Florence Tamagne A History of Homosexuality in Europe

A HISTORY OF
HOMOSEXUALITY
IN EUROPE
VOLUME I & II
A HISTORY OF
HOMOSEXUALITY
IN EUROPE
Volume I & II
BERLIN, LONDON, PARIS

1919-1939
Florence Tamagne
Algora Publishing
New York
2006 by Algora Publishing.

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Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976)
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ISBN: 0-87586-355-8 (softcover)
ISBN: 0-87586-356-6 (hardcover)
ISBN: 0-87586-357-4 (ebook)
Originally published as Histoire de l'homosexualit en Europe, ditions Seuil, 2000

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tamagne, Florence, 1970[Histoire de l'homosexualite en Europe. English]

A history of homosexuality : Europe between the wars / by Florence Tamagne.
p. cm.
Translation of: Histoire de l'homosexualite en Europe.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87586-278-0 (trade paper) ISBN 0-87586-279-9 (hard) ISBN 087586-280-2 (e-book)
1. HomosexualityEuropeHistory20th century. I. Title.
HQ76.3.E8T3513 2003
306.76'6'0940904dc22
2003027409
This work is published with the support of the
French Ministry of Culture/National Book Center of France
Front Cover: Otto Dix, Eldorado, aquarelle, 1927

Berlinische Galerie, Berlin,. Archives AKG, Paris, ADAGP. Paris 2000
Printed in the United States
A History of Homosexuality in Europe (1919-1939) was originally published in

France by Editions du Seuil; this is the second volume of the English translation.
Volume I introduces the first glimmerings of tolerance for homosexuality
around the turn of the last century, quickly squelched by the trial of Oscar Wilde
which sent a chill throughout the cosmopolitan centers of the world. Then, a
variety of factors came together in the aftermath of World War I to forge a
climate that was more permissive and open. The Roaring Twenties are
sometimes seen, in retrospect, as having been a golden age for homosexuals and
lesbians; and the literary output of the era shows why.
However, a different dynamic was also taking shape, and the second
volume explores how that played out. The Depression, the rise of fascist
movements, and a counter-reaction against what were seen as the excesses of the
post-war era contributed to a crackdown on homosexuals, and new forms of
repression emerged.
What happened to homosexuals during and after World War II has been
described in other books; here, Florence Tamagne traces the different trends in
Germany, England and France in the period leading up to that cataclysm and
provides important background to any understanding of the later events.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
THE HISTORY OF HOMOSEXUALITY: A NEW AND CONTROVERSIAL HISTORY
RESEARCH IN HOMOSEXUALITY: METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
3
3
6
PART ONE
11
A BRIEF APOGEE: THE 1920S, A FIRST HOMOSEXUAL LIBERATION

THE HOMOSEXUAL BETWEEN DANDY AND MILITANT
11
11
CHAPTER ONE
13
A MYTH IS BORN: THOSE FLAMBOYANT DAYS

LOOKING BACK: 1869-1919
One Scandal after Another
The Shock of the First World War
The homosexual, a traitor to the fatherland
The front as a school in homosexuality
The war casts open the blinds
THE HOMOSEXUAL SCENE: SUBVERSIVE LANGUAGE
Homosexual Talk: from Slang to Camp
Dandies and Flappers: Homosexuals Have Style
MAGICAL CITIES, MYTHICAL CITIES: THE GEOGRAPHY OF WHERE TO MEET
Berlin, A Homosexual Capital
The male scene
The female scene
Triumph of the amateurs
London, or the Glamour of Uniforms
Not much of scene at all
Pick-ups and prostitutes
Paris, Montmartre, and Getting Caught
Dance time
Night life
13
13
14
19
20
21
25
28
28
31
36
37
38
39
42
45
45
47
50
50
53
ix
A History of Homosexuality in Europe

CHAPTER TWO
59
LIBERATION ON THE MOVE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENTS

THE GERMAN MODEL: COMMUNITARIANISM AND MILITANCY
Magnus Hirschfeld, Prefiguring the Militant Identity
The Beginnings of the WhK (1897-1914)
The apogee and decline of the WhK (1919-1933)
Assessing Magnus Hirschfelds record
Adolf Brand and Der Eigene, An Elite and Aesthetic Homosexuality
Homosexual Magazines and Popular Organizations
Der Deutsche Freundschaftsverband
Der Bund fr Menschenrecht
Lesbians, at the fringes of the homosexual movement
THE GERMAN MODEL AS AN INFLUENCE ON HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENTS
The World League for Sexual Reform: A Homosexual Internationale?
A Lackluster Performance on the Part of English Activists
Edward Carpenter, socialist utopian and homosexual
British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (BSSP):
A timid reformism
THE FRENCH WAY: INDIVIDUALISM COMES UP SHORT
Marcel Proust, Witness of Days Long Past
Andr Gide, A Militant Homosexual?
Inversion, An Isolated Attempt at a Homosexual Review
59
59
60
60
63
67
69
73
74
75
77
81
81
85
85
88
89
89
94
102
CHAPTER THREE
105
AN INVERSION OF VALUES: THE CULT OF HOMOSEXUALITY

SEDUCED IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The Public Schools, Fostering the Cult of Homosexuality
Ambiguities in the System
Paradise Lost: The English Model
TWO GENERATIONS OF HOMOSEXUAL INTELLECTUALS
The First Homosexual Generation: Precursors
Cambridge and the Apostles
Bloomsbury
The Second Homosexual Generation: The Apogee
The Succeeding Generation
Oxford
Escape to Germany
105
106
107
110
115
125
125
125
127
130
130
132
140
PART TWO
149
UNACKNOWLEDGED FEARS AND DESIRES:

AMBIGUOUS SPEECH AND STEREOTYPED IMAGES
HOMOSEXUALS BECOME COMMONPLACE DURING THE INTER-WAR PERIOD
149
149
149
CHAPTER FOUR
151
AWAKENING: WORKING TO CONSTRUCT A HOMOSEXUAL IDENTITY
151
Table of Contents
THE MEDICAL MODEL: AN IDENTITY IMPOSED FROM OUTSIDE
The Doctors Intrude
Medicine at the Service of Homosexuals
Psychoanalytical Shock
BEING HOMOSEXUAL: PROCLAIMING AN IDENTITY
An Early Revelation
Homosexual Discomfort
Asserting Oneself
A Generational Example: Thomas and Klaus Mann
DEFINING ONESELF AS A LESBIAN AN IDENTITY UNDER CONSTRUCTION
The Dominant Model and Alternatives
Radclyffe Hall
Natalie Barney and Colette
Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
Individual Answers
Ignorance
Assuming an identity
Self rejection
THE BIRTH OF A HOMOSEXUAL COMMUNITY?
Sharing a Common Culture
Solidarity and Exclusion
CHAPTER FIVE
152
152
156
158
164
165
166
169
171
175
176
176
179
182
184
184
186
190
192
192
200
207
BREAKING THE SILENCE: HOMOSEXUALS AND PUBLIC OPINION

207
THE WEIGHT OF PREJUDICES
208
Guardians of Traditional Morals
208
The Churches
208
The public authorities
211
The press
212
Greater Tolerance?
219
Sensitive Topics
222
Its the feminists fault
222
Protecting young people
228
The stranger among us
236
239
HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE WINDS OF FASHION
Popular Fears and Fantasies: The Homosexual and the Lesbian in Literature 239
Homosexual and Lesbian Archetypes
239
A Raft of Novels
242
The Homosexual as a Symbol of Modernity
250
A Vague Homoeroticism: Youth and Androgyny
253
CHAPTER SIX
261
HOMOSEXUALS AS POLITICAL CHIPS

HOMOSEXUALS IN THE POLITICAL ARENA
The Fantasy of the Working-Class Lover
Homosexual as Leftist Activists
261
262
262
268
xi

Pacifism
Communism and the far left
A Fascistic Fascination?
An litist and aristocratic homosexuality
Erotic and aesthetic appeal
MISUNDERSTANDING OR BETRAYAL? THE LEFT SHIFTS BETWEEN PURITANISM
AND OPPORTUNISM
The Soviet Illusion
Support from the Anarchists
The Confused Line of the German Left
The SPD and the KPD, allies of the homosexual movements
Homosexuality at the heart of party politics
GENEALOGY OF A CRIME: HOMOSEXUALITY AS A FASCISTIC PERVERSION
The Myth of the Mnnerbund
Hysterical Homophobia
Pragmatism and Scapegoats
Racism and sexuality
The Rhm case
PART THREE
270
271
276
276
278
279
280
282
285
285
287
290
290
293
295
295
297
303
A FACTITIOUS TOLERANCE: LOSING GROUND UNDER THE REPRESSION OF THE 1930S 303
CHAPTER SEVEN
305
CRIMINALS BEFORE THE LAW

REACTIONARY ENGLAND (1919-1939)
The Legal Situation
The Organization of Repression
Changes in sentencing for homosexuality
Police methods
Case studies
The Conference on homosexual crimes of May 7, 1931
The Obsession with Lesbians: The Temptation to Repress
The draft legislation of 1921
The trial of Radclyffe Hall
Extraordinary Women
WEIMAR GERMANY, PERMISSIVENESS AND REPRESSION (1919-1933)
The Legal Context
Institutional Waffling: Draft Laws Come and Go
Real Repression
Changes in sentencing
The police play disturbing games
Case studies
Censorship
FRENCH HOMOSEXUALS OUT ON PROBATION (1919-1939)
Was France the Land of Homosexual Tolerance?
Homosexuality Unknown to French Law
305
305
306
307
307
309
314
316
318
318
320
322
324
324
325
326
326
328
330
335
336
336
337
xii
Table of Contents
The judges are interested
Censorship
Homosexuals under Surveillance
The Homosexual as an ordinary delinquent
Homosexuality and prostitution: military surveillance
CHAPTER EIGHT
337
338
341
341
343
355
THE END OF A DREAM: THE GERMAN MODEL BLOWS UP

355
356
1933-1935: DESTRUCTION OF THE GERMAN MODEL
Youre Fired
356
First Victims: Corrupters of Youth and Male Prostitutes
359
Beefing Up the Legislation
361
The new 175
361
Lesbians
362
365
1935-1939: THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ANTI-HOMOSEXUAL TERROR
Stronger Repression
365
Centralization and rationalization of the campaign against homosexuality 366
Tighter sentencing (1935-1939)
367
Practices of the police and the judiciary
369
Some Specific Cases
372
Homosexuality in the Hitlerjugend and the SS
373
Homosexuality in the Wehrmacht
376
Homosexuality as a way of eliminating opponents
377
Rehabilitation or Eradication?
379
Elimination by Labor
380
Curing and castrating
384
388
THE LATE 1930S: FRENCH AND ENGLISH HOMOSEXUALS IN A TURMOIL
Homosexuality Goes Out of Fashion
388
Depopulation
388
Decadence and decline
389
Turning Inward
392
German Exiles
395
POSTFACE
399
TOWARD HOMOSEXUAL LIBERATION
399
CONCLUSION
403
PROGRESS OR INCREASED REPRESSION?

403
403
NATIONAL INTERACTIONS, CONVERGENCES AND DISTINCTIONS
Questions: The Nature and Style of Homosexuality in the Inter-war Period 405
APPENDIX I. STATISTICS
ENGLAND: CHANGES IN HOMOSEXUAL CRIMES BETWEEN 1919 AND 1940
GERMANY: CHANGES IN HOMOSEXUAL CRIMES BETWEEN 1919 AND 1939
409
409
415
APPENDIX II. SONGS

THE LILA LIED, GERMANYS LESBIAN ANTHEM
420
420
xiii

FRANCES LAVENDER SONG, LA CHANSON MAUVE
421
APPENDIX III. GERMAN LEGISLATION ON HOMOSEXUALITY

175 OF THE CRIMINAL LAW CODE
DRAFT LEGISLATION OF 1909
ALTERNATIVE DRAFT LEGISLATION OF 1911
DRAFT LEGISLATION OF THE COMMISSION OF 1913
DRAFT LEGISLATION OF 1925 (THE REICHSRAT VERSION)
GOVERNMENT BILL OF 1927 (REICHSTAG VERSION)
LAW OF 1935
422
422
422
422
422
423
423
423
424
425
APPENDIX IV. DR. CARL VAERNETS EXPERIMENTS AT BUCHENWALD (1944)
426
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
429
PRIMARY SOURCES
429
A. Archives
429
B. Print Sources
431
C. Testimonies
444
446
SECONDARY SOURCES
A. France, England and Germany in the Twenties and Thirties: reference works 446
B. History of Homosexuality
449
C. STUDIES ON INTELLECTUALS AND PROMINENT HOMOSEXUALS OF THE PERIOD 454
xiv
FOREWORD
This work is the English-language translation of a doctoral thesis presented to the
Institute of Political Studies of Paris, under the direction of Jean-Pierre Azma, entitled,
Research on Homosexuality in France, England and Germany from the beginning of the
1920s to the end of the 1930s, based on information from partisan, police, legal, medical
and literary sources January 1998.
The question of language is at the heart of this study and problems of vocabulary
frequently occurred. It was common, in the inter-war period, to employ terms such as
invert or pederasts to indicate homosexuals. The author elected to use those terms
whenever they occurred in a historical perspective and signified a nuance of identity,
often used by homosexuals themselves, without inducing negative connotations. It would
be anachronistic to use the term gays to refer to homosexuals in the context of the 1920s
and 1930s; and to make the reading easier, the full phrase homosexuals and lesbians is
not always repeated when both groups are indicated sometimes homosexual is used
in a generic sense. Lastly, it is quite clear that although we may attach the term homosexual or lesbian to specific peoples names, that does not necessarily mean that they
regarded themselves as such.
Quotations were used extensively, as the best means of recreating the climate of
the era and bringing the first-person accounts to life. This inevitably presents challenges,
as most had to be translated into French, by the author; or into English, for this edition; or
both. Where possible, idioms in the source language have been preserved in order to avoid
distorting the meaning; in some cases, English sources have been rendered as indirect
quotes set off by dashes since it would be impractical to repeat the entire research
project from scratch.
INTRODUCTION
THE HISTORY OF HOMOSEXUALITY: A NEW AND CONTROVERSIAL HISTORY
Sexuality holds a place at the heart of human societies. However, the history of sexuality is quite a new field of study.1 It stands at the crossroads of several disciplines
history, sociology, ethnology, anthropology, medicine and so this history is still finding
its way, oscillating between embarrassed silence and tempestuous logorrhea. Discussions
of sexuality have usually been sheepish or provocative, seldom neutral and objective. In
fact, sexuality is not fixed and certain, independent of any context; quite to the contrary,
its position within a society reveals the relations of forces, the founding myths, the underlying tensions, and the insurmountable taboos. To Michel Foucault, the very concept of
sexuality is an ideological construction. Every form of society would, in fact, have its own
corresponding attitude toward sexuality.
The concept of sexuality is not only determined by culture, but also by class and
gender. Thus, the traditional (so-called middle-class) schema of sexuality is the monogamist heterosexual family. It may be associated with economic considerations (the
woman does not work), ideological considerations (the woman does not have independent sexuality, she must embody the image of the eternal female and conform to her
womanly role), and political considerations (the family is a factor of stability within
society). This conformist model was spread from the middle class to the working class
starting around the end of the 19th century, as a result of the bourgeoisies efforts to
impose morality upon the masses. Under this highly restrictive definition of the sexual
standard, any form of sexuality not conforming to that pattern was categorized as
abnormal. Thus, under the combined pressures of religion, medicine, the law and
morality, specific types were born: the child who masturbates, the hysterical woman, the
congenital prostitute, the homosexual.
1. See Denis Peschanski, Michal Pollak and Henry Rousso, Histoire politique et sciences sociales,
Bruxelles, Complexe, 1991, 285 pages; Jacques Le Goff (dir.), La Nouvelle Histoire, Bruxelles, Complexe,
1988, 334 pages.

The history of sexuality cuts across many fields of human activity and history: it
touches on the history of morals, changing attitudes, and in particular how our imagination has shifted over time: the history of representation, as well as the history of medicine, the law, the police, religion and, of course, political history. Literary history, art
history, and the history of language also add to the picture. Attitudes toward sexuality
can only be understood in a broad context. The history of sexuality, and thus the history
of homosexuality, cannot be described in social terms alone. It sheds light on fields that
seem to be quite unrelated, and gives us a better understanding of specific periods. This
richness is, at the same time, its principal difficulty; the sources are many, and varied, and
it is not immediately apparent that they are related to each other. Working to synthesize
all these inputs, the historian sometimes realizes that he has ventured onto grounds
which are foreign to him, like medicine and anthropology. As is true for any history of
social attitudes, the historian must make an effort not to apply ulterior values to the population under study. He must also be fully conscious of his own prejudices and acquired
views related to his education, his gender, his lifestyle, his social and cultural origin and
his personal experience. Then we must consider whether the sources are neutral. In the
field of social attitudes, representations and public opinion, we are constantly dealing
with subjective documents and with personal testimonies, from which it is sometimes
difficult to draw conclusions. Extensive use of historical literature as evidence can
likewise entail involuntary distortions. With a question like homosexuality, especially,
one may encounter silence, a lack of evidence, or false evidence. Thus with all humility it
must be admitted that an ideal neutrality cannot be attained in the history of sexuality,
nor even perhaps the approximate truth much less in the history of homosexuality. We
must be aware of that; but that does not mean we have to throw in the towel. There is a
minimal truth that is worth seeking, exposing and analyzing. And that is what I will
attempt to do in this work.
Homosexuality can be defined simply as a form of sexuality in which sexual
attraction is directed toward a person of the same sex. That is a minimal definition which,
nonetheless, raises various problems.2 Indeed, we must specify what such a definition
covers: will we consider as homosexuals and lesbians those people who are attracted only
by individuals of their own sex, or will we also include bisexuals, who may be equally
attracted by both sexes or who may have relations with both sexes? This is a real problem
for, due to social constraints, many homosexuals have led a parallel lives, giving the
appearance of being heterosexual. By the same token, for us to acknowledge that a person
is homosexual, is it absolutely necessary that he should have had sexual relations with a
person of his own gender or is it enough that he should have felt a purely platonic
attraction? That presents another sizable problem: the term homosexual is a recent
invention and does not really apply very well to the passionate friendships, female as well
2. This is not the place to make a detailed analysis of the various theories on homosexuality. For
a general view, refer to Michel Foucault, History of the sexuality, t.I, La Volont de savoir, Paris,
Gallimard, 1976, 211 pages; for English and American theories, see Kenneth Plummer, The Making of the
Modern Homosexual, London, Hutchinsons, 1981, 380 pages, and David F. Greenberg, The Construction of
Homosexuality, Chicago, the University of Chicago Press, 1988, 635 pages. Guy Hocquenghem is also
interesting: Le Dsir homosexuel, Paris, ditions universitaires, 1972, 125 pages. For anthropological
research on the origins of homosexuality, see Evelyn Blackwood, The Many Faces of Homosexuality, New
York, Harrington Park Press, 1986, 217 pages.
Introduction
as male, of the 18th and 19th centuries. Still, should we exclude certain people from the
study just because they did not see themselves as homosexual?
These questions are at the center of research on homosexuality, and the various
answers that may be given often indicate an ideological standpoint. The very restrictive
definition of homosexuality and lesbianism that is sometimes adopted in militant homosexual writings demonstrates a strong political desire to tie homosexual communities to a
clear and exclusive identity, in complete opposition to the dominant heterosexual society.
That is a phenomenon of withdrawal and rejection appropriate for a minority that wants
to persist against a hostile and not very understanding majority. Thus Susan Cavin states
that the feminine account of feminine events is ideally represented by feminist lesbians
and separatist lesbians.3 Certainly, she has a point. Until recent years the history of homosexuality remained terra incognita, and the terms homosexual or lesbian rarely came up
at all, except to spice up a joke or to ruin someones reputation. It took the remarkable
works of homosexual historians like Jeffrey Weeks, Lilian Faderman, and Claudia
Schoppmann to discover whole facets of social history that had been completely obscure.
Furthermore, many studies on homosexuals leave out lesbians altogether, so that their
history is even more overlooked.
Still, we must avoid going to the opposite extreme. The quite understandable
desire of the gay community to take over homosexual history sometimes leads to a revanchist history, over-emphasizing the ghetto and awarding good and bad points depending
on the degree of subservience to an exclusive concept of homosexuality. That leads to
tiresome debates on whether so-and-so was actually homosexual, especially if we are
talking about inter-war period. Virginia Woolf, for example, might be hailed by some as a
complete, almost militant lesbian, an example for the lesbians of her era, whereas others
refuse to regard her as such because she was married and she never defined herself as
lesbian. Both positions seek to deny the complexity of human behavior and to reduce it to
a preconceived model, one that lends support to one camp or another. This presents two
clear dangers: the dilution of the concept of homosexuality in the infinite variation of
individual experiences, and the ghetto-ization of homosexuality, since the term could no
longer be applied to any but a very restricted group of individuals who satisfy all the
political criteria of homosexuality: exclusive attraction, complete sexual relations,
affirmed identity, overt militancy.
The history of homosexuality has to consider the distinction between homosexual
conduct, which is universal, and homosexual identity, which is specific and temporal.
Homosexuals do not necessarily define themselves as such, even if they find people of
their own sex attractive or have sexual relations with them.4 By the same token, society
will not necessarily distinguish an individual in terms of his sexual practices.
3. Susan Cavin, Lesbian Origins, San Francisco, Ism Press, 1989, 288 pages, p.17.
4. Some were quite unaware of the very concept of homosexuality; that was very much the case
before the end of the 19th century. Some considered that trait in their personality as generally meaningless, unimportant, and uninteresting; that attitude, too, was prevalent before the 20th century.
Others flatly rejected the term homosexual because they felt it reflected characteristics that they
did not share that includes prostitute, and prisoners who practiced homosexuality for reasons of
circumstance, but otherwise considered themselves heterosexual. Then, the problem of vocabulary is
such that some men might admit they love other men, but reject the label of homosexual because
they see it as having effeminate connotations.

The term homosexual itself can be perfectly pegged to a specific space and time.
It appeared in the 19th century, in Europe, and gradually took hold more broadly. It seems
to have been invented by the Hungarian Karoly Maria Kertbeny, in 1869 and it became
more widespread after it was taken up by the medical community. Until that point in
time, society did not distinguish the people, but the acts. Sodomy was condemned in
many countries. Until 1939, the term homosexual was scarcely ever used and it only
slowly gained currency. It competed with other terms, in particular invert and uranist.
These changes of vocabulary are not trivial: on the contrary, they testify to a shift in how
the phenomenon was perceived, by society as well as by homosexuals themselves. Until
the end of the 19th century only pejorative terms, insults, were used to indicate such
people; homosexuality as a practice was not distinguished from sodomy. By employing
the term homosexual, doctors wanted to affirm their objective view of the phenomenon,
their scientific approach, and their lack of prejudice. By adopting this vocabulary, homosexuals achieved a fundamental identity, but that was a step fraught with consequences:
they also fell into a scientific and medical category and they seemed to amalgamate the
word with the concept as it was defined by heterosexual society. The adoption of the
term gay marked an important turning point in the second half of the 20th century. This
choice illustrated the desire to get away from the pejorative and degrading connotations
of the term homosexual, and to reaffirm the homosexual identity only as a community,
using non-value-laden language.
The history of homosexuality is not the history of sexual conduct, which is practically unvarying;5 rather, it consists in studying the relations between homosexuals and
society and observing the answers homosexuals have developed in order to affirm their
identity. At the same time, one begins to wonder about homosexual identity and the
validity of categorizing individuals according to their sexual practices. This is why I chose
to adopt a broad definition of homosexuality. I regarded as being relevant to my topic
any person having had homosexual liaisons, even temporary, even platonic ones. Similarly, in the context of representation and interpretation, I explored very broadly the
topic of homoeroticism, i.e. a diffuse, even unconscious, attraction between people of the
same sex.
RESEARCH IN HOMOSEXUALITY: METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

Choosing to study homosexuality from a comparative viewpoint may seem to add
an unnecessary complication. Why, indeed, not focus on just one country and study it
thoroughly? Experience guided my choice. In an earlier work,6 I concentrated my research
on homosexuality in England (1919-1933). 7 It seemed obvious, then, that the fate of
English homosexuals had been largely influenced by the example of Germany. Thus it
became appropriate to study the two countries in parallel. On the other hand, in my
5. Of course, this is relative. There are sexual fashions that come and go. In England, for example,
homosexual relations evolved; during the Victorian era, child molestation enjoyed a considerable
vogue. The practices of reciprocal masturbation, fellatio, and cotus contra ventrem were often preferred
over sodomy.
6. Florence Tamagne, LHomosexualit en Angleterre, 1919-1933, DEA dhistoire du xxe sicle, under
the direction of Anthony Rowley, IEP de Paris, 1991-1992, 188 pages.
Introduction
readings, France appeared only anecdotally. That struck me as odd, and not very logical:
in the political and intellectual fields, France of the 1920s and 1930s was a guiding light in
Europe, if only because of the influence of Proust and Gide. It thus seemed to me that it
would be instructive to include France in the study. Then, using the three countries as
representative examples, one might draw a map of homosexuality in the inter-war period,
define models, understand the interactions and perhaps distinguish some common
ground and find the commonalities in the thinking and the lifestyles common to homosexuality in all three countries.
In the 1920s and 1930s, all three countries occupied a choice place on the European
and international political scene. All three had taken part in the First World War. All
three came out of it shaken although, obviously, Germanys situation was special.
Shortly after the war, the three countries considered themselves liberal democracies
equipped with parliamentary systems. Lastly, they were in constant interaction economically, commercially, politically, militarily, socially and culturally; so that it was no arbitrary decision to look at them all together.
Homosexuality, when it is studied, is often considered over the long term. Many
works set out to embrace the history of homosexuality from Antiquity to the current day,
pretending thus to imply that the subject is easily reducible and that changes occur only
over the centuries, or even the millennia. Studying homosexuality over the long term
means ignoring sudden changes and any characteristics specific to the period. For my
part, I set out to prove that homosexuality is a historical phenomenon that unfolds within
a given political, economic and social context, and that it can be understood only in the
light of events that are both internal and external to the homosexual community. The
choice of the period proved to be a determining factor. From the English example, I had
become convinced that the inter-war years constituted a crucial era, for homosexuals as
well as for the concept of homosexuality. The end of the First World War opened a
period of hitherto unknown homosexual liberation, the echo of which has survived until
today in a fragmentary and largely mythologized way in the homosexual culture. Then
again, the 1920s do not seem to have recorded major advances for the homosexual community. Furthermore, during the 1930s a particularly intense program of anti-homosexual
repression was inaugurated under the Nazi regime in Germany. After the Second World
War, the very notion of a homosexual golden age had disappeared and the fate of homosexuals in the concentration camps had become taboo. Twenty years of homosexual life
had been wiped away. In fact, until very recently, the history of homosexuality during the
inter-war period was almost completely blacked out, and the focus was placed instead on
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as the post-war period.
We are starting to question that convention, and the specific conditions of the
inter-war period increasingly appear to be crucial for the history of homosexuality. This
reversal of perspective comes from German historiography. The fact that homosexuals
were sent to the concentration camps, and certain medical experiments that were conducted upon them, threw a sinister shadow over the history of homosexuality in Germany
7. The topic was in fact limited to England and Wales, because Scotland and Ulster didn't have
the same legislation concerning homosexuality. Besides, Scotland and Ulster were special cases. The
two regions would have required a far more in-depth survey, which seems at present very difficult,
given the extreme scarcity of sources.

