Magnus Hirschfeld’s Die Transvestiten – some more observations

Part 1:  3 misconceptions

Part 2: 2 more misconceptions

Hirschfeld as trans.

Misconception #4: the assumption that Hirschfeld was himself a transvestite.

The first such claim seems to be Vern Bullough’s Science in the Bedroom: A History of Sex Research, 1994:62 where he starts his 14-page essay on Hirschfeld with “Undoubtedly influenced by his own homosexuality and transvestism ….”. However, in the digital version of the book obtainable from Archiv für Sexualwissenschaft, (online) the words “and transvestism” have been removed. Nor did Bullough claim a transvestite Hirschfeld in his 11-page biography in Sexuality and Culture 7 (1) Winter 2003. Bullough had not given any footnote or other reason for his claim, and in effect withdrew it. However those two words in the 1994 hardcover version of the book seem to be the basis of claims elsewhere.

->Find a Grave’s Magnus Hirschfeld page says: “As a Jew living in a historically anti-Semitic country, and as a gay man and transvestite”, and of its nature gives no citations.

-> Tim Armstrong in his Modernism, Technology, and the Body: A Cultural Study, 1998, page 167, writes of Magnus Hirschfeld “Himself homosexual (like Haire) and transvestite, he was less dogmatic than Krafft-Ebing had been”. Armstrong gives no citation or quote to support this. 

->Marta Vicente. "The Medicalization of the Transsexual: Patient-Physician Narratives in the First Half of the Twentieth Century". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 76 (4), Oct 2021: 10, says “Hirschfeld, who also cross-dressed and was known among Berlin transvestites as ‘Aunt Magnesia’ ” and gives a footnote citing Charlotte Wolff’s 1986 biography of Hirschfeld, which does record his distaste at being referred to as “Aunt Magnesia” but no transvesting.

-> Patricia Gherovici, in her “Psychoanalysis Needs a Sex Change”, p4, says “He was also an occasional cross-dresser himself” – her only citation is Bullough, 1994, p68 - not p62. 

->Daniel Brook’s The Einstein of Sex, p96, says “When Magnus researched drag bars and balls, he reputably sometimes went in drag himself as ‘Auntie Magnesia’. A dowdy feminine version of his rumpled self, Auntie Magnesia presumably favored frumpy dresses…”. Endnote p276n96 cites only Robert Beachy’s Gay Berlin which talks of the balls but says nothing of Hirschfeld in drag. Brook actually then mentions that Hirschfeld found the practice of men doing female drag while “boasting moustaches or full beards” ‘distasteful and repellant’. This is Magnus Hirschfeld, famous for his bushy moustache, whom Brook has just suggested did transvest. There is no record of a Hirschfeld without his moustache.

Christopher Isherwood lived in Hirschfeld’s institute and has no such gossip in his autobiography Christopher and his Kind: A Memoir, 1929-1939, published 1976. And of course, if there had been any such rumours, the Nazis would have delighted in repeating them.

The canard is repeated in the EN.Wikipedia article.

We might also note that a gay man who does drag once or twice for a party or a ball, is not thereby a transvestite. Despite what Virginia Prince and the DSM have ignorantly claimed, there are indeed gay transvestites. However being a transvestite does require more than dressing up once or twice for a social event. The soldiers who put on drag shows for fellow soldiers and in prisoner of war camps – with a few exceptions – are not taken to be transvestites, nor are rugby players who drag up for a laugh.

Modern commentaries:

Misconception #5: the advertising pitch that Hirschfeld and Die Transvestiten are an untold tale.

The blurb for Shillace’s book says they are “the forgotten story”; the blurb for Brook’s book says “Today, he’s been largely forgotten”; a review of Brook on Amazon says: “Hirschfield comes up in many contexts but this is the first book I’ve found specifically about him.” And Bullough in his 2003 paper for Sexuality and Culture, wrote “For most of the last half of the twentieth century, however, Hirschfeld was more or less ignored in the English speaking world, despite the fact that two of his works, Die Transvestiten (1910) and Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes (1914), were the most significant and authoritative works written on the subjects before Kinsey and his data and are still of importance to the current generation of researchers.” 

Er, No!

While there are no way as many books about Hirschfeld, as about Sigmund Freud, there are more books about Hirschfeld than about each of Havelock Ellis, John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, Albert Ellis, August-Henri Forel, Bernard Talmey, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Norman Haire and even Richard von Krafft-Ebing.

In my personal memory there were discussions with trans, gay and cishet persons where they knew at least of the book burnings, and often more. This is going back to at least the 1970s. However more importantly there have been many books, journal articles and magazine articles starting with Wolff’s biography in 1986, and then more and more.

A partial list:

• Charlotte Wolff. Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology. Quartet Books, 1986: 107-6
• Vern L. Bullough & Bonnie Bullough. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender. University of Pennsylvania Press 1993: 207-13. 
• Geertje Mak. ,Passing Women': im Sprechzimmer von Magnus Hirschfeld. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, 9,3, 1998.
• Vern L Bullough. "Magnus Hirschfeld, an often overlooked pioneer". Sexuality and Culture. 7(1) Winter 2003: 62–72.
• J Edgar Bauer. “Magnus Hirschfeld's Doctrine of Sexual Intermediaries and the Transgender Politics of (no-) Identity” in Gert Hekma (ed). Past and Present of Radical Sexual Politics. Mosse Foundation for the Promotion of Gay and Lesbian Studies at The University of Amsterdam, 2004.
• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts: Transvestitismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 2005.
• Ralf Dose. Magnus Hirschfeld: Deutscher – Jude – Weltbürger. Verlag Hentrich & Hentrich, 2005.
• Ibon Zubiaur. Pioneros de lo homosexual (Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs, K M Kertbeny, M Hirshfeld). Anthropos, 2007.
• Elena Mancini. Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom: A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement. Palgrave Macmillan. 2010.
• Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) Une Pionier du mouvement homosexual confronte au nazisme. Le Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle, 2010.
• Patricia Gherovici. “Psychoanalysis Needs a Sex Change”. Gay and Lesbian Issues and Psychology Review, 7(1), 2011. 
• Jack Molay. “Magnus Hirschfeld's Theory of Transgender Intermediaries”. Crossdreamers, 19/12/2014.
• Ralf Dose. Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement. Monthly Review Press, 2014 (translation of Dose’s 2005 book)
• Wouter Egalmeers. Magnus Hirschfeld’s exposition of ‘universal’ fetishism in his 1930 Bilderteil zur Geschlechtskunde. Research Masters Thesis, Radboud University, 2016.
• Ken Plummer. „Hirschfeld, Magnus (1868-1935)”. In George Ritzer (ed) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2016.
• Heike Bauer, The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture. Temple University Press, 2017.
• Manfred Herzer. Magnus Hirschfeld und seine Zeit. Gruyter, 2017.
• Emma Heaney. „’I am not a friend to men’: Embodiment and desire in Magnus Hirschfeld's Transvestites case studies”. Journal of Lesbian Studies,
• Wissen schafft Akzeptanz: Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld. Tätigkeitsbericht 2017.
• Darryl B Hill. “Sexuality and Gender in Hirschfeld's Die Transvestiten: A Case of the ‘Elusive Evidence of the Ordinary’”. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 14, 3, 2018.
• Rainer Herrn. Der Liebe und dem Leid: Das Institut für Sexualwissenschaft 1919-1933. Suhrkamp, 2022.
• Brandy Schillace. The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story. W W Norton & Company, 2025
• Daniel Brook. The Einstein of Sex: Dr Magnus Hirschfeld Visionary of Weimar Berlin. W W Norton & Company, 2025