stuttgart 2025 Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Leuschnerstraße 40 30457 Hannover info@ibidem.eu
Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Dies gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und elektronische Speicherformen sowie die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Printed in the EU
for Harry, who was patient, with love
in memory of the people mentioned in this book, who perished in the Holocaust
in memory of Yves Feyten and Avi Haimovsky
“… [when writing the history of homosexuality,] the punishment of Sodom should not serve as the historical model”. Michel Foucault1
1 “… [en écrivant l’histoire de l’homosexualité,] ce n’est pas la condamnation de Sodome qui doit servir de modèle historique” (Foucault 1982, 16).
CONTENTS 1. Introduction
11
2. Karl Giese and Magnus Hirschfeld
17
3. The September 1932 World League for Sexual Reform Conference in Brno
47
4. The May 1933 Looting of the Institute and the Berlin Book Burning
85
5. Magnus Hirschfeld Lands in Paris and Karl Giese Tests the Waters in Brno
125
6. Karl Fein and the Operation to Buy Back Institute Materials
155
7. Attempts at a New Beginning in France and Czechoslovakia
191
8. Karl Giese’s Paris Bathhouse Affair
223
9. The Handling and Settlement of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Estate in Nice
259
10. What Happened to the Institute and Hirschfeld Materials after Hirschfeld’s Death in Nice?
305
11. Karl Giese Settles Down in Brno for the Third and Last Time
347
12. The Giese-Fein Inheritance Case
389
13. The Holocaust Fates of Karl Fein and His Immediate Family
431
14. What Did Karl Fein Do (and Not Do) with the Hirschfeld and Institute Materials in Brno? One Lead, and a First Approach.
493
15. Kamarád and the Discarding of the Institute Materials
551
16. Dr. Stanislav Kaděrka, Elise Brecher and the Jewish Hospital in Brno
607
17. Concluding Itineraries
671
18. Fear
695
Addenda
707
Archives and Libraries Consulted
767
Bibliography
770
Acronyms and Abbreviations
805
Brno Street Names (German-Czech)
807
Photo and Illustration Credits
809
Index
814
Acknowledgments
837
A young man in civilian clothes sorting through books looted from Hirschfeld’s Institute in the student house on Oranienenburger street in Berlin. Photo dated between May 6 and 10, 1933.
1. Introduction In June 2019, one hundred years after the German-Jewish sexologist and LGBT activist Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935) opened his Institute of Sexual Science (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) in Berlin, the Berlin-based publisher Hentrich & Hentrich published an extensively annotated transcript and facsimile edition of a guestbook that Hirschfeld kept during the last two years of his life.1 Hirschfeld’s Exile Guestbook 1933–1935 (Magnus Hirschfelds Exil-Gästebuch 1933–1935) was presented at the “Queering Memory” conference that brought together people and organizations from all over the world, working on LGBT themes in archives, libraries, museums and special collections (ALMS). The sixth ALMS conference was deliberately held in Berlin, on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the opening of the Institute. The conference took place in the House of World Cultures (Haus der Kulturen der Welt), a modernist building located on the site where Hirschfeld’s Institute once stood, close to the Spree river, beside the Tiergarten park.2 Hirschfeld started his guestbook shortly after arriving in France, in May 1933. Presumably the last contributor signed it two days before Hirschfeld’s death, in the middle of May 1935.3 The sexologist invited people he encountered in his daily life to leave an entry in this guestbook: quotes, poems, drawings, or a simple signature. “Guestbook” may not be an adequate term, since Hirschfeld also filled it with newspaper clippings of his lectures and public appearances, photos of himself and the people he met, and other memorabilia. Hirschfeld had previously named his guestbooks “memorial books” (Erinnerungsbücher). He kept several during his 1930–32 world trip, already filling three in the USA, during the first three months of his trip.4 According to our present knowledge, only Hirschfeld’s very last guestbook survived, and it has now come to us in the form of this wonderful facsimile and transcript edition. But what is the story behind this guestbook? How did this Hirschfeld artifact come to us and who were the people involved in the process? That is one of the main subjects of this book, which endeavors to function as an extended, contextualizing introduction to the 2019 publication of the Hirschfeld guestbook.5 In this book, I will also look in detail at the life of the late Magnus Hirschfeld and, even more, at the circle of people who survived him. After introducing his main ally, his life partner and coworker Karl Giese (1898–1938) in chapter 2, our story will start 1 Magnus Hirschfelds Exil-Gästebuch 1933–1935, ed. Hans Bergemann, Ralf Dose, Marita Keilson-Lauritz, and Kevin Dubout (Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2019). 2 See https://queeralmsberlin2019.de/ (accessed Nov. 12, 2020) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ ALMS_Conference (accessed Nov. 14, 2020). The first ALMS conference was held in 2006 in the USA, in Minneapolis. 3 The earliest entry (not all entries were dated) dates from November 1933. See Bergemann, Dose, Keilson-Lauritz & Dubout 2019, f. 11/55. We will see that, in all probability, people added undated entries even earlier. The last explicitly dated entry in the guestbook is from May 12, 1935. See ibid, f. 142/186.
