Marie Jacobus Johannes Exler

Dutch writer, campaigner for homosexual rights and co-founder of the Dutch Scientific Humanitarian Committee, astrologer, theosophist and chicken breeder. In 1911, he published his only novel, Levensleed, with a foreword by German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, in which he confronted the inhumane treatment of homosexuals and denounced contempt for them. He presented the homosexual according to medical arguments as a third gender, neither woman or man. A few reprints and a translation in German followed. In 1913, Exler was elected as a member of the German Scientific Humanitarian Committee by Hirschfeld, an honour he shared with Jacob Schorer and Lucien von Römer, but he did not participate in any of the group's activities. Exler was also an astrologer, actor and Theosophist, and he wrote about the effect of Giza's great pyramid in the near future and drew up horoscopes. He died in Naarden on 21 September 1939, aged 57. Link to Wikipedia biography (Dutch)