November 2008: Important donation to our Archive:
Harry Benjamin - Alfred C. Kinsey correspondence

Early this month, Ben Cable of Phoenix, Arizona, USA, kindly donated a fascinating correspondence between Harry Benjamin and Alfred C. Kinsey to our Archive. The correspondence covers the period from 1953 to the time of Kinsey’s death in 1956. The donation includes 34 letters written by Benjamin to Kinsey and 29 letters written by Kinsey to Benjamin. In addition, there are letters from and to Wardell B. Pomeroy, Paul Gebhard, Christine Jorgensen, and others, as well as some newspaper clips from the period. As the donor explains in his accompanying statement: ”The Benjamin - Kinsey letters give some invaluable insight into the challenges of studying sexuality and sexual identity in the 1950’s.” The entire collection, together with our books, journals and historical documents, will be made available to qualified scholars in our Haeberle-Hirschfeld Archive. It will be housed in the new, centrally located main library of Humboldt University - the “Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm Center”, which will open next summer. Thus, Berlin will  have the most modern and most easily accessible sexological research library in the world. (Among many other things, we also possess the correspondence between Harry Benjamin and Magnus Hirschfeld.)

The Donor and Two Famous Professors
(Left) Ben Cable, Editor and CEO of Cable Muse Network
(Right) The Grimm brothers - Jakob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) - famous philologists and creators of the monumental “German Dictionary” (unfinished in their lifetime), were professors at the university in Berlin (today Humboldt University). Outside of Germany, they are best known for their collection of “German Folk Fairy Tales” (Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood etc.)

The “Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm Center”
This is the name of the new main library of Humboldt University, where our Archive will be housed. Located in the very center of the city, it can easily be reached by all public transportation systems (train, city train, subway, bus, streetcar).
(Left top) Outside view (Right top) Lobby
(Left bottom) A reading area (Right bottom) The multi-storied central reading space (Reading Terraces).