The Gay Capal of the Neteenth Century | The New Yorker

Contents:

• SNDALS: WILHELM'S GAY IENDS SHOOK THE EMPIRE
• WAS KAISER WILHELM II OF GERMANY GAY?
• THE LONG, SORDID HISTORY OF THE GAY CONSPIRACY THEORY

SNDALS: WILHELM'S GAY IENDS SHOOK THE EMPIRE

” The kaiser had already been hurt polilly 1907 by the Eulenburg-Harn affair, which members of his circle of iends were acced of beg homosexuals.

Although there is no evince that Wilhelm was gay– addn to his seven children wh his first wife, he was mored to have several illegimate offsprg–the sndal was ed by his polil opponents to weaken his fluence. 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. ”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.

WAS KAISER WILHELM II OF GERMANY GAY?

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.

THE LONG, SORDID HISTORY OF THE GAY CONSPIRACY THEORY

Gayns is st as an Amerin import. Ulrichs, sentially the first gay activist, enuntered censorship and end up gog to exile, but his ias very gradually took hold.