and inspired some major research projects. In France and England, a similar interest in the
period has not yet evolved; thus, it was essential to study the 1920s and 1930s.8
The history of homosexuality has, until lately, been investigated primarily by the
Americans, thanks to the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, particularly in the context
of Gay and Lesbian Studies. This history has primarily focused on how the movement was
formed, and on the homosexual identity, then on the upheavals linked to AIDS. However,
some authors (both gay and lesbian), did look for traces of the homosexual way of life in
centuries past, concentrating in particular on the end of the 19th century, when homosexuality emerged as a concept. Less research is being done in Europe.
England built on the American trend and developed its own analyses. But, there
again, the authors were especially interested in the most recent period. Theoretical works
on the homosexual identity and the construction of homosexuality proliferated. Works
covering earlier eras are still rare. Outstanding among them is Jeffrey Weekss book,
Coming Out Homosexual Politics in Britain from the 19th Century to the Present (1979), which
offers a useful assessment of homosexuality in Great Britain. In Germany, as we have said,
the younger generations tried to build a complete history of German homosexuality, so as
to clarify the Weimar apogee and the Nazi repression. In France during the 1970s, under
the leadership of Guy Hocquenghem, Jean-Louis Bory and Michel Foucault, theoretical
and militant works proliferated albeit without an identical trend in historical
research.9 Currently, the post-war period is starting to be analyzed, but the earlier years
are still largely ignored.
For any historian of homosexuality, finding sources remains the principal problem.
Medical, literary, autobiographical, and propagandistic sources are fairly abundant and
easy to find, even though a certain number of German works dealing with homosexuality
and published between the two wars have disappeared either they were burned when
Hitler came to power, or they were destroyed during the bombing. And still greater
problems arise: personal testimonies from those days are rare, for obvious reasons. Populations were not polled on the subject, and the press remained very discreet. Legal and
police sources are often vague and lacunar. Certain subjects are well covered by the
available sources: the homosexual scene, homosexual movements, and homosexuality in
the English public schools, in particular. Similarly, there are plenty of medical references,
novels, and confessions from intellectuals and public figures of the time. The other side of
the coin is obvious: very little is known about homosexuals in the lower middle class and
the working class; popular reactions are not very reliable (for they are often reported by
third parties); and the press generally abided by the code of silence, thus distorting any
research that might rely on journalistic reports. Lesbians, moreover, suffer from an
awkward disparity in the sources; in every field (especially the legal) the evidence and
documents concerning homosexuals are more abundant than those dealing with lesbians.
I tried, to the extent possible, to restore balance without always succeeding: as we will
8. Homosexuality during World War II seems to me to be a large enough subject to be addressed
separately. The conflict changed the game considerably, both in terms of homosexual conduct and in
the specific measures taken against it.
9. One might mention some works of varying size and interest, such as those by Guy
Hocquenghem, Race dEp. Un sicle dimages de lhomosexualit (1979), Jacques Girard, Le Mouvement homosexuel en France (1981), Marie-Jo Bonnet, Un choix sans quivoque. Recherches historiques sur les relations
amoureuses entre les femmes, xvie-xxe sicle (1981), Gilles Barbedette et Michel Carassou, Paris gay 1925
(1981), Maurice Lever, Les Bchers de Sodome (1985), Frdric Martel, Le Rose et le Noir (1996).
Introduction
see, female homosexuality posed fewer social problems and thus it was less discussed.
Moreover, many lesbians managed to lead a discreet life and did not seek to publicize
their experiences. However, research on the history of lesbians is currently on the
upswing and more books are appearing.
Finally, a comparison between three countries over a period of twenty years does
not allow for much discussion of regional nuances. With regard to the homosexual scene,
everything was concentrated in the capital cities, where the most homosexual activity
took place. That does not mean, obviously, that there was no homosexuality in the provinces or countryside; far from it. But we have very little evidence about it. I tried,
whenever possible, to shed some light on one or another provincial town. Regional study
of the history of homosexuality, which is already well underway in Germany, will be of
considerable interest for the history of social attitudes.
There remains the question of police and legal sources. Here, the study is quite out
of balance in favor of England and, especially, Germany. There are not many English
sources, but they suffice to enable us to draw a coherent picture of the repression of
homosexuals. The sources primarily are composed of legal statistics, reports of homosexual lawsuits, official reports and notes from the police. Here again, regional studies
would enable us to look more deeply into these data and to establish geographical
nuances. The German files are superabundant, if dispersed far and wide. I was forced to
restrict my research to certain nationwide studies. Several German researchers have
begun very specific research projects studying one city in particular.
I am obliged to acknowledge that my research on France, in this respect, met with
partial failure. It is a special case: homosexuality was not punished by French law in the
1920s and 1930s, so it is normal to find very few documents. Nevertheless, the discovery of
a file on homosexual prostitution in the maritime regions tends to prove that there was
some semi-official surveillance of homosexuals. Unfortunately, it is impossible to go
further for the moment: all requests and inquiries made to the French National Archives
and the Police Archives proved fruitless.
I tended to stay away from certain types of sources. It seemed counter-productive
to spend vast amounts of time and energy collecting the testimony of homosexuals who
lived during the inter-war period. There are not that many people concerned and,
moreover, any such recollections related to a remote past, on a particularly subjective
topic, would have to be taken with a large grain of salt. Distortions, even involuntary
ones, may easily weaken the credibility of memoirs. I therefore preferred to rely on
existing written testimonies and oral records, and I always read them with a critical eye.
Press clippings were also used sparingly. Given the global character of this study, it was
impossible to conclude a systematic examination of the press for each country. I
examined the homosexual periodicals thoroughly, at least the remaining specimens for
some of them, only two or three editions are available. Then, for each country, I focused on
one national daily newspaper, which is used as reference, and I sometimes used other
newspapers on specific points. By analyzing the press, it was possible to make a political
reading of homosexuality. This research was done in Germany, where the leftist press was
examined closely; I also made a thorough review of contemporary periodicals like Gay
News. Cinematographic sources were very little used, except for three or four films that
were emblematic of the period.
Many of the references required a critical reading, particularly the memoirs and the
collections of memoirs written by homosexuals. They are invaluable, an irreplaceable

source on the homosexual way of life. However, care must be taken, especially when the
works were written many years after the events. As with oral testimony, distortions can
creep in with the passage of time. It is less of a problem when sources are overtly partisan,
one way or another that in itself becomes a matter for analysis. I also made extensive
use of the literature of the period, although I did not base my research mainly on literary
sources. (That is a reproach often addressed to historians of homosexuality since, for lack
of objective materials, they are obliged to emphasize the history of homosexuality as it can
be discerned in literature. Nevertheless, literary works are an extremely useful source of
information.) The writer is the witness of his time; the homosexual novelist brings his
own perception of the situation, the heterosexual novelist always reflects some trend in
public opinion. Thus, literature should not be excluded on the pretext of objectivity.
There again, partisan sources can be as revealing as the most neutral analyses. The literary
merit of the works was not considered; the uvres of Proust, Virginia Woolf and Thomas
Mann are examined along with the worst trash novels, each one giving its own view of
homosexuality for a different public.
I do not claim that this work is exhaustive, but I think it has pulled together an
extremely vast range of material. I hope that this work clarifies a subject that has been
ignored over a period of history that is crucial, and that it will reveal, in addition to the
different ways that homosexuality has been treated in the three countries, that the homosexual question, far from being a minor aspect of the history of sexuality, finds its place in
the history of social attitudes and representations, serving through its faculty of
attraction and repulsion to reveal the myths and fears of a society. Certainly, I do not
claim to explain the inter-war period, Nazism and the beginnings of the Second World
War exclusively on the basis of sexuality. It is quite obvious that the economic, political
and social factors remain decisive. Neither do I propose to expound a theory of psychohistory, even if psychoanalytical theories are sometimes enlightening. Nevertheless,
the study of homosexuality should allow us to gain a new understanding of certain fears
on the part of the general public and the government, and perhaps to reassess the
influence of sexual fantasies in the formation of the popular imagination.
10
PART ONE
A BRIEF APOGEE: THE 1920S, A FIRST HOMOSEXUAL LIBERATION

THE HOMOSEXUAL BETWEEN DANDY AND MILITANT
Sex, sex, sex, nothing but sex and jazz.
T.C. Worsley, quoting his father, in Flannelled Fool
CHAPTER ONE
A MYTH IS BORN: THOSE FLAMBOYANT DAYS
The Roaring Twenties. In homosexual mythology, the period just after the War
conjures up a new freedom, the birth of homosexual movements, the extraordinary
variety of the Berlin subculture. A new world, strangely modern and close to ours, seems
to have had a brief and brilliant apogee. Is this wishful thinking or historical truth? Did
Eldorado really exist?
In fact, the liberal tendencies that had begun to flicker through society before and
during the First World War took concrete shape in the 1920s. Homosexuals, like many
others, would benefit from the lax atmosphere in Europe in the wake of the war. In the
countries on the winning side, it was a time for optimism and making hay while the sun
shined; after the suffering and privations, people wanted to laugh and have a good time,
and were readier to tolerate the expression of sexual peccadilloes.
The homosexual emancipation of the 1920s was fed by many streams: historically,
it comes under the rubric of the movements at the end of the 19th century which tried, on
the basis of new medical theories, to influence public opinion. It also bore traces of the
scandals of the Victorian era and the shock of the First World War, fundamental events
that resonated profoundly in the homosexual mind. And then, it was based on a culture of
subversion, which created its own codes and defined its own boundaries. The language
and clothing, the clubs, drag all constituted bases of a homosexual identity in gestation
and the bases of a homosexual liberation which, while it may now be seen in a context
that is more or less mythical, was nonetheless real.
LOOKING BACK: 1869-1919

Among the legendary dates in homosexual history, some stand out. One is the night
of June 27, 1969, the date of the Stonewall incidents. Others are more arbitrary, but are
evidence of a conscious will to reconstruct the history of homosexuality and homosexuals from an identifying point of view. In 1869, the Hungarian writer-journalist
Karoly Maria Kertbeny apparently used the term homosexual for the first time in an
13

anonymous report calling for the abolition of criminal laws on unnatural acts, addressed
to Dr. Leonhardt, Prussian Minister of Justice. Even if it took several decades before the
term stuck, this date, for many historians, marks a turning point, clearly distinguishing
the sodomite (who offended God) and the homosexual (who offended society). In fact,
the years 1869-1919 can be regarded as a major watershed in the history of homosexuality
and as the foundation upon which the homosexual liberation of the 1920s was built.
One Scandal after Another

The scandals at the end of the 19th century hold a place apart, in this history. They
certainly broke out in a paradoxical context. While urbanization, the guarantee of anonymity, and developments in medicine were leading to a greater sense of tolerance and
while the beginnings of a homosexual scene, even a community, were seen, anti-homosexual legislation was strengthened and was used as a pretext for moral repression. This
ambivalence is seen most clearly in England and Germany, with France experiencing a
kind of counter-reaction.
The period is characterized by the development of openly homosexual movements
and clubs, albeit in relatively restricted and elitist milieux the aristocracy, the high
bourgeoisie, the avant-garde. In England, the precursors of the sexual liberation of the
1920s were the Neo-Pagans. This group of intellectuals, linked to the Bloomsbury group,
had its hour of glory just before the First World War. Centered around Rupert Brooke,
leading light of Georgian literature, it included Justin Brooke, Jacques and Gwen Raverat,
Frances Cornford, Katherine (Ka) Cox and the four Oliver sisters: Margery, Brynhild,
Daphne and Noel. Coming together in Grandchester, in the country surrounding Cambridge, they sought to escape modernism by recreating a rural myth and developed an
original lifestyle founded on worship of the body, freedom of movement, nudism, and coed bathing. The Neo-Pagans worked out a new paradigm for relations between men and
women based on frankness and a free discussion of sexual questions. However, this
rejection of social conventions still retained the strict observance of chastity before marriage for women, which led to frustration and repression. In this context, homosexuality
represented a loophole; Rupert Brooke, who had already had homosexual adventures in
his public school and then at Cambridge,10 saw it as an easy and early means of obtaining
sexual satisfaction.
His relationship with Denham Russell-Smith is remarkable in this sense. He
reveals every little detail in a letter to James Strachey.11 The detachment which he displays
and his freedom in describing the sex act testify to a new approach to sexuality and
homosexuality. Pleasure becomes possible, beyond the moral interdicts. Brooke began by
playing with Denham the love games commonly played by the boys at public school,
hugging, kissing and fondling each other. They went on that way for years, he says, until
one calm evening when he masturbated him in the dark, without saying a word. 12
Denham then came to spend part of the holidays with Rupert, who decided to go all the
way. One night, I decided that the next day I would do it, not knowing at all how my
10. Rupert Brooke had homosexual relations in his public school with Lucas St. John and
Charles Lascelles, then at Cambridge with A.L. Hobhouse and Georges Mallory.
11. Cited by Paul Delany, The Neo-Pagans: Friendship and Love in the Rupert Brooke Circle, London,
Macmillan, 1987, 170 pages, p.78-80.
12. Ibid., p.78.
14
A Myth is Born: Those Flamboyant Days

partner would take it. simply wanted to have fun, and still more to see how it would be to
remove the shame (as I saw it) of being a virgin.13 Brooke does not express any remorse,
only the fear that his partner would refuse him: Very banal thoughts crossed my mind,
like the Elizabethan joke about the dance of the bedclothes, I hoped that he was enjoying
it, etc. I thought of him only in the third person.14 Here, homosexuality is no longer
regarded as deviant, a monstrous vice, but as one form of sexuality among others.
The Neo-Pagans, due to their elitist nature, did not exert significant influence on
British society but they did infuse a new spirit in the high bourgeoisie and the intellectual
milieux. Their ideal of a body released of the Puritan constraints was taken up again
shortly after the war. The death of Rupert Brooke, on the front in 1915, shook Victorian
society. He became the symbol of all the young soldiers sacrificed for their fatherland and
he represented the idealized image of a radiant, fair and innocent youth that the world of
the post-war period would struggle in vain to recapture. Sherrill Schells photographs
immortalizing the flower of English youth embodied a visual image that summarized all
the longings of the nation in a time of crisis.15 What is novel in this admiration, in the
context of a society that was still deeply Puritan, it is that it is essentially homoerotic.
In France, Paris enjoyed a flattering reputation (especially among foreigners) as a
capital of pleasures and haven of tolerance. Chic lesbians, mostly Americans, made
Lesbos-on-Seine their paradise. One of the homosexual centers in Paris was the salon of
Winaretta Singer, princesse de Polignac.16 Married at the age of 22 to Prince Louis de SayMontbliard, she divorced very quickly. She knew she was a lesbian and wanted to be
independent. In his book Monsieur de Phocas, Jean Lorrain draws a satirical portrait of her:
a multimillionaire Yankee whose greatest lack of discretion lay in her appearances at the
theater in the company of a friend whose beauty was a little too conspicuous.17 Her
friends, the count de Montesquiou and the countess Greffulhe, advised her to marry
Edmond de Polignac, who was also homosexual, in order to preserve her social position.
She was soon receiving the best society and attracted many writers, in particular Proust.
An American by birth, she was well acquainted with the Anglo-Saxon world. A friend of
Henry James, she brought Oscar Wilde and Lord Douglas to the attention of the Parisian
elite. They created a sensation. Paradoxically, only Montesquiou and Proust avoided
them, finding them decadent!) Their flamboyant homosexuality made quite an
impression and created the appearance of a new tolerance.
Sapphic love affairs were the fashion of the day, especially in high society. The
countess dOrsay, Princess Violette Murat, the Duchesse de Clermond-Thunder, princess
Catherine Poniatowska, Countess Van Zuylen and, of course, Princess de Polignac herself
were leading examples. The great courtesans also entertained female liaisons: Liana de
Pougy, milienne dAlenon, Liana de Lancy. Literary circles were especially rich in lesbians: Natalie Barney, Rene Vivien, Anna de Noailles, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas,
and Vernon Lee were living in Paris. The city attracted many expatriate lesbians, who
found an exceptional freedom and a fully-formed lesbian society in the capital. Natalie
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., p.79.
15. Christopher Hassall, cited by Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1975, 363 pages, p.276.
16. Michael de Cossart, Une Amricaine Paris. La princesse de Polignac et son salon, 1865-1943,
Paris, Plon, 1979, 245 pages.
17. Cited by Michael de Cossart, ibid., p.98.
15

Barneys salon, at 22 rue Jacob, was a center of Parisian Sapphism.18 Literary celebrities
gathered there: Paul Valry, Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, Gide and Proust, and the
finest flower of Parisian lesbians: Romaine Brooks (who would have an affair with the
Princesse de Polignac), Dolly Wilde (Oscars niece), Colette, lisabeth de Gramont, Lucie
Delarue-Mardrus, Rachilde, Gertrude Stein, Marie Laurencin, Marguerite Yourcenar,
Mercedes dAcosta, Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, Dorothy Bussy (Lytton Stracheys
sister), Mata Hari, Edna St. Vincent Millais and Edith Sitwell. The atmosphere was
relaxed, cosmopolitan, literary or with literary pretensions and well born. Inherently chauvinistic, they were for the most part quite oblivious to the other social classes.
France already symbolized a brilliant, theatrical, sometimes blatant homosexuality
that was quite disengaged from political and social concerns. In the absence of repressive
laws, homosexuals seemed to be well integrated into the society. However, this idyllic
vision is misleading: for the majority of homosexuals who were not a part of high society
and who lived in the obscurity of the provinces, homosexuality remained a stain that had
to be kept carefully hidden.
Germany was different. There, by the end of the 19th century, a strong homosexual
community existed and organizations like the Wissenschaftlich-humanitres Komitee
(WhK), under Magnus Hirschfeld, and the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen led by Adolf Brand,
were forming to advocate the abolition of 175 of the Penal Code, under which indecent
acts between men were punished with a five-year prison term. Their respective newspapers, Jahrbuch fr sexual Zwischenstufen and Der Eigene were launched in 1899 and 1903. This
detail explains why Germany, before 1914, had already built a solid reputation for sexual
freedom. Travel in Germany, a normal part of an Englishmans university experience, was
generally the pretext for such discoveries. Rupert Brooke went to Munich, the apex of the
artistic avant-garde, in 1911. However, it was in Berlin that a homosexual scene worthy of
the name was first coming together, with bars, clubs, and meeting places for women as
well as for men.
In 1905, homosexuality was already such a fashionable topic that it was treated
humorously in the German satirical newspapers. The Munich weekly magazine Jugend
published a cartoon captioned, The modern census, showing a middle-class German
family being interviewed by the census official. The parents are asked: How many
children do you have? And the mother answers: Two girls, a boy, one uranian and three
homosexuals.
In the three countries covered by this study, the Puritan backlash, based on a series
of major scandals, badly shook the incipient homosexual communities. In England, the
trial and condemnation of Oscar Wilde took on considerable symbolic importance.19 The
facts are well-known: after having received at his club an insulting note from the Marquis
de Queensberry, calling him a somdomite [sic], Oscar Wilde filed suit for slander. The
trial opened on April 3, 1895, but quickly turned to his disadvantage, several young male
prostitutes having been called to testify. The case was eventually dropped, but it set off
two further lawsuits, which began on April 26 and on May 22, in which Wilde was
18. Gertrude Stein hosted a competing salon at 27 rue de Fleurus. For details on the life and
adventures of Natalie Barney, see George Wickes, The Amazon of Letters. The Life and Loves of Natalie
Barney, London, W.H. Allen, 1977, 286 pages.
19. This topic still fascinates the popular imagination. In the period between the two wars, one
notable publication in 1933 (a key year for homosexuals), was the book by Hilary Pacq, Le Procs
dOscar Wilde, Paris, Gallimard, 263 pages.
16

accused of offending morals and of sodomy. On May 25, he was sentenced to two years in
prison, to the great joy of the public and the press.20
Oscar Wildes trial, while it was unique in terms of the prominence of the individual in question and the scandal it caused, is just one of many examples of the outbursts
of moral panic which haunted Victorian England. Wildes sentence was the consummation of the victory of the Puritan party and it crystallized in the public view the image
of the homosexual as a corrupter of youth, a source of danger and depravity. A conspiracy of silence around homosexuality, intended to protect family morals, ensued. The
Lancet newspaper, for example, said: It is particularly important that such subjects are
not discussed by the man in the street, much less by the young boy or the young girl.21 To
prevent such scandals from proliferating, Halsbury, with the support of the conservative
Prime Minister Salisbury, drafted the Publication of Indecent Evidence Bill in 1896, prohibiting the publication of reports on trials relating to homosexuality. According to Salisbury, indeed, it was proven that the publication of details in lawsuits of this kind
entails the imitation of the crime.22
Paradoxically, the Oscar Wilde trial was a catalyst for a new sense of identity
among homosexuals. The case had revealed the existence of a homosexual lifestyle that
was already solidly in place: Wilde was linked to a network of young male prostitutes
who lived in an apartment at 13 Little College Street. It was not the first time that such
events occurred: in 1889 and 1890, the scandal of Cleveland Street23 exposed a similar
group of young telegraphists.
In Germany, the homosexual question came to the fore as early as 1907, when the
imperial regime of William II was suddenly shaken by a series of scandals. The journalist
Maximilian Harden, in his newspaper Die Zukunft, accused two close friends of the Kaiser,
Prince Philipp von Eulenburg and Count Kuno von Moltke, of being homosexuals. The
motive was to discredit William II by casting suspicion on his entourage and upsetting
Germanys international relations. Eulenburg and Moltke in fact were suspected of
having given information to the First Secretary of the French legation in Berlin, Raymond
Lecomte, who was himself homosexual. He was in a position to reveal to the Quay
dOrsay that Germany was bluffing during the Moroccan crisis of January-April 1906.24
The episode was indisputably political in origin: an advisor to William II, and incidentally
his best friend, Eulenburg was an anti-imperialist diplomat and favored a rapprochement
with France. He quickly drew upon himself the resentment of the military and of Bismarcks disciples. Maximilian Harden organized a campaign against him, and focused on
his homosexuality as an easy means of destroying his career and depriving him of
influence, thus weakening the emperor at the same time without incriminating him
directly. It seems that Harden did, indeed, have many compromising documents concerning William IIs sexuality, but he preferred not to make use of them. It is quite clear
20. See Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1987, 632 pages.
21. Lancet, 9-26 November 1898, cited by Richard Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment,
London, Fontana Press, 1990, 439 pages, p.139.
22. Lord Salisbury, 20 March 1896.
23. For details on the ring at Little College Street, see Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, op. cit., p.414417; on the Cleveland Street scandal, see Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, London, Longman,
1989, 325 pages, p.113-114.
24. For more details, see James D. Steakley, Iconography of a Scandal: Political Cartoons and the
Eulenburg Affair in Wilhelmin Germany, in Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George
Chauncey Jr. (dir.), Hidden from History, London, Penguin Books, 1991, 579 pages, p.233-263.
17

that the charge of homosexuality was only a pretext in a more subtle political maneuver.
During the period between the wars, as well, attacks on homosexuals were often only a
means to a political end.
Harden started by making Eulenburg talk; he had forced him to resign from public
affairs in 1902 by threatening to expose his private life. However, in 1906, Eulenburg
renewed his political contacts, and that led to the campaign launched against him
regarding his relations with General Kuno von Moltke, military commander of Berlin. It is
possible that this campaign was launched under strong pressure from the military brass,
which had just been just hit by a series of homosexual scandals as well. Given the charges,
the Kaiser asked Moltke to resign and Eulenburg had to leave the diplomatic corps and
turn in his medals.
As in England, with Oscar Wilde, one lawsuit followed another. Moltke filed
charges against Harden. Adolf Brand, the leader of Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (the Community of Special People), a homosexual movement, accused the Chancellor of the Reich,
Prince Bernhard von Blow, of having an affair with his Secretary. Blow sued him for
calumny. Moltkes suit against Harden opened on October 23, 1907 and quickly turned
sensational. Moltkes wife made devastating revelations about her husbands sexuality
and Hirschfeld had to testify as an expert. He affirmed that Moltkes unconscious orientation could be described as homosexual. The purpose of this testimony was to denounce
the hypocrisy of the government, which overlooked homosexuality in highly-placed
figures but condemned it in others. This tactic did not pay off: on October 29, Harden was
discharged and a new suit was opened, with Chancellor Blow pursuing Brand for
calumny. Brand was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. A little later, medical
experts asserted that Moltkes wife was hysterical and Hirschfeld challenged her testimony. Harden was then sentenced to four months in prison. Once he was released, he
continued his campaign against Eulenburg. The Eulenburg trial was never carried to its
conclusion, for the prince fell seriously ill. He died in 1921, without being rehabilitated
(unlike Moltke).
The Eulenburg case did serious harm to the homosexual cause. Eulenburg was disgraced and ruined, and the press and the general public now looked on homosexuals as
traitors to the nation. The involvement of Hirschfeld, a Jew and a homosexual, in the
lawsuit, added the idea of a conspiracy between the two groups with the aim of bringing
down the Empire. Homophobic demonstrations became commonplace, often combined
with anti-Semitic, antifeminist and anti-modernist actions. The number of arrests and
indictments for homosexuality increased. The German homosexual liberation movement
underwent a severe crisis. Financial support for the WhK fell by two thirds between 1907
and 1909. It is clear that Hirschfelds intervention was a serious strategic error: the wellto-do homosexuals who had supported it, hitherto, now feared that they too could be
penalized.25
It is clear that homosexuals in the three countries under study were in touch with
each other from the very beginning of the century. The homosexual world already had a
certain unity, superficial but real. In France, the princesse de Polignacs salon felt the
backlash of a wave of Puritanism. The multiplying scandals reverberated deeply among
these people of various stations and nationalities. Wildes trial in 1895 shook this world of
25. See James D. Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany, New York, Arno
Press, 1975, 121 pages.
18

aesthetes and eccentrics; some turncoats became vehement moralists: Octave Mirbeau let
loose a tirade against the aesthetes, Paul Le Bourget disavowed his homosexuality and fell
in with Barres and the French nationalists. In 1903, Alfred Krupp committed suicide; the
same year, the Baron dAdelsward-Fersen was arrested in Paris after a scandal having to
do with schoolboys; in 1907 came the Eulenburg affair. According to Michael de Cossart,
the shockwave was felt by the secret society of homosexuals throughout all of Europe.26
This affair had extreme repercussions. Books were still being written about it after the
First World War.27 Proust mentions it in Sodom and Gomorrah: There exists between
certain men, Sir, a freemasonry about which I cannot speak, but which counts among its
ranks, at this moment, the sovereigns of Europe but the entourage of one of them, who
is the emperor of Germany, wants to cure him of his illusions. That is a very grave thing
and may lead us to war.28 The French press started calling homosexuality the German
vice. Berlin was renamed Sodom-on-Spree and the Germans were called Eulenbuggers. In the mens toilets, homosexual come-ons took a new form: Do you speak
German?29
The scandals of the pre-war period left a lasting mark on the homosexual mind.
The uproar showed how fragile were the attempts at homosexual emancipation, always
at the mercy of the whims of ever-shifting public opinion which was concerned with
respectability and ready to name sacrificial victims, in a crisis, in order to redeem the
sins of the nation.
They also revealed to those homosexuals who had been isolated that homosexual
networks existed and that a homosexual culture was being formed. The First World War
confirmed these trends.
The Shock of the First World War

The First World War represented a major founding myth in the homosexual imagination of the 1920s. The contradictory trends of the inter-war period originated in the
War: liberalism and authoritarianism, pacifism and militarism, virility and femininity.
Ambiguity was born from a certain confusion around the concept of homoeroticism, itself
a consequence of the war. It could be associated with camaraderie, heroism, male beauty
and therefore with virility; just as it could be condemned as the incarnation of a lax
rearguard, traitorous, impotent and thus female. Also, while the homosexual community
of the 1920s may have recalled the First World War as a time of male friendships and
while they may have developed a nostalgia for the sacrificed beauties, the War also led to
a misogynist, militarist tendency expressed in antidemocratic movements and an apology
for virile violence. In public opinion, too, liberal tendencies (and the pent-up desire for
pleasure in the post-war period) clashed with repressive tendencies (including the confusion of homosexuality with decadence).
26. Michael de Cossart, Une Amricaine Paris, op. cit., p.95.

27.Maurice Baumont, LAffaire Eulenburg et les Origines de la Premire Guerre mondiale, Payot,
1933, 281 pages.
28. Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1988,
t.III, 1952 pages, p.586-587.
29. See John Grand-Carteret, Derrire lui: lhomosexualit en Allemagne [1907], Lille, Cahiers GaiKitsch-Camp, 1992, 231 pages.
19

The homosexual, a traitor to the fatherland
War reveals a countrys weaknesses. After 1914, each nation pulled together its
forces to confront the threat. In Germany, England and France, the notion of holy unity
was invoked to catalyze the coming together around national values. The war left little
room for minorities and rendered suspect any and all forms of deviation. Homosexuals
became a target of choice for the heralds of nationalism. In Germany, the homosexual
movements retreated into prudent silence. Individuals remained vulnerable to rumors.
In D.H. Lawrences Kangaroo, the hero, Richard Somers, is characterized by his constitutional weakness which makes him unfit to bear arms, his attraction to socialism and
his sexual ambiguity. He becomes the scapegoat of the small village of Cornouailles, and
each inhabitant begins to spy on him. He is finally obliged to flee to London, but he has
difficulties all throughout the war.30
In England, the war was seized upon as an excellent occasion to purge the country
of all its blemishes, in particular the sexual ones. Oscar Wildes trial was still very much
present in the public memory in 1914. It was a symbol of the decadence of the olden days,
which would have to be eliminated if one wanted to make England a masculine and victorious nation. One of the broad topics in propaganda was the fight against pacifists, and
grafted onto that theme one can find exhortations against sexual deviance, in particular
homosexuality, considered a German weakness. This was a direct consequence of the
Eulenburg episode, but it was also a handy way to designate homosexuality as a crime
almost equivalent to treason.
The same phenomenon could be seen in France: in Temps retrouv, Proust gives a
perfect analysis of how the war changed the perception of Charlus homosexuality. Since
the war, the tone had changed. The barons inversion was not only denounced, but also
his alleged Germanic nationality: Frau Bosch, Frau van den Bosch were his usual nicknames.31
The English army, for its part, enacted severe sanctions against sexual relations
between men: two years of prison for any act, committed in public or in private; ten years
in the case of sodomy. Officers were cashiered before being sentenced. In spite of that,
homosexual activity still went on in the ranks: during the war, 22 officers and 270 soldiers
were tried for homosexuality.32 Homosexuality was not only a crime against the army, it
was a crime against England at war. Civilians, too, became objects of attack and a veritable witch hunt started. The parliamentary deputy Nol Pemberton Billing launched a
crusade against homosexuals. 33 In 1918, he published an article entitled, The First
47,000, referring to the number of British homosexuals (according to him) known to the
German secret service. They supposedly had a list that enabled them to blackmail people
in high places and to extort state secrets. Billing reiterated his assertions before the House
of Commons. He also went after the dancer Maud Allan, who was playing the role of
Salome in the Oscar Wilde play. Allan charged him with slander. Billing protested that
the way the play, and the way it was being performed, was targeted directly at sexual per30. The novel is based on D.H. Lawrences personal experiences during the war.
31. Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, op. cit., 1989, t.IV, 1728 pages, p.347.
32. According to Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined. The First World War and English Culture, New York,
Atheneum, 1991, 427 pages, p.225.
33. The very witty Billing led a feisty campaign against the Jews, German music, pacifists, the
Fabians, foreigners, financiers and internationalism.
20

verts, sodomites and lesbians, and said that at a time when Britains very existence as a
nation was in danger, the producer J. T. Grein had chosen to put on the most depraved of
all the depraved works by a man who already had been given the stiffest penalty available
to the law for vice, for crimes against nature.34 The trial was an enormous scandal and
Billing was never seen as the defendant. He used the hearings as a soapbox to rail against
homosexuality and posed as an honest patriot defending his country against those who
were being led astray by Germany. He was acquitted.35
The hysteria over homosexuality shows the extent to which it could be regarded as
pernicious and hazardous for the nation. The specter of having a homosexual traitor in
power cropped up time and again during the inter-war period, and then, with greater and
greater resonance during the Second World War and up to the paroxysms of the Fifties,
during the Cold War, with the Cambridge spy scandal.
The front as a school in homosexuality

By bringing men closer together in situations of extreme danger, the war was a
fertile ground for the development of homosexual friendships; and thus it served to relieve
homosexuality of some of the tension and drama surrounding it. Warrior aesthetics is
based largely on homoeroticism; by focusing on the male body, by accentuating virile
characteristics, it strives to create an ideal male society. Saint-Loup, in Temps retrouv,
takes advantage of the war to live out a fantasy homosexual romance. The war represented a kind of ideal situation, his dreams fulfilled in a purely masculine chivalric order,
far from women, where he could risk his life to save his order, and in dying inspire a
fanatical love in his men.36
Antoine Prost and Stphane Audoin-Rouzeau both evoked the fraternity of the
trenches, a stereotype of the Great War: 37 in the trenches, soldiers and officers supposedly met each other as equals, helping each other, comforting each other, and feeling
moments of intense sympathy. Similarly, in Germany, the universally worn Stahlhelm
(steel helmet) became a unifying symbol that fostered the cult of Frontkameradschaft.
This enduring myth, promulgated by the UNCs motto United as [we were] at the
Front, is based on a genuine, but fleeting, reality. After the war, only memories were left
to testify to the magic of this solidarity. Still, we should not underestimate the impact of
the experience. The testimony quoted by Stphane Audoin-Rouzeau in Les Combattants des
tranches has strong homoerotic connotations, which has not been emphasized until now.
The newspaper Le Priscope also said, in 1916: [Because of all the misfortunes they have
shared] they have conceived deep friendships for each other. Their shared memories and
pains have left an indestructible bond which keeps them together. Thus they go around as
couples, in the squads: two by two, as if the friendship could not extend to several people
without being weakened and would lose its intensity if it were shared.... They are never
seen without each other.... They are called comrades. Poil et Plume, in October 1916, said:
34. In Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined, op. cit., p.227.

