Richard Christian Carl Linsert (17 November 1899 – 3 February 1933) was a German sexologist, psychologist and activist.

Career

Richard Linsert was born in to the family of a middle-class businessman. After graduating from commercial school he became a member of the

Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, , KPD ) was a major political party in the Weimar Republic between 1918 and 1933, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West German ...

. He was an active member of the KPD's intelligence service AM-Apart. At the age of 22, he became involved in establishing a homosexual association in Munich, a local branch of the “German Friendship Association - Association for Human Rights”. However, it failed due to the repressive attitude of the Bavarian authorities towards the association. In Munich he met and befriended

Kurt Hiller Kurt Hiller (17 August 1885, Berlin – 1 October 1972, Hamburg) was a German essayist, lawyer, and expressionist poet. He was also a political (namely pacifist) journalist. Hiller came from a middle-class Jewish background. A communist, he ...

, who gave him a job as an assistant secretary in

Magnus Hirschfeld Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a German physician and sexologist. Hirschfeld was educated in philosophy, philology and medicine. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitaria ...

Scientific-Humanitarian Committee The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (, WhK) was founded by Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin in May 1897, to campaign for social recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and against their legal persecution. It was the first L ...

(WhK). From 1926 he was secretary of the Scientific and Humanitarian Committee. He became an expert in sexual science topics and wrote the counter-draft to the draft sexual criminal law of 1927. It was thanks to Linsert's commitment to sexual politics that the KPD is the only political party in the Weimar Republic to share the WhK's demand for the abolition of

Paragraph 175 Paragraph 175 (known formally a§175 StGB also known as Section 175 in English language, English) was a provision of the Strafgesetzbuch, German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It Criminalization of homosexuality, made homosex ...

. In December 1929, Linsert left the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and founded the Archive for Sexual Science with the doctors

Max Hodann Max Julius Carl Alexander Hodann (30 August 1894 – 17 December 1946) was a German physician, eugenicist, sex educator and Marxist, "the best-known and most controversial medical sex educationalist in the Weimar Republic". He wrote for a workin ...

, Bernd Götz and the lawyer Fritz Flato, but it hardly achieved any great importance. Nevertheless, in 1929 and 1930 he wrote books about contraception and aphrodisiacs together with Magnus Hirschfeld. He also published an anthology on

male prostitution Male prostitution is the act or practice of men providing sexual services in return for payment. It is a form of sex work. Although clients can be of any gender, the vast majority are older males looking to fulfill their sexual needs. Male pr ...

in 1929. In 1931, Linsert published a Monograph ''Kabale und Liebe''. Peter Limann, the second secretary of the Scientific and Humanitarian Committee, was considered his life partner.Kurt Hiller: ''Leben gegen die Zeit Band 2: Eros. Autobiografie, hrsg. von Horst H. W. Müller. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg. 1973, p. 107'' ''–113'' Linsert died in February 1933 of delayed pneumonia in the Stubenrauch Hospital in Berlin-Lichterfelde

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Linsert, Richard 1899 births 1933 deaths German psychologists German sexologists 20th-century German journalists Communist Party of Germany politicians LGBTQ socialism