Gay Berlin
Birthplace of a Modern Identity
(Sprache: Englisch)
Winner of Randy Shilts Award
In the half century before the Nazis rose to power, Berlin became the undisputed gay capital of the world. Activists and medical professionals made it a city of firsts-the first gay journal, the first homosexual rights...
In the half century before the Nazis rose to power, Berlin became the undisputed gay capital of the world. Activists and medical professionals made it a city of firsts-the first gay journal, the first homosexual rights...
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Winner of Randy Shilts AwardIn the half century before the Nazis rose to power, Berlin became the undisputed gay capital of the world. Activists and medical professionals made it a city of firsts-the first gay journal, the first homosexual rights organization, the first Institute for Sexual Science, the first sex reassignment surgeries-exploring and educating themselves and the rest of the world about new ways of understanding the human condition. In this fascinating examination of how the uninhibited urban culture of Berlin helped create our categories of sexual orientation and gender identity, Robert Beachy guides readers through the past events and developments that continue to shape and influence our thinking about sex and gender to this day.
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Chapter One The German Invention of Homosexuality
When considering the questions What is natural? and What is unnatural? it is paramount to apply a standard that is not foreign to one s own nature.
karl ulrichs, Vindex: Social-Juristic Studies of Male-Male Love, 1864
On a bright Thursday morning in late August 1867, the German lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a former member of the civil service in the kingdom of Hanover, approached the Odeon concert hall in Munich. Since the beginning of the week, the Association of German Jurists had been assembling in this magnificent neoclassical structure to present papers and discuss the legal issues of the day. The professional group included lawyers, officials, bureaucrats, and legal academics from the thirty-nine states and cities of the former German Confederation, a loose association created at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. This imposing body of Ulrichs s colleagues made up the government establishment of the nascent German Empire. Dressed formally even in the midst of summer, they had first met in 1860 to facilitate great tasks of statecraft. As ardent nationalists, they hoped to promote German legal unification, even before the emergence of a nation-state. Although the jurists political program would have important consequences for the incipient German state, Ulrichs s appearance at the Odeon marked a revolution all its own. He was preparing to address his professional colleagues on an unmentionable subject, same-sex love, and to protest the various German anti-sodomy laws that criminalized it.
Ulrichs had celebrated his birthday the day before, and now, at the age of forty-two, he hoped to deliver a speech for which he arguably had spent most of his adulthood preparing. As a university student, he had recognized that he was attracted to other men. This sexual peculiarity and rumors of his intimate affairs had forced him to resign the only professional position he had ever held, as a government
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official. Finally, in an act of enormous courage, he disclosed his secret to his closest kin. Raised in a pious Christian family whose extended members included numerous Lutheran clergy, Ulrichs struggled for years with heart and intellect to make sense of his seemingly unacceptable feelings. Were they unnatural? Had he somehow caused them himself, through actions of his own? He examined carefully his own motivations and desires; he scoured legal and scientific publications on the topic. Following the tradition of the great Protestant reformer Martin Luther, Ulrichs countered prevailing beliefs and developed a theory of his own selfhood though defined in sexual, not spiritual, terms forming the conviction that he must face down an established authority and counter centuries of prejudice. To that end, since 1864, Ulrichs had published pamphlets under a pseudonym, arguing his case that sexual deviance was an endowment of nature and must be respected.
But on that morning in August, crossing Munich s imposing Odeonsplatz, framed by government and cultural buildings, past the grand loggia of the Field Marshals Hall and the baroque spires and dome of the Theatine Church, Ulrichs felt his heart palpitate almost audibly as he neared the Odeon hall. As he would later recount, an inner voice whispered, There is still time to keep silent. Simply waive your request to speak, and then your heart can stop pounding. But Ulrichs also remembered those comrades who were anticipating his protest Was I to answer their trust in me with cowardice? and he recalled a desperate acquaintance who had committed suicide to escape criminal prosecution for sodomy and the public humiliation that would have followed. With breast beating, Ulric
But on that morning in August, crossing Munich s imposing Odeonsplatz, framed by government and cultural buildings, past the grand loggia of the Field Marshals Hall and the baroque spires and dome of the Theatine Church, Ulrichs felt his heart palpitate almost audibly as he neared the Odeon hall. As he would later recount, an inner voice whispered, There is still time to keep silent. Simply waive your request to speak, and then your heart can stop pounding. But Ulrichs also remembered those comrades who were anticipating his protest Was I to answer their trust in me with cowardice? and he recalled a desperate acquaintance who had committed suicide to escape criminal prosecution for sodomy and the public humiliation that would have followed. With breast beating, Ulric
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Autoren-Porträt von Robert Beachy
Robert Beachy
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Robert Beachy
- 2015, 352 Seiten, mit Abbildungen, Maße: 13,1 x 20,4 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Penguin Random House
- ISBN-10: 0307473139
- ISBN-13: 9780307473134
- Erscheinungsdatum: 05.10.2015
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Winner of the 2015 Randy Shilts AwardExcellent and richly documented. . . . Beachy s work must [be] considered in the larger context of a shift in cultural studies. . . . Fascinating. V.R. Berghahn, The New York Times Book Review
Beachy enlarges our understanding of how the international gay-rights movement eventually prospered, despite the setbacks that it experienced not only in Nazi Germany but also in mid-century America. The New Yorker
A very good, serious, detailed, scholarly work of history by an excellent researcher who has clearly done his homework and then some. San Francisco Chronicle
A superb work of historical reclamation by far the best account we have of the formative years of homosexual identity and emancipation, it is brilliantly researched and beautifully written. Martin Duberman, Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, CUNY
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