Unverg Queer History ‘Gay Berl’ | PopMatters

Contents:

• ‘GAY BERL,’ BY ROBERT BEACHY
• BETWEEN WORLD WARS, GAY CULTURE FLOURISHED IN BERL
• GAY BERLIN
• ‘GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY’ BY ROBERT BEACHY
• UNVERG QUEER HISTORY ‘GAY BERL’
• ROBERT BEACHY: GAY BERL. BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY
• GAY BERL

‘GAY BERL,’ BY ROBERT BEACHY

Instead, he tak the rear to the other end of the spectm of opn — that homosexualy is and has always been a sexual orientatn fixed om birth, that same-sex love is as normal as heterosexualy, a ndn not amenable to treatment but rather an endowment of nature that should be rpected as part of a person’s ls important, Beachy, an associate profsor of history at Unrwood Internatnal College at Yonsei Universy Seoul, South Korea, lot the origs of this view of human sexualy Germany the mid-19th century, a culture that also produced morn scientific sexologil rearch. His book refully evaluat the arguments of a number of dividuals this perd who wrote about the subject and agated for the aboln of the wispread legal discrimatns of the elsewhere Europe, the enforcement of anti-gay laws was an issue, and here the book ntas a surprise. While other German ci pursued stricter polici, was Pssian Berl, unr a police missner named Leopold von Meerscheidt-Hüllsem, that more liberal polici were adopted, a velopment that occurred after unrver officers nclud that private clubs and bars for homosexuals were peaceful tablishments and did not nstute a public threat or nuisance.

BETWEEN WORLD WARS, GAY CULTURE FLOURISHED IN BERL

Activists anized popular assembli, often workg-class districts, that attracted up to a thoand cur listeners, evintly keen to learn ’s study ntas a fascatg chapter on pre-1914 “outg” sndals, the most notor of which ultimately led to the nvictn of one of the emperor’s clost iends, Philipp Prce zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld, though not for illic homosexualy. Some genr reassignment operatns were also attempted, but had to be abandoned as too risky and signifince of Beachy’s book go beyond his fdgs on the German roots of the ncln that homosexualy is a blogilly fixed tra. Given the extremism of the Nazi solutn to human difference, took the Germans que a long time after 1945 to reach the sort of openns and tolerance that had existed “Gay Berl” before 1914.

The tle of the chapter, “The German Inventn of Homosexualy, ” telegraphs a prcipal argument of the book: although same-sex love is as old as love self, the public disurse around , and the polil movement to w rights for , arose Germany the late neteenth and early twentieth centuri.

GAY BERLIN

Beachy, a historian who teach at Yonsei Universy, Seoul, ends his book by notg that Germans hold gay-pri celebratns each June on what is known as Christopher Street Day, honor of the street where the Stonewall prott unfold. By the begng of the twentieth century, a non of gay lerature had emerged (one early advote ed the phrase “Stayg silent is ath, ” nearly a century before aids activists ed the slogan “Silence = Death”); activists were bemoang negative pictns of homosexualy (Thomas Mann’s “Death Venice” was one target); there were bat over the ethics of outg; and a schism opened between an clive, mastream factn and a more rto, anarchistic wg. The towerg legacy of German ialism and Romanticism, which helps to expla why the gay-rights movement took root Germany, has self bee somewhat obscure, pecially outsi the German school system.

The episo suggts the gree to which the German cultural and tellectual tradn, particularly the Romantic age, which stretched om Goethe and Schiller to Schopenher and Wagner, embolned those who me to intify themselv as gay and lbian.

”) Schopenher proceed to expound the dub theory that nature promoted homosexualy olr men as a way of disuragg them om ntug to surprisgly, Karl Herich Ulrichs seized on Schopenher’s cur piece of advocy when he began his mpaign; he quoted the philosopher one of his g-out letters to his relativ. Ulrichs might also have mentned Wagner, who, “Die Walküre” and “Tristan und Isol, ” picted illic passns that many late-neteenth-century homosexuals saw as allegori for their own experience. Magn Hirschfeld, his 1914 book “The Homosexualy of Men and Women, ” noted that the Wagner ftival Bayrth had bee a “favore meetg place” for homosexuals, and quoted a classified ad, om 1894, which a young man had sought a handsome pann for a Tyrolean bicyclg expedn; was signed “Numa 77, general livery, Bayrth.

