Everythg about Berl's LGBTQ+ scene ✓ practil ✓ queer events ✓ LGBTQ+ hotels ✓ gay bars & clubs ► Click here for the Gay Gui for Berl
Contents:
- GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME
- QUEER & GAY BERL: YOUR GUI FOR LGBTQ+ BERL
- GAY CISG BERL
- GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY
- A GAY UTOPIA WEIMAR-ERA BERL: BOOK REVIEW
GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME
Alex Ross on Robert Beachy’s new book, “Gay Berl: Birthplace of a Morn Inty.” * gay berlin weimar *
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.
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. ” 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. 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.
QUEER & GAY BERL: YOUR GUI FOR LGBTQ+ BERL
The Nazi regime rried out a mpaign agast male homosexualy and persecuted gay men between 1933 and 1945. * gay berlin weimar *
”) 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.
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. 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.
GAY CISG BERL
Liberated, licent, or merely liberal, the sexual eedoms of Germany's Weimar Republic have bee legendary. The home of the world's first gay rights movement, the republic embodied a progrsive, secular visn of sexual liberatn. Immortalized - however misleadgly - Christopher Isherwood's Berl Stori and the mil Cabaret, Weimar's eedoms have bee a touchstone for the polics of sexual emancipatn. * gay berlin weimar *
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.
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.
GAY BERL: BIRTHPLACE OF A MORN INTY
* gay berlin weimar *
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.
It is unclear how many of the men publicly or privately intified as gay or were part of gay muni and works that had been tablished Germany before the Nazi rise to power.
A GAY UTOPIA WEIMAR-ERA BERL: BOOK REVIEW
If you’re lookg to play harr then Berl is the cy for you. Gay male gui to Berl cise clubs. Bergha. Lab. KKat. * gay berlin weimar *
In ntrast, the work of gay men that veloped around thor Adolf Brand and his anizatn Gemeschaft r Eigenen (The Communy of Kdred Spirs) took a different approach. Gay newspapers and journals, such as Die Frndschaft (Friendship) and Der Eigene (translated varly, but this ntext implyg “his own man”), ntributed to the growth of gay works. Fally, 1936 SS lear and Chief of the German Police Herich Himmler tablished the Reich Central Office for the Combatg of Homosexualy and Abortn (Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung r Homosexualät und r Abtreibung).
Unverg the histori of gay men durg the Nazi era was difficult for much of the twentieth century bee of ntued prejudice agast same-sex sexualy and the ongog enforcement of Paragraph 175.
A new book tells the te stori behd Cabaret, and what was possibly the most thrillg gay party scene the world has ever known. Read an excerpt here. * gay berlin weimar *
A few years later, May 2008, the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted unr Nazism (Denkmal für die im Natnalsozialism verfolgten Homosexuellen) was unveiled nearby Tiergarten park central Berl. Sex and the Weimar Republic exam the rise of sexual tolerance through the bat which surround "immoral" sexualy: obsceny, male homosexualy, lbianism, transgenr inty, heterosexual promiscuy, and prostutn.
A talk wh Robert Beachy spans om Gay Berl to Achwz, providg a warng for our tim of the historic power of hate to stroy the power of love. * gay berlin weimar *
They were known as “wild gangs” or “wild guilds, ” and the late days of the Weimar Republic and to the early Nazi perd, there were some six hundred of the gangs roamg the cy’s woodlands— largely ma up of 14-to-18-year-old boys, most of them gay, dited to a life of sexual eedom, crimal enterprise, and h fort air. When the gay anarchist French wrer Daniel Guér, on a walkg trip across Germany 1932 (chronicled his brilliant travel memoir The Brown Plague), bumped to one of the wild gangs on the outskirts of Berl, he was mmerized by their flamboyant, pirate-like appearance:. While orphans, youth gangs, and sadistic hazg ruals were nothg new, this particular type of gang—wh s anti-civilized posture of ‘wildns’ and s explic homoeroticism— began appearg parklands throughout Germany toward the end of First World War.
The gangs’ distctly gay, woodsy ethos emerged om the Wanrvögel, or Roamers movement, of the turn of the century—a kd of eewheelg German Boy Suts that sought to renew the natn’s valy by gettg youth out of the ci and back to nature while formg strong bonds of male fellowship. The relatively permissive sexual climate of the cy the twenti (even though homosexual acts were still illegal), along wh s many gay and lbian bars and clubs, drew sex tourists like wrers W. ” At the same time, homosexual rights advot like Hans Blüher propound the ial of the Männerbund, exclively male associatns that, his view, had played a key role the tn and ernance of all succsful societi sce Ancient Greece.
Robert Beachy, Gay Berl: Birthplace of a Morn Inty; Daniel Guér, The Brown Plague: Travels Late Weimar and Early Nazi Germany; Mel Gordon, Voluptuo Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berl; Detlev Pkert, Insi Nazi Germany: Conformy, Opposn, and Racism Everyday Life; Nicholas Stargardt, The German War: A Natn Unr Arms, 1939-1945. In Schöneberg fli the flag: In 1996, Schöneberg was the first borough to officially fly the rabow flag at the town hall for the CSD gay pri para, and has done so ever sce. Sce 1982, there has been a memorative plaque at the Nollendorfplatz unrground statn where the Rosa Wkel memorat the persecutn and murr of homosexuals the Third Reich.