4 Bergemann 2019, 27 n. 1; Hirschfeld & Dose 2013, 207 n. 3. I have found strong indication that at least one other such guestbook existed, likely covering the years 1932–33. See below, chapter 15. Hirschfeld’s very last guestbook, published in 2019, covered the years 1933–35. 5 The 2019 publication of the Hirschfeld guestbook is accompanied by two excellent contributions (Dose 2019; Bergemann 2019). Two earlier texts by Marita Keilson-Lauritz, on her first dealings with the Hirschfeld guestbook, remain valuable introductions to and sources of information regarding the Hirschfeld guestbook. See Keilson-Lauritz 2004 and 2008.
11
12
THE SCATTERED LIBRARY
in March 1932, when Hirschfeld again set foot on European soil, returning from his almost two-year world tour, one mainly spent in the US, Asia, and the Middle East. In this way, the book also picks up the thread where Rainer Herrn’s excellent 2022 book on the history of Hirschfeld’s Institute and the life work of Magnus Hirschfeld ended, in 1932–33. Although Hirschfeld was hailed as a world celebrity on his tour, he was quickly reminded, on the return from his world trip, that he was much less liked in Europe. The Nazis’ aversion to Hirschfeld and his ideas was already in evidence in October 1920, when Hirschfeld was physically attacked in the street and left for dead after a lecture he gave in Munich. His person and work met with the same animosity as soon as he disembarked in the port of Athens, in March 1932. Since leaving Germany to go on his world tour in November 1930, Nazi influence in his home country had only grown stronger and his friends urged him not to return to Germany after his world trip. After Athens, Hirschfeld went to Austria, before going to Switzerland, where he stayed in 1932–33, ultimately wandering to France on his birthday, May 14, 1933. Only a few days earlier, Nazi students had looted his Institute in Berlin. On May 10, in Berlin’s Opernplatz, they publicly burned great portions of the Institute’s vast and unique sexology collection, which consisted of books, periodicals, questionnaires, journals, manuscripts, pictures and museum artifacts acquired by Hirschfeld since he started the Institute in 1919 (see chapter 4). That Hirschfeld saw a newsreel of the Berlin auto-da-fé in a Paris cinema, leaving him understandably shattered, is well known. One year after his return to Europe, this was another serious blow, on top of his poor health, from which Hirschfeld never fully recovered. Despite once again having to deal with an old, all-too-familiar hostility as soon as he returned from his world tour, Hirschfeld managed to find some relief in a young European country, one with which he had an excellent relationship since its founding in 1918. In Czechoslovakia, he was able to shine one more time. In September 1932, the fifth and final conference of the World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR) took place in Brno, the second-largest city of Czechoslovakia. The League was another of Hirschfeld’s brainchildren, officially starting in 1928. When visiting Czechoslovakia in the months leading up to the conference, to make preparations for the event with Josef Weisskopf (1904–1977), a local doctor, Hirschfeld lectured in different parts of the country and was received with much enthusiasm (see chapter 3). Despite the grievous blow delivered by the Nazi students in Berlin, Hirschfeld and Giese eventually, in the beginning of 1934, got back on their feet and tried to make a new start in Paris, attempting to start up a new Institute there (see chapters 5 and 7). Some of the materials that Hirschfeld had bought back from Nazi Germany in November 1933 were first sent from Berlin to Brno. In April 1934, a portion of these materials were then sent to Paris. But the Paris project did not succeed. Karl Giese, Hirschfeld’s assistant and life partner, found himself entangled in a bathhouse affair, as a result of which he was expelled from France, in the autumn of 1934. This proved to be a definitive setback for the new Paris venture (see chapter 8). It is clear that the Paris police (Préfecture de Police) used the Giese case to try to contain Hirschfeld’s controversial sexual reform activities in France. At the end of 1934, seeing that he was not as welcome in Paris as he had hoped, Hirschfeld moved from the French capital to Nice in the south of France, known for its mild Mediterranean winter climate. Six months later, Hirschfeld died there. It is in Nice that one can now find the grave of the sexologist who, in his time, was as famous as Einstein. On his world trip, in Chicago, he was dubbed “the Einstein of sex” and “Europe’s Greatest Sex Authority”.
