Germans are still in the process of recovering their own history. This task is complicated tremendously by the catastrophic destruction of the Nazi era, which abolished institutions, disrupted and scattered networks of friends and activists, and eliminated countless sources. Even those who remained and survived dictatorship and war were compelled to destroy everything—letters, journals, photo albums—that might incriminate them as homosexual. The supreme irony, perhaps, is that the gay pride parades held every summer since the 1970s in Berlin and other major German cities are referred to colloquially as CSD, or “Christopher Street Day,” an allusion to the 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn, the putative birthplace of the “modern homosexual rights movement.”
Acknowledgments
This book was conceived years ago, and finished only with the help of many friends and colleagues. I am especially grateful for the intellectual and moral support of Dagmar Herzog, Jonathan Fine, and Richard Wetzell, as well as the great enthusiasm of Gerry Gross and Jill Kneerim. Sarah Watts read and commented on the completed manuscript, and helped me to improve clarity and eliminate infelicities. George Baca was also a valuable critic of my writing and argument. My dissertation advisors, Michael Geyer and John Boyer, are still offering advice (and writing letters)—and have my heartfelt thanks for decades of mentoring. I have also had the support of many Baltimore friends and colleagues, including Uta Larkey, Nelly Lahoud, Ed Larkey, and Peter Jelavich, as well as my cousin John Gingerich. My former student Chelsea Schields read Dutch-language sources for me, and has been an important intellectual interlocutor since I first began studying the history of sexuality. I have also drawn great inspiration from my colleagues in the Goucher College history department—especially Julie Jeffrey and Jean Baker—as well as the many talented students who signed up over the years for my history of sexuality seminars.
In Berlin I benefitted from the scholarship and advice of several historians who have done ground-breaking research on the history of sexuality. These pioneers include Rainer Herrn, Ralf Dose, Günter Grau, and Claudia Schoppmann. At Berlin’s Schwules Museum, I relied initially on the expertise of Karl-Heinz Steinle, and, after his departure, that of Jens Dobler. I also had the good luck of meeting Martin Lücke as he was completing and publishing his dissertation on a related subject. Other Berlin friends who have provided tremendous encouragement—and often a place to stay—are Carol Scherer, Dirk Müller, Dirk Ilius, and Christian-Peter Schultz. Nate Halsan spent many hours tracking down book, journal, and newspaper articles for me in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek.
I’m also grateful for residential scholarships at the National Humanities Center and the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford. During these fellowship years, I gained tremendously from the stimulation (and distraction) of the other fellows. In North Carolina it was especially Rachel Weil, Jim Sweet, Sheryl Kroen, and Christopher Browning who kept me both inspired and amused. At CASBS, I enjoyed many rewarding conversations with Rhacel Parreñas, Nancy Whittier, Robert Proctor, Sam Perry, Ted Porter, Allen Isaacman, Enrique Rodrigues-Alegria, and Liz Borgwardt. Lochlann Jain, who was a fellow at CASBS and my neighbor in the Castro, became a great pal, both at Stanford and in the city. Gayle Rubin and Gerard Koskovich were in San Francisco when I lived there, and offered valuable advice as well as help with sources. I exploited fully the generosity of my brother Phil and sister-in-law Kati Andreasson, who allowed me to live with them for several months in Stanford.
My numerous trips to Berlin were funded in part with a John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, as well as summer research grants from the American Philosophical Society, the German Academic Exchange Service, and Goucher College. A Christopher Isherwood Foundation fellowship from the Huntington Library allowed me to spend two months in Pasadena reading Isherwood’s papers and correspondence. I also benefitted from a Phil Zwickler Memorial Research Grant that allowed me to explore the holdings of the Human Sexuality Collection of the Cornell University Library.
Notes
A list of abbreviations used in the notes can be found on this page.
Introduction
1. New York Public Library, Berg Collection, W. H. Auden, “Berlin Journal,” fol. 2r.
2. Carpenter, W. H. Auden, quoted from p. 90.
3. Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, p. 16.
4. Zimmermann, Die Diebe in Berlin oder Darstellung ihres Entstehens, ihrer Organisation, ihrer Verbindungen, ihres Taktik, ihrer Gewohnheiten und ihrer Sprache (Berlin, 1847; reprint, 1987), p. 163; see also Herzer, Die Geschichte des § 175 (1990), pp. 30–41.
