As part of Nazi Germany's persecution of transgender people, thousands of books taken from the Institute for Sexual Science were burned in Bebelplatz square for being "un-German".

In Nazi Germany, transgender people were prosecuted, barred from public life, forcibly detransitioned, and imprisoned and killed in concentration camps. Though some factors, such as whether they were considered "Aryan", heterosexual with regard to their birth sex, or capable of useful work had the potential to mitigate their circumstances, transgender people were largely stripped of legal status by the Nazi state.

The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The name is variously translated as Institute for Sexual Research, Institute of Sexology, Institute for Sexology, or Institute for the Science of Sexuality. The Institute was a non-profit foundation situated in Tiergarten, Berlin. It was the first sexology research center in the world.

The Bebelplatz is a public square in the central Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. Following World War II, the square was renamed after August Bebel, a founder of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the 19th century.