1. INTRODUCTION
13
A letter from a learned society in Agra (India), called him, referring to the author of the Kamasutra, “the modern-day Batsyayana (Vātsyāyana)”.6 Concerned about his legacy, after ruminating about its precise details for years, Hirschfeld drew up his will in Nice. Principally, Hirschfeld outlined his expectation that the two men dearest to him would continue his life work. These were Karl Giese, whom Hirschfeld met in Berlin in 1914, and who had been the Head of Collections (Archivleiter) of the Institute of Sexual Science library until 1933; and Li Shiu Tong (1907–1993), a young Chinese man, whom Hirschfeld met on his world tour. Hirschfeld’s estate was settled in Nice in 1935–36 (see chapter 9). But the posterity outlined in Hirschfeld’s will was never realized. It was also in Nice, in the months following Hirschfeld’s death, that a few of the smaller remnants of the Institute’s collection, along with other papers, were divided among Karl Giese, Li Shiu Tong and Hirschfeld’s visiting great-nephew, Ernst Maass (1914–1975). A separate portion of the Institute materials that escaped the Berlin bonfire seems to have been inaccessible to the two principal heirs of Hirschfeld’s estate, Karl Giese and Li Shiu Tong. These artifacts, most of them ethnological objects, remained in Nice and were handled by the Austrian painter Victor Bauer (1902–1959) and his circle of friends, then resident in Nice (see chapter 10). The materials left to Li Shiu Tong were partially recovered from his estate, which came to light – thanks to a great deal of luck – shortly after his death in Vancouver, Canada, in 1993. This lot was saved from a waste container in 1993 by Adam P. W. Smith, an astute young photographer. In 2003, Smith donated these materials to the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft in Berlin. The cast of Hirschfeld’s plaster death mask was among the objects rescued. One of Hirschfeld’s personal notebooks, Testament: Heft II, was also part of the Li Shiu Tong lot. This notebook was not strictly a diary. It mainly contains Hirschfeld’s thoughts about what he would do with his estate. In 2013, this Hirschfeld notebook was published by Ralf Dose (1950-) in Germany in an annotated facsimile edition.7 It now constitutes a crucial primary source in Hirschfeld research. The materials that Ernst Maass took to the USA when he emigrated there, in March 1938, were discovered in the New York home of his son, Robert Maass (1956–), in December 2009, thanks to the investigations of the University of Toronto librarian and researcher Don McLeod (1957–).8 In 2011, these materials were donated by Robert Maass to the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft in Berlin. However, a larger part of the Institute’s remaining materials, along with documents and personal archives belonging to Hirschfeld, ended up with Karl Giese in Brno. Once Giese had received, after a one-year delay, his small part of the Hirschfeld inheritance, he returned for the third time, at the end of May 1936, to Brno, where he settled until his death in March 1938 (see chapter 11). The Hirschfeld guestbook was in Giese’s possession when he lived in Brno, together with at least around 500 and possibly as many as 900 books from the Institute library. Giese eventually lost faith, suffering partly because of a love affair with a man nine years his junior that had gone sour, but also because of his growing fear of Nazism. Germany’s annexation of Austria in March 1938 made it clear that Germany would continue to expand beyond its national borders. Giese committed suicide in his Brno apartment in the same month as the Anschluss. Giese drew up a will in which he entrusted the Institute materials and everything else he owned to his friend Karl Fein (1894–1942), a Jewish lawyer in Brno (see chapter 12). Fein perished in the Holocaust in the beginning of May 1942, six months after being 6 For the USA titles, see Viereck 1930, 240; Hirschfeld & Dose 2013, 98. For the Indian title, see Tagesbote, May 22, 1932, 8.
