The National Socialists’ May 1933 Berlin book burning and, to a growing extent, their looting of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) are part and parcel of memorial culture in Germany and around the world. Thanks to the ongoing rehabilitation of Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935), and the revival of interest in his work, more people are now aware that this pioneering Jewish sexologist and LGBT-rights activist died in exile in Nice, France, profoundly traumatized by the destruction of his life’s work.
This is the very first book to offer a meticulously detailed report of the three years leading up to Hirschfeld’s death in 1935 and, especially, the seven years following.
This book is also the first biography of Karl Giese (1898–1938) and Karl Fein (1894–1942), the main players in the afterlife of Magnus Hirschfeld in France and Czechoslovakia, focusing on their dealings with the surviving materials of Hirschfeld’s Institute, and the consequences of the decisions they made – or may have made – as Nazi terror deepened.
Numerous, hitherto untapped archival sources are used to reveal vital new facts. On their basis, this book puts forward original explanations touching on the various fates of the remnants of Hirschfeld’s Institute. It also offers the first account of the “miraculous rescue” of Hirschfeld’s guestbook (Magnus Hirschfelds Exil-Gästebuch 1933–1935) from an old paper container in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1942.
This seminal, generously illustrated book picks up the thread where Rainer Herrn’s Der Liebe und dem Leid: Das Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (2022), a history of Hirschfeld and his Institute from 1919 to 1933, left off. Its thorough documentation provides essential context for the facsimile edition of Hirschfeld’s guestbook, published in 2019 by Hans Bergemann, Ralf Dose, Marita Keilson-Lauritz and Kevin Dubout.
Hans P. Soetaert’s The Scattered Library, 800 pages of meticulous research, provides the reader with an entirely new understanding of Magnus Hirschfeld’s last months, and of what befell his research after his death.
— Finn Ballard, SIEGESSÄULE 06/2025.
The book’s greatest strength lies in its exhaustive archival research. Echoing the transnational movements at the core of its narrative, the archival materials—scattered across multiple countries—have been painstakingly gathered and presented in remarkable detail. The Scattered Library thus serves not only as an object biography but also as a resource-rich foundation for future scholarship on Hirschfeld, sexology, the Holocaust, and the transnational dimensions of the early homosexual emancipation movement.
— Sébastien Tremblay, German Studies Review, Vol. 48, No. 2.
Hans P. Soetaert a réalisé un travail archivistique exemplaire afin de reconstituer le parcours et les pérégrinations des multiples acteurs et documents concernés. Il faut d’ailleurs souligner la richesse des reproductions photographiques et des coupures de presse qui ponctuent la lecture de l’ouvrage. La somme de ces recherches s’incarne avec éloquence dans un ouvrage de plus de 800 pages, incluant un nombre titanesque de notes de bas de page [...].
Hans P. Soetaert has done exemplary archival research to reconstruct the journeys and wanderings of the many people and documents involved. The richness of the photographic reproductions and press clippings that punctuate the book is also worth noting. The sum of this research is eloquently embodied in a work of more than 800 pages, including a huge number of footnotes [...].
— Benoit Migneault, Fugues magazine, No. 491, July 2025.
[...] The Scattered Library significantly expands our understanding of Hirschfeld’s legacy, underscoring the importance of looking beyond Germany in histories of sexuality and, ultimately, also beyond Hirschfeld [...].
— Jonah I. Garde, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, European History Quarterly, Vol. 55, Issue 3, July 2025.
Das Buch zeugt von einem enormen Fleiß und detektivischer Ausdauer des Verfassers, die nicht genug gewürdigt werden können.
— Florian G. Mildenberger, Sexuologie, Bd. 32, Heft 1-2, 2025.
The Scattered Library is an important book. [...] [Soetaert] adds an indispensable chapter to Holocaust research and to the history of LGBTIQA+ emancipation. And he shows once again how vulnerable our queer cultural heritage is under hostile political circumstances.
—Maurice van Lieshout, Gay News (Amsterdam), issue n° 376, autumn 2025, pp. 72-76.
Eine künftige Hirschfeld-Forschung kann nicht umhin, auf Soetaerts Werk aufzubauen und die Arbeitsergebnisse, die in seinem vortrefflichen Buch dargestellt sind, fortzuführen.
(Future Hirschfeld research cannot help but build on Soetaert's work and continue the work presented in his excellent book.)
—Manfred Herzer-Wigglesworth, Berlin, Invertito: Jahrbuch für die Geschichte der Homosexualitäten, Jg. 26, 2024 [2025], p. 174.
Mit akribischer Archivarbeit und neuen Erkenntnissen liefert Soetaert eine unverzichtbare Ergänzung zur bisherigen Forschung über das Institut für Sexualwissenschaft und sein Nachleben.
(With meticulous archival work and new insights, Soetaert provides an indispensable addition to existing research on the Institute for Sexual Science and its legacy.)
—Andreas Markus (posted 14/03/2025) on www.ggg.at (website of the Verein zur Förderung lesbischwuler Kommunikation).
"... , it is a monumental piece of work, ..."
—Jan Seidl, Judaica Bohemiae, Vol. 60, 2025, p. 211.
"Soetaerts Buch ist eine ganz außergewöhnliche Rechercheleistung." (Soetaert's book is a truly exceptional piece of research.)
—Dr. Richard Kühl, Historische Zeitschrift, Band 322, 2026, pp. 812-814.
"Hans Soetaert’s The Scattered Library is a monumental, original, and extremely well researched history of the afterlife of Magnus Hirschfeld’s archive and his closest cooperators. (...) This book will stand as a resource for generations of scholars, and we will all benefit from that."
—Dr. Anna Hájková (University of Warwick, UK), Central European History (18/05/2026), pp. 1–3.
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