The Homophile Movement

Abstract

Between the 1860s and the 1920s, a homosexual movement had crystallized and expanded in Germany. By the Weimar years, it had grown into a remarkably diverse movement. At the forefront was Magnus Hirschfeld’s Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which committed itself to a strategy of pursuing research and spreading education in the hope of promoting tolerance. By the mid-1920s, this organization was being guided increasingly by the vision of Kurt Hiller, a young, multitalented lawyer who had already made a name for himself as a radical writer, a political activist, and even a significant figure within the German expressionist movement.1 Hiller hoped to increase the political effectiveness of the committee by bringing it into an alliance with other sex reform groups.