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The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (''Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee'', WhK) was founded in Berlin on the 14th or 15 May 1897, to campaign for social recognition of gay, bisexual and transgender men and women, and against their legal persecution. It was the first such organization in history.〔. Revised edition published 1995, ISBN 0-87810-041-5.〕 ==History== The WhK was founded on 15 May 1897 (four days before Oscar Wilde's release from prison) by Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish-German physician, sexologist and outspoken advocate for gender and sexual minorities. Original members of the WhK included physician Magnus Hirschfeld, publisher Max Spohr, lawyer Eduard Oberg and writer Franz Joseph von Bülow. Adolf Brand, Benedict Friedländer, and Kurt Hiller also joined the organisation. A split happened in 1903. In 1929, Hiller took over as chairman of the group from Hirschfeld. At its peak, the WhK had about 500 members, and branches in approximately 25 cities in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. The Committee was based in the Institute for Sexual Sciences in Berlin, until 1933 when it was destroyed by the Nazis, from which it took a great deal of scientific theories on human sexuality - such as the idea of a third sex between a man and a woman. The initial focus of the Committee was to repeal Paragraph 175, an anti-gay piece of legislation of the Imperial Penal Code, which criminalized "coitus-like" acts between males, and the goal of this categorization of human sexuality was to demonstrate the innateness of homosexuality and thus make the criminal law against male-male gay sex in Germany at the time inapplicable. The Committee also assisted defendants in criminal trials, conducted public lectures, and gathered signatures on a petition for the repeal of the law. Signatories included Albert Einstein, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Leo Tolstoy. Petitions were submitted to parliament, in 1898, 1922 and 1925, but failed to gain the support of the parliament, and the law continued to criminalise all male-male sexual acts until 1969 and wasn't entirely removed in West Germany until four years after East and West Germany became one country, in 1994. Although it never had more than 500 members, it is considered an important milestone in the homosexual emancipation movement. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Scientific-Humanitarian Committee」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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