Gay Berl: Birthplace of a Morn Inty by Robert Beachy

Contents:

• GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY KDLE EDN
• GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY
• ROBERT BEACHY: GAY BERL. BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY
• GAY BERL : BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY
• GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF MORN INTY
• ‘GAY BERL,’ BY ROBERT BEACHY
• READG, DISCSN & PERFORMANCE: "GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY"
• GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY - HARDVER
• GAY BERL BIRTHPLACE MORN BY BEACHY ROBERT (48 RULTS)
• GAY BERL

GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY KDLE EDN

Still, he had an effect: a few liberal-md lleagu accepted his notn of an nate gay inty, and a Bavarian official privately nfsed to siar yearngs.

GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY

”The first chapter of Robert Beachy’s “Gay Berl: Birthplace of a Morn Inty” (Knopf) begs wh an acunt of Ulrichs’s dac act.

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.

ROBERT BEACHY: GAY BERL. BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY

This msage may surprise those who believe that gay inty me of age London and New York, sometime between the Osr Wil trials and the Stonewall rts. The btal reprsn of gay people durg the Nazi perd largely erased German gay history om ternatnal nscns, and even om German memory.

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. Ulrichs, sentially the first gay activist, enuntered censorship and end up gog to exile, but his ias very gradually took hold. In 1869, an Atrian ltératr named Karl Maria Kertbeny, who was also opposed to sodomy laws, ed the term “homosexualy.

” In the eighteen-eighti, a Berl police missner gave up prosecutg gay bars and stead stuted a policy of bemed tolerance, gog so far as to lead tours of a growg mimon. The next year, the physician Magn Hirschfeld found the Scientific-Humanarian Commtee, the first gay-rights anizatn.

GAY BERL : BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY

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. In 1929, the Reichstag moved toward the crimalizatn of homosexualy, although the chaos ed by that fall’s stock-market crash prevented a fal did all this happen Germany?

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. Lerary figur pursued a cult of iendship that borred on the homoerotic, although most of the time the fervid talk of embrac and kiss remaed jt talk.

”) 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.

GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF MORN INTY

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,’ 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. His Department of Homosexuals, found 1885, mataed a refully annotated talogue of Berlers who nformed to the type.

READG, DISCSN & PERFORMANCE: "GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY"

He evintly was not gay, although his superr, Bernhard von Richthofen, the police partment’s print, is said to have had a taste for young soldiers. ” Meerscheidt-Hüllsem and his associat also showed solicu for gay victims of blackmail, and went so far as to offer unsellg.

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. He felt certa that if homosexualy were unrstood as a blogil evabily then the prejudice agast would disappear.

Although Frd profsed sympathy for gay people, Amerin psychoanalysts later fostered the stctive notn that homosexualy uld be cured through therapy. 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.

GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY - HARDVER

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.

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.

GAY BERL BIRTHPLACE MORN BY BEACHY ROBERT (48 RULTS)

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. The signifince of Beachy's book go beyond his fdgs on the German roots of the ncln that homosexualy is a blogilly fixed tra.

GAY BERL

At the same time, Beachy enlarg our unrstandg of how the ternatnal gay-rights movement eventually prospered, spe the setbacks that experienced not only Nazi Germany but also mid-century Ameri.

" –Alex Ross, The New Yorker"An elucidatg, somewhat startlg study of how early German tolerance and liberalism enuraged homosexual exprsn.... " –Publishers Weekly (starred)"A superb work of historil reclamatn–by far the bt acunt we have of the formative years of homosexual inty and emancipatn, is brilliantly rearched and betifully wrten.