{"title":"Nazi Gender Ideology, Memoricide, and the Attack on the Berlin Institute for Sexual Research","authors":"Matther B. Fuller, Leah Owen","doi":"10.1080/10402659.2022.2131383","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"On 6 May 1933, a group of Nazi students attacked and looted the Institute for Sexual Research (the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or “IfS”), a body set up by the Jewish and openly gay sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld. The IfS’ archives were publicly burned four days later (Hill 2013, 13–15), with photos of the event now synonymous with Nazi repression. Was this targeted, categorical, exterminatory violence against LGBTQ people an attempt at “memoricide” – the willful destruction of the memories and cultural treasures of an adversary (Civallero 2007)? This paper argues that queer people – including trans people – were indeed attacked as part of the Holocaust, facing specific attempts to erase them (whether through invisibilization, memoricide, or direct extermination). Nazi anti-queer ideology, however, was incoherent and erratic. This study contests that they attempted memoricide, social cleansing, and genocide of groups whose parameters and “threat” they had only a hazy notion of. This led to inconsistent treatment for what we might now describe as “transfeminine” and “transmasculine” populations, and produced complex and ad hoc, but still deeply queerphobic, state discourse. Having examined these patterns of prejudice, we proceed to examine attempts to restore this history, and recount the lives of trans people and archives.","PeriodicalId":51831,"journal":{"name":"Peace Review-A Journal of Social Justice","volume":"34 1","pages":"529 - 540"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Peace Review-A Journal of Social Justice","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10402659.2022.2131383","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
On 6 May 1933, a group of Nazi students attacked and looted the Institute for Sexual Research (the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or “IfS”), a body set up by the Jewish and openly gay sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld. The IfS’ archives were publicly burned four days later (Hill 2013, 13–15), with photos of the event now synonymous with Nazi repression. Was this targeted, categorical, exterminatory violence against LGBTQ people an attempt at “memoricide” – the willful destruction of the memories and cultural treasures of an adversary (Civallero 2007)? This paper argues that queer people – including trans people – were indeed attacked as part of the Holocaust, facing specific attempts to erase them (whether through invisibilization, memoricide, or direct extermination). Nazi anti-queer ideology, however, was incoherent and erratic. This study contests that they attempted memoricide, social cleansing, and genocide of groups whose parameters and “threat” they had only a hazy notion of. This led to inconsistent treatment for what we might now describe as “transfeminine” and “transmasculine” populations, and produced complex and ad hoc, but still deeply queerphobic, state discourse. Having examined these patterns of prejudice, we proceed to examine attempts to restore this history, and recount the lives of trans people and archives.
1933年5月6日,一群纳粹学生袭击并洗劫了性研究所(Institut f r Sexualwissenschaft,简称IfS),这是一个由犹太人和公开的同性恋性学家Magnus Hirschfeld建立的机构。四天后,IfS的档案被公开烧毁(Hill 2013, 13-15),照片上的事件现在成了纳粹镇压的代名词。这种针对LGBTQ人群的针对性的、明确的、灭绝性的暴力行为是否是一种“记忆谋杀”——故意摧毁对手的记忆和文化财富(Civallero 2007)?这篇论文认为,酷儿人群——包括变性人——确实作为大屠杀的一部分受到了攻击,面临着清除他们的具体尝试(无论是通过隐形、谋杀还是直接灭绝)。然而,纳粹反酷儿的意识形态是不连贯和不稳定的。这项研究反驳了他们试图谋杀、社会清洗和种族灭绝的说法,而这些群体的参数和“威胁”他们只有一个模糊的概念。这导致了对我们现在所称的“跨女性”和“跨男性”群体的不一致对待,并产生了复杂和特殊的,但仍然深深恐惧酷儿的国家话语。在研究了这些偏见模式之后,我们继续研究恢复这段历史的尝试,并讲述跨性别者的生活和档案。