Burning sexual subjects: books, homophobia and the Nazi destruction of the Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin

Magnus Hirschfeld’s (1868-1935) Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin was a first point of attack for Nazi students and soldiers. There is some critical consensus that it was the Institute’s association, via its founder, with both homosexuality and Jewishness, that made it a target so early on in the Nazi attack against books. Where most of the existing studies of these events have focused in one way or the other on the losses incurred in the act of destruction, this chapter turns attention to the remains: the documents and objects which survived the attack on the Institute. It shows that the materiality of the books and papers influenced how they were handled, and considers why and how some objects –notably a collection of questionnaires and a bronze statue – survived the events

Tangles: an interview with Sarah Leavitt

Sarah Leavitt is an artist, cartoonist and writer, and a member of the Creative Writing Department at the University of British Columbia. Her comics and prose works have appeared in magazines, newspapers and anthologies in Canada, the US and the UK. Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me (2010) is her first book. The following interview was conducted by Skype on 19 May 2015. It discusses the book, its making, reception and translation

The Hirschfeld Archives

This work examines how death, suicide and violence shaped modern queer culture, arguing that negative experiences, as much as affirmative subculture formation, influenced the emergence of a collective sense of same-sex identity. Bauer looks for this history of violence in the work and reception of the influential sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), and through Hirschfeld's work examines the form and collective impact of anti-queer violence in the first half of the twentieth century. Hirschfeld's archive (his library at the Institute for Sexual Sciences in Berlin) was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933, so the archive of Bauer's title is one that she's built from over a hundred published and unpublished books, articles, films and photographs

Influence of Glycerol on the polymorphic Behavior of solid Triglyceride Nanoparticles stabilized with Poly(vinyl Alcohol)

Colloidal dispersions of lipids, e.g. triglycerides, are under intensive investigation as drug delivery systems. Solid triglyceride nanoparticles exist in different polymorphic modifications. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the addition of glycerol, which can be used for the isotonization of such dispersions, on the polymorphic behavior of poly(vinyl alcohol)-stabilized tripalmitin nanoparticles. Glycerol was added to the nanoparticle dispersions at different concentrations in the heat. The dispersions were investigated for their thermal behavior and storage stability with regard to particle size and polymorphic transitions of the triglyceride matrix, using photon correlation spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry and X-ray diffraction. The addition of glycerol led to a decreasing crystallization temperature of the nanoparticles and slowed down the polymorphic transition into the stable β-modification

High-tech and low-tech orthopaedic surgery in Sub-Saharan Africa

BACKGROUND: Zambia's governmental health system suffers from shortage of surgical supplies and poor management skills for the sparse resources at hand. The situation has been worsened by the dual epidemics of HIV disease and tuberculosis. On the other hand the private medical sector has benefited greatly from less bureaucracy under the goverment of the Movement for Multi-party Democracy. DISCUSSION: The Zambian-Italian Orthopaedic Hospital in Lusaka is a well organized small unit providing free treatment of physically disabled children. The running costs are met from the fees charged for private consultations, supplemented by donations. State of the art surgical techniques are being used for congenital and acquired musculo-skeletal abnormalities. Last year 513 patients were operated upon free of charge and 320 operations were performed on private patients

