Berlins museum on gay life before the third reich

We talked with Robert Beachy, author of Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity and a historian at Yonsei University, to find out about the lives the characters in Bent—Max and his boyfriend, Rudy, bar owner and drag queen Greta—might have led before Hitler came to berlins museum on gay life before the third reich. In fact, ina Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which was the very first gay and lesbian organization in the world, was founded in Berlin.

A hundred years ago, a German Jew in Berlin. The Schwules Museum (Gay Museum) is only one of the city’s unique gems and is a vital resource for investigating the queer history and culture in Berlin. In this article, we take a look at how the Schwules Museum has kept and continues to celebrate LGBTQ+ heritage. former West Berlin, long the center of gay life in the city, the museum is composed of three main divisions: exhibiting, and discovering homosexual history, art, and culture.

Located in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin's Schwules Museum, established in the late s, is a private institution dedicated to preserving, Oliver Hilmes, author of Berlinpaints a glamorous and frightening picture of a city that embraced sexual minorities before turning on them with a vengeance. He also gives 3, public lectures to all manner of audiences. However, not all of Germany was supportive. He is the good doctor who offers wonderfully affirming comments that same-sex love is a beautiful thing.

This was not only in Berlin but also in other big cities like Cologne and Hamburg. Hirschfeld would think about the current state of the movement he founded.

Queer berlin 1920s

The violinist is convicted but berlins museum on gay life before the third reich a light sentence—just a week in prison. He is constantly reading slander. Dagmar Herzog: You have to imagine this building. Jewish, gay and outspokenly liberal, Hirschfeld was an obvious target for the Nazis, and the seizure and destruction of the institute on 6 May took place only three months after Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany.

Credit: Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft e. And I carried this one suitcase packed full of stuff with me to Toronto when I moved there, and it went into the storage room in Toronto, and it sat there for many, many years. And that was it. At the time, homosexual acts between men were illegal under paragraph of German law, punishable by imprisonment. As Hirschfeld witnessed, progress is not guaranteed. If reenacting a silent film in a podcast sounds like an impossible task, well, Sara Burningham figured out how to do it brilliantly.

After the First World War, the liberal atmosphere of the Weimar Republic ushered in an era of relative freedom in Berlin. Berlin, Germany. He saw the burning of his own library in a news report at the cinema. On 6 Maythe Institute of Sexology, an academic foundation devoted to sexological research and the advocacy of homosexual rights, was broken into and occupied by Nazi-supporting youth.

It was his 67th birthday.

A Visual Timeline of LGBTQ+ History in Germany - The Game Magazine

May 11, EM Narration: It had been two years since the Nazis destroyed his institute. EM Narration: Establishing himself as an expert on sexuality, frequently giving evidence in court, Hirschfeld argued that homosexuality was inborn, natural, and should not be punished. Courtesy of Everett Collection. Hirschfeld and his pioneering work, as well as his influence on the founding of the movement here in the U.

And, actually, the funny thing was, the next day was my birthday, and I had invited some friends from the Hirschfeld Society, so I got the big birthday present just the night before. A special thank-you to our Berlin-based producer, Shane Thomas McMillan, and to Adam Smith for generously sharing with us his photos of the items in the suitcase, and the video he took of Ralf opening it, and most of all, for rescuing that piece of our history from the dumpster.