The Scientific Humanitarian Commitee was founded in Berlin-Charlottenburg, a locality of Berlin, Germany. This organization published emancipation literature, sponsored rallies, and campaigned for legal reform all throughout Germany and other countries as well. Berlin is the largest city in Germany and it was in 1933 that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party came to power within it. The Nazis are what shut down the Scientific Humanitarian Commitee. Thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps and there was a pink triangle symbol that the Nazis put on the prisoner’s uniforms. The founder of the Scientific Humanitarian Commitee, Magnus Hirschfeld, was a Jew, a gay man, and a sexual liberiation activist. This made him a huge target of Nazis, he was assaulted by volkisch activists in 1920, his Institute of Sexual Research was sacked by Nazis where they burned his archives and materials in a public square, and in 1932, he was unable to return to Germany and was exiled to France where he later passed away. Homosexual men and women had some of the most freedom they had ever seen in Germany within the period between the end of World War I and the Nazi seizure of power. Gay nightlife was tolerated in some cities, the number gay bars had exceeded even that of New York City, and the amount of gay publications kept increasing. Adolf’s Hitler’s era of power had abruptly ended this period of newly found freedom.
“Gay Rights Movement.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/gay-rights-movement.