Hans P. Soetaert: The Scattered Library
Now available
In his new book Hans P. Soetaert describes the various fates of the remnants of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science Collection in France and Czechoslovakia, predominantly in the years from 1932 to 1942. It 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. Soetaert’s seminal book takes up where Rainer Herrn’s 2022 study on the history of Hirschfeld’s Institute and the life work of Magnus Hirschfeld ended, in 1932/33. The book was printed with the support of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society.
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.
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.
This book is also the first biography of Karl Giese 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.
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, 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.