The Transsexual Phenomenon
| Harry Benjamin | |
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| Born | January 12, 1885 Berlin, Brandenburg, German Empire |
| Died | August 24, 1986 (aged 101) New York City, New York |
| Fields | Endocrinology, sexology |
Harry Benjamin (January 12, 1885 – August 24, 1986) was a German-American endocrinologist and sexologist, widely known for his clinical work with transsexualism.
Benjamin was born in Berlin, and raised in a German Lutheran home. His mother was German and his father at least part-Jewish in ancestry. After premed education in Berlin and Rostock, he joined a regiment of the Prussian Guard. He received his doctorate in medicine in 1912 in Tübingen for a dissertation on tuberculosis. Sexual medicine interested him, but was not part of his medical studies. In an interview conducted in 1985 he recalled:
I do remember going, as a young person, to a lecture by Auguste Forel, whose book The Sexual Question was a sensation at the time and which impressed me greatly. I also met Magnus Hirschfeld very early on through a girl friend, who knew the police official Kopp, who was in charge investigating of sexual offenses. He, in turn, was a friend of Hirschfeld's, and so I met both men. That was around 1907. They repeatedly took me along on their rounds through the homosexual bars in Berlin. I especially remember the 'Eldorado' with its drag shows, where also many of the customers appeared in the clothing of the other sex. The word "transvestite" had not yet been invented. Hirschfeld coined it only in 1910 in his well-known study.
Benjamin visited the United States in 1913, to work with a doctor who claimed, incorrectly, to have found a cure for tuberculosis. The liner in which Benjamin was returning to Germany was caught mid-Atlantic both by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and the Royal Navy. Given the choice of a British internment camp, as an "enemy alien", or returning to New York, he used his last dollars to travel back to America, where he made his home for the rest of his life, although he maintained and built many international professional connections and visited Europe frequently when wars allowed.
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