'Gay Berl,’ by Robert Beachy: review

Amerins know a ty b about the subject of gay life Berl, or at least we thk we... * gay berlin book review *

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. 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.

GAY BERLIN

In Gay Berl, Robert Beachy scrib the rise of a gay subculture the 1920s and '30s, how ntributed to our unrstandg of gay inty and how was eradited by the Nazis. * gay berlin book review *

UPI Telephoto; Photo illtratn by Shannon May/The ChronicleAmerins know a ty b about the subject of gay life Berl, or at least we thk we do, bee of “Cabaret, ” the mil and film based on Christopher Isherwood’s “Berl Stori, ” which tells the tale of baret performer Sally Bowl (played by Liza Mnelli, who herself beme a gay in) and her relatnship wh a gay man durg the nt Weimar perd (1918-33), characterized by drkg and e abe, sex tourism and ubiquo, sometim seedy homosexualy. Maybe “Cabaret” spoiled some ways; while Beachy’s book is thorough and profsnal, one fds onelf longg for the fictnal, big-screen versn of this earlit public mand for gay civil rights was ma by lawyer and civil servant Karl Herich Ulrichs, who addrsed the Associatn of German Jurists 1867, llg for repeal of antisodomy laws. Dpe numero setbacks, Ulrichs ntued his advocy work for s, publishg a seri of pamphlets about the rights and experienc of “Urngs” (gay men) like himself, and blazg a trail for gay rights that would be taken up several s later, primarily book is full of juicy tidbs: An early chapter documents the relative tolerance of the late 19th century Berl police chief, Commissner Leopold von Meerscheidt-Hüllsem, who created the police Department of Homosexuals 1885, to prosecute s unr Paragraph 175.

Homosexual gathergs were allowed to flourish wh police monorg: Gay balls required police perms, gay clubs and taverns were regulated, and the police mgled openly gay crowds, sometim actg as tour guis for slummg the Great War, the relatively tolerant cy had a huge number of gay tablishments, publitns (some wh nu photos and personal ads), and other gay bs, as well as a fair number of male prostut, lled “warm brothers” the slang of the day.

BETWEEN WORLD WARS, GAY CULTURE FLOURISHED IN BERL

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But not always warm: Berl’s rent boys equently turned the tabl on their wealthier clients, ually married men, threateng to “out” them as homosexuals unls they received large payoffs, rultg sndals, lawsus and the suicis of several proment cizens. One stra of the opposn theorized that homosexual men were the most virile — this “masculist” stra of the German gay rights movement, addn to s misogyny, strayed to natnalism and anti-Semism durg the Weimar perd, when Hirschfeld, a Jewish doctor, began to be nmned for his relign.

QUEER & GAY BERL: YOUR GUI FOR LGBTQ+ BERL

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More specifilly, 's about gay Berl, the gay subculture that flourished Berl the era between World War I and the rise of the Nazis, when there were nightclubs and barets that tered to a gay clientele, gay-themed theater and films and gay-oriented publitns that were sold at ksks. They advertised all sorts of events, different kds of venu and they also attracted advertisers who were really appealg to a gay and lbian nstuency, and that's also really startlg, I We asked you to suggt a performer, a sger, that we uld listen to to give some sense of the mic people were listeng to then at perhaps some of the gay clubs. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)CLAIRE WALDOFF: (Sgg German) That was Claire Waldoff, a song picked for by Robert Beachy, the thor of the new book "Gay Berl, " which is about the gay subculture Berl the 1920s and early '30s, jt before the Nazi rise to was the law regardg homosexualy the '20s and early '30s Berl?

So was actually ma more dranian unr the Nazis 1935, and that remaed the law of the land Wt Germany until was fally reformed, startg the very-late So if homosexual acts were illegal Berl the '20s and early '30s, how did a gay subculture manage to flourish? And, of urse, people had nsensual sexual relatns private, so the law was difficult to what he fally end up dog - he cid that would be easier to simply observe and monor and, sence, keep tabs on spected homosexuals - spected vlators of the law - than to actually try to persecute them or prevent them om breakg the law. And what this meant practice was that the police partment, startg the late-1880s, simply tolerated all kds of different, you uld say, public acmodatns, bars, f; eventually, large transvte balls, where obv homosexuals, or, at least, obvly spected homosexuals, uld ngregate and there was a kd of homoerotic aternizatn, you uld say, that was allowed Berl by the late 1880s, and this permted the growth of a whole work of different kds of bars and rtrants.

And so blackmail beme a huge the same police missner and then his succsors and really the entire police partment, regnized that the bigger problem was not homosexual nduct, but the way which the law self actually allowed for the practice of blackmail.

GAY BERL · MID-RANGE + BUDGET HOTELS

Books shelved as queer-berl: Gay Berl: Birthplace of a Morn Inty by Robert Beachy, Christopher and His Kd by Christopher Isherwood, Berl's ... * gay berlin book review *

And the assumptn, too, I thk, was that prostut who make money the sex tra were also willg to make money through blackmailg the people they were - who were payg them to have that leads to, like, a whole other chapter the story, which was that there was a lot of prostutn, male prostut, gay Berl at the time.