35. Ibid.
36. Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, op. cit., t.IV, p.324-325.
37. See Antoine Prost, Les Anciens Combattants et la Socit franaise, 1914-1939, Paris, Presses de la
FNSP, 1977, 3 volumes; Stphane Audoin-Rouzeau, 14-18, les combattants des tranches, Paris, Armand
Colin, 1986, p.50.
21

In the first-aid stations, a casualty who is failing will grab the first stretcher-bearer who
comes along and whom he has never seen, and exclaim: Kiss me. I want to die with you.
In fact, if the war allowed a blooming of hitherto discreet and timorous homosexuality, it also served as an eye-opener for men who, in normal times, would have looked on
such relationships with contempt. Most people still thought of the homosexual as an
effeminate and affected man. The friendships created in the trenches were built on a different logic, that of male societies welded together by a code of honor and shared experiences. Most of the homosexual friendships on the front were established between young
officers and their men. J.B. Priestley 38 notes that it was largely members of the upper
classes or of the well-to-do middle class, who had been prepared for such passions in their
public schools, who welcomed the completely masculine way of life, freed of the complications associated with females. These passionate friendships, idealized and devoid of
physical contact, were inspired by the youth, the beauty, the innocence of a young man,
often an aide-de-camp or a soldier assigned to serve an officer. It was under such circumstances that Somerset Maugham met the young ambulance driver, Gerald Haxton, who
was to become his companion. J.R. Ackerley39 noted that his couriers and servants were
selected on the basis of their looks; in fact, this desire to have the best-looking soldiers in
ones service was common with many officers. He did not know, he said, whether any of
the other officers took greater advantage than he did of this relationship of almost
paternal intimacy.
Many officers tried to sublimate what they regarded as guilty desires in an
increased devotion to their men. Psychologist W.H.R. Rivers encountered several cases of
officers who were torn by their sexual desires and a strict notion of duty and military discipline which obliged them to sublimate their feelings in a more impersonal interest for
the fate of their men. Many cases of neurosis seem to have been the consequence of this
conflict. Siegfried Sassoon, in his poems, expresses the pain (more mental than physical),
and the guilt, he felt over his close companions who died.
But now my heart is heavy-laden. I sit
Burning my dreams away beside the fire:
For death has made me wise and bitter and strong;
And I am rich in all that I have lost.
O starshine on the fields of long-ago,
Bring me the darkness and the nightingale;
Dim wealds of vanished summer, peace of home,
And silence; and the faces of my friends. 40
After the war, Sassoon fully acknowledged his homosexuality and went on to have
relationships with Philip de Hesse, Gabriel Atkin, Glen Byam Shaw and especially
Stephen Tennant. This conjunction between the former soldier, virile and tormented, and
the decadent young dandy summarizes the shift that took place in homosexual circles
after the war. Two opposite worlds attracted each other, with their own excesses, in their
38. Cited by Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, op. cit., p.273.
39. Ibid.
40. Memory in Collected Poems, 1908-1956, London, Faber & Faber, 1984, 317 pages, p.105.
22

successive rebellions against the established order to create a new model of a normal
homosexuality, without constraints.
The poet Wilfred Owen41 seems to have had less difficulties accepting his homosexuality, probably because he was fully conscious of it before going to the front. His war
poems42 contain many homoerotic passages; Owen does not stop at evoking the beauty of
his comrades, he shares their sufferings, he evokes the special bonds that tie them. While
he denounces the horror of battle, with his aesthetic vision and his passion for the virile
body he offers an original vision of life on the front:
Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.43
This is a very male perspective which bars from the outset any intervention by
women. In this, Owen is a harbinger of homosexual relations in the post-war period,
when men linked by a common experience preferred to stay to themselves, apart from
women whom they did not really know and whom they did not really trust.
Such fancies were not limited to the Officers Club; romantic idylls also developed
among the troops. Private Anthony French conceived a great passion for his fellow soldier
Albert William Bradley, who died in his arms in September 1916. When he first set eyes on
him, he was struck by his beauty, his youth, his face pale and finely sculpted. He had a
high, broad forehead, and his lips traced an odd curve that left a little dimple in his
cheek.44 Some of the soldiers, certainly, also came to worship their officers, as can be seen
in the play by Robert Graves, But It Still Goes On (1931).
One of the favorite topics in the homosexual imagery of the era was that of bathing.
Descriptions of naked soldiers bathing under the affectionate gaze of their officers crop
up in many of the memoirs of ex-serviceman, expressing the striking contrast between
the vulnerability of the flesh (with strong erotic connotations) and the aggressiveness of
the external world.
41. On Wilfred Owen, see Kenneth Simcox, Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth, London,
Woburn Press, 1987, 166 pages.
42. The Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by Jon Stallworthy, London, The Hogarth Press, 1985,
200 pages.
43. Greater Love (1917), ibid., p.143.
44. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, op. cit., p.274.
23

A little further, a naked soldier was standing under a jet of water.... And the
beauty of this fragile, little blond thing, so white under the sun... was something so
immense in itself that it pierced me with pain like a lance.45
Lastly, the war gave lesbians an unexpected opportunity. Many women participated in military operations, especially as military ambulance attendants. In The Well of
Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall evokes this desire to serve and the opportunity offered to women
who were single and had no children to find a place in society. Stephen, one of her heroines, says she is afraid that theyd refuse people like her; her interlocutor puts a hand on
hers and advises her, rather, that this war could give women of [her] kind their chance. I
believe you may discover that they need you, Stephen.46
Heroines indeed joined the London ambulance corps; and they found not only a
place in society but a solidarity that was to be maintained after the war. One writer
observed that
feminine women, the nurses, had answered the call of their country superbly,
and that should not be forgotten by England; but the others who also offered the
best that they had they too ought not to be forgotten. They might have seemed a little strange (in fact, some of them were), and yet in the streets they were rarely noticed,
although they walked with big steps, perhaps out of timidity, or perhaps out of a selfconscious desire to be useful, which often goes hand-in-hand with timidity. They had
been active participants in the universal upheaval and had been accepted as such, for
their merits. And although their Sam Browne belts held no guns and their hats and
their caps lacked regimental badges, a battalion had been formed during those terrible
years which never would be completely dissolved.47
Thus the First World War brought to light the latent homosexual feelings in
certain sectors of the male and female population, thus contradicting the stereotype of the
depraved homosexual. In their work History of Sexual Life during the World War, Fischer and
Dubois describe the living conditions in the prison camps. The soldiers gave in, they say,
one after the other, to the temptation of relationships that went against nature. Even
those who by temperament were most hostile to it were gradually drawn in by the supplications of their homosexual comrades, even those who might not have had the least idea,
in civil life, of homosexuality.48 The echo of these temptations is perceptible in contemporary satirical newspapers, which published caricatures depicting the diva of the regiment waited on by a horde of his admirers and where transvestite soldiers express
sudden whims. After the war, the troubled consciences could no longer ignore the psychological shifts generated by combat. Still, over the sexual liberation of the Roaring
Twenties a pall was cast, a feeling of incompletion: the young male prostitutes of the bars
in Berlin, the homosexuals in the big, licentious cities were all haunted by the specter of
death which always ran more swiftly than they, which pursued their least pleasures. On
45. Reginald Farrer, cited by Paul Fussell, ibid., p.301. Bathing appears as a theme in both poetry
and painting. Henry Scott Tuke, Frederick Walker and William Scott of Oldham specialized in
portraying young men by the waterside. E.M. Forster had already suggested the erotic connotations
of bathing, in A Room with a View. That freed George Emerson, Freddy Honeychurch and the pastor
Beebe of their inhibitions in a pagan communion.
46. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness [1928], London, Virago Press, 1982, 447 pages, p.271.
47. Ibid., p.275.
48. Cited by Richard Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment, op. cit., p.148.
24

the other hand, the great homosexual myth of the inter-war period, in particular among
English intellectuals, was to find a friend, a friend for life. This desperate search for a
special partner seems reminiscent of the uncomplicated friendships of war-time, when
fraternity between men could be exercised without constraints, without any thought of
the world outside, the world of women, of mothers and sisters.
The war casts open the blinds

Tell England. You must write a book and talk to them,
Rupert, about the schoolboys of our generation, who died.49
The war left deep wounds. In England, 744,000 were killed and more than a halfmillion civilian deaths are ascribed to the conflict. The influenza epidemic of the winter
1918-1919 caused another 100,000-plus deaths. In Germany, 2 million men died in combat
or from their wounds. Civilian deaths were 740,000 more than normal, never mind the
deficit in the birth rate, estimated at 3 million. But the toll was highest in France:
1,300,000 died at the front, plus 150,000 other deaths related to the war, not counting
deaths from disease. Thus, out of 8 million mobilized, there were 6.45 million survivors.50
However, according to Antoine Prost, a large proportion of those mobilized never made it
to the front, and so the number of ex-serviceman would actually be only about a million.
However, about a sixth of the population was directly affected, if one includes war
widows (600,000) and orphans (760,000), that is to say 7,500,000people.51
Many veterans associations supported the legend of communion in the trenches
and particularly emphasized that the survivors had rights over us (Clemenceau). The
veterans associations called for pacifism, driven by their memory of suffering and the
horror of the war, which deeply marked peoples minds psychologically and aesthetically
as well. The heavy death toll was identified with the promising younger generation who
went off to war with all their illusions, and were sacrificed. This feeling of youth in
flower, mown down by guns, was ideally symbolized by the myth that developed in
England around Rupert Brooke. Thus the post-war period, while idolizing the adolescent
heroes for their beauty and their youth, opened the way to a latent homoeroticism in
certain circles of society.
Worship of the body followed naturally in the wake of the great carnage of the war
of 1914, and it is indissociable from the slogan, Never again. Naturism, the rise of movements along the lines of the Wandervogel, and vestimentary liberation were partly the
consequence of the great aesthetic shake-up of the war and a terrible fear of any attack on
the body, especially the young body. The dominant moral values were replaced by the
morality of survival, which gives priority to pleasure over the spirit of sacrifice.
The war transformed the family unit, and the number of orphans was one of the
most immediate effects. The poet W.H. Auden, for example, ascribes his homosexuality to
the absence of his father throughout the entire war period, and Christopher Isherwood, to
49. Ernest Raymond, Tell England: A Study in a Generation, London, Cassell & Cie, 1922, 320 pages,
p.314.
50. Then there were the civilian casualties : some 570,000 died as a rsult of the evacuation, occupation, bombings, the higher infant mortality rate and the epidemic of Spanish flu.
51. Nevertheless, not all the war veterans and victims participated in the movement. At its
apogee, in 1930-1932, it had about 3 million members.
25

his fathers death in combat. Although such an explanation is partial and psychoanalytical, there could be some truth to it. The war was also followed by a steep rise in
divorces, a consequence of the long separations during the war and the different courses
lives will take; but there was also a rise in the marriage rate. Widows were seen in two
possible ways: ideally, they should hide away in their sorrow, faithful beyond death to
the dear departed, and devoted to the children. The merry widow, remarried and free,
became a lightning rod for animosity and led to an obsession with woman-vampires,
treacherously louche and sensualist, revived by the novel by Radiguet, Le Diable au corps
(1923).
Added to that was the new disparity in numbers between men and women. In
England, in 1911 there were 1068 women for 1000 men; by 1921, there were 1096; in 1931,
1088; and in 1939, there were still 1080 per 1000.52 In France, according to Jacques Dupquier, there were more than one million more women than men in 1931. The shortage of
men would (falsely) be seen as a reason for the alleged proliferation of lesbians in the
1920s.53
Then, in contrast to the pacifism of the ex-serviceman, certain homosexuals in the
1930s, who were children in 1914, developed a mythical sense of the war many young
people had the impression that they had missed the major event of their lives. They had
missed the solidarity forged in combat, and they could not prove that they were men. At
Oxford, after the war, the younger students felt like second-class citizens while their
seniors returned haloed in glory, and plaques lined the walls of the university enumerating the names of the war dead. At the same time, other movements derived from the war
(like Freikorps in Germany) developed a homoerotic mystique around the worship of
virility and the glorification of the soldier. Ernst von Solomons works exemplify this
trend. Similarly, Max-Ren Hesses novel Partenau, published in 1929, evokes the drama of
the return to normal and certain soldiers inability to accept the values of civil society.
Lieutenant Ernst Partenau, 30 years old and the glory of the regiment, secretly falls in love
with the brilliant Stefan Kiebold, 22 years old. Their relationship soon disturbs their
superiors. Stefan tries to convince Partenau that this love is misplaced, and he ascribes it
to the influence of the war years: You refuse to see things as they are, now, or you cant
see them, because for four years you lived in the extreme conditions of the No Mans Land,
like a cave man, facing death every day, in an atmosphere of tension and hard masculinity.
But weve gone back to women, long since.54 Partenau commits suicide immediately
thereafter.
Violence too becomes a dominant theme in a certain strain of homosexual literature. James Hanleys novel, The German Prisoner (1930),55 exploits the topic of the war
around a sadomasochistic homosexual phantasmagoria. The war here is seen as a catalyst
of violence subjacent to a certain type of homosexual relations; the enemy is at the same
time an object of hatred and of desire, the possible lover in times of peace and the symbol
of a hostile nation. Unable to overcome the duality of their nature, the heroes give in to
52. Franois-Charles Mougel, Histoire du Royaume-Uni au XXe sicle, Paris, PUF, 1996, 600 pages.
53. An absurd idea: Andr Armengaud shows clearly that in France, for example, the feminine
excess was resabsorbed in part by the decrease in male celibacy, and the high rate of marriage
between Frenchwomen and foreign or younger men. See La Population franaise au XXe sicle [1965],
Paris, PUF, 1992, 127 pages.
54. Max-Ren Hesse, Partenau, Paris, Albin Michel, 1930, 323 pages, p.312-315.
55. James Hanley, The German Prisoner, London, ed. part., 1930, 36 pages, p.32-33.
26

fatal impulses. The climax is reached when two English soldiers violate, then kill, the
German prisoner, young, fair and beardless, matching the stereotype then in vogue; they
are soon blown to bits, themselves. The cruelty and violence of the text reaches an
unbearable pitch, revealing the frustrations of combat. Unable to accept their own homosexuality that surfaces at the front, the soldiers project it onto their enemy, denying it and
destroying it at the same time. The text seems to synthesize all the fears related to homosexuality in times of war. The sexual tension reaches a paroxysm, the body becomes
obsessive, but this discovery of sexual attraction for a man and worse yet, an enemy, is too
brutal to be accepted. All the protagonists are blown away as if no trace must remain of
such wayward actions, as if such a situation must at least be confined to war times.56
The loss of innocence is another major theme of the period, illustrated by the novel
Tell England (1922), by Ernest Raymond. Here, the homosexuality of the pre-war period,
displayed in the form of the passionate friendship between two pupils in a public school
(a common topic in British literature), and the post-war world stripped of its illusions.
The war highlights this shift it is when his friend dies at Gallipoli that the hero, Ray,
realizes that he loved him. Reminiscing about the idyllic scenes of their adolescence, he
cries, I loved you. I loved you. I loved you.57 He is left alone with the awareness of his
lost love and the vague sense that that love could not have existed unless it remained
unrecognized the ambiguity of the homosexual feeling which has no right to be
declared in any definite way, and that is condemned as soon as it comes into clear
existence. The entire novel is charged with homoeroticism and calls upon a latent homosexual culture that is there, waiting to be reactivated among English readers from the
middle class or higher. The attraction of the book rests in its worship of youth; homosexuality becomes a diffuse feeling of love and compassion for other boys, a way of still
denying its sexual character while accentuating how widespread it is in the society.58
Thus the war marks a watershed in terms of sexuality, the revelations of the front
having certain consequences once peace was restored. By awakening certain men to the
profound truth of their own nature, it destroyed the entire edifice of lies and dissimulation which had enabled Victorian society to preserve its appearance of morality. From
this point on, homosexuality was hard to cover up entirely, since it was clear by now that
it involved more than a narrow segment of the population who were considered sick or
depraved. It suddenly became a possibility for everyone.
Even if this acknowledgement was fleeting or unconscious it upset the foundation of sexual morals. Still, homosexuality was not freed from its underlying but ever so
constraining myths: youth offered in sacrifice, pleasure dissolving in death, guilt before
societys expectations, the impossibility of finding lasting satisfaction. All these themes
persisted in the inter-war period, so that the liberation of morals remained hypothetical
even among homosexuals, themselves. Those who called it decadence would persist,
nonetheless, in associating the new visibility of homosexuality with the war, comparing it
to a plague.
56. Ibid., p.36.

57. Ernest Raymond, Tell England, op. cit., p.298.
58. Ibid., p.92.
27

THE HOMOSEXUAL SCENE: SUBVERSIVE LANGUAGE
The homosexual scene is theater. It is not timeless; quite to the contrary. It follows
the fads and fashions and interprets the latest trends. Homosexual fashions in speech,
clothing, and gestures follow specific codes that help keep homosexuals in a world to
themselves. In ways that are often imperceptible to the uninitiated, these evolving
fashions delineate variations and sexual conventions. Knowing how to interpret the
details enables one to penetrate to the very heart of homosexual life, to discern the secrets
and to sort out what is part of homosexual reality and what is more a part of the
mythology. The flamboyance of the homosexual scene of the 1920s, for example, takes its
place among the founding myths of a culture, and gains importance mainly in subversion.
Homosexual Talk: from Slang to Camp

The role language has played in shaping the homosexual identity was highlighted
by Michel Foucault in the first volume of his History of Sexuality. He drew attention particularly to their prolific talk about sex during times when middle-class families preserved a
Puritanical silence on the topic. Putting it in words is an essential element of repression,
but is also a means of getting around it, of subverting it. Sex, and homosexual sex in particular, was filtered and re-transcribed through a coded vocabulary, fixed expressions
which made it possible to channel the discourse and at the same time to cut short the discussion, to render a final judgment from the heterosexual point of view.
But this same language, these same expressions can also be appropriated by homosexual speakers who void them of their usual meanings, deform them and transform them
to the point of using them as the basis for defining their own identity. Talk about homosexuality then becomes something else altogether, a separate genre with its own rules and
obligatory passages. Therefore, we will start by simply trying to delineate homosexual
speech as such, the everyday speech, the designations, the labels.
It may seem anachronistic to talk about homosexual speech. Indeed, the term
homosexual was not much used in those days in homosexual circles, except in medical
books (often translated from German). Many homosexuals were unaware of the meaning
of the term, or did not really see themselves as such. Worsleys characters stumble on this
in his autobiographical Flannelled Fool, in a scene that may be paraphrased as follows.
You are a homosexual, she observed, pleasantly. Really? I asked, truly surprised. Arent you? she insisted. I dont know! I answered, in all good faith...But
was I? How could I say? Homo, I certainly was. Sexual, certainly not. In any case, that
word was not in everyday usage, as it is it now. In those days it was still a technical
term, the implications of which largely escaped me; and in any case it implied being
effeminate. Effeminatized, I certainly was not. Wasnt I, on the contrary, hard, at least
a virile athlete?59
In fact, such designations are a function of the culture and the social milieu. Thus
Alias, in Maurice Sachss novel of that title, summarizes the situation:
59. T.C. Worsley, Flannelled Fool. A Slice of Life in the Thirties, London, Alan Ross, 1967, 213 pages,
p.25-26.
28
He is a fag, he said to me (and every age, every class has its own way, like that, of
indicating the same thing or ascribing the same characteristic, using different words:
the schoolboy says a fag when the doctor says homosexual and a woman says
abnormal; a journalist might say invert, a strong man a dirty aunt, a bartender in
Montmartre: queen, etc.)60
The bourgeoisie traditionally kept mum on this touchy subject. Discussing sexuality in public was out of the question, much less homosexuality. Girls especially were
quite unaware of the existence of homosexuals or lesbians. When it became necessary to
mention the question, a suitable vocabulary was terribly lacking. T.C. Worsley noted:
We had, in any event, in our godforsaken hole of a province, no word for those who nowadays one would summarily describe as queer.61 In his public school, where homosexuality was frequent, it remained unmentioned in everyday conversation. Many
homosexual memoirs concerning this period corroborate these statements.62 Very often,
outside the mainstream there was greater freedom: lower-class workers had crude slang
terms for homosexuals, whereas certain avant-garde circles, like Bloomsbury, could be
very liberal.
It would be an error, however, to think that homosexuality was generally overlooked. If one studies the homosexual vocabulary in French, German and English communities, the multitude of designations is striking. Three categories of terms indicating
homosexuals and their activities can be distinguished: scientific or medical terms; familiar
or slang terms that heterosexuals used when talking about homosexuals which sometimes were picked up by homosexuals themselves; and terms used within the homosexual
community, often having a coded meaning.
Equivalent medical terms are found in all three languages: homosexual, lesbian,
invert, uranian, uranist, unisexual, antiphysic, indiffrent, occasionnel (only due to
special circumstances), intermediary. One of those could be used to indicate homosexuals. There are a vast variety of colloquial and slang terms; according to Brassa,
Parisian slang had more than 40 expressions for a homosexual but only six ways of designating a lesbian. Among most frequent French terms used in the 1920s and 1930s were
tante, tapette, pd, pdale, jsus, mignon, lapin (roughly, aunt, queer, fag, pedal, darling, sweetie,
rabbit). For the women, amazones, gouines, goulues, gousses, tribades (amazons, dykes, and
literally, gluttons, pods, tribads). My mother said pods, and as I did not understand her
she said to me: But dont you see, they are women with women.... My buddies at the
studio spoke among themselves of dykes. None of that made much sense to me; I did not
see myself as either a pod or a dyke I never liked those words.[But] one never used the
word lesbian.63
60. Maurice Sachs, Alias [1935], Paris, ditions dAujourdhui, 1976, 220 pages, p.38.
61. T.C. Worsley, Flannelled Fool, op. cit., p.74.
62. Anonymous homosexual testimonies, from people of all backgrounds, have been used to
recreate the lifestyle homosexual during this period. The English comments include oral records
preserved at the National Sound Archives, some of which have been published in Between the Acts. Lives
of Homosexual Men, 1885-1967 (ed. K. Porter and J. Weeks, London, Routledge, 1990, 176 pages), Walking
after Midnight. Gay Mens Life Stories (Hall-Carpenter Archives, London, Routledge, 1989, 238 pages) and
Inventing Ourselves. Lesbian Life Stories (Hall-Carpenter Archives, London, Routledge, 1989, 228 pages).
63. Testimony of B., a dressmakers apprentice born in Paris in 1910, recorded by Claudie Lesselier, in Aspects de lexprience lesbienne en France, 1930-1968, mmoire de DEA de sociologie, Paris-VIII,
under the direction of R. Castel, November 1987, 148 pages, p.93.
29

It was roughly the same in England: We were a group of girls who were really lesbians; although we did not use that term, we knew what the word meant and we had
used it.64
In German, Schwule was the term most often used. There were certain more pejorative terms like Tunte (queer). Other names were more specific, like Puppenjunge or Strichjunge, which designated the homosexual male prostitute. Young women were called
Lesbierin or, more commonly Lesbe, or sometimes Tribadie. Bube and Bbin are affectionate
terms for a young male or female lover. More medical terms were also employed, like
Urnische or Urning for uranians. In the German and Austrian lesbian milieu, a color code
was used: lesbians are Lila, Violett, Mauve, Fliederfarben (lilac color), Veilchenblau (purplish);
the main Berlin lesbian club was called Damenklubs Violetta, the lesbian song is Lila Lied.65
In England, among the most current terms were to be so (to be like that) and TBH (To
Be Had: available).66 Queer was already in use. This term seems to have been imported
from Ireland, then spread throughout the theatrical circles. It only took on its pejorative
sense later. There were other alternatives in circulation as well, such as to be musical,
for example. Homosexuals called themselves by terms with pejorative overtones that also
spread throughout the general public, like pansies, poofs (tantes) or Nancy boys (tapettes,
queer). Lesbians also used queer; the public often identified them as horsey, or girls in
collar and tie, an allusion to their masculine dress.67 The terms butch and fem came
later.
Homosexual slang (parlare) extended to many situations. Of course, it was used to
indicate sexual practices of a range and variety that would be impossible to list completely. Making love with a boy could be called shagging someone, or having a go with
someone.68 Plain-sewing meant mutual masturbation; it was a contemporary term in
homosexual slang borrowed from the navy, just like Princeton-first-year, which indicated coitus contra ventrem. 69
But the slang was not limited to sex; it left its mark on every aspect of homosexual
life and thus came to embody what we know as high camp. High camp, a kind of exaggeration of homosexual postures and clichs, was a parody of the normal life of the rich and
titled people who lived in Mayfair. The guys took the names of well-bred ladies, divided
the year into seasons, designated certain bars and restaurants as fashionable and used a
secret terminology based on posing (camp), dressing up (drag) and satire (send up).
The best definition of high camp was given by Christopher Isherwood in The World
in the Evening, where he explains,
64. Testimony of Eleonor, farm wife, recorded by Suzanne Neild and Rosalind Parson, Women like
us, London, The Womens Press, 1992, 171 pages, p.33.
65. See annexes (in volume 2 of this work). For more on this topic, see Das Lila Wien um 1900, zur
sthetik der Homosexualitten, Vienne, Promedia, 1986, 127 pages. Bear in mind also that Rene Vivien
was nicknamed la Muse aux violettes.
66. Cited in particular by Frank Oliver, a navy mechanic, in Walking after Midnight (op. cit.), John, a
dancer and gigolo, in Between the Acts (op. cit., p.137), and Gifford Skinner, a shopkeeper, (Cocktails in
the Bath, Gay News, n 135, p.21-24).
67. See Myrtle Salomon and Olive Ager at the National Sound Archives (Hall-Carpenter
Archives), and Gifford Skinner, Cocktails in the Bath, loc. cit.
68. Fred, a hobo, in Between the Acts, op. cit., p.15.
69.W.H. Auden was the first to say that in print.
30

You think that what is camp is an elegant young man with bleached hair, wearing a Gainsborough hat and a feather boa and who thinks hes Marlene Dietrich?...
What I am talking about is high camp... true high camp is basically serious. One does
not make fun of it, one uses it to make fun of himself. One expresses what is really serious through mockery, artifice and elegance.70
Camp helps homosexuals to formulate their own culture. According to Quentin

Crisp (one of the best representatives of camp), camp came into being in the 1920s as a
reaction to the crisis in sexual values, the upheaval of feminine and masculine roles that
marked the period.
All that game of stylizations which is now known by the name of camp (a word
which I heard then for the first time) was self-explanatory in 1926. Women moved
and gesticulated that way. Homosexuals wished to copy them, for obvious reasons.
What is strange about camp is that it became fossilized. The mannerisms never
changed. Now, if I saw a woman sitting with her knees together, one hand on the hip
and the other lightly touching the hair on the nape of her neck, I would think: Either
she is reliving her last social triumph, in 1926, or she is a transvestite.71
The use of a specific language is the first act of homosexual differentiation. The
slang functions as a secret code and brings homosexuals closer to troublemakers and
delinquents, who also have a need for anonymity and dissimulation. The linguistic
expansion testifies to the cultural richness and the desire of homosexuals for affirmation.
The middle-class world of silence, of non-designation, of refusal to name and thus to recognize, is opposed by the noisy world of homosexuality, the logorrhea of camp, the tendency to say it all, to say too much.
Dandies and Flappers: Homosexuals Have Style

