The man who made himself the object of research

On 14 September 1926, a man died in Berlin whom hardly anyone knows today. Karl Friedrich Jordan held a doctorate in natural sciences and then became a senior teacher and professor at a secondary school. He was nine days short of his birthday. With him, the early homosexual movement lost one of its most steadfast campaigners.

In this movement he was known by another name. As "Max Katte", Jordan belonged for years to the board of chairmen of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, the organisation Magnus Hirschfeld had founded in 1897. The pseudonym alluded to Hans Hermann von Katte, the boyhood friend of Frederick the Great, whose relationship with the crown prince is often interpreted as homoerotic.

His most important text appeared in 1900 in the "Yearbook for Sexual Intermediate Stages". It was entitled "From the Life of a Homosexual", and it was about himself. Jordan wrote that he had never felt attracted to a woman. He described the crushes of the schoolchild, his first experience with a classmate, the men he later fell in love with. And he told how two men blackmailed him over a long period until he was on the brink of suicide. In the end he reported the two of them to the police. They were sentenced to long prison terms.

The courage lay in the writing itself. He offered himself as an object of observation, Jordan stated at the outset, and asked that what he said about himself be examined without prejudice. For many readers at the time, such a confession was a lifeline.

He only revealed his pseudonym in 1919, in the second year of the republic. Appearing openly would previously have cost him his post, but since 1908 he had lived as a man of private means. Shortly afterwards he became deputy chairman of the "Gemeinschaft der Eigenen" around Adolf Brand and represented it on the committee for the abolition of Paragraph 175. In Berlin he gave lectures with titles such as "Why and to what extent is our love justified?". No photo of him is known to this day.