So there were actually lots and lots of, we uld say, gay Nazi sympathizers who joed the SA, who joed the party, who were members of the movement, so to speak, and who also believed that bee of this figurehead, they would never actually be this was more or ls the se for the first year and a half until the summer of 1934. And of urse, the late '70s to the '80s, the timat were much, much higher but they've sort of been pegged down as people have done more rearch and done some actual archival work to tablish those Durg the 1920s and the early 1930s, there were movements to try to liberalize the anti-gay law or to elimate the anti-gay law. And his theori had this credible cultural fluence, and a lot of people - people like Thomas Mann wrote, jt passg, how pervasive the ias about the Mannerbund actually anyway, what out of is this ia that there are actually really, really sort of virile, natnalist and, as you put , proto-fascist dividuals who also happen to be homosexual.

A GAY UTOPIA WEIMAR-ERA BERL: BOOK REVIEW

Author Robert Beachy explor Berl's gay culture and sexually liberal history * gay berlin book review *

BEACHY: Well, you know, after pletg this book and after wrg about what I thk is really the birth of morn homosexual inty and homosexual rights activism, I have trouble unrstandg why Germans still regnize the Stonewall rt or rts at the end of the '60s 1969 as the begng of the morn homosexual rights I thk the Germans need to sort of honor their own history and regnize the importance of somebody like Magn Hirschfeld and the scientific humanarian mtee found 1897, you know, almost 70 years before the begng of the so-lled morn homosexual rights movement. So I thk some ways that the Germans have almost been brawashed, and so that's - I gus that explas my ironic tone at the end of the Well, Robert Beachy, thank you so much for talkg wh Thank you so much for havg me on the show, Robert Beachy is the thor of "Gay Berl. Magaz for gays and lbians are available at public ksks and the venu: they clu Die Frndschaft (Friendship), the Blätter für Menschenrecht (Magaze for Human Rights), Die Frnd (The Girliends), Frenliebe (Women's Love), and Das drte Gchlecht (The Third Sex) for transvt and transsexuals.

Numero hotels and gut ho, bety and hairdrsg salons, tailors and photo studs, doctors and lawyers private practice, librari, cigarette and shoe shops, and even a r rental pany, a travel agency and a distributor for potency pills advertise gay and lbian magaz.

The owners of the all-night bar for lbians, Mai & Igel, are also affected by the forced closur, while the rnival stume balls for gays and lbians held at the In n Zelten amement strip Berl's Tiergarten, which were also hugely popular among heterosexuals, are banned wh immediate effect. It is a symbol of the diversy of sexualy and genr, and a metaphor for a nfint, flourishg scene – a landspe that was first nceived of, put to the tt, and ma possible the 1920s – when Berl was a role mol for an ternatnal gay and lbian pal which all queer people uld fd a haven and refuge. The atroci of the Send World War, mted unr a Nazi regime that murred six ln Jews and sent up to 15, 000 homosexuals to ncentratn mps, have permanently altered the German sensibily; today, spe livg a socially liberal untry, many Germans tend to walk on eggshells where issu of cultural diversy are ncerned.

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

A disappotgly lacklter memoir focg on the six boyhood years (1933—39) Gay spent Nazi Berl. All the tellectual and stylistic dimensns that make master historian and bgrapher Gay (thor of the five-volume The Bourgeois Experience, etc.) such a superb amic wrer—a somewhat tached, reflective, tellectually thorough and elegant approach’serve him ls well when wrg tobgraphilly. For example, even when scribg the November 1938 natnal pogrom known as Kristallnacht, he giv short shrift to his own observatns and reactns. Rather, he spends some time mentg upon psychohistorian Peter Loewenberg’s view of the event as a Nazi-anized “gradatn rual” agast the Jews. Perhaps bee he was a sometim doted-upon, only child an upper-middle-class, highly assiated Jewish fay whose members were able to leave before the “Fal Solutn,— Gay was partly sulated om some of the worst anti-Semic and other horrors of the Third Reich. But there are some passag when his wrg do have a certa crisp immediacy, as when he scrib a fay iend whom Gay enuntered a month after the iend was released om a ncentratn mp: “he had visibly aged, looked athly pale, seemed disoriented, I thought almost senile.— He also has some fe mi-profil of both dividuals who betrayed his fay and a few who, wh nsirable urage, assisted them. In general, his wrg more alive when he scrib his experienc as an adolcent refugee, first Havana, then Denver. In large part, however, while Gay repeatedly scrib Nazism as a “poison” om which his psyche has not to this day fully toxified, he don’t que succeed havg the rear really unrstand what the nox, totalarian, and ultimately murro ambience of the Third Reich felt like day-to-day. Perhaps this is bee, as Gay stat his acknowledgments, settg down this acunt proved “the least exhilaratg assignment I have ever given myself or received om others.” (50 b&w illtratns, not seen) * gay berlin book review *

Beachy’s book is an exhstive history of gay culture there om the mid-1800s, when prolific thor Karl Herich Ulrichs published his groundbreakg and ntroversial pamphlets on same-sex love, until the 1930s, when Hler’s operativ raid their own ranks for homosexuals.

As well as Robert Beachy’s and Lrie Marhoefer’s works, books published over the last few years clu Robert Tob’s Peripheral Dir: The German Disvery of Sex (2015), Marti Lybeck’s Dirg Emancipatn: New Women and Homosexualy Germany, 1890-1933 (2014), Clayton Whisnant’s Queer Inti and Polics Germany: A History, 1880-1945 (2016), and Norman Domeier’s The Eulenburg Affair: A Cultural History of Polics the German Empire (2015).

The Gay Capal of the Neteenth Century | The New Yorker

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