7
Hirschfeld & Dose 2013. Don McLeod offers a detailed overview of his concise but effective discovery trail. See McLeod 2012. 8
14
THE SCATTERED LIBRARY
deported from Prague to the Łódź ghetto in Poland (see chapter 13). Fein and possibly also his aunt, Elise Brecher, played a central role in the operation to buy back Institute materials in the last months of 1933 (see chapter 6). Exactly what happened to the Hirschfeld and Institute materials that Giese guarded in Brno remains in part unclear; however, in all probability, most or even all the remaining Institute materials were thrown out in 1942, ending up in a waste paper container belonging to a scrap company. This is a painful observation, made even worse when one reflects that Giese most likely had in his possession the greater part of what remained of the Institute collection, as well as Hirschfeld’s personal archives covering his years of exile. Tragically, especially after Magnus Hirschfeld’s death, Giese considered himself to be their best guardian. But not everything was lost in Brno. In 1942, along with some sexology books, the guestbook that Hirschfeld kept in France, was retrieved by an unknown person from the aforementioned container in Brno. The finder (or finders) of these artifacts handed them over to a Brno doctor, Stanislav Kaděrka (1906–1986). In the 1980s, Dr. Kaděrka asked a close family friend to sell the Hirschfeld guestbook in West Germany. In this way, in 1985, the guestbook made its way to the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach, where it is still housed. Very curiously, the Hirschfeld guestbook thus shared the same fate as Testament: Heft II, also saved from a dumpster in Canada. Many people believe that the whole of the Hirschfeld Institute library was lost to the fire in the Opernlatz in Berlin in May 1933, but the truth is a little more complicated.9 In this book, I try to gain some distance from this pervasive, almost romantic view, in which some people seem almost fascinated by the sensational and destructive Berlin bonfire, even as they are determined to wax indignant about the undoubtedly great injustice committed by the National Socialists. I rejected the idea of yet another book bearing the almost predictable title: The Burning Library. Yes, many things were consigned to the flames in Berlin in May 1933 by the Nazis, but that is only one part of the story; or, rather, just the beginning of the story. Nine years after the Berlin auto-da-fé, in 1942, a considerable part of Hirschfeld’s library, along with other papers related to Hirschfeld, were, in all probability, deliberately disposed of in Brno. Chapters 14, 15 and 16 of this book offer some hypothetical scenarios to explain how the Hirschfeld guestbook, along with some sexology books, ended up in the Brno scrap firm’s container, and also to suggest how the guestbook ended up with the aforementioned Dr. Kaděrka. We will mainly look at two plausible scenarios about what may have happened. One scenario involves a group of seven gay men from Brno, who founded the short-lived gay magazine Kamarád in 1932. The other scenario revolves around an aunt of Karl Fein, Elise Brecher (1869–1943), who found temporary refuge in a small makeshift Jewish hospital in Brno in 1941–43. The fraught year 1942, when the Nazis installed a terror regime in the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren) by appointing Reinhard Heydrich as Reichsprotektor, plausibly explains why someone deemed it safer to discard the Institute materials. Holding on to such materials, which had belonged to Magnus Hirschfeld, one of Nazi Germany’s archenemies, was considered too dangerous and even life-threatening in occupied Czechoslovakia. One key figure, the Czech Jaroslav Růžička (1905–1978), curiously makes an appearance in both scenarios. He was the manager (but not the owner) of the company from whose container the Hirschfeld guestbook and some sexology books were salvaged. This man, and what he did with the Institute materials, is the only truly certain factor in the diffuse and still 9
For a recent example of the strangely persistent idea that everything was lost in May 1933, see Stefano Evangelista’s claim in “Institute of Sexual
cience”, https://happy-in-berlin.org/institute- ofS sexual-science/ (accessed Aug. 6, 2021).