‘GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY’ BY ROBERT BEACHY

The most revelatory chapter of Beachy’s book ncerns Leopold von Meerscheidt-Hüllsem, a Berl police missner the Wilhelme perd, who, perhaps more than any other figure, enabled “gay Berl” to blossom. A week later, a grim irony, this enigmatic protector killed himself—not on acunt of his homosexual associatns but bee he was exposed as havg taken brib om a lnaire banker acced of statutory rape.

) Hirschfeld, who was born 1868, a year after Ulrichs’s speech Munich, began his radil activi 1896, publishg a pamphlet tled “Sappho and Socrat, ” which told of the suici of a gay man who felt erced to marriage. His tert effemacy among homosexual men, his attentn to lbianism, and his fascatn wh cross-drsg among both gay and straight populatns (he ed the word “transvtism”) offend men who believed that their lt for fellow-mal, pecially for younger on, ma them more virile than the rt of the populatn. ” There is no mentn, for example, of the theatre and mic cric Theo Anna Sprüngli, who, 1904, spoke to the Scientific-Humanarian Commtee on the subject of “Homosexualy and the Women’s Movement, ” helpg to gurate a parallel movement of lbian activism.

UNVERG QUEER HISTORY ‘GAY BERL’

Employg the alias Anna Rülg, Sprüngli proposed that the gay-rights and femist movements “aid each other reciprolly”; the prcipl at stake both stggl, she wrote, were eedom, equaly, and “self-termatn. After Sprüngli gave her historic speech—one that may have exacerbated the spl between the “masculist” and the “sexologil” factns of the gay movement, as Beachy lls them—she said nothg more about lbianism.

ROBERT BEACHY: GAY BERL. BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY

Yet her sudn silence suggts how quickly gas n slip the goln years of the Weimar Republic, which occupy the last chapters of “Gay Berl, ” gays and lbians achieved an almost dizzyg gree of visibily popular culture.

They uld see themselv onscreen films like “Mädchen Uniform” and “Different om the Others”—a tale of a gay vlist driven to suici, wh Hirschfeld featured the supportg role of a wise sexologist. Disdaful reprentatns of gay life were not only lamented but also protted; Beachy pots out that when a 1927 Komische Oper revue lled “Strictly Forbidn” mocked gay men as effemate, a monstratn at the theatre prompted the Komische Oper to remove the offendg sk. The openns of Berl’s gay scene attracted visors om more benighted lands; Christopher Isherwood lived the cy om 1929 to 1933, enjoyg the easy availabily of htlers, who, Beachy’s book, have a somewhat exhstg chapter to the gay muny, the masculist-sexologil spl persisted.

Some of Brand’s associat were flirtg wh Nazism, and not jt a metaphoril sense; one of them later beme the lover of Ernst Röhm, the head of the Brown the First World War, a new figure entered the ay: Friedrich Radszuwe, an entreprenr who tablished a work of gay publitns, cludg the first lbian magaze, Die Frnd. Distancg himself both om Hirschfeld’s emphasis on genr ambiguy and om Brand’s predatory foc on boys, Radszuwe purveyed a visn of “homosexual bourgeois rpectabily, ” Beachy’s words. Röhm never ma a secret of his homosexualy, and Hler chose to overlook ; although the Nazi lear had nounced Hirschfeld and the gay movement as early as 1920, he was too pennt on Röhm’s army of thugs to reject him.

GAY BERL

Wh medil termologi emergg that dited that same-sex affectns were hardwired, Michel Fouult famoly lled the mid-neteenth century the birth place of a morn homosexual inty that created s own ‘speci’.

1 Robert Beachy challeng Fouult on historil grounds sayg that his foc on medil disurse only allus to an ia of a ‘laboratory tt tube which medil profsnals ncted new sexual inti’ but fails to take to acunt the particular German ntext of the medilisatn of homosexualy (p. Drawg on a broad range of sourc, cludg homosexual perdils, memoirs, diari, tourist guis, rrponnc, ntemporary novels, medil (psychiatric and sexologil) lerature, he highlights the fertile terplay between scientists, the police, gay rights activists, the prs and middle and upper class homosexuals that, all together, nurtured Berl's vivid gay culture.

In batn of mostly well- and sometim ls well-known paths, Gay Berl is one of the few books givg a prehensive overview of German gay history om the mid-neteenth century until the Nazi seizure of power 1933.