Blinded by mascara and rendered mute by lipstick, I
paraded in the dark streets of Pimlico.... I wore a veil so thick
that it completely obscured the road in front of me. That
didnt matter. There were others to watch where I was going.72
Among the myths associated with the 1920s, the flamboyance of style is the most
persistent. In fact, membership in a group justifies the use of a vestimentary code that
identifies its members. Certainly, what most homosexuals wanted was to be able to blend
in with the mass of normal people and so they conformed to the canons of virility that
were in vogue at the time, adding only the slightest variations to their appearance.
According to Michel de Coglay, those who were willing to give themselves away through
sartorial hints were in the minority and the serious, intelligent and embarrassed homosexual did not distinguish himself in any way.73 The hair was worn very short at the nape
of the neck and on the sides, brilliantined and combed in order to form a wave or plastered smooth like patent leather.74 The suit was dark, of thick fabric, broad in cut, with
70. Christopher Isherwood, cited by Gay News, n 60, p.19.
71. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant [1968], London, Fontana, 1986, 217 pages, p.26-27.
72. Ibid., p.22.
73. Michel du Coglay, Chez les mauvais garons. Choses vues, Paris, R. Saillard, 1938, 221 pages, p.137.
74. See Gifford Skinner, Cocktails in the Bath, loc. cit.
31

the bottom of the trousers flared. This baggy fashion had some erotic advantages, as
Gifford Skinner relates:
The average man wore his trousers very full cut and they went up almost to the
chest. The underclothes, if one wore any, were quite as loose and left the genitals free.
Any friction caused by walking could produce the most stark effect. In the street,
homosexuals would stud their conversation with remarks like, Did you see that
piece? or Look whats coming hes sticking straight out! This was often an illusion caused by a fold in the clothing, but it was a pleasant pastime and didnt cost anything.75
Others, however, sought a departure from the ubiquitous classicism. Suits in

electric blue, almond green or old rose were much admired, but few dared to wear them
for fear of being kicked out of public places.76 Certain accessories became homosexual
signs of recognition, in particular suede shoes and camels hair coats. Some dared to wear
their hair long.
Any eccentricity was readily perceived as proof of inversion, leading to a little
adventure for Quentin Crisp, a flagrant homosexual if ever there was one, when he presented himself at the draft board: While his eyes were being tested, they said to him,
Youve dyed your hair. Thats a sign of sexual perversion. Do you know what these words
mean? He just said yes, and that he was a homosexual.77
That does not mean that the man in the street could clearly identify a homosexual,
that he knew enough to decipher the signs. However, any sartorial oddity was suspicious
and could easily be seen as a sign of homosexuality. There was one way out: to be perceived as an artist, i.e. necessarily an original. Crisp notes that the sexual significance of
certain forms of comportment was understood only vaguely, but the sartorial symbolism
was recognized by everyone. Wearing suede shoes inevitably made you suspect. Anyone
whose hair was a little raggedy at the nape of the neck was regarded as an artist, a foreigner, or worse yet. One of his friends told him that, when someone introduced him to an
older gentleman as an artist, the man said: Oh, I know this young man is an artist. The
other day I saw him on the street in a brown jacket.78
In the same way, the use of make-up was spreading, so that mere possession of a
powder puff was enough to prove ones homosexuality for the police. Evelyn Waugh
remembers sleazy young men in shirtsleeves standing in a bar, repairing the devastations
caused by grenadine and crme de cacao with powder and lipstick.79 This practice was
still tainted with infamy and it generally was indulged in secrecy, sheerly for the titillation:
Sometimes I arranged to meet my friend George at the station. We would
board in first class, for there was no conductor at that hour of the night and the compartments were private with a mirror on the wall. George was mad about make-up
and initiated me. It was just brown powder bought from a theater shop on Leicester
Square. Once applied, we would ask each other if it were visible. Yes meant that a
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, op. cit., p.115.
78. Ibid., p.28.
79. Cited by Lain Finlayson, Gay Dress, in Gay News, n 60, p.19.
32

layer had better be quickly removed. No meant the addition of a little more powder;
and so on to Liverpool Street. Once in the subway and until the end of the line, we
would sit in the corner very withdrawn, terrified at the thought of being seen and perhaps sent to prison.80
The very chic Stephen Tennant, taking tea with his aunt, was admonished:
Stephen, darling, go and wash your face. Thus we know that the practice was by no
means limited to male prostitutes, but involved various social classes. However, it was far
from being well accepted, even in the most exalted circles. At a ball hosted by the Earl of
Pembroke, Cecil Beaton was thrown in the water by some of the more virile young men;
one of them shouted: Do you think the fag drowned? According to Tennant, who was
there at the time, the attack was caused by the abuse of make-up; he was convinced that it
was Beatons made-up face that so disturbed the thugs.81
In the 1920s, Stephen Tennant embodied homosexual aesthetics carried to its
apogee. He was a great beauty, and he enjoyed using all the artifices of seduction and lart
de la pose, theatricality. In that, he exaggerated the prevailing fashion for dressing up.
Vogue, in its spring 1920 edition, wrote that there was nothing more amusing than to dress
up and paint ones face outrageously for, as Tallulah Bankhead says, there is no such
thing as too much lipstick.82 Photographed by Cecil Beaton, especially, Tennant looked
like a prince charming. Even in his everyday wear, he stood apart from the crowd; his
biographer Philip Hoare made much of his style, and his innate sense of theater which
made him a symbol of the Bright Young People of the 1920s in London. Late in the decade,
Tennant represented the most extreme of fashion for a man, at least. His feminine
manners and appearance were not diminished by the striped double-breasted suits he
wore, in good taste and well cut, which ought to have made him resemble any young
fellow downtown. But Stephens physical presence was enough to belie such an
impression. He was large and imperious, but he moved with a pronounced step, affected,
which was described as prancing or as seeming to be attached at the knees. Each of his
movements, from the facial muscles to his long limbs, seemed calculated for effect. He
gilded his fair hair with a sprinkling of gold dust, and used certain preparations to hold
the dark roots in check. Stephen could very well have been taken for a Vogue illustration
perhaps by Lepappe brought to life.83
The most famous Bright Young People had made their studies in Oxford, like
Harold Acton and Brian Howard. 84 Acton was the first to wear very broad trousers
(Oxford bags) in lavender. Together with Cecil Beaton, Stephen Tennant and other young
society men they organized all kinds of themed evenings. Stephen Tennants effeminate
appearance caused ambivalent reactions. Some were simply struck: I do not know if that
is a man or a woman, but it is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen,85 the admiral
Sir Lewis Clinton-Baker would say. Others were less indulgent. When Tennant arrived
one evening dressed particularly outrageously, the criticism reached a boiling point. Rex
Whistler, one of his friends, considered it regrettable that he had gone too far: He posed
80. Gifford Skinner, Cocktails in the Bath, loc. cit.
81. Cited by Philip Hoare, Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant, London, Penguin, 1992,
463 pages, p.85-86.
82. Ibid., p.75.
83. Ibid., p.81.
84. See chapter three .
85. Cited by Philip Hoare, Serious Pleasures, op. cit., p.81.
33

as much as a girl. Rexs brother added, Men should not draw attention to themselves.
That was the only true charge against Stephen, and it was irrefutable. Parents also complained that their children spent time with Stephen. Edith Olivier noted that Helena
Folkestone was complaining about how badly people spoke of Stephen, that he was hated
by people who did not understand him. Olivier noted that they were out of touch with the
times, since nowadays so many boys resemble girls without being effeminate. That is the
kind of boys that have grown up since the war.86
The main trends which we have just reviewed for men are also found among
women. The woman of the 1920s is mythically associated with the flapper, summarized in
a few visual stereotypes: hair cut short, short skirt, cigarette. This is a modern woman,
independent, who takes care of her appearance, and goes to dance halls and especially the
cinema. The flapper is a sign of the beginnings of the Americanization of European societies.
Her image was first broadcast by Hollywood films through actresses like Louise
Brooks and Clara Bow, then by the great dressmakers like Poiret, Madeleine Vionnet, and
Coco Chanel, as well as photographers like Edward Steichen, Horst and Beaton. The proliferation of womens periodicals spread the new fashion throughout all of society, thus
contributing to the creation of a mass phenomenon.87 The short hair, the short, fluids
dresses that did not impede walking, were very symbols of independence. However,
while this new fashion was indeed shocking, it was not always seen in negatively, especially among young people. The flapper, who hung around with young men of her age, was
easily accepted as a comrade who could share common interests in sport or dancing, who
was not physically timid, whom one did not have to treat with special care. Without
exaggeration, one can see that the flapper perfectly embodied the other side of the homosexual tendency that suffused the post-war period. The companion from the trenches is
substituted by an androgynous wife who, with her flat chest and her helmet of short hair,
may even recall the ideal friend met during the war. Thus, Leslie Runciman, of Eton and
Cambridge, with a homosexual past, ends up marrying the novelist Rosamund Lehmann,
herself sexually troubled, for her ambiguous personality: I know that it may seem
extraordinary that I should wish to spend my life with a woman, but Rosamund
resembles a boy much more than a woman. She has the spirit of a man.88
Beyond the traditional image of the flapper, the figure of the lesbian can be distinguished. While the flapper is accused of casting doubt on the value of femininity, her
androgynous allure is mitigated by the feminine accessories: silk hose, fans, sunshades,
boas. She ostentatiously flirts with her cigarette-holder. Her heavy make-up is accentuated by the plucked eyebrows and the feathers, fringes, and pearls which adorn her hair.
While the criticism may have become outspoken, it was first and foremost directed
against unmarried women, those who worked, followed the fashions, and were easy
targets of suspicion of deviant practices. In France, women had been prohibited from
wearing mens clothes since about 1805. Those who still wanted to wear trousers were to
address themselves to the police prefecture and to request a special permit. Several peti86. Ibid.
87. In France, Le Petit cho de la mode (1880), Modes et travaux (1919), Le Jardin des modes (1923), MarieClaire (1937). The anglo-saxon examples dominated, with Harpers Bazaar and Vogue, the French
version of which came out in 1920.
88. Cited by Gillian Tindall, Rosamund Lehmann: An Appreciation, London, Chatto & Windus, 1985,
201 pages, p.47.
34

tions had been submitted to Parliament early in the 19th century in the hope of abolishing
this law, without success. However, right up until the 1920s, this taste for cross-dressing
was not systematically related to lesbianism. On the contrary, the lesbians asserted their
femininity. Liane de Pougy, for example, said, We liked long hair, beautiful bosoms,
pouts and glances, charm, grace; not woman-boys. Why would we wish to resemble to
our enemies? as Natalie-Flossie used to murmur.89
However, the lesbians of the avant-garde followed the example of Radclyffe Hall
and Una Troubridge by exaggerating the flapper fashion.90 Short hair was the fashion
after the war, but Radclyffe Hall chose to affect the Eton crop, a cut much shorter and
more masculine than was usual. When the fashion returned to longer and more feminine
cuts at the end of the 1920s, she chose a crew-cut. She affected mens suits, ties and laceup shoes. To accentuate her male appearance, she smoked cigars and adopted virile poses,
feet apart and hands in her pockets.
It should be noted that the strict separation of roles adopted by the lesbian couple
at the time led to a dichotomy in the costumes of the two partners. Radclyffe Hall, as a
true lesbian (butch), found it appropriate to wear mens clothes, whereas Una Troubridge (fem) retained feminine elements in her attire. Her hair was never as short as Radclyffe Halls, and she wore dresses and high heels. In France, Violette Leduc also
distinguished herself by wearing a suit; her lover of the time, Hermine, reproached her,
saying that she was imitating them. At the publishing house where she worked, they
would tease: I saw Violette Leduc at a concert; yes, in the same getup. This attitude was
adopted intentionally: I hardened my baroque face with razor-cut hair cut above the
temples; I wanted to be a focus of curiosity for the public in the cafs, for the public promenading in the theater because I was ashamed of my face, and at the same time I
imposed it on others.91
Cross-dressing was also very much in style among the lesbians in the inter-war
period. Vita Sackville-West, for an escapade in Paris with Violet Trefusis on October 5,
1920, disguised herself as a young man, which enabled her to display her passion for her
partner without risk:
I dressed myself as a boy. It was easy, I put a khaki band around my head,
which was the style at the time and did not attract attention. I browned my face and
my hands... My large size was useful. I looked like a rather neglected young man, a
kind of student of about nineteen years old.92
But while these vestimentary extravagances might be seen in the eyes of the uninformed public as some vestige of aristocratic eccentricity, it was more difficult for anonymous lesbians to affirm their identity. Above all, they ran into maternal hostility: My
89. Cited by Jean Chalon, Liane de Pougy, Paris, Flammarion, 1994, 389 pages, p.277.
90. See Katrina Rolley, Cutting a Dash: The Dress of Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge, in
Feminist Review, n 35, summer 1990.
91. Violette Leduc, La Btarde, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, 462 pages, p.166. Violet Leduc is a very
ambiguous personality and her testimony must be seen in context: she goes out with Ermine, but
also with Gabriel, and it is he whom she seeks to please by dressing this way. At the same time, it is
partly a provocation: she likes to be seen as a lesbian. Besides, the conspicuous clothing permits her
to distract people from her ugliness they are so struck by what kind she is that they no longer
notice what she looks like.
92. Nigel Nicolson, Portrait dun mariage [1973], Paris, Stock, 1992, 319 pages, p.151.
35

mother wanted me to wear the requisite feminine clothing. I wanted to wear shorts. At
seven or eight years, I cut off my curls with a pair of manicure scissors. If I had been a boy,
I would have had short hair. My mother struck me. They bobbed my hair and by the age of
twelve years I had an Eton crop. There was a terrible argument, but I gave aristocratic
examples to support my position.93
In the 1930s, the fashion turned once again toward a more feminine look and lesbians became even more conspicuous. The dresses were more colorful; they were longer,
and the contours of the body were accentuated again. Hair remained short, but might be
curly, waved or fringed. The only concessions to masculinity were sailor pants, then the
beach pyjamas that came out in the 1930s; one might wear them at home, on the beach, in
a boat; but they were still strongly associated with homosexuality. It became increasingly
difficult for lesbians to go unnoticed. Peter Quennell, who met Vita Sackville-West in
1936, was struck by her unusual appearance. He noted that she was larger and more
imposing than her husband who, standing by her side with his pink face, his briar pipe
and his tweed jacket, looked like nothing so much as a graduate student, while she
evoked a vigorous mixture of both sexes: Lady Chatterley and her lover in one and the
same incarnation. Curls of thick black hair straggled out from under a wide-brimmed
Spanish hat. She had very thick eyebrows, and very dark eyes; her cheeks were highly
coloured and she made no effort to dissimulate the very visible moustache that Virginia
had affectionately mentioned. She was wearing heavy earrings and a thin string of pearls
that plunged down inside a lace blouse, and over it all great velvet jacket, while her legs,
which Mrs. Woolf said called to mind the trunks of vigorous trees, were stuffed into
gamekeepers breeches and high boots laced to the knees.94
Thus, a pure homosexual vestimentary culture developed in the 1920s and 1930s.
While it allowed homosexuals to identify one another more clearly, it also put them at the
mercy of a society increasingly skillful at reading through the codes. Miss Runcible
wore mens trousers, and Miles touched up his lashes in the dining room of the hotel
where they stopped to lunch. They were asked to leave.95
MAGICAL CITIES, MYTHICAL CITIES: THE GEOGRAPHY OF WHERE TO MEET

Among the founding myths of the homosexual liberation of the 1920s, certain
cities Berlin, London, Paris hold a special place. The richness of the homosexual
scene in those towns, the profusion of homosexual hang-outs, the exuberance of the nocturnal festivities made them symbols of pleasure and permissiveness, the memory of
which lingered on for decades. However, behind this glowing faade, the homosexual
scene consisted more of tawdry bars, dismal provinces, and shame.
It may seem foolhardy to try to map out the homosexual and lesbian places in
France, England and Germany in the inter-war period: after all, in all three countries,
many meeting places were skillfully dissimulated in order to avoid drawing the attention
of the police. An establishment could be shut down one week and reopen shortly in
93. Olive Ager, National Sound Archives (Hall-Carpenter Archives).
94. Cited by Victoria Glendinning, Vita, la vie de Vita Sackville-West, Paris, Albin Michel, 1987,
437 pages, p.316-317.
95. Evelyn Waugh, Ces corps vils, Paris, UGE, coll. 10/18, 1991, 245 pages, p.167.
36

another location, under another name. In a small provincial town, there might very well
exist a bar, a dance hall or a club that could be used as a meeting place for homosexuals,
without advertising that fact. Unlike the analogous establishments in the capital, these
haunts might be mixed and open to heterosexuals as well; but the proprietors were
accommodating people, probably homosexual themselves.96 In spite of the limitations, on
the basis of existing sources we can draw an impressive and picturesque view of the
homosexual scene in the inter-war period a panorama of the Roaring Twenties.
Berlin, A Homosexual Capital

In the 1920s, Berlin became an obligatory stopping place for European homosexuals. Visitors accounts glow with enthusiasm: Marcel, how you would like this big
blond bitch of a city. I hopped over here from Venice. Joy keeps me from sleeping. There
are great-looking young men97 Many French works, whose writers were struggling to
come up with a compelling subject, take on a tone of amused sympathy or virtuous indignation and simply enumerate the names and addresses of most of the homosexual bars
and associations, sometimes constituting a virtual guide to homosexual life in Berlin.
Louis-Charles Royer, in LAmour en Allemagne (1936), described how he discovered Berlin
in June 1930:
I walked into a bar to get some change and the barman asked me: Are you
French? Yes. Pederast? Well, I am not used to such direct assaults; my eyes
blinked. The barman must have taken that for assent; he squeezed my hand in his own
soft, be-ringed fingers: Pleased to meet you. Then, taking a look at the clock, he
added, You were well informed. But youve arrived a little early. Come back tonight,
around ten oclock.98
Each of Royers incursions into Berlin life plunged him into confusion. Wishing to
step into a hotel with a lady, he was taken aside by the proprietor, who asked him
whether his partner was a transvestite. Royer denied it vehemently, to which the proprietor responded: Well then, what are you doing here?
As described by foreign visitors, the whole capital seemed to be in the hands of
homosexuals. 99 While that is clearly an exaggeration, there admittedly was a great
number of meeting places. Some clubs only operated for a few months; others became
institutions. In the words of Charlotte Wolff, a young lesbian in the 1920s, and then a sexologist exiled under the Nazi regime:
96. Research in the local and departmental archives would help us to understand the homosexual subculture in the provinces; but the current work forcuses on comparisons at the national
level, and so such research has not been conducted. Nevertheless, in the present chapter and in
Chapter Seven, I provide information on homosexual life in harbor towns like Toulon, Dover and
Hamburg, which had a broad range of homosexual (but probably not lesbian) establishments.
97. Letter from Ren Crevel to Marcel Jouhandeau, late 1928, in Masques, n 17, spring 1983, p.49.
98. Louis-Charles Royer, LAmour en Allemagne, Paris, ditions de France, 1936, 225 pages, p.2.
99. They were already very numerous, before the war, for Magnus Hirschfeld speaks of more
than 50000 homosexuals in the capital, in Les Homosexuels de Berlin (1908 (reedited., Paris, Cahiers GaiKitsch-Camp, 1993, 103 pages).
37

Homo bars and nightclubs had sprung up not only in the trendy districts of west
Berlin, but also in the poor neighborhoods. One might see a line of Mercedes in front
of the homo bars as well as in front of the upper crust lesbian nightclubs. Men and
women, who may have been hetero, would greedily watch the comings and goings of
the underground society, which now goes by the horrible term subculture. Some of
those who came as onlookers would join in the fun and danced with partners of the
same sex.100
Scandal is good publicity, and the more visible establishments, like Eldorado,
started to attract more heterosexual tourists in search of exotic frissons. The community
was very fragmented: not only according to the variety of sexual demand, but also
according to social and cultural origins.
The male scene

The trendiest and best-known nightclub was Eldorado, on Lutherstrasse; it was
famed throughout Europe for its transvestite shows. But this club only very partially
reflects the homosexual life of Berlin, of which it gave a brilliant sketch. It was enlarged
and reopened in 1927 on Motzstrasse, at the corner of Kahlkreuthstrasse. It was a meeting
point for artists, writers, actors and society men; heteros and homos, Berliners and foreigners met there. At any rate, one had to be seen there. The Mikado, Blow-Kasino and
Kleist-Kasino also put on transvestite revues. The Mikado, which enjoyed an exceptional
longevity, was opened in 1907 and closed in 1932-1933. The Silhouette, at 24 Geisbergstrasse, was also a meeting place for celebrities. There, one might find the homosexual
actor Hubert von Meyerinck, Conradt Veidt, and Marlene Dietrich. The smartest clubs
were in the west of Berlin, around Blowstrasse, Nollendorfplatz up to Kurfrstendamm.
Then there was a host of homosexual clubs and bars, each one with its own distinct
character, clientele and ambiance. Some put on shows, others were simply places to flirt
and hang out, where one could find a partner for a dance or a night. These bars were the
foundation of ordinary Berlin homosexual life; some bore evocative names (like the caf
Amicitia), others were perfectly anonymous only the informed customer would know
what to expect inside. Many were tastefully decorated, with boudoir-like soft lighting
and upholstered banquettes to facilitate dialogue and enable clients to become
acquainted, with the utmost discretion. These clubs were preferred by homosexuals of
the middle class, and above all they sought to preserve their reputation and avoid embarrassing scenes, touts, gigolos and too-conspicuous personalities. Along Siegesallee were a
multitude of bars, like Zum kleinen Lwen, at 7 Skalizer Strasse, Windsbona-Kasino,
Marien-Kasino, the caf Amicitia, Palast-Europa, and Palast-Papagei. This was Homosexual Row, which led to the Brandenburg Gate. Conti-Kasino held theme evenings, a
musical soire on Tuesdays, an evening for the elite on Thursday, private parties on Saturdays. Kleist-Kasino, 14 Kleiststrasse, was frequented by the trade and banking clerks,
lower-middle-class men who savored the furnishings, the cocktails and canaps.
The last category of establishments, the pubs and beer halls, were found primarily
in central Berlin or to the north. Here, the workers and less fortunate could huddle; an
unemployed man might be had for a beer and a tip. This is the type of bar that Auden and
Isherwood visited during their stay in Berlin. Cozy Corner was, in fact, Nosters Res100. Charlotte Wolff, Hindsight, London, Quartet Books, 1980, 312 pages, p.73.
38

taurant zur Htte, 7 Zossener Strasse, near Hallesches Tor, a working-class neighborhood. It survived primarily due to its regular clientele; tourists avoided it, considering
the neighborhood none too safe. In fact, there was nothing decadent about the establishment: it was decorated with photographs of boxers and bicycle racers, and the crowd
consisted largely of young laborers who were out of work; they would sit, playing cards
and waiting for customers, their shirts open to the navel and sleeves rolled up. The
Adonis-Diele, Alexanderstrasse, Caf Fritz, 1a Neue Grnstrasse, Marburger-Diele, Nrnberger-Diele, Klubhaus Alexander-Palast, and Hohenzollern-Diele were all similar.
The Karlsbad pastry shop and caf, on Potsdamer Strasse, hosted the drug crowd,
and gigolos:
The whole room was full of noisy men and young fellows, holding forth on one
topic or another, making eloquently caressing gestures. A teenager, with great big eyes
dilated by morphine, was lounging in the middle of the room; under his jacket, one
could see his naked chest, and his feet were also naked, in sandals. He dipped and
twisted to the muted yet feral sounds of a piano and violin, extending his arms, bending his wrists, wiggling, lying down, and standing up again abruptly...101
There were also numerous cabarets catering to soldiers. Along the promenades, soldiers would be on the make, singly or in groups.102 In his journal, Klaus Mann often
evoked the homosexual subculture. Here, one can discover the names of small, unknown
pubs and beer halls for the popular classes, such as Lunte (fox tail which had a phallic
connotation in slang).
Klaus Mann proves that it was entirely possible to live an open and even vibrant
sexual life as a homosexual in the 1920s
October 30, 1931: Went to the Parisian. Brought to my table a little sailor with a
pretty nape, and who was an appalling liar. Stopped for a soup at the Jockey, made out
with Freddy.
December 4: With a nice enough young peasant (and with an enormous thing), in a place near
Kaufingerstrasse.
December 30: Went to the baths (and took a bath) and had a massage; I really like
the place, but nothing happened all the men were too fat; the masseur didnt dare
to try anything, either.
January 2, 1932: With Babs, went to Lenbachplatz. Found a boy called Narcissus. Went
with him to Bs place. All three. Funny enough, and vulgar, but exciting.
January 17: to the Private Club, a convivial homo joint with a faux-fashionable
atmosphere and a lot of transvestites. Willy spent the night with me. Love.103
The female scene

Berlin also had a well-developed and rather well-known lesbian subculture, especially after The Lesbians of Berlin came out in 1928, written by Ruth Margarite Rllig with a
preface by Magnus Hirschfeld.104 The German capital had a vast choice of lesbian estab101. Willy, quoting Ambroise Got, in Le Troisime Sexe, Paris, Paris-dition, 1927, 268 pages, p.52.
102. Magnus Hirschfeld, Les Homosexuels de Berlin, op. cit., p.72.
103. Klaus Mann, Journal. Les annes brunes, 1931-1936, Paris, Grasset, 1996, 452 pages, p.32, 37, 42
and 47-48. Italics in the original.
39

lishments, around fifty of them, each striving to satisfy the demands of the clientele: Here
each one can find her own form of happiness, for they make a point of satisfying every
taste.105
The very chic Chez ma belle-soeur (My sister-in-laws) was a womens club
located at 13 Marburger Strasse, but men were admitted, too. A 13-year-old bellboy
greeted visitors. Frescoes on the walls endeavored to evoke Mytilene, and booths were
shielded by curtains to mask the frolicking of the young women. It seems that this club
was mostly a show place for the titillation of foreigners passing through town. Indeed,
one young woman told Louis-Charles Royer that, The real ones, you know, dont come
here.106 Mostly, the distinguished lesbian would go to her private club; or she might put
in an appearance at Topp and Eldorado, two large clubs where it was good to be seen.
Dorian Gray, 57 Blowstrasse, was one of oldest and better-known homosexual establishments. It was a mixed club, with certain days reserved for women and others for men.
Friday, for example, was elite day for ladies, with dancing alternating with stage shows.
Theme nights included a Bavarian alpine festival, and a festival of the Rhenish grape
harvest. The cuisine was refined Viennese, the atmosphere was traditional and of good
quality. Salon Meyer, or Meyer Stube, was outside the center, in the west of Berlin, on
Xantener Strasse. It was a miniature bar owned by two ladies; there was no live music but
a gramophone lent some ambiance. The clientele were particularly refined: regular visitors included countesses, artists, and famous personalities. The Caf Domino, 13 Marburger Strasse, received only the top-drawer lesbians. Frozen sherry, cocktails, and
sparkling wine were sipped as jazz played in the background. The Monbijou was a very
private club indeed, located in west Berlin at Wormser and Luther Strasse; it had some
six hundred members. One could only get in if introduced by one of the members. The
interior was very elegant, separated into many small and intimate rooms; under soft
lights, surrounded by explicit illustrations, movie stars, singers and the lesbian intellectual elite sat comfortably ensconced in leather easy chairs. Twice a year a great private
ball was given at La Skala of Berlin.
In general, Berlins lesbian establishments were characterized by a refined atmosphere, soft and indirect lighting, and sentimental music. Establishments opened and
closed, as much due to the vagaries of fashion in the lesbian community as to police
action. Hohenzollern, located at 101 Blowstrasse, was one of the first cafs to tolerate
and protect lesbians; in 1928, it suffered from competition from newer establishments and
lost its reputation. Maly und Jugel was a very private club located 16 Lutherstrasse.
Window panes covered with thick curtains blocked out the street; inside, the dcor was a
subdued play of garnet red and pearl gray, with light-colored paintings, deep armchairs
and a piano. The atmosphere was chaste; people came by the couple and there were none
of those theatrical scenes of the clubs for foreigners.
The lesbian newspaper Die Freundin provides some information on these female
meeting places. They tended to pop up in the same neighborhoods, even in the same
104. Ruth Margarete Rllig (1887-1969) was a popular writer who published novels and serials
in newspapers; she also worked as a journalist for several lesbian magazines such as Die Freundin and
Garonne. She hosted stage performers, homosexuals, lesbians and transvestites at home for evenings
of singing, or spiritualism sessions.
105. Ruth Margarite Rllig, Les Lesbiennes de Berlin [1928], Paris, Cahiers Gai-Kitsch-Camp, n 16,
1992, 140 pages, p.53.
106. Louis-Charles Royer, LAmour en Allemagne, op. cit., p.14.
40

streets; some establishments hosted different clubs on different days of the week. Very
often, the same lesbians were frequent visitors to several of these establishments, and the
same formulas were found in two or three clubs. Damenklub Harmonie met every
Wednesday with the Exchange-Festsle, 32 Jakobstrasse; the Association des Amies
Thursday in Khlers Festsle, 24 Meerstrasse, the Club Heiderose every Sunday at the
Kollosseum, 62 Kommandantenstrasse. Verona-Diele was at 36 Kleiststrasse. In 1928, the
Damenklub Tatjana opened; it met Wednesday in Alexander-Palast; in 1929, the Erto
club opened at 72 Kommandantenstrasse. At the same address, the Damenklub Sappho
occupied the second floor; it met on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 7:00 PM,
and Sundays from 5:00. The Klnerhof Hotel hosted lesbians on Monday and Thursday
from 5:00 until 8:00 PM. New names and addresses appeared each year until 1932, when
new lesbian clubs appeared for the last time: Manuela, 26 Joachimstaler Strasse;
Monokel-Diele, 14 Budapester Strasse; Geisha, 72 Augsburger Strasse.
Not all the lesbians preferred the fashionable clubs; some simply went to the local
cafs or even to shady joints in bad neighborhoods. Auluka, at 72 Augsburger Strasse, was
off-color to the point of extravagance. The Caf Olala, Zielenstrasse, was rather coarse; as
many men went there as women. The Topp Cellar, or Toppkeller, 13 Schweinstrasse, was
a hideaway for women where men are tolerated as consumers and onlookers; they held
contests like the most beautiful ladys calf. Sometimes, late in the evening, famous
singers, actresses, and dancers would come in, but the general atmosphere was rather
sordid. Charlotte Wolff describes one scene:
A strange creature, a large woman who wore a black sombrero and looked like
a man, directed the dancers with an eagle eye. She invited us to join them, and we
spread out in a circle around her. She stood at the center of the circle and gave commands in a hypnotic voice. We stepped forward and back, holding a glass with one
hand and our neighbor with the other. This went on until we received the order to
drink and to throw our empty glasses over our shoulders.107
The Tavern, Georgestrasse, was a private jazz club that was used as the model for
the Skorpion in A. E. Weirauchs lesbian novel. One room was reserved for the ladies;
there was smoking, dancing, and drinking. Beer festivals, masked balls, and sorties on the
beach were periodically organized. The atmosphere was crude, and fairly sexual; arguments were frequent. Here the most haggard women in Berlin would turn up, prematurely haggard and faded.
The Club des amies was for women of the popular classes; it held balls two or three
times a week in Alexander-Palast in Landsberger Strasse; Saturdays and Sundays were
packed. Violetta, 37 Blowstrasse, was very popular; it was a center for homosexual
young women in business, saleswomen, manual laborers, and lower level employees.
Dances were held, and conferences and cultural events, and a sporting group offered
excursions. Violetta took as its mission to make love and harmony reign, to fight against
contempt for homosexuals, and to fight against the extension of 175 of the Penal code to
women. Many women came there dressed as men; evenings were organized in order to
help people meet each other; and Das Lila Lied was sung (the mauve song, the lesbian
anthem of Berlin). During certain festive evenings, each woman was entitled to pick up a
107. Charlotte Wolff, Hindsight, op. cit., p.76-77.
41

large number at the cloakroom, which she should wear very visibly. Toward midnight,
mail would be delivered, and each woman could write the number of anyone whom she
found interesting. Every means was employed to help them find partners: when the
Tyrolian was played, no woman should remain seated; everyone was to step forward,
dance, and change partners.
In 1929, Violetta and the Monbijou club were combined; to celebrate this event, a
great festival was organized on September 15 in Amerikanischen Tanzpalast, 72 Kommandantenstrasse. The two clubs then met at this address every Wednesday, Saturday and
Sunday. For the Christmas festivities in 1929, a great masked ball was held.
At the Caf Princess, 4 Gleditschstrasse, each Thursday the merry shrews would
meet; the evening went on until everyone was drunk. Other lesbian clubs also met here.
The Magic Flute was a dance hall located Kommandanturstrasse where the readership
of the lesbian newspaper Frauenliebe would meet. The masculine lesbians (Bubis) were
clearly distinguishable from the female lesbians (Mdis).
Each week, masked balls and dances were announced in Die Freundin. On April 23,
1927, a great ball was planned at the Exchange-Festsle; September 2, a great costume ball
was held in Alexander-Palast. On February 4, 1928, a great masked ball marked Mardi
Gras. Florida, at 72 Kommandantenstrasse, organized a costume ball on October 3, 1929.
In fact, there was quite a lot of dancing in Berlin. Big costume balls were frequently held
to bring together the homosexuals of the city, and homosexuals who were visiting made a
point of attending. Vita Sackville-West wrote, We went to ball of Sodomites. A great
number of them were dressed as women, but I suppose that I was, in this respect, the only
authenticate article.108
Christopher Isherwood went to a Christmas ball in 1929 at In den Zelten. He met
the great actor Conradt Veidt there. Foreign journalists tended to write rather frightened
descriptions of these evenings. Oscar Mtnier attended a masked ball at Dresdner
Strasse, the Dresdner-Casino. Inside there were 400500 people, all in costume and all of
them men. Half were dressed as women. Mtnier was especially struck by the calm and
the reserve of this assembly. Only the waltz, the scottish, mazurkas and polkas were
danced; no one looked astonished and no one laughed; the most eccentric groups did not
draw attention. Everyone was having a good time without worrying about the neighbors.
He noticed moreover that the police tolerated these gatherings. They delivered
special permits; but they did use the occasion to create a register of homosexuals. This
policy enabled them to monitor the groups discreetly while tolerating activities that did
not disturb the law and order.
Triumph of the amateurs

Not all the homosexual spots had to do with sex. They were at the same time
meeting places, hangouts, private clubs, and conference halls; various establishments
depending on a homosexual clientele enabled their members to be among their own kind,
to discuss their problems, or simply to get acquainted. The Berliner League of Friendship
met Tuesdays in a room at 89 Alt-Jakobstrasse. The Association of Friends and (Female)
108. Letter from Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, January 1929, in Louise de Salvo and
Mitchell A.Leaska (ed.), The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, London, Hutchinson, 1984,
473 pages, p.366.
42

