The first issue opened with an article by Hirschfeld himself, appended with a reader survey (“Were your parents or grandparents blood relations?”, “Can you point to a reason for your abnormal feelings?”, “Are your ears large, protruding, small, delicate?”). Academic in tone, it forthrightly claimed homosexuality to be in-born, tracked the development of a corresponding homosexual identity through the long stream of history, and mapped its contemporary forms. The Committee’s charter called for public enlightenment, and its first major product was the 1899 Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Sexual Intermediaries), which appeared in annual editions for a quarter of a century and totalled more than 11,000 pages.