1. INTRODUCTION
15
unresolved matter of exactly what happened to the part of the Hirschfeld estate that Giese guarded in Brno. This book is an attempt, then, to try to determine in as much detail as possible what happened in the years 1932–42 to the remainder of Magnus Hirschfeld’s estate. The consequence is that the reader of this book will encounter a vast number of names, facts, and details. This is not an easily digestible novel or Netflix movie. Readers interested in a quicker read may want to skip the footnotes. Details are especially prodigious in chapters 14–17, containing the Czechoslovak part of our story. This profusion is closely related to the fact that exactly what happened in Czechoslovakia in 1939–42 remains partly unresolved. These final chapters should therefore be read as a sort of investigative report on the partly unsolved crime of the discarding of the Institute materials in Brno in 1942. In these chapters, the probable actors involved, as well as the possible scenarios regarding what may have happened, will be described at length. In reporting in detail on the research trails followed, my wish is to help future researchers, saving them from repeating work already done, and thus speed up the progress of Hirschfeld research. Since much of this uncertainty is intrinsically linked to the deportation and annihilation of the Jewish population – and the concomitant destruction of their personal archives and memories – I have tried to follow as many trails of Jewish survival as possible, hoping to find some answers there. My hope, in spelling out these rare trails of Jewish survival (relegated to the footnotes in most cases), is to reach some Jewish readers who may recognize names of relatives. I would like to ask any who do to contact me so that we may determine whether something new can be learned that may shed further light on our story. I also hope that this book will make a useful contribution to – and serve as an instrument for – the justified quest to find yet other possible remainders of Hirschfeld’s estate. Finally, and most of all, my ambition is that this book will bring further appreciation for and restore some dignity to (as hinted by his first name) the “great” Magnus Hirschfeld, by contributing to the detailed history of what happened to his greatly admirable life’s work when confronted by the multifaceted catastrophe named National Socialism, which infested all of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, ultimately culminating in World War II and the Holocaust.
2. Karl Giese and Magnus Hirschfeld Meeting Magnus Hirschfeld In the winter of 1914, Karl Giese boldly visited Magnus Hirschfeld in his doctor’s office in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Giese was sixteen years old at the time and Hirschfeld forty-six. In June 1935, one month after Hirschfeld’s death, Giese told a journalist in Vienna: “As a 16-year-old apprentice merchant, I sought advice from Dr. Hirschfeld regarding a family matter. I had previously only read a brochure by him, never even seeing a picture of him. So I stood in the elegant villa ‘in den Zelten’ on a gloomy December morning”.1 In previous research, there are already a few indications that Giese met Hirschfeld when he was very young. Most commonly, one relies on the Danish Dr. Ellen Bækgaard’s statement that Karl Giese was “very young” (blutjung) when they met. But what age did Bækgaard have in mind when she characterized Giese as “very young”?2 And what did Hirschfeld’s housekeeper, Adelheid Schulz (1909–2008), mean when she said that Giese came to Hirschfeld “as a young boy”?3 It’s hard to think of any reasons for Giese to be mistaken or simply lie about the date of the encounter when talking to the Austrian journalist. Hirschfeld himself, on two occasions, indirectly suggested that he had indeed met Giese, thirty years his junior, in December 1914. In a 1934 entry in Testament: Heft II, Hirschfeld wrote that he had been working together with Giese for twenty years. Hirschfeld had no reason to be circumspect in such an intimate personal document.4 In a July 1934 letter to the French Ministry of the Interior, Hirschfeld stated – in somewhat faulty French – undermine Giese’s claim, though. Likely, Giese was simply aligning in his mind the important, romantic story of his meeting with Hirschfeld and, in his eyes, the equally significant story of the Institute. It would also explain then why Giese wrote that it was Hirschfeld who opened the door. Once the Institute was established, Hirschfeld no longer answered the door. This was done by a doorman. In the early 1930s, a woman, Mrs. Helene Helling, took on this role, see Dose 2021, 13–15. 2 “Er [Karl Giese] war blutjung zu Magnus Hirschfeld gekommen, nachdem er einen von dessen Vorträgen über Homosexualität gehört hätte. Am Tag danach hat er Hirschfeld aufgesucht, der selbst [die Tür des Instituts] geöffnet hat. […] Magnus Hirschfeld erzog Karl Giese und ließ ihn zum Archivleiter ausbilden und zum Sekretär des Instituts und seiner selbst” (He [Karl Giese] had come to Magnus Hirschfeld as a very young man after hearing one of his lectures on homosexuality. The day after, he went to see Hirschfeld, who himself opened [the door of the Institute]. [...] Magnus Hirschfeld educated Karl Giese and had him trained as the Head of Collections and as his own and the Institute’s secretary) (Bækgaard 1985, 33). In 1986, Ellen Bækgaard also told Manfred Herzer that Giese was actually fifteen when he saw Hirschfeld for the first time. See Herzer 2017, 369. 3 Schulz 2001, 72. 4 Hirschfeld & Dose 2013, f. 87/186, n. 494. See also Hirschfeld & Dose 2013, f. 2/16, n. 2.