Friends held its meetings at No. 32 on the same street. It organized costume balls, conferences on literature, art, the sciences, and group excursions. However, dating was the main
point of most of these establishments, which gave homosexuals a place where they could
do as they pleased without danger and where they meet new people discreetly.
However, even with all these bars and clubs, there was still sex in the parks and
public urinals. There were always men in the bushes in the Tiergarten; they would flee
when the police made their rounds: Near a pool, ten agents surrounded four young little
urchin lads aged about fifteen to twenty. They, too, seemed to be wearing a type of
uniform: silk shirts with Danton collars, full cut trousers in a light fabric, and patent
leather shoes.109
Berlin became the temple of male prostitution in the inter-war period. In Homosexuals of Berlin (1908), Hirschfeld already noted the existence of many safe houses, which
mostly catered to homosexuals of the higher social classes and officers who feared
blackmail. But street prostitution in particular increased in the 1920s, following the economic crisis of 1920-1923, then that of 1929.110 There were something like 650 professional
male prostitutes (Strichjunge, Puppenjunge) in Berlin in the 1920s but, if one counts the
casual or occasional ones, the number would be closer to 22,000, an enormous figure.111
Before the war, there were approximately 12,000 male prostitutes, including 400 professionals. That means there was an increase of more than 60%! 112
Male prostitutes tended to congregate more in the north and east of Berlin, most of
them on Friedrichstrasse; there might have been about sixty there, on average. There must
have been a hundred pubs that allowed male prostitutes. Boys frequented the public
places that attracted many people: fairs, expositions, festivals, pedestrian ways, train stations, parks. They came from all sorts of backgrounds; hotel employees, horse grooms,
hunters, telegraphists, drivers, salesmen and, of course, soldiers. The number of soldiers
who became prostitutes dropped after the First World War, following the measures
taken by the Ministry of Defense. In particular, soldiers in civilian clothes were stationed
at high-risk locations and were ready to intervene if they saw a soldier soliciting.
The majority of young people whom Richard Linsert studied had no professional
qualification. Forty-nine had turned to prostitution after losing their jobs. However, 19
were only prostituting themselves to cover some extra expenses and to make a little
pocket money. The others gave various reasons: for fun, to pay for something specific, to
pay the rent, out of laziness. From the sexual point of view, 31 said they were heterosexual, 34 homosexual, 22 bisexual. Eleven acknowledged masochistic tendencies; 5,
sadistic; 5 were cross-dressers. Thirty-six admitted to being alcoholics, 6 cocaine addicts.
73 lived alone, 19 stayed with their parents, 6 were homeless. While the part-time male
109. Louis-Charles Royer, LAmour en Allemagne, op. cit., p.68.
110. From 1920 to 1923, Germany suffered from galloping inflation as a consequence of the war,
the global economic crisis, the imposed payment of damages, and then of the occupation of the Ruhr.
The gold mark, which was worth 46 paper marks in January 1922, was worth 84,000 in July 1923,
24 million in September, 6 billion in October, and 1 trillion in December. Workers were hit hard by
unemployment and the erosion of their spending power, because the wages did not keep pace with
the inflation rate. In 1923, there were 210,000 unemployted in Berlin.
111. Richard Linsert, militant communist and a member of the WhK, surveyed 100 young prostitutes in Berlin, which allows us a good look at their sociological profile. His conclusions were
published in 1929, in 297, Unzucht zwischen Mnnern (Berlin, Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 130 pages). See
chapter tw.
112. I 1920, Greater Berlin had 3.8 million inhabitants; in 1939, there were 4.3 million.
43

prostitutes were hooking in their everyday clothing, the most elegant (Klassejungen)
invested in fetishistic accessories (shoes with high heels, boots) and make-up. Those who
wore a uniform were preferred: sailors, drivers, soldiers. Some, even at the age of twenty
or more, dressed as schoolboys while soliciting: that was a sure success. Hirschfeld met
the male prostitute known as B, who was very fashionable; he had about 20 to 25 customers a month and approximately 300 a year. Ten percent of them were from Berlin, 50
60% from the provinces, 3040% were foreign (mostly French and American).
The rates varied according to the popularity of the boy; a top male prostitute could
make on average 2030 RM (Reichsmark); Klassejunge got approximately 10 RM. The
prices could go down as low as 50 pfennigs. Most of the boys made less than 5 RM a day.
The weekly profits varied between 1012 RM and 6080 RM. Professionals and de luxe
prostitutes were more expensive. Some boys simply asked for a place to spend the night, a
meal, maybe some gifts. Those who practiced prostitution at a hotel were expected to give
part of what they earned to the night porter. Unlike the women, the boys were paid after
consummation. Fairly often, clients would take off; and blackmail was not uncommon.
Most of the boys hoped to find some rich man who would pick them up and take them
along on a trip. Such couples did travel, in the guise of uncle and nephew, or master and
servant.
A boys career was generally rather short; amateur male prostitutes worked the
sidewalk a year and a half, on average. They began at around the age of 17 years (although
some started as early as 14), and most were through by age 22 (although some were still at
it, at age 30). Of the hundred boys met, three worked for the police: in the local jargon
they were known as Achtgroschenjungen. If they stayed out of jail and did not catch any
disease, the boys could hope to start a business and find a normal life.
Berlin was not the only city marked by an increase in male prostitution. A survey
carried out by Dr. Hans Muser in 1933, Homosexualitt und Jugendfrsorge, focused mostly on
the town of Hamburg, which had a strong homosexual subculture based on the harbor
traffic. The district of Sankt Pauli was famous for its shady bars where men could dance
together and pick up a sailor for a few marks. It is there that Stephen Spender spent
several months between 1930 and 1933.
Among the homosexual establishments was the Hamburg Society for Scientific
Exploration, which offered medical consultations and excursions for men and women.
Then there were the Adonis-Bar and the Three-Stars, which had made names for themselves. Women met Thursday evenings at Phaline. There were approximately 3,000 male
prostitutes in Hamburg. As in Berlin, some solicited downtown, others in the bars.
Until 1924, most of the boys plied their trade in the central station, especially in the
fourth class waiting room. In 1924, the police made a sweep and cleaned up the station;
the prostitutes then spread throughout the whole city. Further police operations in 1928
and 1929 led the male prostitutes to regroup in homosexual joints. The number of prostitutes varied with the season; in the summer, they flowed out of Berlin looking for the
tourist clientele. Statistics from the Office of Youth Affairs showed a net increase in
amateur prostitution, in connection with the economic crisis. In 1929, 13% of male prostitutes only occasionally dabbled in it, and 87% were professionals. In 1930, no more than
40% were professionals; in 1931, 46%. By the same token, the proportion of minors
involved was on the rise. In 1925, 11% of the male prostitutes were minors; 35% in 1926;
49% in 1928; 52.8% in 1930. Competition was fierce; the customers wanted young boys,
the supply was abundant and the older ones could not find any takers. Often, in order to
44

keep their customers, they refused to let the new ones in on where homosexuals could
meet.
The number of unemployed who resorted to prostitution kept going up, too. In
1925, 48% of the registered male prostitutes were unemployed; in 1931, it was 83%! The
Office of Youth Affairs in Hamburg undertook to rehabilitate the young men by finding
them steady jobs and keeping an eye on them. Some of the young men were sent back to
their home regions.
The German homosexual scene thus seems to have been particularly vibrant. It
offered a wide range of services to satisfy any desire, from simple entertainment to ultra
chic dance halls, from timid pick-ups to the unrestrained hunt for sex. While Berlin was
clearly the center, the provinces had something to offer, too.113 Anyone who read the good
homosexual newspapers (which were available to anyone by subscription and under discreet wrappers), could not miss finding out about such and such establishment in their
area, or that friends met regularly at a small and nondescript caf. For many who would
not have dared to solicit in the street nor to approach obvious male prostitutes, the clubs
were the entre to the homosexual community.
London, or the Glamour of Uniforms

The homosexual scene in London in the 1920s, lively as it was, was but a shadow of
that in Berlin. There were far fewer establishments, and they were certainly less picturesque. The large costume balls that gave the German capital such a reputation were
lacking altogether and homosexual dances were rare. The homosexual associations had
no money, so there were practically no meeting places at all. The London scene was also
more spread out and harder to identify than the scene in Berlin. On the other hand,
London led the field in terms of military prostitution and the parks were the favorite place
for homosexual assignations.
Not much of scene at all

Given the frequent police raids, homosexual life in London was primarily restricted
to the night: and one had to be initiated to know the main meeting spots. These places
generally did not set out to attract a homosexual clientele; they were places that were
taken over by homosexuals, without the owners always knowing whom they were
dealing with.
The Maida Vale neighborhood was known for its very gay atmosphere; many
homosexual artists and writers settled there and so the place was soon colonized. Lionel
113. For a study on the homosexual scene in a provincial German town, see Cornelia Limpricht,
Jrgen Mller and Nina Oxenius, Verfhrte Mnner, das Leben der Klner Homosexuellen im dritten Reich
(Cologne, Volksblatt Verlag, 1991, 146 pages). To a far greater extent than in France or in England,
German towns of a certain size tended to have specialized establishments and, especially, a local
headquarters for various homosexual associations. Thus, the Deutsche Freundschaftsbund was flourishing all over Germany. In Brunswick, its offices were at 3 Schlossstrasse. In Karlsruhe, meetings
were held at Prinz Wilhelm, 20 Hirschstrasse. There were affiliates in Eisenach, Weimar, Frankfurt,
Krefeld, Leipzig, Saarbruck, and Dortmund. In Breslau, Sagitta welcomes homosexuals; in Chemnitz,
there was the club Nous; Kassel had the club Fortuna. In Dsseldorf, the Club of Noble Sociability
met at the restaurant Neue Welt. In Dortmund, one would go to Heinrich Burstedde for dancing,
and in Frankfurt, to the caf Reichsland.
45

Charlton, Tom Wichelo, Stephen Spender and his friend Tony Hyndman, William Plomer
and J.R. Ackerley lived there. In London, homosexual evenings started in the galleries of
the theaters and the variety halls, in particular the Prince of Wales, Holborn and the Palladium, which were used as meeting places and hunting grounds. A few became favorites,
including those of G.S. Melvin, Bartlett and Ross, which put on transvestite spectacles.
Various plays were very popular with homosexuals. In The Green Bay Tree, by Frank
Vosper, a homosexual aristocrat picks up a working-class boy and remodels him in his
own image. Similarly, Children in Uniform (the English version of Jeunes Filles en uniformes by
Christa Winsloe) was a great success. After the theater, homosexuals headed off to
certain cafs.
The Cri was located in the basement of the Criterion hotel. Most of the homosexual clients took the service entrance on Jermyn Street, but some triumphantly entered
by the grand staircase on Piccadilly and were greeted by applause. Famous transvestites
were regulars there, like Lady Lavender, a big blond twenty-year-old (who was in fact
more like forty), or Rosie, Baroness Bothways, a Welshman of indeterminate age who
dressed sumptuously and was covered with gold chains and bracelets. In spite of his reputation as a millionaire, Rosie was in fact cook for a very rich old homosexual who lent
him his clothes and jewels for his nightly excursions in the West End.
Coventry Street Corner House became a cult spot. Homosexuals would spend the
evening there, but they might also turn up during the afternoon, in a room on the first
floor that they called the Lily Pond. The caf was run by two old ladies who never noticed
a thing, no matter how flagrant their guests might be. Sundays, one could go to a tea salon
called The Tea Kettle, located one minute from Piccadilly Circus. There were no exclusively homosexual clubs; but certain clubs that catered to people in show business were
mainly homosexual, like Caravan Club, Rumbaba Club, Apollo Club and Florida. Neither
were there many homosexual pubs. There was the Cavour Bar and JBs, in Leicester
Square; Dickens on Edgware Road, The French Hour and York Minster in Soho; the
ground floor of Queens, in Coventry Street, was a homosexual haunt as was Pakenham,
next to the Wellington barracks where the soldiers of the Guard gathered; The Running
Horse, near Shepherd Market, was very much in fashion at one time; and, finally, the Long
Bar of the Restaurant Trocadero, in Shaftesbury Avenue, which was reserved for men.
The police from time to time descended on the pubs, took names and arrested
potential homosexuals. That meant the end of the pub as a homosexual meeting place.
Sometimes all it took was for a group of homosexuals to meet at a caf and find the owner
obliging, and it would end up becoming a homosexual favorite. Quentin Crisp and his
friends met in a caf on Old Compton Street called the Black Cat; he said it resembled a
dozen other cafs in the area, with a horseshoe-shaped bar area that was rarely cleaned, a
linoleum floor in black and white squares and mirrors everywhere. There he and his counterparts would sit, while one dull day succeeded another, loveless night followed loveless
night; and they sipped tea, combed their hair and tried each others lipsticks.114
For the women, the places for socializing were far fewer, and there was no comparison with Berlin and Paris. The Orange Tree Club, which opened in 1921, became very
famous and women could dance together there. In the 1930s, Gateways Club, or Gates,
became the lesbian center of the city. Radclyffe Hall gives a rather sordid description of
the female bars in The Well of Loneliness. For her, the Narcissus and Alecs Bar were the
46

symbols of all that homosexuals lacked, even if they did offer some place to meet: Where
could one go if not to the bars? There was no other place where two women could dance
together without causing comments or ridicule, without being looked at like monsters.115
One of the great homosexual events of the London season was the charity ball organized by Lady Malcolm at the Albert Hall. Initially, it was intended for domestics and
tickets had to be obtained. But as it was a costume ball, it served as a pretext for all kinds
of fun. Famous women were represented. The final procession was a great moment. The
ball evolved with the passing of the years until it became a drag ball.
Pick-ups and prostitutes

In London, solicitation principally took the form of cottaging; it consisted in
making the rounds of the various urinals of the city looking for quick and anonymous
meetings. The most likely places were the urinals at the Victoria and South Kensington
stations and the public toilets at Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner. The urinals were
frequently subjected to police raids; and there were often agents provocateurs, which
made it all the more dangerous. Then other places were used as pick-up sites, like the
arcades of the County Fire Office in Piccadilly Circus, the Turkish baths at Jermyn Street,
the isolated streets of Bridge Places, Dove Mews, Dudmaston Mews or Falconberg; in
Clareville Street, Leicester Public garden or Grosvenor Hill, one could find somebody for
the night.116
Most of the male prostitutes operated around Piccadilly Circus and Leicester
Square. Quentin Crisp remembers his astonishment at discovering this shady world.
There he was, wandering along Piccadilly or Shaftesbury Avenue, when he ran into some
young fellows standing at the crossroads. One of them said to him, Isnt it terrible this
evening, darling? Not a man on the horizon. Dilly isnt what it used to be. Crisp adds that
the Indian boy at school had stunned the students by telling them that there were male
prostitutes in Birmingham, but theyd never believed that they would really see one themselves. Now, there they were and recognizable to everyone or almost everyone,
posing like fashion models, with hand on hip and hip thrust forward.117 One could take
his conquest to a cheap hotel on the West End; J.R. Ackerley found some in Mayfairs
Shepherd Market, a zone known for prostitution. You could rent a room there, no questions asked. The location was not very promising, however: 11 Half Moon Street. It is in
this kind of room that one commits suicide.118
In addition to the professionals, there were docile characters whom one would first
take along to dine, and there were boys who were kept.119 As in Germany, but to a lesser
degree, male prostitution expanded due to unemployment. At the Cat and Flute in
Charing Cross, young workmen would be found. The contemporary practice was that
two would sit together and share a beer. A client would approach and offer to pay for the
115. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness, op. cit., p.403.
116. See Richard Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and punishment, op. cit., p.146.
118. J.R. Ackerley, note dated 1921, cited by Peter Parker, A Life of J.R. Ackerley, London, Constable,
1989, 465 pages, p.40.
119. For details on the life of men who were kept as lovers, see John and Bernard in Between the
Acts, op. cit., 137-143 and 117-124; as for professional gigolos, see Tony, ibid., p.114-150.
47

second one. After a moment one of the boys would step away, leaving the two others
together. These boys were not necessarily homosexual, but got into prostitution due to
the economic situation. Some of them said they were saving up to get married.120 The
rates were set, with 10 shillings added if there were sodomy.
Soldiers (mainly from the Guards brigade) and sailors made up another category of
prostitutes. Unlike the workmen, they were not in prostitution as a result of need but
rather by tradition. The best places to meet them were the London parks, especially Hyde
Park, Kensington Gardens and Saint James Park, Tattersall Tavern in Knightsbridge, and
the Drum, by the Tower of London, for sailors.121 The guards red uniform and the sailors
costumes exerted a fascination and an erotic attraction that was constantly evoked by
contemporaries: everyone prefers something in uniform. Any national costume or traditional equipment can be sexually stimulating and there are as many eccentric sexual
tastes as there are kinds of costumes.122
The sailors uniform was particularly appreciated for the tight fit and especially for
the horizontal fly. Moreover, while soldiers generally had very little time to share, sailors
had many weekends. For a walk in the park, a soldier received about 2 shillings; a sailor
might get up to 3 pounds. Stephen Tennant wrote about this fascination, noting one
sailors tight little derrire.123 Anecdotes from those days include the story of an evening
organized by Edward Gathorne-Hardy where a contingent of soldiers of the Guard were
invited as special guests; in another, a soldier was offered as a gift to the master of the
house.124 To the soldiers, prostitution was a tradition; it seems that the young recruits
were initiated by their elders as they were being integrated into the regiment. The customers were designated twanks, steamers or fitters mates. A good patron was preferred;
thus Ackerley received a letter one day announcing the death of one of his lovers and
another soldier from his regiment offering himself as a replacement. This part-time prostitution allowed soldiers to get some pocket money, which they then spent on drinks or
with prostitutes of their own. These activities were not entirely safe, for many a soldier or
sailor could turn out to be quite brutal. Charles Damon, a former turn-of-the-century decadent, a relic of Oscar Wildes circle, is supposed to have murmured to Nol Coward: My
dear, my ambition is to die crushed between the thighs of a soldier of the guard!125
While London obviously had a far vaster choice of homosexual entertainment,
there were also some good places in the provinces. In the big cities, especially university
towns, homosexuals could get together at certain pubs (the Still and Sugarloaf at Cambridge, for example). The big annual rowing race between Oxford and Cambridge was a
good occasion to meet. That is where J.R. Ackerley met E.M. Forster, Colleer Abbott,
Lionel Charlton, Tom Wichelo, Harry Daley, their various lovers, and quite a number of
police officers, soldiers, sailors and other young delinquents who were linked by a
common secret.
In the 1920s, J.R. Ackerley, Raymond Mortimer and Eddy Sackville-West, inter alia,
went to Portsmouth. In the 1930s, due to increased repression in the capital, more of them
p.81.
120. Cited by George Mallory, Gay in the Twenties, Gay News, n 30, p.9.
121. See Chapter Seven, as well.
124. Cited by Peter Parker, A Life of J.R. Ackerley, op. cit., p.114.
125. Cited by Philip Hoare, Noel Coward: A Biography, London, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995, 605 pages,
48

turned up in harbor cities, in particular Brighton, which was easily accessible for the
evening by the 6:00 PM. rapid train for 4 shillings round trip, or for the weekend for only
10 shillings. One of the discreet locations that accepted homosexuals was the hotel The
Old Ship, which had a wing reserved for men only. The room doors did not close, which
allowed for easy coming and going. Several pubs were accepted homosexuals, in particular Pigotts, on St. James Street; the Eastern, in Montpellier Street; and the Star of
Brunswick. A section of the beach was reserved for men and, in fact, homosexuals took it
over.126 The city of Dover was also favored by homosexuals, where four regiments were
stationed along with a considerable number of sailors. J.R. Ackerley went to many pubs,
the British Queen, Granville, Prince Regent, and Clarendon; he had an apartment where
he invited many friends. The city was host to homosexual celebrities like T.C. Worsley,
Graham Bell, Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, E.M. Forster, Jack
Sprott, and John Hampson; Lionel Charlton and Tom Wichelo settled there for good;
William Plomer lived there for a year. Forster jokingly said that, if a bomb fell on the city,
it would have freed the country of almost all its undesirables.127
The rates were low: 10 shillings on average, but nothing was guaranteed; many
male prostitutes were dishonest and dangerous; the city was organized around sex; the
sailors and the soldiers who prostituted themselves then spent their money on girls. The
myth of Dover was boosted by W.H. Audens poem, Dover, which evokes with many an
ambiguity and double entendre the night life and homosexual meetings, and describes the
atmosphere of a city whose rhythm followed the venal relations by which its populace
passed the time:
Soldiers crowd into the pubs in their pretty clothes,
As pink and silly as girls from a high-class academy;
The Lion, The Rose, The Crown, will not ask them to die,
Not here, not now: all they are killing is time,
A pauper civilian future.
...
The cries of the gulls at dawn are sad like work:
The soldier guards the traveller who pays for the soldier,
Each prays in a similar way for himself, but neither
Controls the years or the weather. Some may be heroes:
Not all of us are unhappy. 128
Londons homosexual scene seems to have been more traditional than the German
scene: it was on the defensive, which is a sign of greater police repression and less tol126. All descriptions of the homosexual scene in London and the provinces has been reconstructed from the testimonies of Roy, Sam, Bernard, Barry and John, in Between the Acts; the testimony
of Gifford Skinner, Cocktails in the Bath, loc. cit.; of Galileo, The Gay Thirties, Gay News, n 54, p.1112; and of George Mallory, Gay in the Twenties, loc. cit.
127. Cited by Peter Parker, A Life of J.R. Ackerley, op. cit., p.212.
128. W.H. Auden, Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957, London, Faber & Faber, 1966, 351 pages, p.98.
The Lion, The Rose and The Crown are names of pubs that were frequented by soldiers and homosexuals. W.H. Auden slips in references that would be understood only by those in the know.
49

erance for overt display. The English homosexual scene had merely infiltrated the city,
rather than springing up within it. And, due to the higher level of repression, the clubs
and the pick-up scene were more directly sexual: there was little time and opportunity for
small talk and idle chat, much less a real exchange of information. In the bars, simply
asking for a cigarette was enough to pick up a partner, without attracting the attention of
anyone else. In essence, the English homosexual culture was an underground culture,
closed to the uninitiated, inaccessible to timid, and concentrated very closely in obscure
districts of London and the ports.
Paris, Montmartre, and Getting Caught

Paris held a special position in the 1920s. In a climate of relative tolerance, many
specialized homosexual and lesbian establishments were opened, and the capital gained a
reputation for the variety of its night-time pleasures.129 When the Nazis cracked down in
Berlin in the mid-1930s, Paris essentially became the new center of homosexual life.
Dance time
The homosexual venues were mostly found in one of three locations: Montmartre,
Pigalle and Montparnasse. Since the end of the 19th century, Montmartre had been the
main gathering place for Parisian lesbians, where they could be seen sitting together at
the sidewalk cafs or dancing at the Moulin-Rouge. Lulu de Montparnasse opened The
Monocle, on Edgar-Quinet boulevard one of the first lesbian nightclubs. All the
women there dressed as men, in Tuxedos, and wore their hair in a bob. Paris had many
homosexual bars: Tonton, on rue Norvins, in Montmartre; la Petite Chaumire; Palmyre,
on place Blanche; Libertys; Rubis; Tanagra; Rcamier; The Maurice Bar; Chez Ma
Cousine on rue Lepic; Graff, place Blanche (where Crevel was a regular); the Clair de lune,
on place Pigalle, was open from three in the afternoon until five oclock in the morning
and was popular with marines and soldiers; and Mon Club, at the end of a dead-end off
the avenue de Clichy, where salesmen and office workers met in the basement. There
were also Chez Leon, near Les Halles; la Bole, on the Rive Gauche, in the passage des
Hirondelles; and Chez Julie, rue Saint-Martin. La Folie, on rue Victor-Mass, became the
Taverne Ligeoise on rue Pigalle. Les Troglodytes was a private club.
The Petite Chaumire (the little thatched cottage) was a picturesque establishment that drew sensation-seeking foreigners. The scene is described in Le Troisime
Sexe, by Willy:
129. Gilles Barbedette and Michel Carassou present serious research on Parisian homosexual
meeting places between the wars, in Paris gay 1925 (Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 1981, 312 pages),
and Brassa in Le Paris secret des annes trente (Paris, Gallimard, 1976, 190 pages). I will thus repeat some
of their conclusions. To round out the list, I also consulted the testimony of Willy (Le Troisime Sexe,
op. cit.), Charles-tienne (Notre-Dame-de-Lesbos, Paris, Librairie des Lettres, 1919, 309 pages, and Le Bal
des folles, Paris, Curio, 1930, 255 pages) and Michel du Coglay (Chez les mauvais garons, op. cit.) Most of
these establishments did not survive more than a year, as a result of police raids, the frequent scandals that ruined the reputation of the clubs, and the clienteles insatiable desire for something new.
50

The pianist gives a prelude to a shimmy, and as if on cue the professionals who are
paid to give the viewers a spectacle immediately latch onto one another. They undulate more than dance, and thrust their pelvises obscenely, shimmying their bosoms
and delicately grasping the leg of their trousers, which they raise above their shiny
boots with each step forward, all the while winking at the customers. They wear very
fine clothing, and some appear to have built up their chests with cotton wadding.
Others wear low-cut kimonos, and one of them wears an Oriental costume all in silver
lam.130
Many of these establishments are reputed to have engaged in drug trafficking, too.
Almost all the bars for pederasts in Montmartre, or near the porte Saint-Denis and the
porte Saint-Martin, are cocaine dens, where selling and using are common.131
However, it was at the homosexual balls that they could get together on a large
scale. Such events were very popular in those times. The Sainte-Genevive Mountain
dance, with accordion music, was held behind the Pantheon, and evolved into a drag ball
on the day of Mardi Gras. Male and female couples were seen, and women danced
together. Magic-City, on rue Cognacq-Jay, was the most famous. A drag ball for men of all
ages and every social background, it was banned after February 6, 1934. Following this
prohibition, homosexuals tried unsuccessfully to revert to normal balls and ended up
slipping off to the outskirts of town. For instance, to celebrate Christmas in 1935, a
hundred homosexuals traveled fifty kilometers outside of Paris, by coach, for their midnight supper.
Magic-City, due to its sinful reputation, attracted spectators as well as homosexuals, so that inverts were often greeted by a crowd of gawkers:
For it was a very Parisian thing for some [of the normal people] to come and visit
the aunties at Magic every year. Their presence was always a nightmare for me; not
because I was afraid of being spotted by them, since I might well be just a dilettante,
but because I knew what homosexuals had to fear when these Peeping Toms
showed up at these balls... For them, the aunties at Magic represented Sodom,
whereas in fact they were nothing more than a disturbing caricature.132
This was the central topic of Charles-tiennes novel, Le Bal des folles (1930). Despite
the fictionalized aspect, one can assume that the author paints a fairly true-to-life picture,
especially with regard to the ambiance and the reactions of the onlookers. He places
himself in the position of the viewer who is completely foreign to the homosexual milieu,
who discovers, with a mixture of amazement, distaste and amusement, the largest gathering of Parisian queens, and he describes how the crowd gathered to watch the transvestites shouts insults and threats.133 Others comment, How can they be allowed to
insult the world this way! Today, we are entitled to respect as much as to fun.134
People came there to be seen, and certainly to see others:
130. Willy, Le Troisime Sexe, op. cit., p.173-174.

131. Ibid., p.177-178.
132. Alain Rox, Tu seras seul, Paris, Flammarion, 1936, 403 pages, p.258.
133. Charles-tienne, Le Bal des folles, op. cit., p.153.
134.Ibid., p.154.
51

After the bruising attack outside, here the reception was more restrained, but
quite as bitter, inside. All along the balustrade, clusters of people perched, climbed,
and packed together to the point of smothering, raised a mocking jeer: two hundred
heads with eyes flaming and mouths hurling insults... a Greek chorus of poisonous
epithets, ridicule, and slurs....135
This was certainly the greatest homosexual attraction in Paris, not to be missed for
anything in the world. Through their costumes, the transvestites expressed all the exuberance and vitality of a community kept closely under wraps all the rest of the year and
wildly satirized the normal world through exaggerated, almost archetypal feminine and
virile characters: countesses dressed in crinoline, mad virgins, Oriental dancers cavorting
with sailors, hoodlums, and soldiers.
Pretty much the same ambiance prevailed at the Wagram Ball, which was also held
during Lent. Charles-tiennes description of it, in Notre-Dame-de-Lesbos, sounds like
Magic-City. His portraits of the transvestites give us a good idea of the general color.
Didine was one example: Stuffed into a yellow brocade dress, wearing a red wig topped
by a trembling tiara of paste, the dress low-cut and in the back naked to the waist,
revealing the physique of a prize fighter, a man climbed the staircase, twisting adroitly
and with meticulous gestures lifting the long train of her skirt.136
The list of the nicknames is particularly revealing: Fontanges, Svign, Montespan,
the Duchess of Bubble, the Infante Eudoxie, the Mauve Mouse, the Dark One, Sweetie Pie,
Frda, the Englishwoman, Mad Maria, the Muse, the Teapot, the She-wolf, Sappho, Wet
Cat, Little Piano, Princess of the Marshes, Marguerite of Burgundy, etc. This was a
triumph of camp, a tinsel aristocracy that mocked the traditional hierarchies and values.
Like Magic-City, the Wagram Ball attracted a crowd of spectators, but of lower-class
origins. From the Avenue des Terns to the parc Monceau, from la Muette to ltoile, all
the laborers from the surrounding area would flock to Wagram. It was something of a
ball for the household help, but others came, too, from Point-du-Jour and La Villette,
looking for a treat.... 137
These were the homosexual centers in Paris; some second-tier locations existed as
well: the Champs-lyses was the in place for a lofty clientele including members of
parliament and men of letters; the English gathered at a tea house opposite the Tuileries;
others congregated at the porte Saint-Martin while the Champs-de-Mars was monopolized by the Italians. The Gaumont cinema was a notorious place for pick-ups, as was the
Berlitz bazaar, on the broad boulevards. And finally, there were several dance halls in the
Bastille neighborhood, especially in rue Lappe, where tipsy sailors and colonial troops
could be seen. This was not strictly speaking a homosexual scene, but men could dance
together and one could easily find a partner for the night.
Daniel Gurin describes the atmosphere of this workingmans neighborhood:
I was a regular at one of the popular dance halls on rue Lappe, near the Bastille,
where workmen, prostitutes, society women, johns, and aunts all danced. In those
relaxed and natural days, before the cops took over France, a chevalier could go out in
public with a mate of the same sex, without being considered crazy. From its little
135. Ibid., p.155.

