Vibrators, erotica, condoms Christopher Turner puts on his plastic gloves to examine treasures from the Institute of Sexology, and finds that the pioneers of the study of sex were not just campaigners but political activists and collectors, too
Berlin is a buggers daydream, the 21-year-old WH Auden wrote to Christopher Isherwood, with news of the citys 170 policecontrolled male brothels. By 1929, when his school friend joined him there, the metropolis was the world capital of sexual liberation with a decade-long reputation as Babylon on the Spree. In his 1939 novel, Goodbye to Berlin, Isherwood brilliantly captured the Weimar Republics decadent atmosphere of sexual experimentation, which was heightened by a sense of looming crisis. The city had been hit particularly hard by the worldwide recession; there was mass unemployment, malnutrition, economic panic and simmering political violence. One suddenly realised the whole foundations of life were shaking, Auden concluded.
In Berlin, Isherwood lived in an apartment owned by Magnus Hirschfelds Institute for Sexual Science, which occupied the grand mansion of the former French ambassador. The institute was decorated more like a wealthy private residence than a scientific establishment, with Persian carpets, a grand piano and glass cabinets full of porcelain. Free sex advice was dispensed in lectures and private consulting rooms and there were medical clinics for the treatment of venereal diseases and other sexual problems, as well as a library containing the largest collection of literature on sex in the world. There was also a research laboratory where the portly, walrus-moustached Hirschfeld known as the Einstein of Sex formulated dubious aphrodisiacs and anti-impotence medicines, and supervised the worlds first sex reassignment surgery.
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