Towards a second generation of Salmonella-mediated oral DNA vaccines

Salmonella-mediated oral DNA vaccination has established itself as a very potent and versatile way of immunization. In this method, the use of commercially available multicopy expression plasmids based on pUC origin of replication (ori) transferred by the metabolic mutant Salmonella typhimurium aroA to mice has resulted in protective responses against pathogens and tumors. However, general applicability of this system has been hampered by a severe instability of transformants carrying these expression plasmids. Therefore new low copy number expression plasmids were constructed using different oris to stabilize the transformants. Comparative studies between transformants of the high copy number plasmid pCMVß and the different low copy number plasmids that contain the pMB1, p15A or pSC101 ori on the pCMVß backbone, revealed a dramatic increase in plasmid stability in vitro and in vivo. Analyzing the immune responses against antigens encoded by these vectors indicated that the increased stability resulted in a strong and reproducible induction of antigen specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell as well as antibody responses even after a single application. In protection studies using listeriolysin as antigen, mice were protected against a high lethal dose of Listeria monocytogenes independent of the plasmid copy number. Thus, we consider the improved stability as a first step towards a second generation of Salmonella-based oral DNA vaccines. In addition, it was shown that Salmonella transferring two independent antigens on these compatible low copy number plasmids elicited robust responses to either antigen that is effective as Salmonella transformed with each plasmid singly.Die Salmonellen-vermittelte orale DNA Vakzinierung hat sich bereits als eine sehr wirkungsvolle und vielseitige Art der Immunisierung etabliert. Bei dieser Methode werden kommerziell verfügbare Multicopy-Expressionsplasmide auf der Basis des pUC Replikationsursprunges (ori) mittels der Stoffwechselmutante Salmonella typhimurium aroA in Wirtszellen übertragen und sowohl schützende Immunantworten gegen Pathogene als auch gegen Tumore ausgelöst. Allerdings wird derzeit eine generelle Anwendung dieses Systems durch eine starke Instabilität der Transformanten, die solche Multicopy-Expressionsplasmide tragen, verhindert. Um die Transformanten zu stabilisieren wurden neue Plasmide konstruiert, deren Kopienzahl durch Einführung verschiedener ori´s reduziert wurden. Die Analyse der Transformanten mit den verschiedenen neuen Plasmiden niedriger Kopienzahl, die den pMB1, p15A oder pSC101 ori auf dem Hintergrund des ursprünglichen Multicopy-Plasmids pCMVß enthalten, zeigten eine extreme Verbesserung der Plasmidstabilität in vitro und in vivo gegenüber pCMVß. Darüber hinaus zeigte die Untersuchung der Immunantworten gegen Antigene, die von diesen Vektoren kodiert wurden, dass eine verbesserte Stabilität auch in einer stärkeren und reproduzierbaren Induktion Antigen spezifischer CD4+ und CD8+-T-Zellen sowie Antikörperantworten schon nach einer einmaligen Anwendung resultierte. In Protektionsstudien, in denen Listeriolysin als Antigen verwendet wurde, waren Mäuse gegen eine hohe lethale Dosis von Listeria monocytogenes geschützt, unabhängig davon, ob die Salmonellen ein Plasmid hoher oder niedriger Kopienzahl tragen. Deswegen betrachten wir die verbesserte Stabilität als einen ersten Schritt in Richtung der zweiten Generation Salmonellen-basierter Vakzine. Darüber hinaus konnte gezeigt werden, dass die Übertragung von zwei unabhängigen Antigenen, die auf diesen kompatiblen Plasmiden niedriger Kopienzahl kodiert sind, eine robuste Immunantwort gegen beide Antigene hervorrufen, die genauso gut ist wie Salmonellen die mit einem einzelnen Plasmid transformiert sind

The Hirschfeld Archives : violence, death, and modern queer culture

This work examines how death, suicide and violence shaped modern queer culture, arguing that negative experiences, as much as affirmative subculture formation, influenced the emergence of a collective sense of same-sex identity. Bauer looks for this history of violence in the work and reception of the influential sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), and through Hirschfeld's work examines the form and collective impact of anti-queer violence in the first half of the twentieth century. Hirschfeld's archive (his library at the Institute for Sexual Sciences in Berlin) was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933, so the archive of Bauer's title is one that she's built from over a hundred published and unpublished books, articles, films and photographs

The Hirschfeld Archives: violence, death, and modern queer culture

Is violence an intrinsic part of modern queer culture? This book presents compelling new research on how homophobia, suicide, gender violence, abuse, racism, and the impact of war and colonialism shaped the emergence of modern homosexual rights activism. It examines forgotten writings by Magnus Hirschfeld, the influential sexologist who is best known today for his homosexual activism and foundational transgender work. In 1919 he opened the world’s first Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin. Attracting international visitors including doctors, artists, writers and political activists, it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933. Attacks against queer life play a formative role in modern same-sex culture. Yet remembering the victims is only part of the task of queer history. The Hirschfeld Archives attends to the queer dead and injured, but it also demonstrates that the development of homosexual rights politics in the West had gendered and racialized limits

The use and abuse of queer history

Review of Anita Kurimay's book 'Queer Budapest 1873-1961' (2020), which examines the complexities of queer lives, representations and politics in Hungary bewteen the 1870s and the 1960s