Sex Researchers:

Karl Maria Kertbeny was born in Vienna in 1824, as Karl Maria Benkert. His parents were both artistic, his father a writer and his mother a painter. As a young man Kertbeny served as an apprentice to a bookseller. During this time Kertbeny met a friend who in his words had “abnormal tastes.” This friend committed suicide after being blackmailed. This event would later play a significant part in his convictions on sexuality. Kertbeny served a stint in the Hungarian Artillery Regiment, in the mid- 1840s. After returning to Budapest, he met and socialized with members of the Hungarian literati, which motivated him to become a writer. He then traveled and wrote for various publications (newspapers, journals) and published German translations of Hungarian poetry. He had little success as an author, writing over 25 books that were later reviewed as superficial. It was at this point that Karl Maria Benkert changed his name to Kertbeny a Hungarian name, which gave him an air of nobility.
In the 1860’s Kertbeny first coined the word “homosexual.” The word was derived from Greek homo and the Latin root sexualis. He used the term in several pamphlets that he anonymously published. Of the pamphlets, one was entitled “Paragraph 143 of the Prussian Penal Code of 14 April 1851 and It’s Reaffirmation as Paragraph 152 in the Proposed Penal Code for the Nordeutscher Bund. An Open and Professional Correspondence to His Excellency Dr. Leonhardt, Royal Prussian Minister of Justice.” In these pamphlets, Kertbeny criticized the laws against same-sex sexual activities. He wrote that if the Prussian anti-sodomy law was unjust, that Paragraph 143 violated the rights of man. He believed that a man had a right to use his body for or how he chose. He also felt that Paragraph 143 gave people a legal tool to blackmail and extort money from homosexuals. Kertbeny classified homosexuals into several different groups. Monosexuals were men who masturbate with other men, pygists who were active and passive men, and platonists were men who enjoyed the company of other men, without sexual intercourse.
Kertbeny corresponded frequently with Karl Ulrich. Both men had different views on homosexuals, Kertbeny was pro-homosexual and Ulrich believed his term for homosexuals “Ulrning” meant a man with a woman’s soul. Aside from their differences, they both agreed that sexual orientation was innate and both opposed Paragraph 143.
By the 1880s Kertbeny’s term homosexual appeared in several books, Discovery of the Soul by Gustav Jager and in Magnus Hirschfeld’s Yearbook for Sexual Intermediates. The term homosexual was also used in Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s 2nd edition of Psychopathia Sexualis and Albert Moll’s Contrary Sexual Feeling.
Kertbeny continued to write, collaborating with others through-out his life, was never married, and claimed to be “sexual normal.” He died of a stroke in 1882. He’s known best for the term “homosexual” and his “human rights” campaigns.
The word homosexual has survived the times and is still used today. The current meaning of the word has changed to included both women and men, it simply means sexually attracted to a person of the same sex.

References

glbtq, Inc. (2004). Kertbeny, Karoly Maria (1824-1882). Retrieved September 9, 2004, from http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/kertbeny_km.html.

Wikholm, A. (1998). Biography: Karl Mara Kertbeny. Retrieved September 9, 2004,from http://www.gayhistory.com/rev2/events/kertbeny.htm.