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History
and Homosexual Rights: How Early-Twentieth-Century German
Activists Engaged with the Past
Yvonne
Ivory
Department
of German
University
of South Carolina
(Estados
Unidos)
Anti-homophobic political and social activism emerged
earlier in the German-speaking world than it did elsewhere
in Europe. In the last decades of the nineteenth century,
German intellectuals championed same-sex love by recalling
the exploits of historic queer figures: in the name of
Shakespeare, or Michelangelo, or Sophocles, writers called
for the repeal of laws banning sex between men and praised
the noble heritage of mann-maennliche Liebe. Activists
riding the second wave of the gay rights movement in
Germany—-those of the post-Stonewall period—-looked
back to the turn of the twentieth century for their heroes
and models, plucking from obscurity such names as
Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs and Magnus Hirschfeld. Popular gay
and lesbian uses of history in the post-68 period revolved
around martyr-figures—an inevitable trend, perhaps,
given the legacy of the Third Reich for the homosexual
community. The emergence of the notion of queerness in the
1990s problematized the very idea of gay identity politics
and thus changed the status of history in popular queer
culture. This paper will examine one aspect of the story
of how history has been deployed within the discourse of
homosexual rights in twentieth-century Germany. Focusing
in particular on Der Eigene and the Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle
Zwischenstufen -- gay-themed publications that appeared
before the rise of Hitler -- I will show the nature and
extent of queer culture’s engagement with the past, and
to place our contemporary engagement with the past in its
own historical context.
About Yvonne Ivory
Yvonne Ivory (PhD UCLA, 2001) has taught at San Diego
State and Duke Universities; and is currently Assistant
Professor of German at the University of South Carolina.
Her research covers the history of sexuality in both
Britain and Germany; and she especially interested in the
intersections between sexual identity and aesthetics.
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