136. Charles-tienne, Notre-Dame-de-Lesbos, op. cit., p.62.
137. Ibid., p.67.
52

loggia the orchestra, dominated by the accordion, carried us away on its tantalizing
rhythms. Once in a while some tough would try to start a fight, but not very seriously;
the whores fussed with their chignons. When there was a raid, it was rare and paternalistic, the so-called morality brigade was lenient and discreet. We sat in peace and
sipped our traditional diabolo.138
However, not all the witnesses shared Gurins enthusiasm. What you see there
are little delinquents, not too carefully washed but heavily made up, with caps on their
heads and sporting brightly colored foulards; these are guys who, when they fail to make a
buck here, will certainly be found hauling coal or other cargo.139
Night life
As a city of homosexual delights, Paris distinguished itself from Berlin by the large
number of pick-up joints and prostitution. Although there were practically no places for
meeting and socializing, the baths and even homosexual flop-houses were innumerable.
In certain public urinals, also known as tea-houses or tea cups, solicitation was
unrestrained. The urinals were round, with three stalls; one could discreetly observe the
activity next door and join in, if one wished. If you were caught, you risked three months
to two years in prison for offending public decency and a fine of 500 to 4,500 francs.
Homosexuals mostly circulated around the urinals on the grand boulevards, in the
railway stations, at the Invalides, the Champs-de-Mars, the Trocadro, and the Champslyses, in Montmartre, Montparnasse, the boulevard de Courcelles, Edgar-Quinet boulevard, Haussmann boulevard, Malesherbes boulevard, at the Batignolles, Pre-Lachaise,
la Villette, les Halles, the Latin Quarter and at the Observatory.
Those were places for hunting solo; in the public parks, especially the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes, the well-born mingled with male prostitutes and hustlers of all sorts; then, too, there was the more romantic Park Monceau, where
homosexual couples strolled in summertime, and finally the Tuileries, where queens
known by their noms de guerre would meet: Mme. de Lamballe, Mme. de Pompadour, etc.140
According to Daniel Gurin, the barge No, moored at the canal Saint-Martin near the
Bastille, was a homosexual joint. Lastly, the swimming pools were still good places to try
ones luck. Gurin especially cites the UCJG pool (Union of Young Christians), on rue
Trvise, where visitors would swim naked after exercising or taking a walk, and the one
on rue Pontoise, where people would slip, two by two, into the cabins to make love. 141
Male prostitution in Paris was well organized; in contrast to Berlin and London,
most of the male prostitutes were professionals and operated within specialized establishments. Even Proust, as early as in A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) mentioned these male brothels where the most demanding clients could be satisfied. The
middle-class customer was reassured by the family atmosphere; he had quite a wide
choice, the dcor was acceptable, and there was relative anonymity. The fear of robbery,
aggression and blackmail were also reduced.
138. Daniel Gurin, Autobiographie de jeunesse, Paris, Belfond, 1972, 248 pages, p.169.
139. Willy, Le Troisime Sexe, op. cit., p.162-163.
140. Michel du Coglay, Chez les mauvais garons, op. cit.
141. Cit in Gilles Barbedette and Michel Carassou, Paris gay 1925, op. cit.
53

Certain houses were equipped to satisfy the more extreme requests. Maurice Sachs
noted,
I had not hitherto even suspected that there was any homosexual activity going
on there. Someone suggested that I try an establishment on XXX Street which, operating under the cover of a public bath, dissimulated an active business in male prostitution, where soft lads too lazy to seek regular jobs earned money to bring home to their
wives by sleeping with men, for it is striking that this deviant youth neither derived
pleasure nor became habituated to the practice of these infamous vices.142
Willy also mentions these establishments; one on rue Tiquetonne, in another part
of Les Ternes, and another near Saint-Augustin:
Having identified a young man whose style is particularly pleasing, one slips some
small change into the young bath attendants damp hand, and he promptly notifies the
attractive young man that a Monsieur wishes a massage session. And then one is shut
up in a private cubicle with a curtain at the door, and, hey, presto! Your soul mate
appears, and sets to work in his capacity as a masseur to restore movement to the
unresponsive member.143
Another place, on rue de la Folie-Mricourt, was arranged to facilitate sexual

exchanges: ...all along both sides of the bath, benches were arrayed around tables in
small, separated niches, where patrons sat together in bathrobes, with piano music emanating from a semicircular stage at the back of the room.144
Many male prostitutes worked independently, in a fairly cohesive world having its
own codes, slang, and signs of recognition.145 Most of the gigolos used noms de guerre, often
inspired by show business: Mistinguett, Baker, Greta, Marlene, Gaby, Crawford, or Mae
West. Sometimes they were disguised, and always heavily made up: All the painted
youth of the boulevard de Clichy were there, including Messaline, with her dyed hair.146
Cross-dressers operated mainly at Pigalle, in Clichy, and Rochechouart, but there
were also some in Montmartre. The rates and the means of payment varied. On the first
go, a gigolo could earn 200 to 300 francs a night, but thereafter the tariff might drop to 50
francs; and he still had to pay the hotel a fee, on top of the price of the room. On the other
hand, if the customer were rich, the hotel paid a commission to the male prostitute. There
were subscription systems for timid customers, family men who did not want to be
noticed; they could see the prostitute once a week, or twice per month, for example.
The gigolos lived together and formed a subculture within the Parisian underworld. They installed themselves in the promenades of Parisian theaters, where they targeted their next customers and flaunted their charms: The ladies (as they were called)
142. Maurice Sachs, Le Sabbat [written in 1939, publi en 1946], Paris, Gallimard, 1960, 298 pages,
p.194.
143. Willy, Le Troisime Sexe, op. cit., p.181.
144. Alain Rox, Tu seras seul, op. cit., p.282.
145. For a good description of the milieu, see Franois Carlier, La Prostitution antiphysique (1887;
reedited., Paris, Le Sycomore, 1981, 247 pages): The head of the morality brigade at the Paris prefecture between 1850 and 1870 used various terms to distinguish between prostitutes (honteuses,
persilleuses, travailleuses) and clients (tantes, tapettes, corvettes, rivettes). See also
Francis Carco, Jsus-la-Caille (1914; Paris, Mercure de France, 250 pages), Charles-tienne, Les
Dsexus (1924; Paris, Curio, 267 pages), Michel du Coglay, Chez les mauvais garons (1938; op. cit.).
146. Francis Carco, Jsus-la-Caille, op. cit., p.76.
54

chatted. Then, as the hour advanced, Olga set off for a date at the steam bath, Titine
seduced a strapping man and Birdie readily accepted the first serious invitation presented.147
Not every male prostitute operated the same way. Along with the beautiful young
men strolling the boulevards, there were tougher characters whose main concern was to
make the customer cough up some money, by any means necessary. These boys often
operated in pairs: while one was working the urinals, the other lurked, club in hand, ready
to jump on the recalcitrant customer. Some carried fake unemployment cards, which protected them from arrest for vagrancy. Unlike the gigolos, they were not so much homosexuals as little thugs looking for an easy buck. They would justify their actions by
bragging and by denying the sexual aspect of their profession: I took that job because I
said to myself that it was cleanest or the least dirty, and the least risky. Whats the big
deal? In any case, robbing these old bastards, I do their kids and their wives a service.148
The robbed and cheated customer was in a bind: if he filed a complaint, the police would
mock him, insult him, and even abuse him, so he was hardly likely to call attention to
what had happened.
In many instances, a guy controlled one or more male prostitutes. He was not up
to the level of Charlot-des-Halles, who had eight or ten minors under his control, and who
disdained him entirely.149 Commonly, young boys who had not yet been initiated into
their profession would work under the wing of an older male prostitute. A stout brunette, La Marseillaise, ran two pale little apprentices and pocketed their receipts. Both
minors, Pompom-Girl and Lolotte would trot along nicely in front of her, and she would
announce, I have two good-looking boys, here, Mister.150
Cross-dressers worked the same territory as women prostitutes, who often complained of unfair competition. The two types of prostitution were not, however, entirely
at odds with each other. Sometimes, a pimp might have both girls and boys, and a prostitute might sometimes get together with a gigolo: How often does a girl fall in love with
a Jesus? The ladies didnt have any compunction over taking the most ambiguous artists
from the Moulin Rouge as lovers. They were all free agents.151 This sort of goings on was
viewed very unfavorably in the homosexual world, as the butches did not like to see
anyone horning in on their prerogatives and having the drips ridicule them. You dont
know Birdie. She cannot stand the mignards. She sees red. When she heard that a woman
had deceived her man with an aunt, it was he who felt like a cuckold and who wanted to
be avenged.152
Social exclusion added to the problems of financial dependence. Gigolos were not
accepted; they were scorned by just about everyone, including many women. Therefore,
they were particularly vulnerable to the settling of accounts in the underworld. This was
a chauvinist milieu where it was important to affirm ones virility, even ones brutality;
gigolos were suspected of being rats and were not trusted. Paradoxically, for this reason
they were often denounced to the police by thugs looking to put themselves in a good
light: He knew Corsicas instinctive hatred for ambiguous couples and, like Corsica, he
147. Francis Carco, Jsus-la-Caille, op. cit., p.151
148. Ptit Louis, cited by Michel du Coglay, Chez les mauvais garons, op. cit., p.39.
149. Ibid., p.239.
150. Ibid., p.134.
151. Francis Carco, Jsus-la-Caille, op. cit., p.104.
152. Ibid., p.65.
55

hated Bamboo, Birdie and others who were of the same species but did not show it.
Indeed, in Montmartre he satisfied his urge to violence by encouraging the police to take
action, meanwhile declaring, in the bars: Death to the she-asses and death to the
aunts!153 Also, very often, the gigolo was the designated fall guy, sacrificed without
remorse, rejected by the very circle from which he came. His life expectancy was relatively
short and he often ended his days in indigence: the trade was profitable only during a
youth that quickly faded,154 and the hopes of moving over into other criminal sectors
remained slim, since the reputation of such people made them complete outcasts from the
start. Moreover, gigolos were often addicted to opium and coke, which accelerated their
decline.
In the 1920s and 1930s, professional male prostitutes faced competition on their
own terrain by unregulated soliciting on the part of young workmen. Andr Gide, in his
journal, mentioned his astonishment at this trend. According to Roger [Martin], nine out
of ten young men who resort to prostitution are by no means homosexual. They do it
without any sense of repugnance, but solely for the money, which by the way enables
them to maintain a mistress, with whom they like to go about during the day.155
The economic crisis may have encouraged temporary prostitution, but it seems
that this phenomenon was less widespread in France than elsewhere, perhaps because
the crisis hit there later.156 Amateur prostitution in Paris is explained not so much by any
urgent financial need as by the allure of the good life, expensive gifts, sometimes an introduction into a higher social milieu, and a general atmosphere of sexual license. It is so
easy to allow oneself to be caressed by any hand, when one closes ones eyes. And then,
without expecting it in the least, one ends up finding that one has developed a taste for
it.157
These amateur male prostitutes were likely to come to grief. Having been introduced to another world, the lad soon felt ill at ease at his work place and hoped to escape
from it by becoming attached to a patron. This kind of adventure generally ended in
misery, for it was the working-class origin of the boy and his amateurism that so fascinated the customer. Joining the crowd of professional male prostitutes, painted and jaded
and spewing slang, the working boy lost his principal attraction:
153. Ibid., p.9-10.

154. An article appeared in La Vie parisienne, 1934, p.1307, showed that some of them managed to
get away with it for quite a long time: a young fellow dressed in a navy uniform and beret was the
main attraction at a certain homo nightclub in Montmartre. He spoke like a child, and had big eyes.
The police put an end to his reign. They asked him for his papers, and he took out his military record,
saying: I am a war veteran, here is the list of campagns I was in from 1914 to 1916. The old
gentlemen must have fallen out of their seats; the evidence was incontrovertible: the boy was 40
years old!
155. Andr Gide, Journal, 1889-1939, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1951, 1374 pages,
24 October 1932, p.1144-1145.
156. Germanys industrial output fell, starting in 1929. By spring 1930, the crisis hit Great Britain.
France was not affected until fall of 1931.
157. Ren Crevel, Mon corps et moi, Paris, ditions du Sagittaire, 1926, 204 pages, p.54-55.
56

A child of the poor neighborhoods,... who can no longer stand to look at Nini, now
that he has learned to appreciate the torso of the young man to whom he has sold himself as a joke, just to try it,... One day, he throws away his workmans tools A pot of
cream softens the face. Now, in the evening, he goes to the dance halls. Foreigners like
places such as Notre-Dame...he quickly learns how to choose the prettiest ties. He has
a whole collection of them. He dances well, he sings. He makes an art of it.158
These boys were a mainstay of cosmopolitan Parisian night life. Professional prostitutes recruited middle-class men from Paris or the provinces, habitus with well-defined
tastes and not very much interested in trying something new and even less interested
in having their reputations compromised by showing up at trendy places. But amateurs,
workmen, gangsters and sailors on leave were very much in demand. It is they whom the
rich foreign tourists, especially the Americans, wanted to meet in order to have a good
story to tell when they went home. Proud and trembling with false outrage, they could
say that they had had an adventure with a real operator. Ren Crevel gives us a little
vignette:
The little scoundrel was shaved so smooth, his neck looked so white draped as
it was in a beautiful red scarf, waiting at a table with a glass of wine; a friend to help
you forget the rain and loneliness of the night,... The teasing and flirting might include
a little English learned from American soldiers during the war. The foreigner would
invite the boy to dance. A girl, in love with the lad, insulted him when he left with the
foreigner. He caressed her hair and gave no reply to her abuse.159
These were the very lads that the top celebrities of Paris liked to show off and
offered to their friends as prized gifts. Cocteaus and Crevels crowds would spend the
evening in trendy nightclubs, forging and demolishing the reputations of young men filled
with illusions. A remarkable beauty, an appealing physique, a reputation for toughness
brought them fleeting glory on Montmartre, the envy of their peers, and a gold watch. But
callous society men were soon bored and rejected those whom they once had adored.
The homosexual life in the countryside is more difficult to research. Toulon was
characterized as a charming Sodom,160 and Cocteau raved about it in Le Livre blanc
(1928): From every corner of the world, men enamored of male beauty come to admire the
sailors who stroll by, singly or in groups, responding to winks with a smile and never
refusing the offer of love.161 Marseilles attracted many homosexuals in search of exoticism and sailors on leave. Stephen Tennant stayed there several times, drawing ideas
from harbor life for his drawings and his novel, Lascar. Daniel Gurin, embarking for
Beirut, made a pass at a young fellow and from that point onward was propositioned continuously, throughout the whole voyage, by all the most virile deckhands.
Similarly, Andr Gide draws an enthusiastic portrait of the town of Calvi:
158. Ibid., p.57-58.

159. Ibid., p.161-162.
160. See Chapter Seven.
161. Jean Cocteau, Le Livre blanc [1928], Paris, ditions de Messine, 1983, 123 pages, p.56.
57

In Calvi, every male, grown up or not, is involved in prostitution. Even that word
is inadequate, for pleasure seems to drive them more than a desire for profit... At the
many public dances, men only dance with each other, and in a very lascivious way. Little boys, from eight years and up, go along with their big brothers when they go off to
frolic in love with foreigners, who take them along on the beach, to the rocks, or under
the pines; they keep watch in the neighborhoods and sound the alarm in case anybody
seems to be approaching; they make propositions on their own behalf, or enjoy themselves as Peeping Toms. Any hour of the day or the night, always ready.162
This makes it very difficult to determine how many homosexual locales there were
outside of Paris. Willy solves the problem in one sentence: It would take Bottin to enumerate all the various commercial centers in the provinces that have a thriving trade in
pederasty.163 This enthusiasm seems suspicious; indeed, while some bars and some
hotels in the large provincial towns no doubt accepted homosexuals, cruising was
restricted primarily to nighttime and, unlike Germany, there was no organized structure
to handle the desires of the homosexual clientele.
Thus, the main distinction in the 1920s homosexual scene was the creation, in
addition to the traditional networks of cruising and prostitution, of quasi-legitimate
establishments doing regular business and openly accepting homosexual customers. For
the first time, it became possible to show up as homosexuals, to go to specialized bars, to
come on to one another without danger, at least in the capitals. This sense of security was
tremendously important to expanding the phenomenon: it encouraged contact, allowed
dialogue, facilitated meetings: in the bars, in the dance halls, a community was created.
During work hours, homosexuals formed an integral part of society, for the most part
indistinguishable from anyone else performing a job. But, during their free time, they
became very distinct, a class apart.164 At the same time, this sense of security fostered the
illusion that society was undergoing a radical moral shift: living without constraint, in a
protective cocoon, one sometimes forgot that the external world had changed little. In
England and Germany, homosexuality remained a crime. For some, the return to law and
order in the 1930s was a painful surprise.
***
The 1920s were a flamboyant time. The homosexual imagination is stoked, like
everyone elses, by visual stereotypes, evocative names, magical places which by their very
names are part of the background mythology and become components of homosexual
identity. In this construction of the imagination, which is essential, what matters is not so
much the historical truth with all the insults, ridicule, scorn and exclusion it entails
but the power of the symbols, and the power that we still ascribe to them. The success of
these founding myths is undeniable. They served as the basis for the homosexual liberation of the 1920s, which resulted in the creation of the German homosexual movement
and the emergence of a virtual cult of homosexuality among the English elite; in addition,
they served as a reference for the homosexual liberation movements of the Seventies.
162. Andr Gide, Journal, op. cit., 3 September 1930.

164. Galileo, The Gay Thirties, loc. cit.
58
CHAPTER TWO
LIBERATION ON THE MOVE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF
HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENTS
The homosexual apogee of the 1920s is more than just the mythical context. It is no
exaggeration to speak of a homosexual liberation in the 1920s, but that is precisely
because the emancipation took concrete forms, from activist groups to networks of
mutual aid. Indeed, while we today usually associate homosexual movements with the
1970s, they actually came into being far earlier. The first groups, founded in Germany at
the end of the 19th century, had already become fairly significant. They were mainly
geared to repealing anti-homosexual laws, but they also showed ambitions to establish a
clear identity and a community, and they took on a mission to inform and educate the
public. As we will see, the lack of unity thwarted them in achieving these objectives. The
movements had various priorities and were sometimes at odds with each other, and the
lesbians mostly kept to the sidelines.
Besides, homosexual militancy did not really take hold in England and France
before the Second World War. Liberation took different forms in those two countries. In
England, attempts were made to form homosexual organizations, but they were only a
sidebar to the cult of homosexuality which characterized the period.165 And finally,
compared to the democratic and militant German models, France presented an individualistic model, less assertive and centered on exceptional figures.
THE GERMAN MODEL: COMMUNITARIANISM AND MILITANCY

Germany holds a special place in the genesis of homosexual movements, serving as
the cradle of homosexual militancy and a model of organization for other European movements. Since about 1890, German homosexuals tried to enroll public opinion on their side;
165. See Chapter Three.
59

they particularly concentrated their efforts on the abolition of 175 of the Penal Code,
which condemned homosexual acts between men.
Magnus Hirschfeld, Prefiguring the Militant Identity

Magnus Hirschfeld166 was born on May 14, 1868 into a Jewish family in Kolberg, on
the Baltic coast. After studying medicine in Munich and Berlin and after travelling to the
United States and North Africa, he settled in Magdeburg and then in Berlin, in the district
of Charlottenbourg. One of his homosexual patients committed suicide the day before his
marriage, and that apparently led him to take an interest in the homosexual question. The
subject was in vogue at the time, and Hirschfeld was one of those liberal doctors who
advocated a scientific rather than a criminal approach to homosexuality.
He developed a highly complex theory on the origins of homosexuality, which he
regarded as innate: a theory which can be summarized by the famous formula, The heart
of a woman trapped in the body of a man. According to his theory, there are intersexual
levels, a subtle classification of human beings according to various degrees of hermaphrodism and intermediate sexuality. Hirschfeld published his first book on the subject in
1896, under the pseudonym Th. Ramien, Sapho und Sokrates. Thirty more followed. Hirschfelds theories on homosexuality were covered most broadly in his principal work, The
Homosexuality of Men and Women (1914) (in English from Prometheus Books, September
2000, Michael A. Lombardi-Nash, trans.; Vern L. Bullough, introduction), a monument at
over a thousand pages which elaborated on all the forms of homosexuality. It is densely
documented: the articles and interviews are supplemented by questionnaires the doctor
distributed to his patients, especially those in the working classes. Homosexuals in Berlin
(1908) and Von einst bis jetzt (Then and Now) (1923), are early histories of the German
homosexual movement, whereas A Sexologists World Tour (1933) enabled him to compare
sexual practices and the perception of sexuality in various countries. But Hirschfeld was
not merely a theorist of homosexuality: he created the first German homosexual
movement, the WhK (Wissenschaftlich-humanitres Komitee, or the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee).
The Beginnings of the WhK (1897-1914)

The WhK was founded in Berlin on May 14, 1897 by Hirschfeld, a doctor, psychiatrist and sexologist; Max Spohr, editor; Eduard Oberg, administrative civil servant and
lawyer; and the former officer Franz Josef von Blow. This was a major event in the
history of homosexual movements, as it marked the first time that an organization was
created with the acknowledged goal of defending homosexual rights. It was declared to
be politically independent. The Committee had several goals:167 first of all, to secure the
abolition of 175, then to inform the public about homosexuality, and finally to involve
166. For a biography of Magnus Hirschfeld, see Manfred Herzer, Magnus Hirschfeld, Leben und Werk
eines jdischen, schwulen und sozialistischen Sexologen, Francfort-sur-le-Main/New York, Campus, 1992,
189 pages.
167. Within the WhK, a board of some 70 people discussed and decided the major issues; seven
of them were elected to an executive committee, of which Magnus Hirschfeld was president until
1929. There were also one or two secretaries, who were the only two members to be paid for their
work.
60
Liberation on the Move: The Golden Age of Homosexual Movements

homosexuals in defending their own rights. WhK was a rational and effective organization; it took full advantage of the modern media to promote its cause and to lobby for
reforms.
In 1897, Hirschfeld launched a petition in favor of abolishing 175. The petition
called for the suppression of anti-homosexual laws, except for the use of force, public disturbance, or acts concerning minors below the age of sixteen. Six hundred signatures
were quickly collected, including the names of now prestigious artists like Hermann
Hesse, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan Zweig, Lou Andreas Salome, Karl
Jaspers, Georg Grosz, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Engelbert Humperdinck (German composer, 1854-1921); politicians such as Rudolf Hilferding, Karl Kautsky, and Eduard Bernstein; sociologists like Max Scheller and Franz Oppenheimer; sexologists like Richard
von Krafft-Ebing; theologists including Martin Buber and scientists such as Albert Einstein. Foreign figures including Emile Zola and Leo Tolstoy signed the petition. Certain
highly-placed homosexuals like Alfred Krupp, however, refused.
In 1914, the petition linked the names of 3000 doctors, 750 university professors
and 1000 others. It did not go unnoticed. Hirschfeld managed to interest some leftist politicians in the cause. August Bebel (a founder of German Social Democracy) made a speech
on January 13, 1898, at the Reichstag, calling on the other members of Parliament to sign
and support the petition. Hirschfeld regarded it as a great success to be received by
Rudolf Arnold Niebarding, head of the Justice Ministry for the Reich. He is supposed to
have told Hirschfeld, at the time: The hands of the government are tied until the public
understands that your requests are a question of ethics and not some sexual or scientific
whim. You must educate the public so that they understand what would be the result if
the government gets rid of Paragraph 175.168
The Committee stepped up its campaign; it sent letters to Catholic priests, to
members of the Reichstag, officers in the administration, mayors and judges. In 1905, the
question of 175 was raised before the Reichstag; Bebel and Adolf Thiele called for its abolition, alleging that, according to Hirschfelds works, 6% of the population was homosexual or bisexual and that thousands of Germans were likely to be threatened with
blackmail. Liberals and conservatives opposed it in the name of moral order and the
vitality of the German people; the law remained unchanged. By this date, the WhK
appears to have had 408 members.
Hirschfeld was busy on other fronts, as well. He put together international conferences to disseminate information on homosexuality, published reviews and bulletins on
homosexuality and sent them to the commissions charged with reforming the Penal Code
in Germany; he also sent them to the public libraries at home and abroad. He promoted all
kinds of information on homosexuality: medical, of course, as well as legal, historical,
anthropological, literary; debates and scientific studies. In 1901, he published a pamphlet
entitled Was soll das Volk vom dritten Geschlecht wissen? (What should people know about the
third sex?). It went through nineteen editions and more than 50,000 copies were printed.
It included a list of famous homosexuals, accompanied by assurances as to homosexuals
morality, their desire to be integrated in society, their compliance with the prevailing
laws. The tone was consciously soothing; this was a first attempt to legitimize homosexuality and Hirschfeld had no intention of coming across as a provocateur. WhK publica168. Cited by James D. Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany, New York,
Arno Press, 1975, 121 pages, p.31.
61

tions were always careful not to defy contemporary morals: Nothing could be farther
from our aims than to violate the province of the Church, he wrote in Jahrbuch fr sexual
Zwischenstufen .169
Hirschfeld produced original and innovative works. Anxious to collect all possible
information on homosexuality, he launched a major research project in 1903 covering the
students in Charlottenburg and metal-workers in Berlin. More than 8000 questionnaires
were sent out,170 listing precise questions about sexual practices. Of the students who
responded, 1.5% said they were attracted to members of their own sex, and 4.5% said they
were bisexual. Among the workers, 1.15% declared themselves to be homosexual, and
3.19% bisexual. Hirschfeld concludes from these surveys that 2.2% of the population was
homosexual and 3.2%, bisexual.
While this study is open to criticism (the selected sample is not very representative
of the population as a whole), it marked a new and sociological approach to homosexuality. A protestant pastor, Wilhelm Philips, in Pltzensee, filed charges against him for
the distributing indecent writings171 and slander on behalf of six student co-plaintiffs.
Hirschfeld reported many cases of homosexual suicides, including one in particular at the
Charlottenburg technology school, and insisted on the need for information and for compassion. In the end, he was only fined 200 marks, the court system having thrown out the
charges of indecency.
The Eulenburg Affair (1902-1907, in which many of the men closest to Kaiser
Wilhelm II were accused of homosexuality and possibly treason) was a serious blow to
the WhK, and caused it to lose most of its financial support. In 1910, the new draft of a
reformed penal code proposed extending the prosecution of homosexual acts to lesbianism, evidencing the less tolerant attitude toward the homosexual question. Feminists
reacted by organizing meetings and by voting in support of a resolution condemning the
law. Helene Stckers Bund fr Mutterschutz und Sexualreform (Union for the protection of mothers and sexual reform) met with Magnus Hirschfeld in February 1911.
Until this point, lesbians had kept their distance from the Committee, but the link
between activism and legal pressure became too important. In the 1912 elections, the
WhK sided with those parties who supported the homosexual cause. It published inserts
in newspapers, hailing the possibility of seeing members of the third sex elected to the
Reichstag. The WhK kept at it during the next several elections, working to develop a
political awareness among its members.172
169. Jahrbuch fr sexuelle Zwischenstufen, n VI, 1904.

170. 3000 questionnaires were sent to students in Charlottenburg, and 5721 to metal workers;
1696 students and 1912 metallurgists responded. In 1901, a Dutch medical student, Lucien von Rmer,
conducted a comparable survey with 595 students at the University of Amsterdam;he arrived at very
similar results: 1.9 % homosexuals, 3.9 % bisexuals, according to Manfred Herzer, Magnus Hirschfeld,
op. cit., p.63. Certain authors, like Richard Plant, mention 6611 questionnaires, with the same results.
171. Cited by John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935),
New York, Times Change Press, 1974, 91 pages, p.22.
172. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know what influence the WhK had on the homosexual
vote. While one faction of the homosexuals already felt a strong sense of identity and probably voted
accordingly, it is likely that most of them, who were less engged in militancy, voted as a function of
other concerns.
62

The apogee and decline of the WhK (1919-1933)
Soon after this defeat, the Committee had another prime opportunity to fight for
homosexual rights, on the occasion of the change of regime. For Hirschfeld, 1919 was a
banner year; he founded the Institute fr Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for sexual
science) in Berlin, and bought a building from Prince von Hertzfeldt at 10 In den Zelten.
Visitors were greeted at the entryway by the inscription, Dolori et Amori Sacrum (dedicated to pain and to love); the WhK slogan was Per Scientam ad Justiciam (justice
through science). The Institute had two main functions: as a scientific research center, it
intended to collect all the existing documentation on homosexuality; and it also comprised a library and a museum. At the same time, it was expected to serve as a center for
homosexuals seeking medical help, or psychological support, or who simply wished to
meet friends.173 A hand-picked group of doctors, scientists and politicians attended the
inauguration on July 1, 1919. Magnus Hirschfeld gave a speech and presented the Institute
as the first and the only one of its kind in Germany and in the world, and he underscored
its political leanings: Our institute can be described as a child of the revolution.174
The Institute quickly became famous abroad and attracted doctors, sex
researchers, intellectuals and journalists. Andr Gide, douard Bourdet, Ren Crevel, and
Christopher Isherwood all came to visit. The literature of those days is full of references to
the Institute, which seems to have become an obligatory stop for any visitor who knew
anything about Berlin. The diplomat Ambroise Got, in LAllemagne nu (Naked Germany)
(1923), and the journalist Louis-Charles Royer in LAmour en Allemagne (Love in Germany)
(1936) give their French readers lengthy descriptions of the Institute. Royer was received
by Dr. Abraham, an associate of Hirschfeld, who asked him to fill out a 48-page so-called
psychobiological questionnaire. The staircase doubled as a photo gallery. The museum
featured portraits and photographs of famous inverts and transvestites. Vitrines displayed material relating to specific cases: fetishists, sadists, Siamese twins, hermaphrodites. In Hirschfelds own office hung a portrait of the Chevalier don. Royer sat in on
some interviews; he met two pedophiles who requested to be castrated.
One of the most important WhK publications, the Jahrbuch fr sexual Zwischenstufen
(Annals for the sexually in-between), was published regularly between 1899 and 1923. It was
the first newspaper in the world focusing on the scientific study of homosexual conduct,
and included articles on medical and sociological studies, reports on WhK activities and
press reviews on homosexuality, biographies of famous homosexuals and literary essays
on inversion. Jahrbuch published an annual report on the activities of the Institute fr Sexualwissenschaft: in the year 1919-1920, 18,000 consultations were held, for a total of 3500
people (two-thirds of them men), including 30% homosexuals. After 1923, because of
inflation and the economic crisis, Jahrbuch fr sexual Zwischenstufen was no longer issued; in
1926, it was replaced by Mitteilungen des WhK (WhK Information), which was published until
1933.
173. Scientific research concerning sexuality extended to four domains: biology, pathology, sociology and ethnology. The reception center was also divided into four sections: Marriage and professional counsel, Psychopathological states and nervous illnesses, Psychological sexual problems
and physical sexual problems. The medical team was under the direction of Magnus Hirschfeld,
neurologist Arthur Kronfeld, dermatologist Friedrich Wertheim and radiologist August Bessunger.
174. Jahrbuch fr sexuelle Zwischenstufen, January-June 1919, p.51.
63

