Book Review: <i>The Scattered Library: The Various Fates of the Remnants of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute of Sexual Science Collection in France and Czechoslovakia, 1932–1942</i> by Hans P. Soetaert SoetaertHans P., <i>The Scattered Library: The Various Fates of the Remnants of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute of Sexual Science Collection in France and Czechoslovakia, 1932–1942</i> , Ibidem: New York, 2024; 850 pp.; 9783838218953, $81.00 (hbk)

Scholars of German queer and trans history have long been fascinated with the looting of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute of Sexual Science by a group of Nazi students and the subsequent destruction of the institute's library in the infamous book burnings on 10 May 1933.Taking place just three months after Hitler came into power, these events are often represented as the turning point from the relative sexual freedoms of the Weimar Republic to the violent attacks against and persecution of homosexuals and transvestites under the Nazi regime.However, contrary to popular beliefand its accompanying melancholic attachmentnot all the contents of Hirschfeld's personal archive and the Institute's collection of books, magazines, patient questionnaires, and ethnological objects were lost to the flames.Rather than understanding the book burnings as an end point of the Institute's history, in The Scattered Library, Hans P. Soetaert provides a meticulously researched account of how the surviving remnants of Hirschfeld's library were dispersed across France, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Canada, and the USA.Focusing on the three years leading up to Hirschfeld's death in 1935 and the fate of his estate in the years that followed, the author traces the complex history of the library's fragmentation.In 18 heavily footnoted chapters, followed by an extensive appendix, the book offers, on the one hand, an investigative report on the history of the Institute's material in France and Czechoslovakia, how it traversed borders, was kept in mysterious storerooms, hidden and smuggled across countries, confiscated by authorities, auctioned-off and repurchased, until finally some of the material was rediscovered in an old paper container.On the other hand, the book delivers the first extensive biography of the Institute's archivist and Hirschfeld's life companion Karl Giese and the Jewish lawyer and gay activist Karl Fein .Both played a key role in the afterlife of the Institute's materials, as Soetaert illustrates by shedding light on their decisions, their motives and the repercussions of their actions, which were always shaped in response to the expansion of Nazi power.The first eight chapters trace Hirschfeld's and Giese's exile journeys following Hirschfeld's return from his world tour.Here, Soetaert gives a detailed account of the proceedings of the 1932 World League for Sexual Reform conference in Brno, which Hirschfeld and Giese both attended and where they first met Karl Fein.After recounting the lootings of the Institute in May 1933, adding new insights that challenge established narratives around the book burnings by not only arguing against the myth of a completely destroyed library, but also the conception of Nazism as an infallible machine, the book gives a detailed account of Hirschfeld's unsuccessful attempts to rebuild the Institute

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