5. Moll, Die conträre Sexualempfindung (Berlin, 1899) 3rd ed., p. 526.
6. Hirschfeld, Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes, p. 698.
7. Some of the best evidence comes from homoerotic literature of the period. See Stefan Müller. Ach, nur ’n bisschen Liebe: Männliche Homosexualität in den Romanen deutschsprachiger Autoren in der Zwischenkriegszeit 1919 bis 1939 (Würzburg, 2011), pp. 42–43, 503–04.
8. Herzer, Magnus Hirschfeld, p. 14.
9. New York Public Library, “Berlin Journal,” fol. 8r.
10. See Kertbeny, §143 des preussischen Strafgesetzbuches and Das Gemeinschädliche des §143. Kertbeny’s identity as the author of these pamphlets was suspected earlier but only confirmed in 1905. See Manfred Herzer biographical introduction in Karl Maria Kertbeny, Schriften zur Homosexualitätsforschung (Berlin, 2000), pp. 7–61.
11. Ostwald, Rinnsteinsprache, p. 142.
12. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality; Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization; or the essays in Herdt, ed., Third Sex, Third Gender.
13. Rocke, Forbidden Friendships.
14. Berco, Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status; Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland 1400–1600.
15. See Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England, pp. 16–17, 88–93; Norton, Mother Clap’s Molly House; Trumbach, “Modern Sodomy,” pp. 77–106, and Sex and the Gender Revolution, pp. 3–8, 53–59.
16. Van der Meer, “The Persecutions of Sodomites in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam,” pp. 263–310, 286; and L. J. Boon, “Those Damned Sodomites,” pp. 237–48.
17. Rey, “Parisian Homosexuals Create a Lifestyle, 1700–1750” and “Police and Sodomy in Eighteenth-Century Paris”; and the essays in Merrick and Ragan, eds., Homosexuality in Early Modern France.
18. Valerie Traub has argued that early modern same-sex love between women did not produce a modern lesbian identity but “demonstrate[s] the conditions of emergence for such an identity.” Perhaps a similar argument might be made for the “mollies” of Enlightenment London. Quoted from Traub, “The Psychomorphology of the Clitoris,” p. 85.
19. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, p. 43. The literature on this question is voluminous, and I cite sparingly. For the emphatically “constructivist” position on the “medicalization” of homosexuality see Arnold Davidson, “Sex and the Emergence of Sexuality” and “How to Do the History of Psychoanalysis: A Reading of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” Critical Inquiry 14 (1987): 252–77. See also the essays in Jan Goldstein, ed., Foucault and the Writing of History (Oxford, 1994). David Halperin offers a nuanced reading of Foucault’s claim. See “Forgetting Foucault.”
20. Rydström, Sinners and Citizens, pp. 43–54, 320–21.
21. Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia.
22. See Revenin, Homosexualité et prostitution masculines à Paris 1870–1918; Peniston, Pederasts and Others; Chauncey, Gay New York; Cook, London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885–1914; Cocks, Nameless Offences; and also Abraham, Metropolitan Lovers.
23. On the history of Paragraph 175 see Weber, Der Trieb zum Erzählen; Mildenberger, “…in der Richtung der Homosexualität verdorben”: Psychiater, Kriminalpsychologen und Gerichtsmediziner über männliche Homosexualität 1850–1970; Sommer, Die Strafbarkeit der Homosexualität von der Kaiserzeit bis zum Nationalsozi
alismus; Frank, Die Strafbarkeit homosexueller Handlungen; Hutter, Die gesellschaftliche Kontrolle des homosexuellen Begehrens; Sievert, Das Anomale Bestrafen; and Gollner, Homosexualität.
24. Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, 16 vols. (Leipzig, 1908), vol. 9, p. 526.
25. Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon, 17 vols. (Leipzig, 1908), vol. 9, p. 315; vol. 10, p. 599; vol. 16, p. 127. Carl Westphal had coined the more cumbersome conträre Sexualempfindung (often translated as “sexual inversion”) in an 1869 case study, which defined the “pathological reversal” of same-gender sexual attraction. See Westphal, “Die conträre Sexualempfindung.”
26. Scott Spector,“The Wrath of the ‘Countess Mervida.’ ”
CHAPTER ONE The German Invention of Homosexuality
1. See John, Politics and the Law in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany.
2. See the important scholarship on Ulrichs, including the biographies Kennedy, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, and Sigusch, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs; and the essays in Setz, ed., Die Geschichte der Homosexualitäten und die schwule Identität an der Jahrtausendwende.
3. Ulrichs’s twelve pamphlets are available in English translation, The Riddle of “Man-Manly” Love.
4. Ulrichs provides an account of his appearance at the Munich meeting in his sixth pamphlet, “Gladius Furens” (“Raging Sword”) in The Riddle of “Man-Manly” Love, 1: 261–71.
