#natzi

The place: 1260 Barclay Street, Vancouver, Canada. Autumn 1993. A tenant of the building, Adam Smith, notices several old suitcases have been thrown out, one of which had fell open to reveal yellowed letters and diaries, in German.

Intrigued, Mr Smith investigates further, discovering a huge amount of correspondence, numerous pictures of the same two men - a younger Asian man and an older Caucasian man - in places all over the world, most noticeably India. Finally, Mr Smith discovers a plaster cast of a man's face ... a death mask.

It was not until 2003, when Ralf Dose, a researcher at the resurrected Dr Magnus Hirschfeld society in Berlin, was engaged in his regular (and sometimes drunken) googling of Hirschfeld and Hirschfeld-related topics that, by some algorithmic serendipity, he found Adam Smith's post from 1994.

Adam Smith had discovered the effects of Hong Kong-born Li Shiu Tong, the partner of Dr Magnus Hirschfeld, who in the 1920s was known as "the Einstein of Sex" and had set up the world's first pro-LGBT+ rights group in 1897.

A pioneer in an almost unbelievable number of areas relating to sexuality, amongst other things, Hirschfeld and his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft provided the earliest sex-reassignment surgeries to transgender people. Gay and Jewish, Hirschfeld railed against the indignity piled upon LGBT+ people due not to their character, but their orientation, telling one concerned mother "your son suffers not from his homosexuality, but from the false judgement of it!".

His motto, and that of his Institute, was "Through Knowledge, to Justice." - he believed passionately that the unbiased and uncensored study of minority sexualities would yield understanding and empathy.

Li Shiu Tong would meet Hirschfeld in Hong Kong in 1931, as Hirschfeld toured and lectured on sexuality and understanding, usually leading with discussions of how to find & maintain sexual fulfilment within heterosexual marriages. The pair fell very deeply in love, and Li Shiu Tong's father blessed the union, writing he hoped Li would become the Chinese Hirschfeld. The pair would be inseparable for the rest of Hirschfeld's life.

The Nazis stole and then burnt the Institute's library. The worlds first male-to-female sex change patient, Dora Richter (b.1891), who voluntarily submitted herself to what she knew were experimental procedures, was a live-in maid at the Institute and was present on the day of attack. She afterwards fled to her native Czechoslovakia - her fate after the Nazi occupation of that country in 1939 is unknown.

The Nazi destruction of the Hirschfeld Institute in 1933 is, in my and others opinions, a destruction of an LGBT+ Library of Alexandria, a near-successful attempt to completely erase the LGBT+ world of the late Victorian and early 20th century. In so doing, the Nazis truly did reset the clock on the march of LGBT+ people to equality and dignity.

Little by little, due to hard work and luck, that which was burnt in 1933 is slowly and painstakingly being reconstructed, with the aim of providing a complete and correct contextualising of LGBT+ life, love, and struggle.

It is also a reminder to us now that it is necessary and essential not to be invisible, every note, every photograph, every online post, every artwork, thrust into the world could one day be the key to making true the most important credos that defend human dignity: Never Forget, Never Again.

More about Magnus Hirchsfeld, his life, and work:

https://imgur.com/gallery/kQbsQAX

The Magnus Hirschfeld Society:

https://magnus-hirschfeld.de/start-en/

A very fine podcast (and transcript) of this history-hunting:

https://makinggayhistory.com/podcast/magnus-hirschfeld/

A good article on Mr Li's life, and the story of his trove:https://xtramagazine.com/power/the-mystery-of-li-shiu-tong-43055

First thing is Im on no one’s side but I’ve done this and still like it So this is not new I’ve done this for a commission for a site who sell prints and tshirt and ect . The link : https://unitedbychaos.storenvy.com/products/24836409-war-or-peace-unisex-blue

They were supposed to pay me for each sell but they ditched that . . . . . .

In the 1940s there was the biggest real villain, Hitler. America chose to stay neutral but the jews within the US could not stand by so, even if the Holocaust is not known to the world the attitude towards the Jewish people is well known in German and across the world.

