The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture

230 Pages·2017·7.44 MB·English

by  Heike Bauer

The hirschfeld Archives
In the series Sexuality Studies,
edited by Janice Irvine and Regina Kunzel
AlSo In thIS SeRIeS:
Ryan Murphy, Deregulating Desire: Flight Attendant Activism,
Family Politics, and Workplace Justice
heike Bauer, Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific
Encounters across the Modern World
lynette Chua, Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance
in an Authoritarian State
Thomas A. Foster, Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest
for a Relatable Past
Colin R. Johnson, Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America
lisa Sigel, Making Modern Love: Sexual Narratives and Identities
in Interwar Britain
The hirschfeld

Archives
Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture
heike Bauer
teMple UnIveRSIty pReSS
Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo
teMple UnIveRSIty pReSS
philadelphia, pennsylvania 19122
www.temple.edu/tempress
Copyright © 2017 by temple University—of the Commonwealth System
of higher education
All rights reserved
published 2017
library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication Data
names: Bauer, heike, author.
title: the hirschfeld archives : violence, death, and modern queer culture / heike Bauer.
Description: philadelphia : temple University press, 2017. | Series: Sexuality studies |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lCCn 2016049922| ISBn 9781439914328 (hardback) |
ISBn 9781439914335 (paper)
Subjects: lCSh: Sexual minorities—violence against. | Institut für Sexualwissenschaft—
Archives. | BISAC: hIStoRy / Modern / 20th Century. | SoCIAl SCIenCe /
Gay Studies.
Classification: lCC hQ73 .B38 2017 | DDC 306.76—dc23 lC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049922
the paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American national
Standard for Information Sciences—permanence of paper for printed library Materials,
AnSI Z39.48-1992
printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of
my grandmother, Amalie Kirstein,
and my great-aunt Anna Zimmer,
strong, beloved women

contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Sexual Rights in a World of Wrongs: Reframing the emergence
of homosexual Rights Activism in Colonial Contexts 13
2 Death, Suicide, and Modern homosexual Culture 37
3 normal Cruelty: Child Beatings and Sexual violence 57
4 From Fragile Solidarities to Burnt Sexual Subjects:
At the Institute of Sexual Science 78
5 lives That Are Spoken For: Queer in exile 102
Coda 125

notes 135
Bibliography 183
Index 211

Acknowledgments
Ih ave accrued many debts in the course of this research: to the people who
read and commented on parts of the book; the colleagues with whom I had
the good fortune to collaborate and share ideas; and the scholars, librar-
ians, and archivists who went out of their way to give me access to materi-
als that were difficult to obtain. I am grateful for the support of the many
librarians and archivists who have assisted my research at the British library
in london; harvard law library; Cambridge University library; oxford
University library; the Deutsches literaturarchiv Marbach, Germany; the
Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien in tokyo; humboldt University library
of Berlin; and the national library of Wales in Aberystwyth. In particular,
thanks are due to Ralf Dose from the Magnus-hirschfeld-Gesellschaft in
Berlin; Margaret phillips from Berkeley library, University of California;
Shawn C. Wilson from the Kinsey Institute Archives; and Barbara Wolff
from the hebrew University of Jerusalem, who all went out of their way
to assist my research. thanks also go to the librarians and archivists from
the Wellcome library, especially lesley hall, who shared her own research
insights. Roc Ren from the national library of China assisted my search for
an edition of the Peking Daily News, which seems to have mysteriously dis-
appeared or been blocked from access. lisa vecoli from the Jean-nickolaus
tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota helped with my research
on Magnus hirschfeld’s legacy and revealed another mystery to me, which I
discuss more fully in the Introduction. I am grateful to Stephan likosky, who
x ■ Acknowledgments
kindly granted permission to reprint the postcard of cross-dressing soldiers
from his private collection, and to Jeremy Mason and Ashley Robins for their
assistance with the image of oscar Wilde on his deathbed. the research was
made possible by generous funding from the Arts and humanities Research
Council (AhRC); the Wellcome trust; the leslie Center for the humanities
at Dartmouth College; the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research (BISR) and
Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality (BiGS); and the Department of english and
humanities and the School of Arts, Birkbeck College, University of london.
While completing the book, I had the good fortune of being able to share
my work with many brilliant colleagues. Jana Funke, Andrea Josipovich, liat
Kozma, Anna Katharina Schaffner, and Katie Sutton all read draft chapters,
and I am extremely grateful for their astute criticism and the generous words
that kept me going. Special thanks are also due to patricia Watt, who cast her
eagle eye over the manuscript. Some of the preliminary ideas and research
presented in the book were first developed in articles and chapters I previ-
ously published, including “‘Race,’ normativity and the history of Sexuality:
the Case of Magnus hirschfeld’s Racism and early-twentieth-Century Sex-
ology,” Psychology and Sexuality 1, no. 3 (2010): 239–249; “Sexology Back-
ward: hirschfeld, Kinsey and the Reshaping of Sex Research in the 1950s,”
in Queer 1950s: Rethinking Sexuality in the Postwar Years, ed. heike Bauer
and Matt Cook (Basingstoke, UK: palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 133–149;
“Burning Sexual Subjects: Books, homophobia and the nazi Destruction of
the Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin,” in Book Destruction from the Medi-
eval to the Contemporary, ed. Gill partington and Adam Smyth (Basingstoke,
UK: palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 17–33; “Suicidal Subjects: translation and
the Affective Foundations of Magnus hirschfeld’s Sexology,” in Sexology
and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters across the Modern World,
1880–1930, ed. heike Bauer (philadelphia: temple University press, 2015),
233–252; and “Staging Untranslatability: Magnus hirschfeld encounters
philadelphia,” in Un/Translatables: New Maps for Germanic Literatures, ed.
Bethany Wiggin and Catriona Macleod (evanston, Il: northwestern Uni-
versity press, 2016), 193–202. In developing these publications, I have ben-
efited especially from the feedback of Matt Cook, peter Cryle, lisa Downing,
Catriona Macleod, Gill partington, Adam Smyth, and Bethany Wiggin.
Much of the research is in some way linked to papers I presented as part of
conferences, symposia, and workshops. I express my thanks to the colleagues
who invited me to share my ideas, including nadje Al-Ali, Serena Bassi, Sean
Brady, Robert Craig, Kate Fisher, veronika Fuechtner, Robert Gillett, Doug-
las haynes, Ann heilmann, lise Jaillant, esther leslie, Ina linge, elena
loizidou, David Midgley, Sylvia Mieszkowski, Sharon ouditt, tuija pulkin-
nen, hadley Renkin, Sasha Roseneil, Antu Soreinen, and elizabeth Stephens.