Name: Sex and the Weimar Republic
ISBN: 9781442626577

Laurie Marhoefer

Sex and the Weimar Republic shows how, in Weimar Germany, the citizen's right to sexual freedom came with a duty to keep sexuality private, non-commercial, and respectable.

German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis

Sex and the Weimar Republic

Georgina Gale

Science demonstrated that sexual anomalies such as homosexu- ality were rare, natural, "purely biological, not pathological," variations, similar to other naturally occurring and yet unusual conditions, such as colour blindness. 

"What is natural can- not be immoral," Hirschfeld wrote.l0 "When state and society, family and individual persist in their old prejudice against homosexual men and women, a prejudice that is based on ignorance, then an injustice is done, one that has only few parallels in human history."ll 

The Weimar Republic relaxed restric. ions on media about sexuality, which proved crucial for the fomation of mass political organizations of gay men, lesbians, and "ransvestites (Transvestiten), 19

Only through science, he believed, could homosexuals achieve liberation.

Steakley, Homosexual Emancipation, 73; Herzer, Hirschfeld, 29-30. 

This is reflected in some studies of the homosexual emancipa movement that deny much significance to the Weimar period.

Their struggle began in 1918-19, when war, revolution, and the Republic's founding seemed to commentators from across the political spectrum to have destabilized norms of gender and sexuality.

also the KPD at times, though they were also critical of some reforms

The coalition for reform included Hirschfeld and the WhK. It also included feminists and sex reformers. To them, including the guests at the opening of the Institute for Sexual Science, a new era of sexual norality and parliamentary democracy promised a better life and a more just society. In party politics, the German Social Democrats (the SPD) largely backed the reforms for which Hirschfeld and his allies fought. 

Opposing the reformers were people who defended a vision of sexuality drawn from Christianity. They valued heterosexual mariage and decried the creeping influence of what they called immorality which included homosexuality, prostitution, and supposedly obscene media, as well as extramarital heterosexual sex and the birth control and abortion practices that it entailed. They were wracked with anxiety that Germany would soon drown beneath a monsterous "flood" of "immorality.” Protestant historian and diehard monarchist Ulrich Stutz declared in 1920 that in Germany the "new Sodom and Gomorrah" had arisen by which, he said, he did not only mean Berlin but other big cities too such as "no-longer-holy Cologne." Among those who took this view were members of the conservative women's movement, moderate politicians in the Centre Party, Protestant morality activists, and right-wing conservatives, this last group often being linked to the German National Socialist Party (DNVP). The National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterbartei, NSDAP) took no part in the major battles of Weimar-era sexual politics because it did not enter the national political arena with any kind of force until the Great Depression hit Germany in the winter of 1929-30.

 Dem-onstrating the depth of support for the Institute in Social Democratic circles, a police official wrote that scientific research into "sexual life ... can only be welcomed" and defended the Institute's advocacy of the not uncommon opinion that homosexuality is not a vice, but rather an inborn predisposition.”

 Substantial portions of the major lesbian novel of the era, Anna Elisabet Weirauch's The Scorpion (Der Skorpion, published in three volumes between 1919 and 1931) are set in the countryside, and the book critiques the conservative, bour- geoisie notion that perversion resided exclusively in cities.

This sentiment inspired thousands of men in the years after the First World War. Max Danielsen, one of the editors of the important new homosexual emancipation magazine Friendship (Freund- schaft), wrote that after "the world war swept disaster over the old world" and "unconquered, but broken, the German Volk collapsed ... A new age dawned! The hour of liberation is now or never, for us ... We, the ostracized, persecuted, and misjudged, are set aglow by a new age of eaual respect and equality.”

The magazine reached a national audience and became a vital means of organization for the friendship leagues," homosexual emancipation groups like Lin- sert's that sprang up just after the war in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Dresden, Kassel, and other cities. The friendship leagues were the beginning of an important transformation of homosexual emancipation: it became a mass movement, and a more diverse one. 

The belief that the war, the Revolution, and the new democracy had ush- ered in "a new age" of gender and sexuality was not confined to Richard Linsert and his fellow homosexual emancipationists in Munich: it was widely shared and often expressed by people of diverse political com- mitments. That is, whether or not change was in reality all that dramatic. many people perceived a dramatic change. Change was, thus, affective and epistemological, and this perceived change had lasting effects. Peo- ples' experience of change shaped how they acted and ultimately shaped the state that they built. In 1924, the Kölnische Zeitung, a major conserva- tive daily in the Rhineland that backed the DNVP, published a front-page article on this.46 "Each era has a different erotic morality" the paper informed its readers. "Ten years ago, none of us thought possible some of what we live with today ... We have, doubtless, experienced a sexual revolution over the course of a certain number of years, and even ifit has not done us much good, it is a reality."17 This author, like many such com- nentators, was aware that norms of gender and sexuality had undergone profound changes well before 1918; he or she noted that nineteenth- century industrialization was in part "guilty" for sexual revolution. Yet, as was typical of Weimar-era commentators, the author focused not on the longue durée but on what he or she was experiencing as a dramatic, short-term transformation between 1914 and the mid-1920s.

