Source: The Local, Associated Press via Haaretz
Berlin today renamed a promenade along the Spree River after Magnus Hirschfeld, a sex researcher and pioneer of the German gay rights movement.

The Hirschfeld promenade is in the government quarter, diagonally across from the German chancellery.

The city's Charite hospital also opened a new exhibition of his work called Sex Burns. A monument is also planned with a bust of the researcher – known as “the Einstein of sex” – who was born in 1868 in the German city of Kolberg as son of a Jewish doctor.

"The tributes to Hirschfeld are a clear acknowledgment for gays that a persecution has taken place and that reparation is necessary," said Alexander Zinn, head of Germany's Lesbian and Gay Association, at the dedication ceremony.

"That is a first step in the right direction," he said.

Nazis ransacked the offices of Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Research seventy-five years ago today, seizing hundreds of books that were burned in a towering pyre four days later. A bust of the researcher was also thrown into the flames.

As one of the founders of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, Hirschfeld worked to repeal Paragraph 175 – a clause in German law that criminalized homosexuality.
In 1919 he founded the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin. He was one of the most important figures in pre-war Germany to defend homosexual rights

"Magnus Hirschfeld constantly tried to free the public from negative homosexual prejudices," said German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries at the dedication of the downtown riverbank.

"His life work and his own fate show clearly how much aggression, injustice and prejudice homosexuals have had to deal with in Germany."

The exhibition at the Charite hospital features the work of seven artists, each of whom focus on a different facet of Hirschfeld's research.

Their exhibits feature parts of Hirschfeld's collection of notes, photographs posters and other material.

Work is also underway in Berlin on an overall memorial to the Nazi's homosexual victims, which will be located in Berlin's Tiergarten Park, across from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

The 600,000 eruo ($932,000) memorial, designed by Danish-born artist Michael Elmgreen, features a gray concrete slab with a window allowing visitors to view a film inside of same-sex couples kissing.

Hirschfeld lived in French exile until his death in 1935 in Nice.

Full article: The Local - Berlin promenade to be named after 'Einstein of sex' | The Local
Germany honors gay rights activist and sex researcher persecuted by Nazis | Haaretz (AP)