GLR July-August 2025

people who could, sometimes for the first time in their lives, meet, exchange thoughts, get to know each other personally, and form friendships or even romantic or sexual relationships. The sense of belonging to a community was particularly im portant for non-metropolitan queer people, who could not al ways participate in the nightlife culture of great cities. 3. T HERE ’ S LIFE BEYOND BERLIN : S IZEDOESN ’ T ALWAYS MATTER . While the extravagant nightlife as depicted in Cabaret or Baby lon Berlin is usually associated with that city (which, remark ably, has maintained a unique appeal for LGBT people down to the present day), queer public life in Weimar Germany was not limited to the capital. It was present not only in other metropo lises, such as Munich and Cologne, but across a host of middle sized or small cities and even some villages. What’s more, its extent was not always correlated with the size of a given mu nicipality. The significantly larger but geographically isolated cities of Königsberg (modern-day Kaliningrad, Russia) and Danzig (modern-day Gda ń sk, Poland, then an independent free city, though predominantly German-speaking) had fewer meet ing points for queer people and experienced fewer waves of po litical self-organizing than, say, the small provincial cities of Liegnitz and Görlitz. The latter benefited from their proximity to regional hubs of queer social, political, and cultural life, such as Berlin or Breslau. greater visibility of queer culture and individuals. Police records and news reports show that legal persecution of same-sex-lov ing and gender nonconforming people was greater in cities than in the countryside. An article published in Die Freundschaft in 1921 depicts a “hunt” that “a whole army of [police] officials” is said to have launched against the queer people of Breslau, in cluding the surveillance of meeting points and specific people. 4. T HERE IS NO UNIVERSAL QUEER EXPERIENCE . In Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany, as elsewhere, it mattered whether someone was transgender or a cisgender man or woman. Paragraph 175 only penalized sex between men (or people read as such), but it did not mean that lesbians didn’t face discrimination and ostracism. While cisgender homosexual men cultivated a lively public sex culture, and most cities were dotted not only with cruising grounds but also with establish ments catering especially to this group, lesbians and trans peo ple prioritized the domestic sphere as their preferred space for socializing. (There were also differences that ran along class lines. While working-class people did not always have the eco nomic freedom to participate in queer sociability and culture, their middle-class counterparts often lacked the social freedom to do so, since their jobs depended on their reputation and re spectability. Nonconforming or transgressive gender expression was more common among working-class people, who might To be sure, the city has always held a special place in the queer imagination as a place of refuge from the supposed conser vatism and backwardness of the countryside and as a realm of opportunities—social, sex ual, cultural, and otherwise. However, while it certainly offered liberties that were often absent from nonurban spaces, the city could also be dangerous because of the generally

have had less to lose if they dressed in a “provocative” manner, though this did expose them to greater risk of harassment and even violence in public places.) 5.M AKE ROMANCE , BUTDON ’ T ROMANTICIZE . Both in popular culture and among historians, the Weimar pe riod is often idealized as a golden era for all gender and sexual dissidents. Although in many ways the outburst of queer ac tivism and culture of that time was unprecedented, this view usually obscures the often harsh reality that sexual- and gender nonconforming people faced: the various forms of legal perse cution (including not only anti-sodomy laws but also indecency and obscenity laws), blackmail, and exposure to violence. Then there were the cultural tropes such as that of the “fairy” or the homosexual vampire, censorship of the queer press, and threats from law enforcement and anti-vice organizations. Then, too, some of the major figures and leaders of the queer movement were far from being above reproach. Magnus Hirschfeld, usually hailed as the father of queer emancipation and an early role model, was implicated in colonialism, racism, and eugenics; and, while publicly avowing women’s rights, he marginalized female scientists and their work. Adolf Brand, an other important figure, was a fervent misogynist and anti Semite, and Friedrich Radszuweit built the largest queer 6. D IVISIONS DON ’ THELP ; UNITYDOES . Despite the precarious legal and social condition of queer peo ple in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany and the resulting ur gent need for unity, the movement of that time was riven by internal conflicts. It consisted of several rival political camps that differed not only on ideological but also on strategic grounds. Moreover, these factions were all run by men with big egos, each of whom aspired to become the sole leader of queer emancipation. They often engaged in petty arguments that played out publicly, and their personal feuds lasted for years, until the end of organized queer activism in 1933. Instances of cooperation and overcoming their pride were rare but usually crowned with success, such as the joint campaign for the de criminalization of sex between men in 1929 (which was passed that same year by a parliamentary committee but never imple mented due to supervening political circumstances). This “lack of unity” and “internal quarrelsomeness” were later cited by one of the major figures of the queer movement, Kurt Hiller, as among its key weaknesses and one of the reasons it did not achieve its goals. 7. U NITY IS NOT BUILT BY EXCLUSIONS . The 1929 vote by the German parliamentary committee on legal affairs in favor of decriminalizing sex between men had its downside. While the proposed reform was intended to abolish organization of the Weimar era while ex cluding sex workers, the jobless, and other less than “respectable” social types. As the power of the Nazis grew, Radszuweit also wrote an open letter to Adolf Hitler and ap pealed to him to reconsider his position on homosexuality, though this was probably due to his naïveté and lack of judgment more than to his presumed pro-Nazi sympathies.

The Nazi movement can teach us a lot about social progress and queer history. Here are nine lessons from the Weimar era that may be applicable toour own ti me.

TheG & LR

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