The Einstein of Sex – The Life and Work of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (KINO)

Long before Kinsey, there was Magnus Hirschfeld: physician, sexologist, socialist, Jew, homosexual, and the man the tabloids dubbed “the Einstein of Sex.” Rosa von Praunheim’s affectionate biopic charts Hirschfeld’s extraordinary crusade as he founded the world’s first gay rights organisation in 1897, battled Paragraph 175, and opened Berlin’s pioneering Institute for Sexual Science in 1920, a haven for queer and trans lives that flourished through the Weimar years until Nazi students torched its library in 1933. Friedel von Wangenheim plays the doctor with owlish warmth, flanked by his aristocratic great love Baron von Teschenberg, devoted young Karl Giese, and the institute’s guardian angel, housekeeper Dorchen. Mixing period drama, newsreel and von Praunheim’s trademark impish humour, it is both a monument to a man the Nazis nearly erased from history and a reminder of how quickly hard-won progress can burn.