A small publisher, Timely Comics, in New York (sounds familiar? They become Marvel later) went a bit different than the official US policy. They hired a publisher called Joe Simon (Joseph) who brought his partner Jack Kirby and created a character called "Super American", ha, just kidding, they created Captain America but the name they thought of at the beginning was Super American (terrible, right?).

Clearly political for the US to enter the war and stop Hitler. First cover? 

Captain America punching Hitler. 2nd issue? 

Again hitting Hitler. And ofc the perfect hero...or human to become a hero? Skinny: Checked Unfit: Checked Big Heart: Checked A sense of Justice: Checked

A symbol that is clearly there. He is there to fight the enemy (3rd Reicht). There are a bunch of superheroes that appear in that period but there is one that would stand out and survives even today: Wonder Woman Created in 1941 she has the eagle and the stripes. It is sexy and not wearing a mask.

She stands for something good and she is a powerful superhero. The most powerful that has ever been by then after Superman but who was NOT human. Yeah, she is from half God and she's an amazon but still of this Earth. So, ofc Wonderwoman was needed for the women in the US because they needed someone who can do it so that they, themselves can do it.

This guy, Steve Trevor, an American pilot crashes on the island (you have seen the movie I guess)and informs Diana of the great war that is happening in the real world. So she comes to find Nazi's and not only. The women finally had their hero.

All superheroes: Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman, etc. were all used for propaganda. Which was NOT a bad thing.

After that, the superheroes go in some sort of dark corner. Captain America fighting bank robbers. Most superheroes are gone the only one remaining Superman, Blackman and Wonderwoman.

The men were returning from the war and they wanted their jobs back. So the women had to return to their usual tasks. Wonderwomen is less a warrior and more of a housewife. Conformity becomes the status quo in America. The power of that was so enormous that it was an enforced political conformity. Senator Joe McCarthy goes on his witch hunt. In the paranoia, it happens what is happening again in the US these days. Paranoia. Enforced by small minds or rather big minds that want everything as they wanted. Comics become the best place to blame for juvenile kids. Wonderwoman becomes a target because of the supposed lesbianism from an island full of women. Batman and Robin? Homosexuals.

In the book called Seduction of the Innocent the American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham goes on an idiot homophobic rampage on superheroes.

“Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and psychopathology of sex can fail to realize the subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism which pervades the adventures,” wrote Wertham. “The Batman type of story may stimulate children to homosexual fantasies.”

Comic code came out and you cannot do lots of things. Like:

No "crime" word on the cover

No blood

Could not imply in any way that a federal or local official is corrupt

All male psychics were gone

Bucky, Batwoman, Bat Girl, Bat ape as long as it is not Robin there. Wonderwoman wondered if she should marry Steve Trevor or rescue him. Superman and his "ilk" saves lemonade using his cold breath or cook the hotdog with laser vision. Lovely.

Timely Magazine barely survives with monster comics. Too many maybe. Good thing the juveniles are about to bring the revolution. Kenedy becomes the youngest president. His new administration? The new frontier.

We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.

60's are for unachievable. Imagination sees the rebirth in population and in 1961, Captain America's publisher Jack Kirby and editor Stan Lee decide to pick on space and space race. Stan Lee remembers that if he wanted to keep his job he needed to come with a team of superheroes. I wanted the hero to be the world greatest scientists. They were the Fantastic Four. 

They are normal humans (genial ones) but they get blasted in space with a certain kind of radiation and they start to possess different powers. Ofc they did not get along and fought among themselves quite a lot. Stan Lee managed to make the heroes more "human". The comic rebrands to Marvel. But we will talk about that in a later article.

Hope you enjoyed the story.

Previous stories on superheroes:

Darkest of the Heroes

Superheroes and would you like a superpower? (Part I)

We must not erase our history. We must preserve it with as much neutrally as possible. It should be apparent with empirical facts alone who is on the ‘right’ side.

It would be a great tragedy to cover the ugly parts of our history only to repeat them.  All the vile, horrible, deplorable things we’ve done as a sentiment species must be preserved for all to see in their disgusting entirety.