Death
On his 67th birthday, 14 May 1935, Hirschfeld died of a heart attack in his apartment at the Gloria Mansions I building at 63 Promenade des Anglais in Nice. His body was cremated, and the ashes interred in a simple but elegant tomb in the Caucade Cemetery in Nice. The headstone in gray granite is inset with a bronze bas-relief portrait of Hirschfeld in profile by German sculptor and decorative artist Arnold Zadikow (1884–1943) and is engraved with Hirschfeld's Latin motto, "Per Scientiam ad Justitiam" ("through science to justice"). (The Caucade Cemetery is likewise the location of the grave of surgeon and sexual-rejuvenation proponent Serge Voronoff — whose work Hirschfeld had discussed in his own publications.)
On 14 May 2010, to mark the 75th anniversary of Hirschfeld's death, a French national organization, the Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle (MDH), in partnership with the new LGBT Community Center of Nice (Centre LGBT Côte d'Azur), organized a formal delegation to the cemetery. Speakers recalled Hirschfeld's life and work and laid a large bouquet of pink flowers on his tomb; the ribbon on the bouquet was inscribed "Au pionnier de nos causes. Le MDH et le Centre LGBT" ("To the pioneer of our causes. The MDH and the LGBT Center").
Read more about this topic: Magnus Hirschfeld
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Could any death be so horrible as birth? Or any decrepitude so awful as childhood in a happy united God-fearing family?”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“For in the word death
There is nothing to grasp; nothing to catch or claim;
Nothing to adapt the skill of the heart to, skill
In surviving, for death it cannot survive,
Only resign the irrecoverable keys.
The wave falters and drowns. The coulter of joy
Breaks. The harrow of death
Depends. And there are thrown up waves.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)