He based his practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg during the Weimar period. Performance Studies and Rhetoric Professor Dustin Goltz characterized the committee as having carried out "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights ". Hirschfeld is regarded as one of the most influential sexologists of the 20th century. Hirschfeld was forced into exile in France, where he died in As a youth he attended Kolberg Cathedral School [ de ] , which at the time was a Protestant school.
In , he earned his medical degree. After his studies, he traveled through the United States for eight months, visiting the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago , and living from the proceeds of his writing for German journals. During his time in Chicago, Hirschfeld became involved with the homosexual subculture in that city. Hirschfeld became interested in gay rights because many of his gay patients took their own lives. In particular, Hirschfeld cited the story of one of his patients as a reason for his gay rights activism: a young army officer suffering from depression who killed himself in , leaving behind a suicide note saying that despite his best efforts, he could not end his desires for other men, and so had ended his life out of his guilt and shame.
The officer could not even bring himself to use the word "homosexuality", which he instead conspicuously referred to as "that" in his note. However, the officer's use of Sie , the formal German word for you, instead of the informal Du , suggests Hirschfeld's relationship with his patient was strictly professional. At the same time, Hirschfeld was greatly affected by the trial of Oscar Wilde , which he often referred to in his writings.
Magnus Hirschfeld found a balance between practicing medicine and writing about his findings. After several years as a general practitioner in Magdeburg , in he issued a pamphlet, Sappho and Socrates , on homosexual love under the pseudonym Th.
The group aimed to undertake research to defend the rights of homosexuals and to repeal Paragraph , the section of the German penal code that, since , had criminalized homosexuality. They argued that the law encouraged blackmail. The motto of the committee, "Justice through science", reflected Hirschfeld's belief that a better scientific understanding of homosexuality would eliminate social hostility toward homosexuals.
