Projects
Current Projects
2020-2022
Jewish Homosexual Modernism in the German Speaking World and in Mandatory Palestine/Israel
The project is a cooperation between Humboldt-University and Hebrew University in Jerusalem funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin.
The project puts forward the thesis that between 1890 and 1945 a corpus of literary texts – a “Jewish Homosexual Modernism” – came into being in the German cultural sphere. This canon of literature comprises German and Hebrew and Yiddish texts that deal with both Jewishness and homosexuality and their entanglements. [More]
2017-2022
Naomi Wilzig Art Collection – A Collection on the Cultural History of Sexuality
The World Erotic Art Museum (WEAM) was founded in 2005 by Naomi Wilzig (1934–2015), a Jewish patron and widow of a German Holocaust survivor. Located in Miami Beach, Florida it houses an extensive collection of erotic art covering many eras and cultures.
Since 2018 parts of the collection have been coming to Humboldt University on loan for a period of five years to be indexed, digitized, and researched under the direction of the Research Center. Parts of the collection will be displayed in different museums in Berlin and elsewhere. [More]
Past Projects
2016–2019
Cruising the 1970s: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures
The European research project was funded as part of the HERA Programme “Uses of the Past” and carried out together with the UK, Spain and Poland. [More]
2016–2019
Jewish Presence in Weimar Gay and Lesbian Culture and the German-Jewish Contribution to the Emergence of Gay Culture in Palestine/Israel, 1933–1960
The research project, carried out together with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was funded by the participant universities in the first phase (2016) and by the German Israel Foundation (GIF) in the second phase (2017–2019). [More]
2015-2018
Digitization of the Magazine "Der Eigene"
Together with the Humboldt University Library and Schwules Museum, Berlin the Research Center was working on digitalising the Berlin arts and culture magazine Der Eigene: Ein Blatt für männliche Kultur (Our Own: A Magazine of Masculine Culture) in order to make it publicly available to researchers online. [More]
2014-2015
AIDS Archive Pilot Project
Through this pilot project, carried out in collaboration with the Humboldt University Library, the Research Center aimed to establish a basis for a collection on the cultural history of HIV/AIDS. To this end, the Center expanded the Haeberle-Hirschfeld Archive’s collections in the Humboldt Uiversity library on the politics of AIDS through documents received through a range of donations and bequests. [More]
2015
Monograph on Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexology (1919–1933)
Our Research Center supported Rainer Herrn in preparing a monograph devoted to Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexology (1919–1933), in collaboration with the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation and the Berlin Society for the History of Medicine. [More]
2015
"From the Museum of Passions” – An Exhibition Project with Early-Career Researchers
As part of a project sponsored by the Excellency Initiative of the Humboldt-University, the Research Center curated the exhibition “From the Museum of the Passions. Collections on the Cultural History of Sexuality", which opened on 14 May 2015. [More]
2012-2013
Magnus Hirschfeld’s Testament
Written in diary form, Magnus Hirschfeld’s last will and testament is an important source of information on the later years of his work and his efforts to secure his legacy. [More]
2012-2014
Magnus Hirschfeld’s Legacy: Investigating the Deeds of his Foundation
When Magnus Hirschfeld established a foundation in 1919 as the basis for his establishment of the Institute of Sexology, he instructed: “In the event that the foundation […] should be dissolved, its assets shall pass to the University of Berlin or, if the latter declines to accept the assets, to another university.” [More]
