German sexologist and activist Richard Linsert was BOTD in 1899. Born in Berlin to a middle-class mercantile family, he grew up in Munich, where he completed a commercial apprenticeship. A committed member of the German Communist Party, he formed a local branch of the gay rights organisation Deutschen Freundschaftsverbands (German Friendship Association) when he was 22. In 1923, he was appointed as assistant secretary of the Berlin-based
Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee), on the recommendation of lawyer and activist Kurt Hiller. Linsert worked closely with sexologist and Institute director Magnus Hirschfeld, co-authoring books on contraception, aphrodisiacs and male sex workers. He also secured the Communist Party’s support for proposals to repeal the anti-gay Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code. After leaving the Institute, Linsert co-founded the Archiv für Sexualwissenschaft (Archive for Sexology) in 1930. The following year, he published Intrigue and Love: On Politics and Sexual Life, a compendium of empirical findings about eroticism and its role in political history from ancient Egypt to the present, including a discussion of King Friedrich the Great‘s sexual relationships with men. Linsert lived with his long-term partner Peter Limann until his death from pneumonia in 1933, aged 33.