5. Ibid.
6. Ulrichs has been eulogized by modern gay civil rights activists from around the world. See Setz, ed., Karl Heinrich Ulrichs zu Ehren and Die Geschichte der Homosexualitäten und die schwule Identität an der Jahrtausendwende.
7. Kennedy, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, p. 1–3.
8. Conze and Kocka, eds., Bildungsbürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert.
9. Kennedy, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, p. 3.
10. See Ulrichs’s curriculum vitae reprinted in Ibid, pp. 262–65.
11. On the Holy Roman Empire see Walker, German Home Towns, pp. 11–33.
12. Meinhardt, Die Universität Göttingen.
13. Ulrichs’s correspondence with his family was first published by Magnus Hirschfeld, “Vier Breife von Karl Heinrich Ulrichs an seine Verwandten,” JfsZ 1 (1899), pp. 36–70. They are quoted here from the English translation in Lombardi-Nash, Sodomites and Urnings, pp. 2–7.
14. Friedel, Briefe über die Galanterien von Berlin.
15. Stieber (anon.), Die Prostitution in Berlin und ihre Opfer, pp. 209–10. See also von Schaden, Berlins Licht- und Schattenseiten, pp. 72–73.
16. Casper, Klinische Novellen zur gerichtlichen Medizin nach eigenen Erfahrungen, pp. 170–71.
17. Kennedy, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, pp. 11–17.
18. Quoted from Ibid., p. 19.
19. Quoted from Hoffschildt, Olivia, p. 14.
20. Schildt, “Das Ende einer Karriere,” Capri 6, no. 4 (1988): 24–33.
21. Kennedy, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, pp. 26–29.
22. On the 1848 revolutions see either of the excellent surveys: Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century, or Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866.
23. Dobler, “Ulrichs vs. Preußen,” pp. 49–126
24. The history of German railways is drawn from several sources including Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century; Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866; and Roth, Das Jahrhundert der Eisenbahn.
25. Roth, Das Jahrhundert der Eisenbahn.
26. Kennedy, “Johann Baptist von Schweitzer: The Queer Marx Loved to Hate,” Journal of Homosexuality 29, no. 2–3 (1995): 69–96.
27. Lombardi-Nash, Sodomites and Urnings, pp. 2–7.
28. Ibid., pp. 8–11.
29. Ibid., pp. 18–20.
30. Ibid., p. 12.
31. Ulrichs, The Riddle of “Man-Manly” Love, 1: 34–41.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., pp. 51–98.
34. Ibid., pp. 119–21, 161.
35. Ibid., pp. 203–6
36. Ibid., pp. 99–108
37. Ibid.
38. The revised ninth edition of Handbuch der gerichtlichen Medizin was published in 1905–07, more than forty years after Casper’s death.
39. Casper, “Über Notzucht und Päderastie und deren Ermittlung Seitens des Gericht-sarztes.”
40. All direct quotations are taken from ibid., pp. 67–69.
41. Ibid., p. 62.
42. Casper, Practisches Handbuch der gerichtlichen Medizin, vol. 2, p. 174.
43. Krafft-Ebing, “Über gewisse Anomalien des Geschlechtstriebs.”
44. Ibid., pp. 70–71, 208–09; Oosterhuis, Stepchildren of Nature, pp. 47–48, 66–67.
45. Kennedy, “Johann Baptist von Schweitzer,” pp. 69–96.
46. Krafft-Ebing, “Die conträre Sexualempfindung,” p. 46.
47. Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis, 6th ed., p. 210.
48. Ibid., 3rd ed., p. 83.
49. Ibid., 5th ed., p. 161.
50. Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, 16 vols. (Leipzig, 1908), vol. 9, p. 526. Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon, 17 vols. (Leipzig, 1908), vol. 9, p. 315; vol. 10, p. 599; vol. 16, p. 127.
51. The Victorian-era, English homosexual-rights activists John Addington Symonds and Edward Carpenter used the expression “Uranian love,” as did a group of Cambridge classicists, sometimes dubbed the “Uranian poets,” who wrote Greek-inspired pederastic poetry. See Edward Perry Warren, A Defence of Uranian Love, ed. Michael Matthew Kaylor (Kansas City, 2009). Although Symonds and Carpenter almost certainly adopted the term from Ulrichs and from the German sexological literature that cited him, Michael Matthew Kaylor disputes that the Uranian poets were influenced by Ulrichs and argues instead that, as Classical scholars, they coined the expression independently. See Kaylor, Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians (Brno, 2006), 13.
