The Einstein of Sex

The Einstein of Sex (also known as: The Einstein of Sex – Life and Work of Dr. M. Hirschfeld, German title: Der Einstein des Sex) is a 1999 German film by Rosa von Praunheim. The plot follows the life of the Jewish doctor, sexologist, and gay socialist Magnus Hirschfeld. The film was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival and at the São Paulo International Film Festival in 2000, among others.

Magnus Hirschfeld made a name for himself as a co founder of sexology and a founder of the first gay rights organization in 1897. In the film, three of Hirschfeld's closest friends are portrayed: Baron Hermann von Teschenberg (with whom Hirschfeld shares a complicated romance), aide Karl Giese, and Dora "Dörchen" Richter. They establish the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin in 1919 and try to keep the institute open during the rise of the Third Reich in the early 1930s. Hirschfeld even gave lectures in the USA while the Nazis condemned his educational work. The Nazis destroyed the Institut in 1933, sending Hirschfeld into permanent exile in France.

The German magazine Spiegel wrote: "Rapid rise and early suffering, political furor and private disaster, told in a pleasingly conventional way against the political background of the Weimar Republic a cinematic poetry album of upright feelings." Although inspired by Hirschfeld's life, the film is semi fictitious, containing invented characters and incidents and attributing motives and sentiments to Hirschfeld and others with little or no historical evidence. (Ralf Dose)

"And the Nazis had really managed to make Hirschfeld almost forgotten for a long time. Until Rosa von Praunheim shot his film The Einstein of Sex about him in 1999 – and thus rescued him from oblivion." (Berliner Morgenpost)