[2][3] Ulrichs was born in the East Frisian village of Westerfeld, incorporated today within Aurich, which at the time was in the Kingdom of Hanover.

[5] Ulrichs recalled that as a youngster he felt different from other boys and was attracted by the bright colors of military uniforms and women's clothing.

[4] From 1846 to 1848, he studied history at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, writing a dissertation in Latin on the Peace of Westphalia.

[7] In 1862, Ulrichs took the momentous step of telling his family and friends that he was, in his own words, an Urning, and began writing under the pseudonym of "Numa Numantius".

His first five pamphlets, collected as Forschungen über das Rätsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (Studies on the Riddle of Male-Male Love), explained such love as natural and biological, summed up with the Latin phrase anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa (a female psyche confined in a male body).

Ulrichs also coined words for the female counterparts (Urningin and Dioningin), and for bisexuals and intersex persons.

[8] In the 1860s, Ulrichs moved around Germany, always writing and publishing, and always in trouble with the law — though always for his words rather than for sexual offences.

Ulrichs was a patriotic Hanoverian, and when Prussia annexed Hanover in 1866 he was briefly imprisoned for opposing Prussian rule and all his papers were confiscated.

[11][12] Later he moved to Stuttgart, where he cultivated silkworms for an income but convened a weekly discussion at a restaurant on Gymnasiumstrasse with other urning activists.

At the end of his eulogy, he said: But with your loss, o Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the fame of your works and your virtue will not likewise disappear... but rather, as long as intelligence, virtue, learning, insight, poetry and science are cultivated on this earth and survive the weakness of our bodies, as long as the noble prominence of genius and knowledge are rewarded, we and those who come after us will shed tears and scatter flowers on your venerated grave.

Ulrichs also corresponded for many years with the psychiatrist, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, who later acknowledged in a letter to Ulrichs that:From that day when you sent your writings – I believe it was in 1866 – I have turned my full attention to this phenomenon, which was just as puzzling as it was interesting to me; and it was only the knowledge of your books which motivated me to study this highly important area.

When he first started publishing his pamphlets, he received hundreds of letters from same sex attracted men, who began calling themselves 'urnings'.

This review found a suite,[21] in Vox Urbis: de litteris et bonis artibus commentarius published twice monthly by the architect and engineer Aristide Leonori between 1898 and 1913.