On May 17, 2025, Gaby Cohen, the great-niece of Magnus Hirschfeld, visited the Information Center together with her husband Leon and her family. There, Dr. Ulrich Baumann, Deputy Director of the Stiftung Denkmal, gave them a tour of the exhibition.
Gaby Cohen traveled to Berlin on May 14, 2025, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of Magnus Hirschfeld’s death. The Federal Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation organized several commemorative events and panel discussions for this occasion, together with various partners and as part of the Anti-Discrimination Days 2025. Gaby Cohen and her family were guests at these commemorative events. Dr. Ulrich Baumann, Deputy Director of the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also participated in the colloquium “Contemporary Queer Remembrance Culture. Against Discrimination. For Diversity” on May 14, 2025, at the House of World Cultures. Other panel participants included Prof. Dr. Martin Lücke, Didactics of History, Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Free University of Berlin, Dr. Insa Eschebach, visiting scholar at the Institute for Religious Studies, FU Berlin, Director of the Ravensbrück Memorial 2015-2020, Doro Halbrock, Guest Professor of Social Design, University of Fine Arts Hamburg, and Giuseppina Lettieri, Queer History Month Berlin, Spinnboden Lesbian Archive and Library.
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Magnus Hirschfeld was a physician and sexologist who founded the first homosexual movement in Berlin and campaigned for the right to sexual freedom and the protection of minorities. Due to his own identity as a Jewish, homosexual social democrat, he was also repeatedly the victim of discrimination and persecution for his activism. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld died on May 14, 1935, his 67th birthday, in exile in Nice, France.
