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    Burning sexual subjects: books, homophobia and the Nazi destruction of the Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin

    Bauer, Heike (2014) Burning sexual subjects: books, homophobia and the Nazi destruction of the Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin. In: Partington, G. and Smyth, A. (eds.) Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 17-33. ISBN 9781137367655.

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    Abstract

    Magnus Hirschfeld’s (1868-1935) Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin was a first point of attack for Nazi students and soldiers. There is some critical consensus that it was the Institute’s association, via its founder, with both homosexuality and Jewishness, that made it a target so early on in the Nazi attack against books. Where most of the existing studies of these events have focused in one way or the other on the losses incurred in the act of destruction, this chapter turns attention to the remains: the documents and objects which survived the attack on the Institute. It shows that the materiality of the books and papers influenced how they were handled, and considers why and how some objects –notably a collection of questionnaires and a bronze statue – survived the events.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Book Section
    Additional Information: This extract is taken from the author's original manuscript and has not been edited. The definitive, published, version of record is available here: http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/book-destruction-from-the-medieval-to-the-contemporary-gillian-partington/?K=9781137367655
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Magnus Hirschfeld, Nazism, book burnings, homophobia, antisemitism, homosexuality, history of sexuality
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Depositing User: Heike Bauer
    Date Deposited: 09 Jul 2014 10:14
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:35
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/10089

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