During the 1920s, Hirschfeld travelled extensively, to conferences in Germany and
abroad, tirelessly spreading his vision of the third sex and agitating for homosexual rights.
He made a lecture tour in 1922 in the Netherlands, Vienna and Prague. In 1930, he went to
the United States and China; in 1932, he toured Europe and spoke at several events in
Switzerland and France. He also continued to fight unremittingly for the abolition of 175,
making much of the risks of blackmail. Hirschfeld quoted incredible sums: one victims
supposedly paid 242,000 marks over the course of several years, and someone from
Munich paid 545,000 marks.175 Some victims committed suicide to avoid shaming their
families.176
To influence public opinion on the subject, the WhK used the cinema. Hirschfeld
was involved in the first militant homosexual movie, Anders als die Andern (Different from the
Others). The film was commissioned by the producer and director Richard Oswald, who
specialized in social cinema with an educational purpose. A press screening was held on
May 24, 1919, in Berlins Apollo-Theater, before it was shown to the public. The lead role,
that of Paul Krner, was played by Conradt Veidt, the future hero of Das Kabinett des
Doktor Caligari (Dr. Caligaris Office).177 The melodramatic plot means to be edifying: a
famous violinist, a homosexual, is not free to express his love. Persecuted by a blackmailer, he is finally denounced to the police. His reputation demolished, he commits
suicide. The moral of the film is underscored by Magnus Hirschfeld, who plays the part of
the understanding doctor who campaigns for the recall of 175 and advocates more social
tolerance for homosexuals who are not responsible for their condition.
Predictably, the film sparked a public debate. It received many very eulogistic
reviews in the press, which underlined its serious approach. But there were also attacks
from those supporting the moral order and from anti-Semitic circles. A special screening
took place on July 17, 1919, at the Prinzess-Theater in Berlin, for researchers, writers and
various famous personalities. Hirschfeld also received very many letters from both celebrities and anonymous sources, expressing variously their support or indignation. In fact,
the film was quite a hit, but incidents took place on several occasions while it was being
shown, and as a consequence the police banned it in certain cities, like Munich and Stuttgart. After October of that year, it could not be shown anymore except to doctors or
scholarly organizations. In spite of this limitation, the film remains a milestone in the
fight for homosexual freedom. Due to its broad distribution in Germany, it was an
important means for disseminating homosexual propaganda and it helped to inform the
public about a cruel injustice.
WhK also fought to modify 297, which related to male prostitution and which
envisaged, in the new draft laws, sentences of up to seven years of forced labor. Richard
175. In n 19 of Mitteilungen des WhK (January 1929), Hirschfeld mentions the case of a man from
Leipzig who had to pay first 600, then 200 marks. When they demanded another 264 marks, the
victim filed a complaint for blackmail and the thieves were sentenced, one to 3 years in jail and 3
years of loss of civic rights, another to 9 months in jail, the third to 6 months in jail. Such cases were
rare, because the victim usually was unwilling to press charges for fear of being condemned in turn
on morality charges, and for fear of the inevitable social disgrace.
176. A 1914 questionnaire covering 10000 homosexuals showed that one quarter of them had
attempted suicide. 51 % did it out of fear of being arrested, 14 % following a case of blackmail,
8 % because of family conflicts, 2 % because of sexual trouble with their wives. 18 % of these suicides
were homosexual couples. 3 % succeeded.
177. Tall the information about the film is drawn from Jahrbuch fr sexuelle Zwischenstufen, JanuaryJune 1919, p.1-51, which includes a very comprehensive press review.
64

Linsert, a communist, published in pamphlet form a compendium of interviews with key
people on this question, 297, Unzucht zwischen Mnnern (1929). This adds up to a solid
report on the state of male prostitution in Germany,178 and it contains various appeals for
modifications to the penal code, from Heinrich and Klaus Mann and Alfred Dblin, inter
alia. WhK also continued its parliamentary lobbying.
When a new Minister for Justice was appointed (Otto Landsberg, a socialist), Hirschfeld took the occasion to send him a congratulatory letter cum petition,179 asking for a
new commission to address the question of penal reforms to be made up of doctors, sexologists and criminologists as well as lawyers. Landsberg ensured Hirschfeld of his
goodwill but the new draft law of 1919 still condemned homosexuality. Thereafter, each
new Minister for Justice received a letter from the WhK and various information
packets.180 The Reichstag deputies were also sent reports calling for the removal of that
paragraph and giving scientific explanations of the origins of homosexuality. For the 1924
elections, the WhK sent the deputies a report comprising a history of German laws on
homosexuality and listing the many public figures who had signed the petition. Magnus
Hirschfeld stressed that some 11.5 million Germans were homosexual, that is to say
about 100,000 voters, and that they would be voting according to the deputies position
on 175. WhK therefore asked the various parties to publicly state their positions on the
issue.
These pressure tactics did not have the desired effect and the WhK tried on several
occasions to increase its impact by taking joint actions with other German homosexual
movements. In 1922, the writer and lawyer Kurt Hiller, a close collaborator of Hirschfelds, published 175: die Schmach of Jahrhunderts! (175: The shame of the
century!), a violent lampoon criticizing members of Parliament. According to him, no
political party had yet taken a clear stand in defense of homosexuals. Hiller asked for SPD
to present Magnus Hirschfeld as a candidate in the next elections. This request went
without response. In fact, the WhK briefly considered founding a homosexual party at
the national level, which would participate in the elections with the aim of defending the
rights of the third sex. This attempt ended in failure, and Hirschfeld bitterly commented, in 1927:
Without going into a discussion of the merits of these efforts and how important
the final success would be, we must stress that all the efforts to create a mass organization for homosexuals have, in the final analysis, failed. It is not true that homosexuals form a kind of secret society with all kinds of secret signals and arrangements for
their mutual defense. With the exception of a few minor groups, homosexuals have
almost no feelings of solidarity; in fact, it would be difficult to find another class of
humanity that was so unable to organize itself to ensure its elementary rights.181
Starting in 1919, the WhK also tried to unite the various German homosexual
movements in order to step up the pressure. On the initiative of Kurt Hiller, an action
178. See chapter one.
179. BAB, R 22/FB 21764.
180. Ibid. 21 July 1921, Minister Gustav Radbruch; 29 April 1923, Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno;
25 September 1925, Hergt. 16 October 1929, the day that 175 disappeared from the new draft of the
legal code, Magnus Hirschfeld sent to the Minister of Justice a new appeal, regarding issues related
to 175 that were still open.
181. Cited by James D. Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany, op. cit., p.82.
65

committee (Aktionausschuss) was founded on August 30, 1920, bringing together the
WhK, Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, and Deutscher Freundschaftsverband, in order to
organize the fight against 175. Interested individuals were invited to send donations to
the lawyer, Walter Niemann, and a separate account was opened at Deutsche Bank. In
January 1921, Hiller called for all German homosexuals to join in the fight to assert their
rights: The liberation of the homosexual can be only be accomplished by homosexuals
themselves. The Action Committee reformulated the old WhK petition and wrote new
pamphlets, which it sent in great quantity to the Reichstag deputies.
At the same time, the new Minister for Justice Gustav Radbruch, USPD, proposed
a new draft law, in which homosexual activity between consenting adults was not condemned. Radbruch was himself a signatory of the WhK petition, and two months after
taking office, in December 1921, he received a WhK delegation. Nonetheless, because of
political instability, Radbruchs draft law never went into effect.
The Action Committee also had to contend with internal tensions. Deutscher Freundschaftsverband, now called Bund fr Menschenrecht, had a new director, the editor
Friedrich Radszuweit; he took a very aggressive stance that led to the successive withdrawal of Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, and then of the WhK.
In the wake of this failure, Hiller then reached out to heterosexual groups that
were seeking legal reforms on sexual matters. In 1925, the Kartell fr die Reform of Sexualstrafrechts (Association for the reform of the penal code in regard to sexual issues) was
founded, bringing together the WhK and five other organizations.182 In 1927, in response
to a new draft law that still maintained the repression of homosexuality, Kurt Hiller
drafted an alternative (Gegenentwurf)183 that better protected individual rights; this set
off an intense polemic in the press and had the merit of bringing to the publics attention
the question of abolishing 175. 184 The Association also proclaimed the equality of
women, and called for liberalizing laws relating to marriage and for contraceptives and
abortion services to be made available. Once again, the pleas of homosexuals were
drowned out in the broader cacophony and the Association failed to make its mark.
In 1929, the decriminalization of homosexuality was accompanied by additional
riders that irritated the WhK.185 By now, the WhK was slowly crumbling and little by
little lost its influence. Hirschfeld had to step down, in the face of increasing criticism
from his own adherents, especially his former friend Richard Linsert. He set off on a new
series of travels, which became the basis for his book A Sexologists World Tour, published in
Switzerland in 1933. During the three last years of its existence, the WhK was a shadow
of itself. The economic crisis that hit Germany in 1930 and the increasing political tensions did nothing to improve the chances of creating a more tolerant environment;186 and
182. At the time of the opening meeting, 19 January 1925, participants in the Cartel included the
Deutscher Bund fr Mutterschutz, Gesellschaft fr Sexualreform, Gesellschaft fr
Geschlechtskunde, Verband fr Eherechtsreform, WhK and the Department for Sexual Reform of
the Institut fr Sexualwissenschaft. Deutsche Liga fr Menschenrecht joined soon thereafter. WhK
was the only homosexual organization to participate in the Cartel.
183. The editorial commission was composed of Magnus Hirschfeld, Kurt Hiller, Felix Halle,
Arthur Kronfeld, Richard Linsert, Heinz Stabel, Helene Stcker, Felix A. Teilhaber, Siegfried Weinberg and Johannes Werthauer.
184. The WhK published 55 newspaper and magazine articles relating to the counter-proposal,
in n. 10, 11 and 13 of its Mitteilungen des WhK.
185. See Chapter Seven and the annexes.
66

with the loss of its leader, the WhK was left with no clear direction. There were no new
initiatives undertaken during this period.
Assessing Magnus Hirschfelds record

Given his notoriety and his role as a precursor, Magnus Hirschfeld was a lightning
rod for all sorts of abuse and insults. The very symbol of homosexuality in Germany, his
name became a household word. He was the prototypical homosexual militant, and at the
same time he represented medicines new supremacy in the field of sexuality. He was
active on all fronts, and made many enemies.
WhK was at its most successful early in the century. After the War, it never quite
managed to re-establish its influential position. WhK celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary on May 15, 1922, an event commemorated by a booklet published by Jahrbuch fr
sexual Zwischenstufen. Hirschfeld assessed the organizations progress to date. He noted that
the task of the WhK had been to research and to educate. The movement had not failed
in this mission and would continue its work undaunted: All these things are seeds,
which must bear fruit; but the harvest is not yet ripe and the time for the harvest and for
rest has not yet come.187
Five years later, at its thirtieth anniversary in 1927, the press (mostly on the left)
echoed this commemoration and emphasized what had been achieved.188 An article in the
May 14, 1927 edition of Vorwrts was eulogistic, but it underlined the principal failure of
the WhK: its inability, despite all the pressure exerted, to decriminalize homosexuality.
In fact, the Committees failure was mainly political. Wishing to avoid being tied to any
one party, Hirschfeld guaranteed the independence of his organization but deprived it of
any real support in Parliament.
Still, the WhKs nonpartisan stance was only relative. Hirschfeld, who greeted the
revolution of 1918 with enthusiasm, was a member of the SPD (Germanys Social Democratic Party) and his closest collaborator, Kurt Hiller (1885-1972), who joined the WhK in
1908, belonged to a group of pacifist revolutionaries and was editor of the newspaper Das
Ziel (The Goal) 1916-1924). Both were anti-Bolsheviks. Another WhK leader, Richard
Linsert, was a member of the KPD. In addition, because he hoped to spare the publics
sensibilities, Hirschfeld made himself the unwitting accomplice of the most conservative
movements. He was convinced until the very end that he would be able to win over his
interlocutors to common sense and tolerance. He never despaired of convincing the conservatives, and made repeated, even humiliating appeals to them. As an example, we have
a letter which he sent to the deputies of the Bavarian Popular Party (BVP), on January 29,
1925: We request, resolutely, Right Honorable Deputies, that you take all that into consideration and we hope that your psychological discernment and your love of mankind
186. In 1929, unemployment was at 8.5 %; it reached 14 % in 1930, 21.9 % in 1931 and 29.9 % in
1932 that is, 5.6 million registered as being out of work and probably another million undeclared.
Politically., March 1930 was the end of the big coalition. When he came to power, Heinrich Brning
imposed presidential, antiparliamentary government. At the Reichstag elections on 14 September
1930, the NSDAP had more than 18 % of the votes. The last years of Weimar were marked by a paralysis of the system. See Detlev J.K. Peukert, La Rpublique de Weimar, Paris, Aubier, 1995, 288 pages.
187. Jahrbuch fr sexuelle Zwischenstufen, January-June 1922, p.5-15.
188. Strongly positive articles were published in Le Vorwrts, Welt am Montag, Welt am
Abend, and Schsiches Volksblatt, Volksstimme Chemnitz, Berliner Volkszeitung, Berliner BrsenCourier, Neue Berliner 12 Uhr-Zeitung, and Neue Zeit.
67

will lead you to rally to our cause....189 He was even more diffident in his approach to the
Nazi party.
He became the target of virulent attacks from the far right, who set to work undermining his public events. In several German towns, including Stettin and Nuremberg, he
was prevented from giving his talks. In Hamburg, in March 1920, he was attacked by
demonstrators armed with stink bombs and fireworks. In Munich, events took a dramatic
turn. He had decided not to avoid the city despite having received threatening letters; as
he stepped forward to give a conference on October 4, 1920, he was attacked, shoved, and
jeered at, the crowd spat at him from above, and he was pelted with rocks; he was seriously wounded. Some nationalist newspapers even announced that he had died.
The Bayerischer Kurier of October 24 took the occasion to denounce his theories and
to warn its readers against his pernicious influence. Deutschnationale Jugendzeitung (Nos 3334) went still further: The bad penny still turns up. The famous Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld
was severely wounded during a conference in Munich. It has now been learned that he is
expected to recover from his wounds. We are not afraid to say that it is regrettable that
this infamous and very impudent corrupter of the people (Volksvergifter) has not yet
met the end that he so very much deserves! 190 A few days after the incident, Hitler
himself went to Munich and briefly commented on the event.
Another incident occurred in Munich in 1921; and in 1922, during a conference in
Vienna, a young man shot at him. After 1929, Nazi persecution increased to the point that
it was almost impossible for him to appear in public. Even after his death, he was excoriated as a typical representative of Weimar. In the lampoon Die Juden in Deutschland (1936),
published by the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question, Hirschfeld is featured in
the chapter on Jews and Immorality.
Even so, Hirschfeld long believed that the Nazi party might come out in support of
the abolition of 175. Prior to each election, he sent letters to sound out the NSDAPs
position on homosexuality. Early in 1932, Mitteilungen des WhK published an anonymous letter from a homosexual member of the SA (Sturmabteilung, Attack Section)
under the title National-Socialism and Inversion, which explained that there were many
homosexuals in his party and they were tolerated without any problem. Kurt Hiller
responded by citing many examples of Nazi homophobia; he concluded that the NSDAP
was on this ground either fundamentally reactionary or profoundly hypocritical. Nonetheless, the letter was used again and again by homosexual movements to convince themselves that Nazi hostility was only temporary and was intended merely as a sop to public
opinion.
The ultimate failure of the WhK must be viewed in context. The Committee not
only had to fight the conservative parties, but also many of the German homosexual militants especially the second largest German homosexual movement, Gemeinschaft der
Eigenen who considered his activities counter-productive and antithetical to the
homosexual cause. Moreover, Hirschfeld had to face the scathing irony and the skepticism of foreign commentators, above all the French, who looked on his work as nothing
but fantasy and charlatanism. Willy, who devoted a whole work to the third sex, had
this to say:
189. Cited by Joachim S. Hohmann, Sexualforschung und -aufklrung in der Weimarer Republik, Berlin,
Foerster Verlag, 1985, 300 pages, p.36.
190. Cited by Jahrbuch fr Sexuelle Zwischenstufen, July-October 1920, p.105-142.
68
His idealism is perfectly combined with a certain cupidity betrayed by all the
noisy advertisement of his periodical, his film, and even of his institute and the consultations given there.... He has an admirable knack for exploiting the perverse curiosity
of his contemporaries.191
Some French homosexuals judged his activity harshly; Ren Crevels tes-vous fous?
(Are You Nuts?) (1929), is a severe indictment against him. Crevel depicts him under the
guise of Dr. Optimus Stag-Mayer, an abominable charlatan who specializes in conducting
absurd operations.192
In sum, Hirschfelds record as a homosexual militant remains mixed. The Committee never comprised more than five hundred members, and Hirschfeld was constrained to note that the majority of homosexuals were not ready to fight for their rights.
Some activists felt that his endless propaganda only served to exasperate the public and
made homosexuals a more obvious target for extremists. However, in spite of all his errors
of judgment and his appetite for power and honor, it is hard to deny Magnus Hirschfeld a
unique place in the history of homosexual movements. Thanks to him, it became possible
to discuss homosexuality in Germany, on a scientific and humanistic basis. The insults
and abuse to which he was subjected clearly show that his adversaries did not underestimate his power of persuasion and the originality of his combat.
Adolf Brand and Der Eigene, An Elite and Aesthetic Homosexuality

Adolf Brand (1874-1945) followed a very different course from that of Magnus Hirschfeld.193 He had to give up his post as a professor because of his anarchistic opinions
and his association with free-thinkers. An assiduous reader of Max Stirner, he named his
newspaper in direct reference to that philosophers principal work.194 To him, anarchism
and homosexuality went hand in hand: as an affirmation of ones right to his own body
and as a stand against the intervention of the State, the Church, the medical profession
and middle-class morals. He cited Nietzsche as an example.195
Brand founded the newspaper Der Eigene, in 1896, but it lasted only for nine issues,
then ran out of money. In 1898, Brand tried to start over, advertising the newspaper as
the first homosexual periodical in the world. After seven issues, he was fined 200 marks
by the County Court of Berlin on March 23, 1900. His partners, Hanns Heinz Ewers and
Paul Lehmann, were fined 50 and 150 marks. A third attempt, in January 1903, led to a
new conviction November 1903 and he spent two months in prison for immorality. Editor
Max Spohr had to pay a fine of 150 marks. Publication recommenced, nonetheless, and Der
Eigene became a landmark in homosexual history. Brand also published a supplement to
the newspaper, Eros, and he published many shorter works on homosexuality, poems,
news, essays and lampoons; and he published photographs of beautiful young men in
191. Willy, Le Troisime Sexe, Paris, Paris-dition, 1927, 268 pages, p.47.
192. Ren Crevel, tes-vous fous?, Paris, Gallimard, 1929, 179 pages, p.141-142.
193. See Harry Oosterhuis and Hubert Kennedy (dir.), Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi
Germany, New York, The Haworth Press, 1991, 271 pages.
194. Der Einzige und sein Eigentum. See also Chapter Six.
195. Hansfried Hossendorf, Nietzsche und der Jugend, Der Eigene, n XI/2, 1926, p. 34-35.
69

mannered, homoerotic reviews, like Bltter fr Nacktkultur, Rasse und Schnheit, and Deutsche
Rasse.
Like other homosexual reviews of the time, Der Eigene had the ambition of serving as
a forum on homosexuality, and encompassed scientific, literary, artistic, and historical
articles, poems, news bulletins and photographs of stunning, naked young men. However,
the general tone strove to be lofty and edifying, and the production quality was high. The
leading contributors included Elisar von Kupffer (1872-1942), a homosexual aristocrat
and a follower of aestheticism, and Edwin Bab (1882-1912), a doctor.
Der Eigene adjusted its political content according to the times. In 1932, only literary
pieces and homoerotic photographs were published, as had been the case in the publications early days, for the political climate was becoming less tolerant. By way of contrast, the years 1919-1931 are remarkable for the wealth of topics covered, the many
philosophical discussions and political views expressed. Like most homosexual newspapers, it ran a large section of classified advertisements; they helped make it a success,
for they enabled homosexuals to make contact anonymously; some were simply seeking
friends, others were looking for jobs: Student from good family, 22 years, fair, admires
physical and intellectual celerity, seeks a real man, understanding friendship (reciprocal),
encouraging, similar age or an older student. Letter with photograph to be sent to the
editor if possible; Saar region: male, 29, seeks exchange of ideas with distinguished men,
very pure, 25-20 years, student if possible, living in the Saar, Rhineland or France. No
anonymous replies, (Eros, N 7). The newspaper was condemned regularly for immorality, and on January 3, 1922, the County Court of Berlin fined it 5000 marks.
In 1903, Brand and Benedict Friedlnder (1866-1908), a philosopher and biologist,
had also founded Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (the Community of special people), a
homosexual association. Among the founding members were Friedlnder, Wilhelm
Jansen the founder of the Jung-Wandervogel, the painter Fidus, the writers Caesareon,
Peter Hille, Walter Heinrich, Hans Fuchs and Reiffegg (a pseudonym of Otto Kiefer), the
composer Richard Meienreis, writer and professor Paul Brandt, Dr. Lucien von Rmer,
and the legal counselor Martha Marquardt.
After the war, Brand tried to expand his movement beyond Berlin and abroad,
without much success. We do not have membership statistics for Gemeinschaft, nor subscription information for Der Eigene, but the movement does seem to have grown during
the post-war period. Like the WhK, the Community of special people actively lobbied the
Ministry of Justice.196 The Ministry was given a massive report on May 29, 1929, with all
kinds of documents favorable to the homosexual cause including several issues of Der
Eigene and Eros, and various propaganda articles.
However, even though several members of Gemeinschaft were also members of the
WhK and were contributors to the same periodicals, political and strategic differences,
exacerbated by the competition between Brand and Hirschfeld, led Gemeinschaft to
attack the WhK. From a theoretical and ideological point of view, the two associations
were very different. Whereas Magnus Hirschfeld was driven by rationalist and humane
ideals, Brand held a romantic and antiquated vision of the German culture. The avantgarde nature of some of his positions on sexuality was contradicted by his reactionary
bases: Friedlnder preached nudity, and was himself a member of a nudist organization
since 1893 but his reasons were mainly related to hygiene;197 by the same token, when
196. BAB, R 22/FB 21764.
70

he praised pedophilia, he was focusing only on the spiritual and educational aspect of this
relationship and denied its sexual implications.
Fascinated by the Greek model, the Community was strongly antifeminist and
rejected industrialization and the principal assets of modernity, which it interpreted as
signs of decadence. The ideal, they felt, was that of a male community linked by bonds of
honor, something like knighthood, which would express its aesthetic sense through the
veneration of beautiful, heroic young people.
These aspirations reprise many of the themes in German romanticism: admiration
for the Christian Middle Ages, faith in the humanistic values of the Renaissance, love of
nature and worship of friendship, as expressed by Goethe and Nietzsche. The movement
was also close to the philosophy preached by the poet Stefan George, who entertained a
circle of male admirers bound by a love of Greece and homoerotic relations, as well as the
exaltation of nature. In fact, the Community of Special People shared some of the same
aspirations as other German movements like Wandervogel.
Theorists like Hans Blher and Gustav Wyneken had close ties to the Community,
with which they shared a elitist and aesthetic vision of homosexuality. The program of
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen fits directly in line with this:
[It] stands for the social and moral rebirth of love between friends, the recognition
of its natural right to existence in public and private life, as was the case at the height
of its reputation, when it encouraged the arts and shaped the evolution of freedom in
Ancient Greece. [Gemeinschaft] will foster, through words and images, through art
and sports, the worship of adolescent beauty, as was the case during the apogee of
Antiquity... [It] naturally stands for the elimination of all laws contrary to the law of
nature. It seeks in particular the abolition of 175, because it constitutes a permanent
attack by the State on the right to personal freedom. By the same token, it opposes
184 [on obscene publications] and all the restrictions that derive therefrom.198
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen especially refuted the vision of homosexuality that was
being disseminated by Hirschfeld. Benedict Friedlnder was one of the first to denounce
the theory of the third sex, which he considered humiliating and untrue. Similarly, Adolf
Brand saw Hirschfeld as being largely responsible for homosexualitys bad image in
Germany. A pamphlet by St Ch. Waldecke, published by Der Eigene, took on the WhK:
Das WhK, warum STI zu bekmpfen und centre Wirken schdlich fr das deutsche
Volk? (WhK: why it should be fought and why its activities are harmful for the German
people).199 He denounced the attempt to label homosexuality a medical problem and
stated that association with the left was dangerous for, in fact, leftist newspapers had
denounced Krupp, Eulenburg and Wyneken. Hirschfeld, he asserted, confused love and
friendship, pederasty and homosexuality.
Brand and Friedlnder repeated these charges and took particular exception to
Hirschfelds excluding pedophiles so as to make homosexuals respectable, and categorically rejected the idea of setting a sexual majority at the age of sixteen. This special rela-
197. Adolf Brand, Nacktkultur und Homosexualitt, Der Eigene, n VII/1, 1919.
198. Adolf Brand, Die Bedeutung der Freundesliebe fr Fhrer und Vlker, Berlin, Adolf Brand, 1923,
32 pages, p.5.
199. Berlin, Adolf Brand, Der Eigene, 1925, 18 pages. Most of it comprises a speech given in Berlin,
27 January 1925, at the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen.
71

tionship did not, in their eyes, preclude marriage: most of the leaders of the Community
were married and were bisexual.
Lastly, the strategic options of the two movements were very different. Brand
several times came out in favor of a mass outing of famous homosexuals. In 1905, he published a lampoon accusing Kaplan Dasbach, the leader of Zentrum (who was savagely
opposed to the abolition of 175), of being homosexual.200 At the time of the Eulenburg
Affair, as was mentioned above, he called the Chancellor of the Reich, Bernhard von
Blow, a homosexual; a lawsuit ensued and he could not show any proof. The WhK did
not support him in these moves. In this unsettled context, the Community of Special
People did not hesitate to use anti-Semitic arguments against Hirschfeld; as a Jew he
was an unsuitable leader for a movement against 175, since he represented an oriental
point of view on sexuality and love.
In the early 1920s, Gemeinschaft and the WhK temporarily set aside their disagreements and cooperated within the Action Committee in order to prepare a new campaign
for the abolition of 175. Like Hirschfeld, Brand felt the need to mobilize his troops, for the
atmosphere of moral tolerance allowed homosexuals to let down their guard rather than
continue their fight. The younger generation which follows us often forgets that we are
still in mid-combat . . .201
This lull was of short duration: in 1925, Adolf Brand started in again on Hirschfeld.
The increasing influence of two young authors within the Community, Ewald Tscheck
and Karl Gnther Heimsoth, seems to have played a part in this change of attitude.202
Both were ardent opponents of the theory of the third sex. Number 9 of Der Eigene, 1925,
became an attack on Hirschfeld, who was once again subjected to violent attacks, antiSemitic and otherwise.203
In fact, there were contradictory political leanings within the movement and, like
the WhK, Gemeinschaft had difficulty finding a middle ground. In 1928, Brand asked all
the parties to state their position on the abolition of 175. In 1925, he had been very disappointed by the immobility of the SPD he had urged his readers to give them their votes,
and yet, once they were in power, they had ignored the homosexual cause. Even so, in an
article entitled Rightist Parties and Love Between Friends, he recalled that the right had
always been an enemy to homosexuals and he thus suggested voting for the Socialists, the
Communists or Democrats.204
While some members of Gemeinschaft, like Heimsoth or Hanns Heinz Ewers,
became Nazi sympathizers, Brand himself seems to have cherished few illusions as to the
true nature of the NSDAP, even if he was troubled by the homoerotic resonance of the
movement. The sexual revelations about Rhm reinforced his conviction that the Nazis
were hypocrites who refused to admit what was going on in their own ranks: With the
Rhm trial, the German public will finally have its eyes opened to the fact that the most
200. Brand serait ainsi lun des prcurseurs de louting.