1
“Magnus Hirschfelds Erbe in Wien”, Der Morgen – Wiener Montagblatt, Jun. 24, 1935, 10: “Als 16 jähriger Kaufmannslehrling suchte ich in einer Familienangelegenheit Rat bei Dr. Hirschfeld. Ich hatte vorher nur eine Broschüre von ihm gelesen, hatte nie ein Bild von ihn gesehen. So stand ich an einem trüben Dezembervormittag in der eleganten Villa ‘in den Zelten’”. There appears to be, at first sight at least, a small problem with Giese’s claim that he went to see Hirschfeld in the elegant villa in In den Zelten. This seems to refer to the villa-like corner building with a front garden where, in 1919, the famous Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sexual Science) was established. The exact address was 9, 10 In den Zelten / 3 Beethovenstrasse. Hirschfeld started the Institute in July 1919, buying the building in November 1920. See Dose 2015, 11–12. However, in 1914, Hirschfeld was not yet living at this address but in another house on the same street: 19 In den Zelten. See, for example, Berliner Adressbuch 1914, 252; Berliner Adressbuch 1915, 253. The typescript “Hirschfeld in Berliner Adreß- und Telefonbüchern” gives the 19 In den Zelten address for the year 1917. See Wellcome Institute, London, fonds Charlotte Wolff, folder n° 6-8-4 I. In the fourth edition of the 1915 Psychobiologischer Fragebogen, the same ad dress is given but with the addition of the Roman numeral “I”, likely indicating the floor number on which Hirschfeld then lived in the building. Cf. Dose 2015, 69. This inconsistency does not necessarily
17
18
THE SCATTERED LIBRARY
that “[f]or nearly 20 years, Mr. Giese has administered as an archivist this valuable scientific material”.5 The specification “for nearly 20 years” is especially remarkable. We can see that Hirschfeld was acutely aware of the upcoming important twentieth anniversary in December 1934. And Hirschfeld was a man who was sensitive to anniversaries, most of all his own. Lastly, an unknown journalist who reported on Hirschfeld’s funeral ceremony in Nice, in May 1935, also mentions Giese having been Hirschfeld’s secretary for twenty years.6 Most likely, explaining the relative discretion of the two women who referred to Giese’s being quite young when he met Hirschfeld, there must have been some kind of taboo around the matter in Hirschfeld’s lifetime. In this sense, it was likely no coincidence that Giese was happy he could finally be open about this decisive moment in his life, when he spoke to a foreign journalist a month after Hirschfeld’s death. It was a sort of grateful release of a love secret kept too long. But, on reflection, it was wise to be very discreet about Giese’s exact age when he met Hirschfeld. Probably, Hirschfeld himself urged his closest friends and associates never to bring it up. Even though the age of consent was fourteen, as stipulated in paragraph 176 of the German criminal code (Strafgesetzbuch, StGb), the preceding infamous paragraph 175 forbade any sex between men, rendering the issue of the age of consent irrelevant.7 And yet, as Laurie Marhoefer has shown, a higher age of consent (Schutzalter) for boys than for girls lay at the heart of the 1929 Criminal Code Reform Committee (Strafgesetzausschuss) debates around repealing the infamous paragraph 175. Boys were considered more prone to homosexual seduction than girls, one reasoned. At the same time as repealing paragraph 175, the intention was to introduce twenty-one as the age of consent in paragraph 297.8 So, even though Giese was already sixteen years old – and not fourteen or fifteen – when he and Hirschfeld met, it certainly would have compromised Hirschfeld as a relatively respected human sexuality researcher (Sexualforscher) had it come to public knowledge that he had an affair with a very young working-class man. His opponents would doubtless have used the matter to attack him and accuse him of “corrupting German youth”.9 5 AN, site de Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, Ministère de l’intérieur, Direction générale de la sûreté nationale (fonds de Moscou), file Karl Giese, dossier n° 15843, letter from Magnus Hirschfeld to Interior Ministry (dated Jul. 12, 1934), cote 19940448/186: “Mr. Giese a depuis près de 20 ans administré comme archiviste ce précieux matériel scientifique”. A time frame of twenty years was already mentioned in an earlier letter (dated Jun. 17, 1934, f. 1) sent by Hirschfeld to the French authorities, but I think that claim less poignant because the word “presque” (almost) is not used. In another, later letter sent to the French Interior Minister, Hirschfeld repeated the number of years (“depuis vingt ans”) one more time; see ibid., letter (dated October 23, 1934) from Magnus Hirschfeld to Ministre de l’Intérieur. 6 L’Eclaireur de Nice et du Sud-Est, May 22, 1935, 3. Yet another source shines more light on the matter. In July 1937, Giese claimed that he had worked eighteen years for Magnus Hirschfeld (see MZA, Brno, fonds B 40, Zemský úřad Brno (Landesbehörde in Brünn), kart. n° 2138, sign. 5274/38, f. 6b). If we take 1933, the year the Institute was looted, as the end of the journey, this brings us to the year 1915. So they might indeed have met in December 1914, with Giese moving into the Institute in the course of the year 1915.
