Mel Gordon - Voluptuous Panic - The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin

During the Great Inflation, as Berlin metamorphosed into Europe’s garish midway of smut, a different, more respectable enterprise surfaced in the erotic city: “Sexual Science.” A hodgepodge field that had its origins in Wilhelmian times, Sexology was nothing less than a mammoth attempt to excavate, classify, and then cobble together all things sexual into a single body of knowledge. Nearly every area of the humanities and medical science fed the novel endeavor: cultural anthropology and folklore; anatomy, biochemistry, and eugenics; endocrinology and psychotherapy; religious and art studies; social psychology and public health, criminology and prison reform. Even hypnosis, graphology, folk medicine, and nineteenth-century phrenology were analyzed for their sexual relevance.

No. 17:In your immediate family, are there any females who look like men; or males with obvious female characteristics? Do any of your siblings exhibit any aspects of the opposite sex?

No. 44:Can you whistle?

No. 61:Are you left-handed?

No. 90:How do you feel about the Great War? What part did you play in it?

No. 92:Do clothes occupy an important part of your thinking? Do you prefer a simple or multi-layered look, tight or free-flowing garments, high-collared or open shirts? Do you wear any accessories or jewelry? Do you have a favorite color? Which?

No. 93:Do you normally carry in your pockets or purse: a knife, make-up kit, lighter, or photographs? What objects do you like to always have with you?

No. 97:Have you ever been aroused by a member of your own sex?

No. 99:Which sexual partners do you normally prefer: people older than yourself, younger, or—more or less—the same age? What was the most extreme difference in age of someone to whom you were attracted? Do differences of age and generation have no importance for you?

No. 100:Which do you find more exciting: the naked body, the clothed body, or the partly-clad body? Does the smell of perspiration from certain people ever excite you? Repel you?

No. 102:Have you ever fallen in love with someone solely because of an idiosyncratic trait, like the way that person wore something, their body shape, hair color, or spiritual demeanor?

No. 104:During sex, have you ever fantasized you are with another partner?

No. 123:Have you ever wished that your beloved treated you in such a way as to cause physical pain? Allowed or commanded him/her to hit you?

No. 131:Have you ever been tempted to have intercourse with three partners? In which combination of men and women?

No. 132:Have you ever been sexually aroused by an animal?

No. 133:Does it bother you when someone refuses to talk about their sexual peculiarities?

In Vienna’s scientific circles, particularly among the bickering founders of psychoanalysis, there was great skepticism (later mixed with envy) over the ever-expanding scope and public acceptance of Sexual Science. The Berlin upstart, according to the Freudians, received far too much lay support and renown during its recklessly short period of incubation. The infant science had merely hacked off tiny offshoots from established disciplines (as it highlighted all their fringe minutiae) and grafted them onto some hulking, synthetic beast.

More irritating was the professional attitude of Sexology’s leading practitioner, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. The Berlin educator acknowledged the opinions of his many detractors, considered their scientific validity, and frequently embraced them. “Papa” Hirschfeld was the liberal spirit of the infinitely tolerant metropolis. Debating him was an exercise in maddening futility, like passing bad notes on to an old-time counterfeiter or boxing an ancient but improbably nimble kangaroo.

Trained as a physician, Hirschfeld acquired other skills during his long career as the international spokesman for Sexology. He was an energetic defender for sexual minorities and women, prolific science writer, legal authority, behind-the-scenes politician, and master showman. Hirschfeld was widely credited in his lifetime and after as the primary inventor of marriage counseling, Gay Liberation, artificial insemination, surgical gender “reassignment,” and modern sex therapy.

In 1897, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, the first organization anywhere devoted to the protection of homosexual rights. As a young doctor, he studied the riptide affects of alcoholism and unwanted pregnancy on Berlin’s families and their neighborhoods. Prussia’s comprehensive program for health and social welfare, considered to be the most enlightened in Europe, was designed by Hirschfeld in 1916. He also served as the first President of the World League for Sexual Reform.

Hirschfeld’s judicious writings included more than 200 titles. Their range was broad and the research insightful. Besides sexual variation, Hirschfeld methodically investigated pornography, traditional aphrodisiacs and sexual aids, the relationship between crime and illicit sexuality, social mores and fetishism, the etiology of pleasure, and the erotic basis of warfare. His goofy persona and conscientiousness transformed Sexology from an anthropological curiosity into a popular German science. The Berlin monthlies, starting in the mid-Twenties, referred to Hirschfeld solicitously as “the Einstein of Sex.”