Chronology of the Events 1933
 
1. 30. Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the German Reich: singing groups of Nazis celebrated their triumph with torchlight marches.
1. 31. Institute coworker Ewald Lausch openly admitted at the Institute to being an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi party (NSDAP). He had been working as a doctor's help in the radiological department since 1923. He managed the library and the archives after Karl Giese joined Hirschfeld in exile.
2. 27. The German Parliament,
"Reichstag", went up in flames: mass-arrest of political opponents.
3.  5. Elections: no majority for the Nazi Party.
3. 23. The Reichstag passed the "Act of Enablement", granting Hitler dictatorial powers:
Berlin had become a sea of Nazi banners, with Nazis patrolling the streets "foreigner" being a swearword.
3. 29. Institute coworkers Lausch, Hauptstein and Röser reported in a friendly and calm letter to Hirschfeld in exile of house-searches carried out "in a correct, gentle, matter-of-fact and polite form" by plainclothes and auxiliary police. In this attempt to counter the "gutter-press news from Germany", they did, however, also mention visits "by apparently illegal SA people" to the Institute who had enquired after Hirschfeld..
4.  1. Public call by the Nazis to boycott Jewish shops: terror campaign by the SA.
5.  6. The Institute was raided, ransacked and plundered:  1   2   3   4   5 
in the morning, about one hundred sport students from the German Student Union ("Deutsche Studentenschaft") arrived at the Institute on lorries amid brass music and cordoned off the premises. After a trumpet call, ransacking and plundering the library and entrucking the book stocks. The subsequent final demonstration in front of the Institute ended with a threefold "Sieg Heil" for Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler and the song "Fellows, come out!" ("Burschen, heraus")

The confiscated books and archival material were submitted to a "close examination by experts, lest works of high value to medical science be destroyed. [...] The picture-archives of the Institute, in which hundreds of slides were stocked, also underwent thorough scrutiny, and everything 'un-German' ('undeutsch') was destroyed [...]", the Catholic Party's paper told its readers.
5. 10. Spectacular burning of books on the Opera Square:
Even during the torch-procession to the bonfire, a student carried a bust of Hirschfeld skewered onto a stick. Hirschfeld's writings were then thrown into the flames, as were those by other outlawed authors.  6   7   8   9   10 
6. 14. Official closing-down of the Institute by the Berlin Police, "as a continuation of the activities would have endangered public peace and order considerably."
"By operation of article 14 of the Police Administration Act and article 1 of the regulation of 28.2..33, the property is confiscated without any compensation".

The Police urged the Minister of the Interior to deprive the "Hirschfeld Foundation" of its charitable status in order to retrospectively declare tax rebates, to date, as illegal and then to collect the "arrears" An administrator was to be instructed with the auditing and liquidation. He proposed all assets, including the Foundation, be given to a university or otherwise be used for "hygienic purposes".

Eight employees, with salaries in arrears, were still working at the Institute. Dermatologist Bernhard Schapiro moved his practice elsewhere and demanded his equipment and furniture back. (He emigrated the very same year)

Hirschfeld's sister, Recha Tobias and the former receptionist, Helene Helling, among others, stayed on in the Institute's buildings until 1934.

The Tax Authorities claimed more than 100.000 Reichsmark back for corporation and sales tax.(The Institute and the Pharmaceutical Industry)
Nov. The Berlin Tax Office had items auctioned "belonging to the famous sexual researcher Magnus Hirschfeld, among other things, a 300-volume library as well as medical equipment, instruments, furniture etc.", a paper in Vienna reported.
1933/34  Sequestration of the "Hirschfeld Foundation".
The Institute's rooms were let out to anti-Communist and antisemitic institutions.



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