7
Kerchner 2005, 269 n. 108. Laurie Marhoefer writes that the age of consent for girls was sixteen (Marhoefer 2015, 240 n. 181). Jens Dobler provides the best discussion on the issue of the Schutzalter (age of consent) in relation to paragraph 175. See Dobler 2020, 55–60, 155–56, 170–75. Dobler also mentions concern about sexual abuse in a work relationship as another important factor that could have hindered free expression. See Dobler 2020, 166. 8 Marhoefer 2015, 44–45, 76, 120–28. In 1935, the Nazis made twenty-one the age of consent, and made it clear that, in very light cases, a young man (read: an innocent seduced by an older “predatory” gay man) might escape punishment. See https:// de.wikipedia.org/wiki/§_175 (accessed May 5, 2020). About this akward victimization of young men, Magnus Hirschfeld wrote: “Wenn man von einem jungen Mädchen beansprucht, daß es sich selbst, ohne gesetzliche Unterstützung, vor Verführung schützt, kann man es von einem jungen Mann wohl auch verlangen.” (If you expect a young girl to protect herself from seduction without legal support, you can probably expect the same from a young man). See Hirschfeld & Beck 1927, 59. 9 For some examples of the National Socialist discourse on the corruption of youth “promoted” by Hirschfeld, taken from the Nazi publications Völki-
2. KARL GIESE AND MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD
19
Karl Giese’s Family Karl (Otto Bernhard) Giese was born into a working-class family on October 18, 1898, at 17 Schulstraße, in what was then known as Berlin Norden.10 The house where Giese was born escaped the intense World War II bombing of Berlin and still stands today [ill. 1].11 Nowadays the building houses low-income immigrant families. During the Weimar republic, the Wedding neighborhood was known as “Roter Wedding” (Red Wedding) since almost half of its residents voted Communist. Giese’s parents were no exception.12 Karl Giese’s father, Hermann Giese (1862–1904), was a helmsman (Steuermann) by profession.13 His mother was Anna Noack (1860–?).14 The couple scher Beobachter (Oct. 31, 1928) and Der Angriff (Nov. 19, 1928), see Herrn 2010, 125–26, 128. 10 Karl was delivered by the Hebamme (midwife) Marie Haupt in his parents’ house at 9 a.m. The baby was baptized in either the Neue Nazarethkirche or the Alte Nazarethkirche. See ELAB, Berlin, Taufbuch Berlin-Wedding, Gemeinde Nazareth 1898–1899, n° 3150, folio 17, n° 1267, Carl Otto Bernhard Giese. A copy of Karl Giese’s birth certificate can be found in MZA, Brno, fonds C 107, Německý úřední soud Brno (Deutsches Amtsgericht Brünn), kart. n° 256, sign. 5a V 3/41 (Karl Giese inheritance file). I saw the original birth certificate in the Standesamt of the Bezirksamt Berlin Mitte in 2012 (Bezirksamt Berlin Mitte Berlin, Archiv im Standesamt, Bestand P Rep. 920, Geburtsregister, Standesamt Berlin XIII [zurückgeführtes Erstregister], year 1898, certificate n° 3711). Since 2014, the birth certificate can be found online at Ancestry.com (under Berlin, Germany, Births, 1874–1906). The administrative division at the time was Bezirk Berlin Wedding (with Ortsteilen Berlin Wedding and Berlin Gesundbrunnen). Since 2001, this Bezirk has been part of the greater Bezirk Berlin Mitte. The birth certificate indicates that Giese’s first name was officially spelled “Carl”, but I will retain the usual spelling, “Karl”, since this had already been current in Giese’s lifetime. In October 2012, I further inquired with the Landesarchiv Berlin about any trace of Giese or his parents in the fragmentary archival fonds of Berlin residents’ registration cards (Berliner Einwohnermeldekartei, EMK, 1875–1960, Bestand B Rep. 021). This search, a paid service, proved unsuccessful. See Landesarchiv Berlin’s letter to the author, dated November 1, 2012. 