I’ve seen the revivals of a couple of people whose work I love: first, Edna St. Vincent Millay, who had stopped being recognized in academia for a few decades before interest in her returned; before that, Buster Keaton, who now gets mentioned in documentaries on Bob Newhart and in various conversatons with film people.
But the revival of Magnus Hirschfeld really thrills me. I’ve often wondered how different the world might be if his work at the Institute of Sexuality had continued all those years ago. He circulated a petition to make homosexuality legal in Berlin; he personally testified on the part of transsexuals in order to get their gender identity changed on ID cards, and he is, of course, the person who coined both the terms ‘transvestite’ and ‘transsexual’ (though the latter was popularized by Dr. Harry Benjamin).
There’s a reason I dedicated My Husband Betty to him, and much thanks to Vern Bullough for “introducing” me to Hirschfeld’s work (in his Crossdressing, Sex, and Gender) and to Donna for posting the Gay City News article, and to Benjamin Weinthal for writing it.