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.
Contents:
GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME
* gay weimar culture *
Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipatn and the Rise of the Nazis. The home of the world's first gay rights movement, the republic embodied a progrsive, secular visn of sexual liberatn.
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. 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.
Alex Ross on Robert Beachy’s new book, “Gay Berl: Birthplace of a Morn Inty.” * gay weimar culture *
”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. 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.
The Nazi regime rried out a mpaign agast male homosexualy and persecuted gay men between 1933 and 1945. * gay weimar culture *
” 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.
In 1896, Der Eigene (“The Self-Owng”), the first gay magaze, began publitn.
Buy a cheap py of Weimar Culture: the outsir as sir book by Peter Gay. First published 1968, Weimar Culture is one of the masterworks of Peter Gay's distguished reer. A study of German culture between the two wars, the book... Free Shippg on all orrs over $15. * gay weimar culture *
The next year, the physician Magn Hirschfeld found the Scientific-Humanarian Commtee, the first gay-rights anizatn. 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.