GLR July-August 2025

ESSAY

Nine Lessons from Weimar Germany M ATHIAS F OIT

T HE WEIMAR ERA in German history (1919– 1933) saw the emergence of what was probably the world’s first organized, public mass move ment for queer liberation, complete with its own institutions and fervent political activity. The campaign’s roots can be traced back to the sec ond half of the 19th century, and some of its major players were active from the 1890s onward, in a period known as the Wil helmine era (1890–1918). A lively queer culture—consisting of meeting points, nightlife, and stage performances, among other elements—flourished alongside this movement and has been celebrated in popular culture ever since, including in the prose of the Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood, his story’s spectacular Broadway run (1966–1969) as the musical Cabaret , the show’s Liza Minelli-starring Hollywood adapta

1. (Q UEER )H ISTORY IS NEVER LINEAR . It is a commonly held belief that the arc of history is one of progress or improvement, from less sophisticated sociopoliti cal systems and relations to more advanced forms. However, whether it’s the anti-LGBT rhetoric and policies of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis or Weimar Germany’s descent into fascism, history reveals that no democratic achievement can be taken for granted. The Nazis destroyed in a matter of months whatever progress the sexual freedom movement had achieved in almost forty years. After twelve years of the Nazi regime, it took West Germany two decades of democracy for its queer movement to become at least as public and vocal as it had been in the Weimar era.* It wasn’t until 1994 that the infamous Para graph 175, which criminalized sex between men, was finally erased from the German penal code (though it had been re

formed in the 1960s, and subsequently was not widely enforced). However, modern legislation pertaining to legal gender recognition is still pending; hatred and fear of LGBT people are on the rise; queer refugees, migrants, and peo ple of color are facing systemic racism and in tersecting discriminations; and some right-wing groups are challenging the German LGBT com munity’s achievements, including marriage equality. 2. P ROGRESS IS NOT JUST ABOUT RIGHTS . Looking at the balance of the Weimar queer movement from the standpoint of liberal re forms, one German historian described it as characterized by “apparent achievements and an emancipatory stalemate.” While the move ment may not have achieved its primary goals—abolishing Paragraph 175 and raising the overall societal acceptance of sexual and

Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret (1972).

tion in 1972, and the successful contemporary German TV se ries Babylon Berlin (2017–present). With the Nazi rise to power in 1933, both the campaign for expanding rights and the public queer culture suffered a sudden and brutal rupture, marking the beginning of systematic op pression and, later, extermination of sexual and gender non conformists in Germany. That movement ultimately failed to achieve its goals, but its enduring legacy can teach us a lot about social progress and queer history. I have identified what I see as nine lessons that we can take from the Weimar experience that may be applicable to our own time. Mathias Foit is the author of Queer Urbanisms in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany: Of Towns and Villages (2023). An earlier version of this article appeared in Notches (notchesblog.com).

gender nonconformity—it would be misguided to consider it a complete failure. The queer movement of both the Wilhelmine and Weimar eras succeeded in creating, possibly for the first time in history, a group consciousness that extended beyond local, regional, or even national boundaries, as well as positive patterns of individual and collective self-identification for sex ual and gender nonconformists. The German queer press of that time, consisting of approximately twenty titles, sparked the es tablishment of groups across the country that were both politi cal and social in character. It created a fellowship of like-minded ___________________ * This refers to West Germany. In East Germany, a satellite state of the Soviet Union, political self-organizing of same-sex-loving and gen der nonconforming people was slower and less spectacular, which was due, among other things, to the limitations of its political system.

July–August 2025

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