It became a point of scientific and research interest for many scientists of sexuality, as well as intellectuals and reformers from all over the world.

• Tamagne, Florence (2007). “Liberation on the Move: The Golden Age of Homosexual Movements”. A History of Homosexuality in Europe, Vol. I & II: Berlin, London, Paris 1919-1939. Algora Publishing. pp. 59–104. ISBN 978-0-87586-357-3.
• Bauer, Heike (2014). “Burning Sexual Subjects: Books, Homophobia and the Nazi Destruction of the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin”. In Partington, Gill; Smyth, Adam (eds.). Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 17–33. doi:10.1057/9781137367662_2. ISBN 978-1-137-36766-2. Retrieved 2022-10-07.
• Matte, Nicholas (2005-10-01). “International Sexual Reform and Sexology in Europe, 1897–1933”. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History. 22 (2): 253–270. doi:10.3138/cbmh.22.2.253. ISSN 2816-6469. PMID 16482697.

Visitors included:

René Crevel, French writer involved with the surrealist movement.

Christopher Isherwood, Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which inspired the musical Cabaret.

Harry Benjamin, German-American endocrinologist and sexologist, widely known for his clinical work with transgender people.

Édouard Bourdet, 20th-century French playwright

Margaret Sanger, American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term “birth control”, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States

Francis Turville-Petre, British archaeologist, famous for the discovery of the Homo heidelbergensis fossil Galilee Man in 1926, and for his work at Mount Carmel, in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, now Israel. 

André Gide, French author awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gide’s career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars. 

Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat, statesman and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20th century. Nehru was a principal leader of the Indian nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. 

• Tamagne, Florence (2007). “Liberation on the Move: The Golden Age of Homosexual Movements”. A History of Homosexuality in Europe, Vol. I & II: Berlin, London, Paris 1919-1939. Algora Publishing. pp. 59–104. ISBN 978-0-87586-357-3.
• Bauer, Heike (2014). “Burning Sexual Subjects: Books, Homophobia and the Nazi Destruction of the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin”. In Partington, Gill; Smyth, Adam (eds.). Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 17–33. doi:10.1057/9781137367662_2. ISBN 978-1-137-36766-2. Retrieved 2022-10-07.
• Matte, Nicholas (2005-10-01). “International Sexual Reform and Sexology in Europe, 1897–1933”. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History. 22 (2): 253–270. doi:10.3138/cbmh.22.2.253. ISSN 2816-6469. PMID 16482697.

The institute also received visits from national governments; in 1923 the institute was for instance visited by Nikolai Semashko, Commissar for Health in the Soviet Union. This was followed by numerous visits and research trips by health officials, political, sexual and social reformers, and scientific researchers from the Soviet Union interested in the work of Hirschfeld. In June 1926 a delegation from the institute, led by Hirschfeld, reciprocated with a research visit to Moscow and Leningrad.

• Matte, Nicholas (2005-10-01). “International Sexual Reform and Sexology in Europe, 1897–1933”. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History. 22 (2): 253–270. doi:10.3138/cbmh.22.2.253. ISSN 2816-6469. PMID 16482697.
• Healey, Dan (2012-04-26). Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent. University of Chicago Press. pp. 132–138. ISBN 978-0-226-92254-6.
• Mancini, Elena (2010). “Back Matter: Appendix 1”. Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom: A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 151–152. doi:10.1057/9780230114395. ISBN 978-0-230-11439-5. OCLC 696313936.

One particular fixture at the institute which aided its popularity was its museum of sexual subjects. This was built with both education and entertainment in mind. There were ethnographic displays about different sexual norms across different cultures internationally. It included exhibits about sexual fetishism and sadomasochism. A collection of phallic artifacts from around the world was also exhibited. Additionally, there were presentations regarding the diversity of human sexual orientation, particularly with regards to homosexuality. Upon visiting the institute, Dora Russell (British author, feminist, socialist campaigner, second wife of the philosopher Bertrand Russell, campaigner for contraception and peace) reflected that it was “where the results of researches into various sex problems and perversions could be seen in records and photographs.”

• Beachy 2014, p. 162–164.
• Beachy 2014, p. 162.
• Russell, Dora (1975). The Tamarisk Tree: My Quest for Liberty and Love. Putnam. p. 206. ISBN 978-0-399-11576-9 – via the Internet Archive.

The neighboring property purchased in 1922 by the institute had an opening ceremony on 5 March 1922, after which it became a place for the institute’s staff to interact with the public in an educational capacity. Lectures and question-and-answer sessions were held there to inform laypersons on topics of sexuality. The public especially tended to ask questions regarding contraception.

• Wolff 1986, p. 182.
• Beachy 2014, p. 183–184.

Bibliography

• Dose, Ralf (2014). Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement. New York University Press. ISBN 978-1-58367-439-0. JSTOR j.ctt9qg6t2. OCLC 870272914.
• Beachy, Robert (2014). Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-47313-4.
• Wolff, Charlotte (1986). Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology. Quartet Books. ISBN 978-0-7043-2569-2. OCLC 16923065. USHMM: bib31255.

Further reading

• Isherwood, Christopher. (1976) Christopher and His Kind, 1929-1939, 1st edition. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Full text on OpenLibrary.
• Blasius, Mark and Phelan, Shane ed. (1997) We Are Everywhere: A Historical Source Book of Gay and Lesbian Politics (See the chapter: “The Emergence of a Gay and Lesbian Political Culture in Germany” by James D. Steakley).
• Grau, Günter ed. (1995) Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany 1933-45.
• Lauritsen, John and Thorstad, David (1995) The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935). (Second Edition revised)
• Steakley, James D. (9 June 1983) “Anniversary of a Book Burning”. pp.18–19, 57. The Advocate (Los Angeles)
• Marhoefer, Laurie. (2015) Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis. University of Toronto Press.
• Taylor, Michael Thomas; Timm, Annette F.; Herrn, Rainer eds. (2017) Not Straight From Germany: Sexual Publics and Sexual Citizenship Since Magnus Hirschfeld. JSTOR: 10.3998/mpub.9238370.