In 1906 , Hirschfeld was asked as a doctor to examine a prisoner in Neumünster to see if he was suffering from " severe nervous disturbances caused by a combination of malaria , blackwater fever and congenital sexual anomaly " . The man , a former soldier and a veteran of what Hirschfeld called the " '' Hereroaufstand '' " ( " Herero revolt " ) in German Southwest Africa ( modern Namibia ) appeared to be suffering from what would now be considered post-traumatic stress disorder , saying that he had done terrible things in Southwest Africa , and could no longer live with himself . In 1904 , the Herero and Namaqua peoples who had been steadily pushed off their land to make way for German settlers , had revolted , causing Kaiser Wilhelm II to dispatch General Lothar von Trotha to wage a " war of annihilation " to exterminate the Herero and Namaqua in what has since become known as the Herero and Namaqua genocide . The genocide came to widespread attention when the SPD leader August Bebel criticized the government on the floor of the '' Reichstag '' , saying the government did not have the right to exterminate the Herero just because they were black . Hirschfeld did not mention his diagnosis of the prisoner , nor he did mention in detail the source of the prisoner 's guilt about his actions in Southwest Africa ; the German scholar Heike Bauer criticized him for his seeming unwillingness to see the connection between the Herero genocide and the prisoner 's guilt , which had caused him to engage in a petty crime wave
Herero and Namaqua genocide
Herero and Namaqua genocide
Magnus Hirschfeld