Ernst Burchard
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
physician, sexologist, and gay rights advocate and author.
Burchard was born in Heilsberg
Heilsberg
Heilsberg:* German name of Lidzbark Warmiński* Battle of Heilsberg* Transmitter Heilsberg- See also :* Lidzbark* Lidzbark * Lidzbarski...
(modern Lidzbark Warmiński
Lidzbark Warminski
Lidzbark Warmiński is a town in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in Poland. It is the capital of Lidzbark County.- History :The town was originally an Old Prussian settlement known as Lecbarg until being conquered in 1240 by the Teutonic Knights, who called it Heilsberg...
, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship
Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship
Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, or Warmia-Masuria Province , is a voivodeship in northeastern Poland. Its capital and largest city is Olsztyn...
). He studied medicine in Tübingen
Tübingen
Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...
, Würzburg
Würzburg
Würzburg is a city in the region of Franconia which lies in the northern tip of Bavaria, Germany. Located at the Main River, it is the capital of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. The regional dialect is Franconian....
and Kiel
Kiel
Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...
, taking his doctoral degree in 1900 with a dissertation on Einige Fälle von vorübergehender Glycosurie. After his studies, he worked as a physician in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and opened his own practice. Here he met Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and sexologist. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which Dustin Goltz called "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights."-Early life:Hirschfeld was born in Kolberg in a...
and joined him to found the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee
Scientific-Humanitarian Committee
The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was founded in Berlin on the 14th or 15 May, 1897, to campaign for social recognition of homosexual, bisexual and transgender men and women, and against their legal persecution...
along with the pastor Georg Plock and Baron von Teschenberg.
Burchard, who was gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
, testified as an expert witness in several court cases involving prosecutions on grounds of Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality. All in all, around 140,000 men were convicted under the law.The statute was amended several...
, which criminalized homosexual practices. He and Hirschfeld co-authored several articles on sexology. In 1913, Burchard published his books Zur Psychologie der Selbstbezichtigung and Der sexuelle Infantilismus, and in 1914 he published his Lexikon des gesamten Sexuallebens. Burchard also wrote lyric poems for the gay periodicals Der Eigene
Der Eigene
Der Eigene was the first gay journal in the world, published from 1896 to 1932 by Adolf Brand in Berlin. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself...
and Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, including the poem "Vivat Fridericus". Burchard died on February 5, 1920, in Berlin and was buried at the Luisenfriedhof cemetery.
Gay rights activism
Burchard had a successful career in medicine. After several years as a general practitioner in Berlin, he assisted Hirschfeld in starting the Scientific Humanitarian Committee with publisher Max SpohrMax Spohr
Johannes Hermann August Wilhelm Max Spohr was a German bookseller and publisher. He was one of the first publishers worldwide, who published LGBT publications...
, lawyer Eduard Oberg and writer Max von Bülow. The group aimed to undertake research to defend the rights of homosexuals and to repeal Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality. All in all, around 140,000 men were convicted under the law.The statute was amended several...
, the section of the German penal code that had criminalized homosexual acts between men since 1871. They argued that the law encouraged blackmail, and the motto of the Committee, "Justice through science", reflected Hirschfeld's belief that a better scientific understanding of homosexuality would eliminate hostility toward homosexuals. Hirschfeld was a tireless campaigner and became a well-known public figure.
Benedict Friedländer and some others left the Scientific Humanitarian Committee and formed another group, the "Bund für männliche Kultur" or "Union for Male Culture", which however did not exist long. It argued that male-male love is a simple aspect of virile manliness rather than a special condition.
The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, under Hirschfeld's leadership, managed to gather over 5000 signatures from prominent Germans for a petition to overturn Paragraph 175. Signatories included Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
, Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
, Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition in the first half of the 20th century...
, Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, Heinrich Mann
Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...
, Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
, August Bebel
August Bebel
Ferdinand August Bebel was a German Marxist politician, writer, and orator. He is best remembered as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.-Early years:...
, Max Brod
Max Brod
Max Brod was a German-speaking Czech Jewish, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is most famous as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka...
, Karl Kautsky
Karl Kautsky
Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-German philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the coming of World War I in 1914 and was called by some the "Pope of...
, Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
, Gerhart Hauptmann
Gerhart Hauptmann
Gerhart Hauptmann was a German dramatist and novelist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.-Life and work:...
, Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
, Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Eduard Bernstein
Eduard Bernstein
Eduard Bernstein was a German social democratic theoretician and politician, a member of the SPD, and the founder of evolutionary socialism and revisionism.- Life :...
.
The bill was brought before the Reichstag
Reichstag (German Empire)
The Reichstag was the parliament of the North German Confederation , and of the German Reich ....
in 1898, but was only supported by a minority from the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
, prompting a frustrated Hirschfeld to consider the controversial strategy of "outing
Outing
Outing is the act of disclosing a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person's true sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. Outing gives rise to issues of privacy, choice, hypocrisy, and harm in addition to sparking debate on what constitutes common good in efforts...
" — that is, forcing some of the prominent law-makers who had remained silent out of the closet. The bill continued to come before parliament, and eventually began to make progress in the 1920s before the takeover of the Nazi party obliterated any hopes for reform.
Works
- Der sexuelle Infantilismus (with editor Magnus Hirschfeld), Halle a. S. : Marhold, 1913.
- Zur Psychologie der Selbstbezichtigung, Adler-Verlag, Berlin, 1913.
- Lexikon des gesamten Sexuallebens, Adler-Verlag, Berlin, 1914.
Tribute
The German director Rosa von PraunheimRosa von Praunheim
Rosa von Praunheim , in Riga, Latvia. His given name is Holger Mischwitzky. He is a German film director, author, painter and gay rights activist. Openly gay, he is one of the initiators of the gay rights movement in Germany....
made the film Der Einstein des Sex
Der Einstein des Sex
The Einstein of Sex: Life and Work of Dr. M. Hirschfeld is a 1999 German film directed by Rosa von Praunheim. The plot follows the life of the Jewish doctor Magnus Hirschfeld who was a sexologist and gay socialist...
in 1999, based on the life of Magnus Hirschfeld.
See also
- Harden–Eulenburg Affair, a major affair in Germany in 1907-1909 regarding accusations of homosexuality in high circles
- Magnus Hirschfeld MedalMagnus Hirschfeld MedalThe Magnus Hirschfeld Medal is awarded by the German Society for Social-Scientific Sexuality Research for outstanding service to sexual science, granted in the categories "Sexual Research" and "Sexual Reform"...
, awarded to outstanding sexologists by the German sexology society - Arnold AletrinoArnold AletrinoArnold Aletrino was a Dutch criminal anthropologist and writer, who published works on homosexuality in Dutch and French...
- researcher and cofounder of the Dutch chapter of The Scientific Humanitarian Committee - Hirschfeld Eddy FoundationHirschfeld Eddy FoundationThe Hirschfeld-Eddy Foundation was founded in Berlin in June 2007. It is a foundation focused on human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.-Name origin:...
, a Human Rights Foundation for Lesbians and Gays