Berlin of the 20s was probably the most liberal place for queer people in the west. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft and wrote the first paper on trans identities, gave people counseling, hormones and recommended surgeons.

He was able to decriminalise homosexuality and have trans people allowed to present “sex non-conforming” in public if they had a slip from him.

The Nazis used this for culture wars and promise a return to the golden time of tradition and morality.

His institute was raided in the first book burning, thousand of scientific papers are lost forever, his patients hunted down. He managed to flee to France.

It’s important to treat his persona critically though, because as a scientist of his time, he also adopted some problematic stances on eugenics and racial teachings. On the other hand, he was also one of the few that criticised the rigor of the science behind those teachings from time to time.

Did you have an ideas of what it would look like before you had the surgery? Maybe there’s pictures elsewhere on the interrnet.

German environmentalist Robinga Schnögelrögel recently talked about the shifting baseline syndrom, and he gave an example of how bad it is. He read a primary source from 1858 that talked about the biodiversity back then: Butterflys were described as “everywhere”, hundreds on every meadow. A type of mayfly (ephoron virgo) hatched in rivers and congregated above, making it look like a snow flurry. The next day their dead bodies would cover the river banks, which farmers picked up by the wheelbarrow to use as fertilizer and feed to their pigs. Hence ephoron virgo’s German name “Uferaas”, meaning shore carrion.

What I’m mainly wondering is why they basically ceded, moved to the right and don’t talk about it anymore. They did pick up some steam online recently in adressing the fossil corruption, but nothing much about being basically beaten in line. Do they think it’s not worth it?

I suppose some of the more center greens like Özdemir aren’t that unhappy about the party’s changed orientation at least.

Here in Germany, for 1,5 out of 50 years there was every other day some news titled “climate-”. Since the activist group withdrew, silence has covered the topic again. They should get medals.