Hänschen Rilow and Ernst Röbel

Hänschen Rilow and Ernst Röbel, two characters in Frühlings Erwachen, an 1891 German play by Frank Wedekind translated in English as Spring Awakening (or variations, such as The Awakening of Spring), are a same-sex teenage couple who – in a reversal of later conventions – have the most optimistic storyline in the production. Röbel is a mediocre student on the verge of failing his classes; Rilow, the more apt and sexually forward pupil who seduces him. (Rilow may also be read as bisexual given a scene in which he masturbates to an image of a woman.) The final scene in which they appear takes place in a vineyard and concludes with a declaration of love; remarkable, given that two of the other children end up dead and one on the run after breaking out of a reformatory.

For its frank discussion of sexuality Frühlings Erwachen has been repeatedly censored, including an incident in New York where an injunction had to be sought in order to put on a single matinee performance. (Ironically, Frühlings Erwachen was adapted as a Broadway musical in 2006.)

Balian Buschbaum

German athlete Balian Buschbaum competed in the women’s pole vault for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games (placing 6th) and several world championships. His personal record of 4.70 meters ranks him as Germany’s second best as of the time of this posting. Since starting testosterone he has been barred from competitions and consequently forced to retire, but he was able to channel his track and field expertise into a position as a coach, and penned an autobiography. His transition has received international attention due to his career and his appearance: National Geographic included him in a documentary and blogs count him among the world’s most attractive trans men.

Buschbaum’s personal website is available here; his Facebook page is here; and a longer program about him in German can be found here.

 

Paul Körner

As much a public interest piece as a movie, Anders als die Andern (“Different from the Others”), a film co-written by sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and famed director Richard Oswald, was the first to offer a positive portrayal of homosexual characters. Paul Körner, a skilled violinist terrified of Germany’s anti-homosexual law, falls in love with a male student of his. As the two grow closer, a blackmailer who had caught them walking together in the park (and who had previously attempted to extort money from Körner during his school days) becomes increasingly aggressive, driving himself and Körner into a mutually destructive court battle. Despite the judge’s sympathy, Körner is sentenced to a week in prison; resigned to the fact that his privacy and career have been destroyed, Körner then commits suicide.

Although the film has not survived in its entirety due to the destruction of most copies, a viewing with live music has been recorded and is available on YouTube here.

Magnus Hirschfeld

German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld was lucky enough to begin his work shortly before the Weimar Republic years, but unlucky enough to see much of it destroyed in a Nazi conflagration. His motto, “Per Scientiam ad Justitiam” (“through science to justice”), drove him to approach queer activism from a researcher’s perspective, with the hope that education – including a film he co-wrote and acted in – would help end homophobia. He postulated that there were numerous varieties of sexual intermediacy, categorized by what would now be called sexual orientation, gender expression, and gender identity; for a time, he classified homosexuals as a “third sex”. Hirschfeld himself was a private person, but later biographies suggest he was gay or bisexual, and certainly had at least two male lovers.

Hirschfeld was a pop culture figure in life who inspired everything from caricatures, to Ireland’s first LGBT center, to a decades-long hunt for his personal belongings. Germany issued funding in the early 2000s to establish the Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld (Magnus Hirschfeld National Foundation)

 

Historiography Saturday: Irma Grese

Although the details of her time as a guard at the Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps are a matter of some contention due to a paucity of living witnesses and the tightly focused nature of her trial, it is known that Grese was 22 years old when she was sentenced to death by hanging for war crimes. Witnesses claimed that she was a sadist who took pleasure in violently tormenting prisoners; details of the allegations can be found in this open letter published during her trial. What is certain is that she was an officer in the SS who was given a high-ranking position of authority in the camps, and she admitted to beating prisoners in her own testimony.

Some of the allegations against Grese involve the sexual abuse of prisoners; as a result, she is sometimes referred to as a lesbian or bisexual. Regardless of what her sexual orientation may have been, the possibility of a powerful bisexual Nazi guard poses a challenge for scholars of queer history: Not only is her story tempting to sensationalize (for example, the film Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, which was inspired in part by Grese), but it complicates the narrative of how homosexuality was treated in Nazi Germany; additionally, there is the eternal temptation to avoid unflattering portrayals of members of a subaltern group lest they be employed as proof of the group’s poor moral character.

Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben

Baron von Steuben, the drillmaster for the Continental Army in the American War of Independence who did not speak English, was among one of history’s quirks of circumstance. Thanks to a falsified lineage he had been able to enjoy the patronage of one of Prussia’s poorer princes before being driven out due to rumors of his homosexuality. He bounced around France until Benjamin Franklin finally hired him on as a volunteer without pay.

Von Steuben’s tactics, which he required translators to convey to the troops until he got around to writing down and distributing the army’s first training manual, were brutal and advanced – and included hygiene provisions -, which turned the soldiers into a respectable fighting force and von Steuben into a Major General.

The United States German-American community now celebrates Von Steuben Day (which appears in the comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) in September. Although von Steuben’s homosexuality was never conclusively proven, he is included here due to the threat of discharge and to the two attractive young men who accompanied him throughout his campaign.

Christa Muth

Christa Muth, a German corporate consultant and systems scientist, is a co-founder of Human Systems Engineering, a post-graduate discipline that looks at how organizations function at different levels. Armed with an academic background in economic history, sociology, and educational theory, she began taking jobs reworking corporate cultures, including the Swiss university system.

Muth decided to transition (link is in French) after developing psychosomatic back problems due to the stress of living as a man, and agreed to star in a documentary about her transition. A trailer for the film, titled “Between Two-Spirit” in English, can be viewed here. (The original French title, Entre Il et Ailes, is a pun that translates to, “Between Him and Wings,” where “ailes” (wings) is pronounces like “elle” (her).)

Since her transition Muth has remained active in the Swiss transgender community, including the Transgender Network Switzerland (link is in German).

Marlene Dietrich

Although she was dubbed the ninth greatest female screen legend of the 20th century by the American Film Institute, bisexual actress Marlene Dietrich’s movies were only one part of her entertainment career: she also toured as a stage performer and musician for decades, both before and after her time in film. The most famous clip of her early years comes from the film Morocco, where she appears onstage in full white tie attire and kisses another woman. When her home country of Germany was in the process of transitioning from the Weimar Republic years into Naziism she refused to contract with them, and later toured with US troops giving performances to keep their morale up and sell war bonds.

Dietrich posthumously holds the curious honor of being the namesake to a luxury Montblanc fountain pen. Biography Channel has a short clip about her life on their website that includes a photograph of Dietrich posing with the Beatles.

 

Klaus Nomi

Klaus Nomi, a native of Germany, landed in New York City in 1972, and set up shop in the East Village art scene. His performance in the “New Wave Vaudeville” four-night event brought him the publicity and the connections necessary to start releasing material, including a surreal, operatic cover of Lou Christie’s “Lightin’ Strikes”. The exaggerated tuxedo he wears in many of his public appearances was inspired by the plastic getup David Bowie sported on the Saturday Night Live appearance at which Nomi joined him as a backup singer. Nomi’s costume change to a more baroque outfit was a calculated effort to hide the Kaposi’s sarcoma blemishes that signaled his impending death from AIDS-related complications; his ashes were scattered over New York City.

The Nomi Song, a documentary honoring the performer’s life, was released in 2004, spurring a renewed interest in Nomi. His animated supervillain avatar has guest-starred on The Venture Brothers as a bodyguard of David Bowie (also a supervillain), and his fashion sense has been an inspiration for – among others – Lady Gaga (witness her Telephone video) and Hugo Boss.

 

Sofia Kovalevskaya

How much Sofia Kovalevskaya might have accomplished in the field of mathematics if she hadn’t wasted half her time fighting with universities over their male-only policies is an open question, but there’s no dispute that in her short life she made significant strides in several areas, including partial differential equations. Her ascent as an academic was fraught with workarounds like studying abroad (Russian universities forbade women from entering); private tutoring with Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstraß; and earning a doctorate through the submission of her papers as a substitute dissertation without taking the required exams. She also held the distinction of being the first woman to hold a full professorship and to edit a scientific journal.

It is uncertain whether Kovalevskaya was attracted to women, men, or both (she is tentatively tagged ‘lesbian’ here). She married a fellow student so that he could sign papers authorizing her to study in Germany, but the two had a tumultuous relationship that ended in their permanent separation, at which point Kovalevskaya moved in with Swedish writer
Anne Charlotte Leffler; the two maintained a “romantic friendship” for the rest of Kovalevskaya’s life.

Kovalevskaya’s name is currently shared with a lunar crater and several grants.