11 The house has several wings (Vorderhaus, Seitenflügel, Quergebäude, etc.) with many apartments and is located just across from the neo-Gothic, evangelical Neue Nazarethkirche located between two U-Bahn stations, Nauener Platz and Leopoldplatz. The 1893 Neue Nazarethkirche is not to be confused with the older nearby (towerless) 1835 Alte Nazarethkirche, situated on Leopoldplatz. The house number has not changed since 1898, the year Giese was born, as testified by an email (dated Mar. 27, 2013) from Bernhard Wittstock (Bezirksamt Mitte von Berlin, Stadtentwicklungsamt, Kataster und Vermessung) to the author: “Aus einer hier archi vierten historischen Übersichtskarte und der Eintragung im Original des hier vorliegenden Preußi schen Gebäudesteuerbuches geht hervor, dass das in Rede stehende Grundstück Schulstraße 17 diese Hausnummer auch im Jahr 1913 hatte. Daher ist davon auszugehen, dass eine Veränderung der
Haus nummer nicht stattgefunden hat und diese auch in der Zeit von 1899 bis 1918 bestand” (From a historical survey map archived here and the entry in the original of the Prussian building tax book available here, it is clear that the property in question, 17 Schulstraße, also had this house number in 1913. Therefore, it can be assumed that no change of the house number took place and that it was also in existence from 1899 to 1918). 12 Berlin Wedding and Berlin Neukölln were the two main neighborhoods involved in the so-called Communist workers’ Blutmai (Bloody May) revolt of 1929. Ralf Dose communicated to me that the Giese family was Communist. See the comment (n. 7) added by Dose to the English translation of the letter (dated Dec. 29, 1937) sent by Karl Giese to Ernst Maass (Archiv MHG, Berlin, fonds Ernst Maass). This fact appears to correspond to what Giese wrote about his relatives in the same letter: “Meinen Geschwistern geht es sagen wir mal einigermaßen. Sie leiden allerdings alle sehr unter dem, was sie, trotzdem sie keine Juden sind, als schweres und unverdienstes Joch empfinden” (As for my siblings, let’s say they are pretty ok. However, they all suffer greatly from what they feel to be a heavy and undeserved yoke, although they are not Jews). Hirschfeld’s housekeeper Adelheid Schulz once complained that Antonie Mertens, one of Giese’s two sisters, always tried to get her to join the Communist Party with her ideological talk. See Schulz 2001, 74. 13 Karl (August Hermann) Giese, was born in Neu endorf (present-day Babelsberg). His death certificate is held at Landesarchiv Berlin, Sterberegister, Standesamt Berlin XIIIa (zurückgeführtes Erstregis ter), year 1904, certificate n° 814. It is now available online at Ancestry.com (under Berlin, Germany, Deaths, 1874–1920). His birth year was inferred from the death certificate. I thank Ralf Dose for helping me decipher the handwriting on the death certificate. Hermann Giese’s profession appears on the birth certificate of his first son, Georg, as well as on his and Anna’s 1885 marriage certificate. 14 Anna Dorothea Luise Noack was born in Zossen, a small city fifty kilometers south of Berlin. Initially, I could only find her first and middle names, along with her birth name, when I consulted the ELAB Berlin Wedding Taufbücher for the births of some of her children. Armed with this information, Ralf Dose traced her exact year of birth and the Berlin Standesamt in which her birth was registered. The exact death date of Giese’s mother is still unknown; however, it must be before 1938, since her name does not appear in a document naming possible