World League for Sexual Reform

The World League for Sexual Reform was a League for coordinating knowledge about the enhancement of sexual function. In 1921 Magnus Hirschfeld organised the First Congress for Sexual Reform, which led to the formation of the League. Ralf Dose has written an overview of the League. Congresses were held in Copenhagen (1928), London (1929), Vienna (1930), and Brno (1932). Congress speakers included: Magnus Hirschfeld, Norman Haire, Vera Brittain, Dora Russell,Charles Vickery Drysdale (from the Malthusian League), Stella Browne, Ernst Gräfenberg, Marie Stopes, M. D. Eder (a pioneer psychiatrist), Laurence Housman, George Ives, Eden Paul, Felix Abraham (who with Dr Levy-Lenz performed the world’s first sex-change operation in 1931 at Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin), Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Ethel Mannin,Harry Benjamin, Peter Schmidt, William J. Robinson (an American contraception crusader) and Jack Flügel, a Freudian psychologist who assisted Norman Haire and Dora Russell organize the Congress and also led the Men's Dress Reform Party Although not a speaker, Albert Einstein was in contact with the Congress.