52. Hull, Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700–1815, pp. 345–50.
53. Sommer, Die Strafbarkeit der Homosexualität, pp. 31–58.
54. Ulrichs, Großdeutsches Programm und Lösung des großdeutschen Problems.
55. Kennedy, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, pp. 99–106.
56. Dobler, “Ulrichs vs. Preußen.”
57. From the sixth pamphlet, “Gladius Furens”; see Ulrichs, The Riddle of “Man-Manly” Love, 1: 266.
58. Kennedy, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, pp. 111–19.
59. Ulrichs, The Riddle of “Man-Manly” Love, 1: 269–70.
60. Goschler, Rudolf Virchow.
61. Quoted from the Prussian Scientific Deputation’s formal position paper, reprinted in Krafft-Ebing, Der Conträrsexuale vor dem Strafrichter (Leipzig, 1894), pp. 35–37.
62. Quoted from Kennedy, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, p. 156.
63. Kertbeny was the pen name of Karl Marie Benkert, an ethnic Hungarian born in Vienna, raised in Budapest, but for much of his working life a resident of Berlin, where he published widely on contemporary and cultural topics. His biography is shrouded in mystery, and only in 1905 was he identified as the author of the pamphlets and inventor of the word “homosexuality.” The words “homosexual” and “homosexuality” (in English), derived from a Latin root and a Greek prefix, have come to displace most other historical terms used to describe sexual acts or identities related to same-gender love. See the introductory essay by Herzer in Herzer, ed., Schriften zur Homosexualitätsforschung, pp. 7–61.
64. The best account of the Zastrow affair and its influence on Ulrichs’s campaign is Dobler, Zwischen Duldwigspolitik und Verbrechensbekämpfung, pp. 127–39.
65. Ibid., p. 138.
66. Ulrichs, The Riddle of “Man-Manly” Love, 2: 476.
67. Dobler, Zwischen Duldwigspolitik und Verbrechensbekämpfung, p. 138.
68. John, Politics and the Law in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany.
69. Ulrichs, The Riddle of “Man-Manly” Love, 2: 627–88.
70. Kennedy, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, pp. 220–51.
CHAPTER TWO Policing Homosexuality in Berlin
1. Abends von acht bis morgens vier
Ziehn durch die Friedrichstraße wir.
So gehn wir nun seit ein’gen Jahren
Arm in Arm stets auf den Strich,
In dufter Schale wir stets waren,
Denn sonst geht das Geschäft ja nich.
Denn erstens muß ein Pupenjunge
Chik und elegant stets gehn;
Und zweitens muß er mit der Zunge
Gar zu bedächtig nicht umgehen;
Und drittens, will er mal was erben,
Muß er auch mal ’nen Kerl hochnehmen
Translated by the author with the help of the following reference work: Hans Ostwald, Rinnsteinsprache: Lexikon der Gauner-Dirnen-und Landstreichersprache (Berlin, 1906).
2. BBZ, 1 December 1885 (no. 561).
3. Detailed trial records are published in Karsch-Haack, Erotische Großstadtbilder als Kulturphänomene, pp. 56–71. See also the reports in BBZ, 1 December 1885 (no. 561); BTb, 1 December 1885 (no. 609); and NdAZ, 1 December 1885 (no. 562).
4. Karsch-Haack, Erotische Großstadtbilder als Kulturphänomene, pp. 63–64.
5. Ibid., p. 67.
6. Ibid., p. 70.
7. NdAZ, 1 December 1885 (no. 562), p. 2; Karsch-Haack, Erotische Großstadtbilder als Kulturphänomene, pp. 69–70.
8. Friedländer, “Aus dem homosexuellen Leben Alt-Berlins,” p. 55.
9. Ibid., pp. 45–63. Friedländer drew from his own experience, direct and anecdotal, but also relied on two censored publications that are no longer extant: Die Geheimnisse der Berliner Passage (1877), and Die Männerfreunde von Berlin (1880). Magnus Hirschfeld discusses Männerfreunde in Berlins drittes Geschlecht, p. 145, and Iwan Bloch mentions Geheimnisse in The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 290.
10. One of Richthofen’s underlings, Hans von Tresckow, who directed the Homosexuellen Dezernat after Hüllessem in 1900, claimed in his best-selling memoir that Richthofen was not only gay but also secretly monitored by his own men. Von Fürsten und anderen Sterblichen, p. 55.
Gay Berlin Page 32