Just before the war, the West German Morality League's discourse was not unlike what Imperial Germany, founded in 1885 by Luc war, t it would become after 1918 after 1918-19. In 1913, the club warned that thouch ough industrial economy since the had lost "strict public mnorality."0 Yet the war brought new con- had developed a more powerful ind one like military brothels, fatherless youths, promiscuous women the home front, and the effect of millions of battlefield deaths on the And when the war ended, the sexual-moral circum- national birth rate. nnces did not improve. Quite the contrary. The West German Moral- iv League's publications just after the armistice reflect the sense that the bottom had suddenly dropped out: 1918 brought "moral collapse. "52 Now we sit in a swamp" of "disgracefulness and immorality," lamented the November/December 1918 issue of the League's journal,58 Prior to the war. these activists had identified the Social Democratic Party asa cause of moral decline.4 So it is not surprising that when the kaiser fell and the SPD headed a transitional government, moral purity activists foresaw the end of German civilization. At the West German Morality League's first meeting following the war, in the spring of 1919, one of its leaders declared that "immorality has won the field... the true nature of people has been made plain by the Revolution. The beast in humanity was released and has become master. "55 As evidence of this, he pointed to "crime and the waywardness Verwilderung] of youth," as well as “moral flth [Schmutz] in cinemas and theatres" and "trashy literature [Schundlit eratur)." A 1919 club publication described a "moral emergency" in prog ress that menaced youth and the family: "racketeering [Schiebereil and profiteering [ Wucheei],""pleasure-seeking and dancing in their crassest 1oms, gambling, movies with sexual content, prostitution, venereal dis- ease, and divorce,50 The West German Morality League had been com- Pianing of "moral decline" since well before 1918, but League members Claimed - and apparently sincerely believed- that the war's conclusion and the Revolution had plunged Germany into a moral abyss the likes of which had not yet been seen. 

the "No the the cau anc for Le: lea pe W? The belief that the war, the Revolution, and the new democracy had usk ered in "a new age" of gender and sexuality was not confined to Richard Linsert and his fellow homosexual emancipationists in Munich: it was widely shared and often expressed by people of diverse political Com. mitments. That is, whether or not change was in reality all that dramatic, many people perceived a dramatic change. Change was, thus, affective and epistemological, and this perceived change had lasting effects. Peo- ples' experience of change shaped how they acted and ultimately shaped the state that they built. 

Take for example, the West German Morality League (Westdeutscher Sit. lächkeitsuerein), one of the two major Protestant moral purity groups of imperial Germany, founded in 1885 by Ludwig Weber. Just before the war, the West German Morality League's discourse was not unlike what it would become after 1918-19. In 1913, the club warned that thouch Germany had developed a more powerful industrial economy since the 1870s, it had lost "strict public morality."50 Yet the war brought new con cerns, like military brothels, fatherless youths, promiscuous women the home front, and the effect of millions of battlefield deaths on the national birth rate. 5l And when the war ended, the sexual-moral circum- stances did not improve. Quite the contrary. The West German Moral- ity League's publications just after the armistice reflect the sense that the bottom had suddenly dropped out: 1918 brought "moral collapse."52 "Now we sit in a swamp" of "disgracefulness and immorality," lamented he November/December 1918 issue of the League's journal.

In a 1931 lecture at a transvestite chk Marie Weis acknowledged that although not all that democracy had prom ised in 1918, such as press freedom and socialized industry, had come to pass, when Germany "transformed itself into a democratic Republic...it seemed as if with the collapse of the moribund monarchy, dogmatic and conservative moral theology ceased to rule our lives."

He laid down his life ... for the Fatherland. which persecuted him because of a natural orientation that he could not help. That persecution injured his sensitive soul deeply. It is deplorable that because of a short-sighted law. the Fatherland still makes it impossible for good citizens [Bürger], upright people with excellent character traits ... to feel that they are equal with others. It is deplorable that the Fatherland ostracizes them or condemns them and treats them as pariahs, simply because nature saw fit to organize them differently than ordinary people ... (P]eople who by nature are ori- entated towards the same sex perform their duty and their part fully and completely. It is finally time that the state treat them in the same manner that they treat the state. [emphasis in original] 

Hirschfeld was convinced that a "mass organization" of homosexuals would fail because "homo- sexuals ... are almost entirely lacking in feelings of solidarity; there s barely another class of people [Menschenklassel that has less interest in organizing around common legal and social interests."

Sex and the Weimar Republic German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis

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