Berlin was the capital city of the German Empire from to , its eastern part the de facto capital of East Germany from to , and has been the capital of the unified Federal Republic of Germany since June, Berlin has a long history of LGBT culture and activism. Though there are earlier German proponents of decriminalization and de-stigmatization of romantic love and sex between men Karl Heinrich Ulrichs is often mentioned in this context , the WHK was the first to do so in a collaborative and organized fashion.
The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was also the first not to concern itself only with men's sexuality and gender. Hirschfeld and his peers used other terms at the time and viewed themselves as reformers.
Men of letters and breeding like Hirschfeld or Ulrichs invented their own terms based on Greek mythology or scientific Latin. Words like " gay " or its German counterpart "schwul" are words historically alluding to prostitution and things associated with it, and so to an extent even to the present day not deemed appropriate for "scientific" parlance.
Such or similar vocabulary might have been used by some of Hirschfelds patients and objects of study, but he and his peers were, to their own minds scientists, reformers, "Urnings" a term coined by Ulrichs , or "members of a third sex" a phrase coined by Elsa Asenijeff popularized by Ernst von Wolzogen in his eponymous novel , to name just a few phrases that could have been used at the time without causing more offense than the very idea of "such things" generally caused at the time, and for quite some there after.
Bars, cabarets, and ballrooms offered same-sex dancing, cross-dressing, racy shows, exotic dancers, and prostitutes seemingly willing to satisfy any imaginable desire to regulars and diversion seekers just coming to look, marvel, and titter. Visitors at the time, steeped in Victorian and Wilhelmine prudery, were reminded of the biblical " Babylon ". But, the s and early s were a time of rapid cultural change. It was an era in which the unimaginable horrors of World War I had called into question formerly held truths and presumptions, and discredited the old order.