201. Der Eigene, n VII/1, 1919.
202. See Manfred Herzer, Die Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, in 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung, Berlin,
Schwules Museum, 1997, 384 pages.
203. In the preceding numbers, in 1924 and 1925, he was subjected to anti-Semitic attacks in
Bcher und Menschen by Valentin Schudell (Der Eigene, n VII/8, 1924) and in Freundesliebe und
Homosexualitt (Der Eigene, n VIII/9, 1925), where it was suggested that a Jewish committee was
endangering German eros.
204. Der Eigene, n XIII/8, 1928.
72

dangerous enemies of our cause are often homosexual themselves, who help, consciously,
through political hypocrisy and lies, to destroy again and again any moral victories we
may have obtained through all our efforts.205
In sum, Gemeinschaft der Eigenen offered German homosexuals another model.
Elitist and anti-modernist, it associated the worship of male beauty with the denunciation of contemporary society and it exalted individualism over communitarianism. This
criticism, anarchistic and romantic at first, took on increasingly nationalist and reactionary tones in the 1920s. At the same time, the movement offered a positive image of
male homosexuality, repositioned historically, artistically and culturally, which could
have been used as the basis for a strong sense of identity, independent of medical theories
and somewhat immune to societys judgment.
However, Brands hostility to the WhK contributed significantly to the failure of
the German homosexual movements. By fostering division, by excluding effeminate
homosexuals, by defining homosexuality very restrictively, he played into his opponents
hands and obstructed the creation of a strong and unified homosexual movement.
Homosexual Magazines and Popular Organizations

After the First World War, there was an explosive expansion of homosexual associations in Germany.206 The two pioneering movements, the WhK and Gemeinschaft der
Eigenen, were joined by a multitude of local or exclusive cliques, with names like Freundschaft (friendship), Klub der Freunde und Freundinnen ([male- and female-] friends
club), and Freundschaftsbund (friendship association), which transformed the homosexual movement into a mass movement, as far removed from the elitism of Brand as from
the scientific vocation of the WhK. Most of these clubs were the result of private and
local initiatives and were not related to each other. Their intention was to provide a social
space for homosexuals where they could talk, have fun and exchange thoughts. Many of
them had separate sections for men and women, and it was these associations that gave
lesbians the opportunity to organize themselves for the first time.
Many of these associations were largely known by their periodicals; most managed
to survive only a few years, since mass circulation magazines monopolized the market to
such an extent. Der Hellasbote (Greek messenger), founded by Hans Kahnert in 1923, targeted both male and female readers. The price, in May 1923, was 300 marks; and it was
mainly literary in scope: poems, homosexual news, and readers views on subjects of their
choice. In the June 9, 1923 edition, Ernst Bellenbaum, a reader, suggested that the best
way to influence public opinion would be to have frequent coverage in the national press.
He proposed regularly sending material on the homosexual movements to the socialist,
communist and democrat newspapers. The magazine went out of print in 1925.
The number of homosexual periodicals grew tremendously during the 1920s,
thanks to the liberalization of the press following the end of war-time censorship.207 Die
Fanfare was published from 1924 to 1926, by the writer Curt Neuburger (who had also
founded an independent club, Internationaler Freund Bund, IFB). He was strongly
opposed to the leading homosexual movement, Bund fr Menschenrecht. In 1927, PhoebusBilderschau was founded by Kurt Eitelbuss; it published only illustrations. These reviews
205. Adolf Brand, Politische Galgenvogel: ein Wort zum Fall Rhm, in Eros, n 2, 1931, p.1-3.
206. On this subject, see 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung, op. cit.
73

addressed very different publics: some were high-brow and were intended for a cultivated
readership, others were more populist; some advocated a return to nature and, using
sporting events as a pretext, published photographs of naked athletes in suggestive positions; others were reserved for women and defended the flapper. Addressing a mainstream homosexual public, who were eager to enjoy their sexuality in peace but avid for
information on the homosexual community, meeting places and available entertainments,
the reviews sought to tread a fine line, maintaining their neutrality politically and
socially. However, the main periodicals of the time, Die Freundschaft, Das Freundschaftsblatt,
Flapper and Die Freundin were in fact official organs of the larger homosexual associations.
Der Deutsche Freundschaftsverband

On August 13, 1919, Karl Schultz founded the review Die Freundschaft, subtitled Mitteilungsblatt des Klubs der Freunde und Freundinnen (News bulletin of the Club of friends and
[female] friends). It was sold openly at newsstands. Number 2 was banned and for a few
weeks the publication came out under the title of Der Freund. Die Freundschaft found its
market very quickly, and in 1922 it absorbed two of its former competitors, Freundschaft
und Freiheit, published by Adolf Brand, and Uranos, by Ren Stelter. The editor of Die Freundschaft was Max H. Danielsen, but he was replaced in 1922 by the former Secretary of the
WhK, Georg Plock. It was a monthly, published in Berlin at 1 Baruther Strasse.
The fact that this was an official publication based in homosexual clubs is attested
by the fact that Berliner Freundschaftsbund (Association of Berlin friends) was inscribed
in the register of associations by the local court on September 28, 1920.208 In fact, Die Freundschaft was a serious newspaper that published fundamental articles on homosexuality,
calls to decriminalize it, and stories about the status of homosexuals through the ages. It
constantly recalled the homosexual legacy. The newspaper was copiously illustrated with
suggestive photographs, but with an aesthetist bent. It was also famous for its classified
advertisements, which allowed German homosexuals and sometimes those abroad to find
one another. These ads, like those for homosexual establishments, brought in money.
The first articles were signed pseudonymously. A debate on that subject concluded
that the use of pseudonyms detracted from the struggle to assert homosexual rights, and
from then on, most of the writers used their real names. The review was known abroad,
and it became the symbol of German homosexuality. Ambroise Got, who visited Berlin
and was shocked by Germanic morals, noted that the review Die Freundschaft, despite its
high price (50 pfennigs), was a big success: It is difficult to get this newspaper, unless
you look for it the very day it comes out. In downtown Frankfurt and Berlin, and many
other cities, where there are many colony of transvestis [sic], it is snapped up as soon as
it goes on sale, and it is futile to look for it at the newsstands the following day; as for back
207. James D. Steakley tried to draw up a list of these periodicals: Agathon, Die Bltter fr ideale
Frauenfreundschaften, Bltter fr Menschenrecht, Das dritte Geschlecht, Die Ehelosen, Der Eigene,
Eros, Extrapost, Die Fanfare, Frauenliebe, Die freie Presse, Der Freund, Die Freundin, Die Freundschaft, Freundschaft und Freiheit, Das Freundschaftsblatt, Der Fhrer, Garonne, Geissel und Rute,
Der Hellasbote, Die Insel, Jahrbuch fr sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Ledige Frauen, Der Merkur, Mitteilungen des WhK, Monatsberichte des WhK, Mundbrief, Phoebus-Bilderschau, Die Sonne, Der
Strom, Die Tante, Uranos. Some magazines printed hundreds of thousands of copies, others were
very small.
208. WhK fut was registered there on 2 June 1921.
74

issues, they are untraceable.209 Die Freundschaft was a child of the November revolution.
Politically, it came out clearly in support of the Weimar Republic. However, the review
was primarily concerned to pull together the incipient homosexual community.
Friendship Associations (Freundschaftsvereine) were formed in several large
towns in 1919 and later; they offered their members concerts, debates, conferences, social
afternoons, and sporting events. They often had a conference room, a library, a medical
section and a legal aide, and sometimes specific sections for younger people and women.
On August 30, 1920, these various associations were unified under the name Deutscher
Freundschaftsverband (DFV), which encompassed Berliner Freundschaftsbund and the
Hamburg, Frankfurt-am-Main and Stuttgart sections. Gradually, other clubs became
affiliated and the DFV organized congresses to help the various members to meet and
discuss militant action. The first congress was held in Kassel on May 27 and 28, 1921, the
second in Hamburg, April 15-17, 1922. The DFV sought to oversee all the homosexual
organizations and hoped to lead the militant activity. As it turns out, it quickly fell into
crisis, not having any sway over the earlier movements like the WhK and Gemeinschaft
der Eigenen, which still had influence. In any case, it soon faced competition from a new
movement that took off on the wings of its charismatic founder.
Der Bund fr Menschenrecht

Friedrich Radszuweit (1876-1932) set up a ladies clothing store and a retail
business in Berlin in 1901. He became involved in the homosexual movement in 1919 and,
due to his talent as an organizer, was named chair of Vereinigung der Freunde und Freundinnen, a Berlin-based homosexual club. He renamed it the Bund fr Menschenrecht
(Union for human rights), or BfM, in May 1922. The following year, he succeeded in incorporating the DFV and several other homosexual clubs into it. He split off from Die Freundschaft, which took a dim view of his authoritative methods; the newspaper went on
without him until 1933.210 In the meantime, Radszuweit founded many periodicals, and
they became the most influential in the homosexual press. These were the Bltter fr Menschenrecht (Pages for human rights), February 1923; Die Freundin (The [female] friend), September 1924; Die Insel (The island), November 1924; and, Das Freundschafts blatt (The
friendship sheet), June 1925. Radszuweit opened a bookshop on August 1, 1923, and then
a publishing house, Friedrich Radszuweit Verlagsbuchhandlung, 9 Neue Jakobstrasse. In
January 1924, he launched a collection of homosexual writings entitled Volksbcherei
fr Menschenrecht.
The movements official organ was Bltter fr Menschenrecht, a monthly (sometimes
weekly) review that covered literary and scientific information and defined the associations positions: fighting for the abolition of 175, fighting for the social integration of
homosexuals, fighting against blackmail, and calls for free legal help. Das Freundschaftsblatt,
209. Ambroise Got, LAllemagne nu, Paris, La Pense franaise, 1923, 248 pages, p.103. Also cited
by Alain Rox, Tu seras seul, Paris, Flammarion, 1936, 403 pages, p.269.
210. The magazine only lasted one year because it was denounced, apparently by Radszuweit,
and registered on the list of pornographic and slimy publications. A meeting organized by
Danielsen on 4 May 1928 at the Alexander-Palast was attended by some two hundred people; it
ended in great confusion after a talk by Brand Adolf, originally entitled 175 and the elections but
in which he accused Radszuweit of having denounced the magazine to the authorities (BAB, R 22/
FB 21764). The DFV was unable to stand up to the BfM and the power of Radszuweit.
75

a traditional homosexual review, appeared on Thursdays and cost 20 pfennigs. In
addition to traditional medical, social, and literary articles, it carried considerable
political content. Indeed, Radszuweit frequently used the newspaper as his personal
platform, which enabled him to influence great numbers of homosexuals, many of whom
were not militant. He hoped by this means to sensitize an increasing number of inverts
and encourage them to become more politically engaged in the struggle for social recognition. For example, the lead headline on November 1932 was: Should We Vote? Radszuweit made much of the decisive role that homosexuals could play in determining their
own fate. Like other homosexual organizations, before each election Bund fr Menschenrecht sent out questionnaires to various political organizations asking them to state their
position on 175 and it encouraged readers implicitly to vote for those parties who were
favorable to the cause. Nevertheless, it also underlined the ambiguity of the leftist parties:
on November 10, 1932, it denounced an article published in the communist newspapers
Berlin amndt Morgen and Welt amndt Abend, which termed homosexuality a middle-class
vice, along with prostitution, sadomasochism and bestiality.
Bund fr Menschenrecht became the largest German mass organization for homosexuals. Whereas the DFV had succeeded in signing up 2,500 members by 1922, BfM
already had 12,000 in 1924 and, in August 1929, it reached its apogee at 48,000, including
1,500 women members. Almost every town in Germany had a group related to Bund fr
Menschenrecht; the addresses published in the groups publications were most often only
post office boxes. Affiliates were formed in Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and
even in New York, Argentina and Brazil. BfM printed more than 100,000 copies of its periodicals every month. Die Insel, priced at 30 pfennigs, hit a record press run of 150,000.
BfM was also active politically. It organized a demonstration in May 1925 against
the Army Minister, Otto Gessler, for the dismissal of homosexual soldiers from the Reichswehr. In August 1926, it forwarded a complaint to President Hindenburg regarding the
dismissal of homosexual civil servants. BfM also spoke out during the lawsuit over 175,
seeking to get the case dismissed or to lessen the penalties. Its members were eligible for
legal aid and many of them were defended by the famous lawyer Walter Bahn, who was
active in the homosexual movement. Like the WhK and Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, BfM
peppered the Ministry of Justice with letters, petitions, bulletins and reports. In 1925, it
sent a letter to Justice Minister Frenken, questioning his position on homosexuality, and
reminding him that there were 2 million homosexuals not an insignificant portion of
the populace.211 It wrote to the Justice Minister of the Reich and all the Justice Ministers
of the different Lnder, or states, on April 20, 1925, recapitulating the fundamental causes
of homosexuality and emphasizing the normality of homosexuals.212 On August 27, 1926,
it sent the ministry a whole series of booklets on the question and a copy of the review
Bltter fr Menschenrecht and, in 1927, all the deputies were sent the pamphlet, 175 Muss
211. BAB, R 22/FB 21764. Nine questions were posed to the Minister : 1) What does the minister
think of homosexuality, does he think it is innate or acquired? 2) Does he know that there are
2 million homosexuals in Germany? 3) Does he think that homosexuality endangers public morality?
4) Does he think that 2 million Germans should be marked with infamy, as they currently are?
5) Does he believe that homosexuality can be eliminated, thanks to 175? 6) Does he plan to keep the
paragraph in the new draft? 7) Did he remember that in 1910 and 1911 many public figures had been in
favor of suppressing that law? 8) What does he think about that? 9) What does he think of the thousands of signatures on the petition?
212. BAB, R 22/FB 21764.
76

abgeschafft werden! Denkschrift an den deutschen Reichstag zur Beseitigung einer Kulturschande (175 must be repealed! Calling on the German Reichstag to eliminate a cultural disgrace).
BfM shared the goals of the WhK and Gemeinschaft, but was fundamentally
opposed to Magnus Hirschfelds theories. Like Brand, Radszuweit rejected the notion of a
third sex and refused to equate homosexuals with effeminates. He did, however,
publish a periodical specifically for transvestites, Das dritte Geschlecht, which included
advice on how to dress effectively enough to pass undetected. This heavily illustrated
magazine cost 1 mark.
Unlike the WhK, BfM took an intolerant attitude toward homosexual minorities.
Looking to increase the sense of normalcy and to foster social integration, it rejected those
who did not fit the mold, especially queens, pedophiles and male prostitutes. Furthermore, BfMs opposition to 175 was more limited than that of Hirschfeld, which prevented them from working together effectively. Thus, on October 9, 1929, Radszuweit
sent the Prussian Minister for Justice a list of resolutions that had been adopted by the
Bund fr Menschenrecht at its plenary session on September 20 and 23.213 They claimed
immunity only for homosexual acts between consenting adults, and recommended setting
the age of sexual majority for boys at eighteen years and, inter alia, recommended prosecution of male prostitution. The draft law formulated by the Kahl Commission in 1928
was practically identical to this, but it had been vigorously attacked by the WhK, which
preferred the total decriminalization of homosexual acts except where violence was
involved.
This difference of views hampered the homosexual struggle, and the governments
took advantage of these dissensions to grant only partial reforms. BfM did not get along
any better with Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, which considered itself the refuge of the
enlightened. Furthermore, the homosexual movements never really managed to involve
the lesbians into their fight, and this only accentuated the divisions.
Lesbians, at the fringes of the homosexual movement

The beginnings of lesbian militancy in Germany date to the 1920s. Until then,
women were ascribed minor roles within the WhK, and Gemeinschaft der Eigenen was
strictly a male organization. The proliferation of friendship clubs in Germany allowed
the creation of lesbian sections. Most of the clubs accepted both men and women, but the
two groups had their own conference rooms and held their own demonstrations. Often,
the buildings were reserved on different days for the men or women. BfM was organized
according to the same schema, and it offered women their own organizations and a wide
range of activities; it also published Die Freundin, a well-received magazine that became
the symbol of lesbianism in the 1920s.
Die Freundin started out as a monthly, then became weekly; it had a large press run.
A supplement for transvestites, Der Transvestit, was eventually dropped. It was published from August 8, 1924 to from March 8, 1933. Its goal was spelled out in Number 3:
Die Freundin will defend the equal rights of women in social life. Die Freundin will foster
ideal friendships by publishing articles by our readers, and we invite every woman who
feels qualified to send articles and works that they feel are suitable.214
213. GStA, I.HA, Rep.84a, 8101.
77

The magazine responded to the aspirations of the lesbian public, which sought to
be affirmed independently and to be recognized within the homosexual movement as its
own entity. Women had their own section within BfM where they could meet together
and discuss their problems. However, these sections were often kept out of the
movements main activities: political actions, the fight for rights, and parliamentary representation; and BfM itself was run by men. Die Freundin was a specifically lesbian newspaper, but it was not written exclusively by women. Like most homosexual periodicals at
that time, it offered a range of articles on varied subjects. Historical articles extolling the
glory of lesbians of ages past (Rosa Bonheur, Christine of Sweden, Sappho, etc.) predominated; with basic articles on the problems facing lesbians in Germany (loneliness in the
rural areas, work-related problems, confrontations with the police); and cultural articles
(homosexual meetings, homosexual life in foreign countries, and reviews of books, plays
and movies likely to interest the homosexual public); then there were scientific/medical
articles speculating about the origins of homosexuality, political articles calling for solidarity, news, and homosexual poems, as well as photographs of attractive young women.
In addition to various ads for lesbian establishments and dances and all the homosexual events of the week, there were several pages of personal advertisements, which
were the magazines main selling point. These ads were not restricted to lesbians; advertisements for male couples and even heterosexuals also ran. They were an immediate
success, as they met a real need in the lesbian community. Not every woman was comfortable going to lesbian establishments and preferred discretion over militancy. By the
time No. 8 came out, the classified advertisements took up more than half a page: Berlin,
nurse seeks partner to chat at tea time.215 Transvestite selling a well-stocked ladies
wardrobe, very cheap, like new.216 Cologne: a woman in the professions, brimming with
life, loves swimming, seeks partner.217 Modern couple, 38-42 years, with comfortable
house, seeks a similar couple in Knigsberg to get acquainted.218
The plight of lesbians outside the city was a frequent topic. Many wrote in to
express their anguish and isolation. One such letter dated March 7, 1927, from Elisabeth
S., says: How I envy my comrades and my friends in Berlin! It must not be too difficult for
them to meet a nice girl. There are so many meeting places, cafs, clubs... My only solace is
that there are even more women who are abandoned, like me. With longing, I still await
my best friend.219 A married woman wrote to say that her husband, after having learned
that she was homosexual, allowed her to visit her friend: I wish that other married
women, like me, might meet with such understanding from their husbands with respect
to their homosexual inclinations and thus be able to live in friendship, tying their life to
that of their friend for eternity.220 For other women, Die Freundin seemed a life saver,
which delivered them from despair: As nobody could understand me or my nature, I have
cut myself off from my homeland and my parents.221
Die Freundin was the definitive reference point for lesbians of the 1920s.
214. Die Freundin, n 3, 1924.
215. Ibid., n 8, 1924.
216. Ibid., n 13, 1927.
217. Ibid.
218. Ibid., n 22, 1929.
219. Ibid., n 4, 1927.
220. Ibid., n 6, 1927, Letter dated 4 April 1927.
221. Ibid., n 7, 1927, Letter dated 18 April 1927.
78
We had only a few cents; we would buy a few clothes and my most urgent
desire, in those days we could sometimes go out....I would buy Die Freundin as often
as I could (i.e., seldom). There were classified advertisements there, letting us know
what was going on. In this way we managed to attend a Christmas ball for a few hours
at a lesbian association. There was a large hall with a stage. And choirs... We also went
to a homosexual place on Blowstrasse, once. For an hour or two. Thats all.222
Lesbian readers of Die Freundin were modern women, who worked, who were up on
all their rights and ready to demand they be respected. Thus, it seemed likely that they
could be mobilized for specific causes and join an alliance pushing for the abolition of
175, even though it related to them only indirectly. Bund fr Menschenrecht used the
periodical for its own publicity and tried to recruit new members by expounding its
views before a favorably-disposed audience. In No. 10, 1928, an article entitled Homosexual women and the elections tried to guide lesbians to vote for parties on the left.
These calls seem to have resonated with very few lesbians. The political messages
drew no reaction in the Letters to the Editor, whereas the social and medical articles
launched polemics. Looking to mobilize the female public, Friedrich Radszuweit and
Lotte Hahm, director of the lesbian club Violetta (one of the citys most famous establishments) launched a new association, Bund fr ideale Freundschaft (Union for ideal
friendship), whose statutes were published in Die Freundin No. 22, May 28, 1930. It is
implicitly stated that, while there is a time for fun and games, they must also think about
fighting for their rights. By this return to its roots, the magazine exhibited a growing
unease in the face of a political climate that was not getting any friendlier, and a concern
over the continuing passivity of lesbians.
In July 1930, for the first time, a police incident at a meeting of Bund fr Menschenrecht is mentioned. The newspaper echoed the shock that went through the homosexual
community and published a long protest against this aggression. In February 1931, a
young woman wrote to testify to her professional troubles. She wore short hair and male
clothing; her appearance earned her insulting remarks from her customers and the boss
demanded that she change her behavior or be fired. She resigned herself to reverting to a
feminine appearance. In 1932, the classified advertisements disappeared, signifying the
end of the publication in the form that first won it its following.
Even so, the newspaper could not make up its mind to face certain questions and it
refused to take sides, for fear of putting off some of its readers and attracting reprisals. In
1928, Die Freundin clearly encouraged readers to vote for the SPD, but it gradually backed
away from the political aspect of homosexuality.
Hitlers shadow weighed on BfM, and Radszuweit was unsure as to what stance to
adopt with the NSDAP. His lack of political acumen became cruelly apparent when he
decided to publish A Letter to Adolf Hitler, on August 11, 1931, asking Hitler to spell out
his views on homosexuality. He recalls certain remarks the Nazi press made with reference to homosexuals (When we are in power, they will all be hanged or expelled), but
presumes that Hitler is merely misinformed on the subject. He then pleads in an almost
humiliating tone on behalf of homosexuals. In fact, he stoops so far as to state that homo222. Testimony of Gerda M. (1904-1984), who lived in Berlin with her lover since the 1930s,
unemployed at the time. Cited by Kristine von Soden and Maruta Schmidt (dir.), Neue Frauen, die
zwanziger Jahre, Berlin, Elefanten Presse, 1988, 176 pages, p.162.
79

sexuality is not a Jewish plague. Anticipating Hitlers possible accession to power, he
offers to support him if he agrees to take homosexual interests into account. He goes on to
stress how important homosexuals have been within the Nazi party a strategy which
he supposed, mistakenly, would be to their advantage: I think, Mr. Hitler, that you also,
in the interest of your party, can accept these requests, and [I wish] that in your partys
platform you will give up any prosecution of homosexual conduct and that, during consultations for the drafting of the new penal code, the deputies of your party will decide to
abolish 175. Several hundred thousands of homosexuals will be grateful to you, many of
them being members of your own party.223
Radszuweit did not receive any reply to his letter. He continued, however, in the
same vein right up until his death, on April 3, 1932. One of his last articles, dated March
30, 1932, is an attack against the left for using Rhms homosexuality to discredit him.
After Radszuweits death, Die Freundin stuck to the same line.
The 1932 issues attest to a very clear degradation of the situation of German homosexuals. Suicides are announced one after another, along with stepped-up police activity
and the closing of homosexual establishments. On March 8, 1933, a little more than a
month after Hitler came to power, Die Freundin disappeared.
Die Freundin was not the only lesbian periodical. Die Bltter fr ideale Frauenfreundschaften (BiF) had the unique quality of being the only lesbian periodical produced entirely
by women. The other female publications were produced by male homosexual groups
which accepted women but did not make the lesbian cause their priority. Many articles in
fact were written by men the height of irony, and proof that, unfortunately, the lesbian
community was sorely lacking in cohesion and organization. And then Selma Engler, the
editor of BiF, went to join the team at Die Freundin.
Deutsche Freunschaftsverband was reconstituted and in 1928 tried to publish a
magazine to compete with Die Freundin; Frauenliebe und Leben (Female Love and Life) made a
brief appearance but did not have much success. The first issue defined the its objectives:
[It aims] to serve as a link between homosexuals and heterosexuals; it will address
various topics in the fields of science, art, sport, fashion and personal life, include
exchanges of opinion.224 In fact, unlike Die Freundin, Frauenliebe und Leben was aimed not at
the emancipated, even militant, lesbians of Berlin but the modern woman who was interested in female topics, looking for useful recommendations and anecdotes rather than a
serious analysis of the lesbian situation in Germany. The newspaper regularly emphasized
the things that heterosexuals and lesbians had in common, in order to work toward a
future of mutual tolerance and comprehension. The layout was directly derived from that
of traditional womens magazines, enlivened here and there with more specific details:
photographs of famous lesbians, Sapphic poems, sections on beauty and astrology, exercises designed to help one maintain ones figure,225 and articles on lesbian life.226
Frauenliebe was soon replaced by another magazine, Flapper, which was published
from October 1930 to October 1932, with a printing of 10,000 copies. Continuing in the
223. Die Freundin, n 32, 1931, Letter dated 11 August 1931.

224. Frauenliebe und Leben, n 1, 1928.
225. Dr Agnes Shelter, Heimgymnastik fr lesbische Frauen (Gymnastics at home, for
lesbians), ibid., n 2, 1928.
226.Dr Eugen Grster, Hosenrolle und Frauenemanzipation (Transvestism and womens
emancipation), ibid.
80

same vein as Frauenliebe, Flapper was addressed to the average woman, emancipated and
sympathetic to the feminist movement but not necessarily lesbian.
German organizations like the BfM are evidence of homosexuals desire to forge a
community in the 1920s. While its founder, Friedrich Radszuweit, was adamantly militant, it is by no means clear that all his members and all his readers shared that feeling.
Most homosexuals wished above all to discover the new homosexual scene, to find likeminded people, to be able to socialize with their own kind. They were engaged in this
effort in varying degrees: the true militants were relatively few, and the list of names of
those who took the lead in the main organizations and published articles in the periodicals shows that. Often, the same people were the motivating force behind two or three
periodicals and were the leaders of various organizations and clubs. There were many
association members, 48,000 for BfM alone, but far fewer than the readership of the magazines and newspapers. However, the German experience, in spite of its limitations, was
exceptional and was evidence of an early awakening of a homosexual identity in Europe
in the 1920s.
THE GERMAN MODEL AS AN INFLUENCE ON HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENTS

The German model, although unique, did have some echoes in Europe and the
wider world, mostly due to the influence of Magnus Hirschfeld. Indeed, one of his goals
had been to create a worldwide organization with the aim of spreading new ideas on sex
and psychiatry, of informing the public and securing rights for sexual minorities. The
impact of the movement, although limited, allowed for a homosexual awakening in other
countries besides Germany and inspired the formation of homosexual movements in some
of them, such as England. However, these movements never managed to catch on in a big
way and their actions remained largely symbolic.
The World League for Sexual Reform: A Homosexual Internationale?

In 1921, Magnus Hirschfeld launched a series of world congresses for sexual reform,
which led to the constitution of a World League for Sexual Reform227 made up of scientists, doctors, and intellectuals who were anxious to encourage the sharing of new ideas.
The homosexual question fit in with the general liberalization of sex that marked the
1920s. Doctors were anxious to improve sexual hygiene, and feminists were calling for
gender equality and the recognition of female sexuality, the right to divorce, access to
contraception and the liberalization of abortion; and psychoanalysts, educators and theorists of all kinds all had a part to play. The medical influence was considerable, and testifies to the new emergence of doctors interested in sexuality.
The League chose Berlin as the site for its first congress in 1921, evidence of how
important the German movement was in the sexual avant-garde in those days. The
League published its newspaper and generally met at Hirschfelds Institut fr Sexualwissenschaft. The League was run by an executive central committee composed of the pres227. The reports could be published in German, English and French. The League was known as
Weltliga fr Sexualreform, World League for Sex Reform and Ligue mondiale pour la rforme sexuelle.
81

ident and five other people. The international committee consisted of deputies (a
maximum of three per country) of the various affiliated countries. Three honorary presidents had been appointed: Hirschfeld, Havelock Ellis and Auguste Forel, which in itself
makes clear what was the philosophy of the movement. According to Wilhelm Reich, the
League included the foremost sexologists and sexual reformers in the world,228 and
included representatives of the Western capitalist countries and the USSR. Indeed, the
list of the international committee for the congress of Copenhagen in 1928 shows that an
impressive number of countries sent representatives, 229 many of them celebrities.230
Membership in the League was open to anyone who worked for sexual reform on a scientific basis and to associations pursuing similar goals. Each association was represented
by a member. At its high point, the League had 130,000 members, divided into various
affiliated associations. Resolutions were passed by a simple majority. Each individual had
a vote; associations could vote for 500 members, but they could not vote for more than five
choices. The annual fee was as high as 5 shillings, but members were encouraged to give
more, if they could. The Leagues newspaper, The Journal for Sexual Reform, sold for 12 shillings (9 shillings for members).231
At the first congress in Berlin, the homosexual question was approached from
various angles.232 Dr. H.C. Rogge (Dutch) gave a talk on the significance of Steinachs
research into the question of pseudo-homosexuality. Dr. C. Mller (German) established
the linkage between Psychoanalysis and sexual reform and he explained in detail why
175 was harmful: The paragraph represents a confusion of social and moral law...homosexual activity is not in itself harmful to society; socially harmful excesses can be pursued
in court without calling it an attack on morals.233 Several other speakers addressed the
abolition of 175, in particular Kurt Hiller in The Law and Sexual Minorities. His speech
concluded with the words: 175 is the shame of this century.
The League held its second congress in Copenhagen in 1928. The committee
included about thirty members, by then. At this congress, the goals of the League were
explicitly defined and its statutes were revised. The Leagues goals were expressed in a
general resolution adopted at the end of the congress, July 3, 1928:
The international congress for sexual reform on a scientific basis appeals to legislative bodies, the press and the people of all countries to help create a new social and
legal attitude (based on knowledge based on scientific research in sexual biology, psychology and sociology) towards the sexual life of men and women. Currently, the happiness of an enormous number of men and women is sacrificed to false sexual
228. Cited by Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, London, Longman, 1989, 325 pages, p.185.
229. England, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Russia, Austria, Switzerland,
Czechoslovakia, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland,
Lithuania, Egypt, Liberia, Argentina, Chile, the British Indies and Malaysia.
230. Norman Haire and Dora Russell for England, Margaret Sanger the United States, Max
Hodann and Helene Stcker for Germany, Victor Margueritte for France, Alexandra Kollonta for
Russia.
231. For information on the League, cf. Constitution of the WLSR, in WLSR, Sexual Reform
Congress, Proceedings of the Second Congress, Copenhague, 1-5 July 1928, Levin & Munksgaard, 1929,
307 pages.
232. All these presentations are covered in Dr A. Weil (dir.), Sexualreform und Sexualwissenschaft,
Vortrge gehalten auf der erste internationale Tagung fr Sexualreform auf sexualwissenschaftlicher
Grundlage in Berlin, Berlin, Julius Pttmann, 1922, 286 pages.
233. Ibid., p.144.
82

standards, ignorance and intolerance. Therefore it is urgent that many sexual problems (womens place, marriage, divorce, contraception, eugenics, marriage, unmarried
motherhood and illegitimate children, prostitution, sexual anomalies, sex murders,
sex education)... be re-examined from a judicious and impartial viewpoint and dealt
with scientifically.
The League especially called for political, economic and sexual equality between
men and women, the liberation of marriage (and especially of divorce) from the tyranny
of the Church and the State, the control of conception, so that procreation may be
undertaken only voluntarily, and therefore only with the necessary sense of responsibility, the improvement of the human race through the application of the knowledge of
eugenics, the protection of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children, a rational
attitude toward sexually abnormal people and especially with regard to homosexuals,
both men and women, the prevention of prostitution and venereal diseases. It advocated that disorders of the sexual instinct [be] considered as essentially pathological
phenomena, and not, as in the past, as crimes, vices or sins; that only sex acts which
compromise the sexual rights of another person [be] regarded as criminal; that sexual
acts between responsible adults, undertaken by common assent, must be viewed as
private matters; and, finally, that systematic sex education be provided.
The League was tackling an ambitious, exhaustive and progressive program. It was
connected to a legislative platform. It proposed that sexuality was a special field, subject
to comment only from scientists and not the government, the Church or public opinion.
Information and education were to be used to bring an end to outdated behaviors,
transform peoples attitudes and bring about changes in legislation.
The question of homosexuality is explicitly addressed in item 6 and indirectly in
item 9. Homosexuality is seen as strictly a private matter; the law has nothing to say, since
it does not impinge on the sexual rights of others. Nevertheless, it should be noted that
homosexuals are defined as abnormal, which makes it difficult to improve their public
image. This formulation is clearly the result of a compromise between the various factions
represented in the League.
The World League for Sexual Reform did not stop at voicing pious wishes,
expressing its views and publicizing the medical and sociological advances in the field of
sexual research. It developed various activities intended to ensure the application of the
points of its program, as enumerated in the Leagues statutes. It was to achieve its goals
by serving as a link between organizations and individuals of all countries which share
its point of view, by disseminating scientific knowledge on sexuality, as a combatant
all the forces and the prejudices that bar the road to a rational attitude with regard to
these questions. The principal methods adopted were to publish or encourage the publishing of technical and popular scientific works aimed at reforming sexuality on a scientific basis, to produce an international journal on sexual reform, to conduct an
international congress, disseminate propaganda via conferences, collect all the laws
and statistics relating to sexuality in every country, and to draft laws and assist in the
development of legislation as regards sexuality.
Obviously, the League saw its key activities as being mainly in the field of information and education. An intellectual and scholarly organization, it was geared more to
reflection than to action. While the prominence of some of its members gave it some
measure of influence at the government level, and while it could contribute to influencing
public opinion through its publications and conferences, it remained invisible on the
83

ground. There was no direct pressure paced on the government (petitions, demonstrations, press campaigns).
In this, the League was different from, for example, Wilhelm Reichs Sexpol. Specifically, it did not consider practical measure, for example in the field of contraception.
However, it must be said that it was made up of many associations which were, themselves, active on the ground in confronting the daily problems of homosexuals. The
League had an international vocation; it had neither the means nor the structures necessary for local action. It was rather a coordinating body that defined a political outlook
shared by the various associations working for sexual reform.
The Leagues third congress was held in London in 1929. It was a great success in
terms of audience; 350 deputies took part in it, compared to just 70 deputies who had participated at Copenhagen in 1928. Portugal was the only European country not to send a
representative. Several participants testified to the importance of the homosexual
question within the League, even if, according to Dora Russell, practically all the presentations were intended to inform or influence public opinion rather than to instigate
political action.234 R.B. Kerr addressed the fundamental topic of the sexual rights of
single people. H.F. Rubinstein gave a talk on Sex, censure and public opinion in
England, dealing with the lawsuit against Radclyffe Hall for The Well of Loneliness (1928).
His remarks against the Minister for the Interior, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, were particularly severe; it was he who had initiated the condemnation of the book. Rubinstein
said that, Under his government, the administration seems to take as its goal to refuse
any public discussion of the problem of homosexuality.235
George Ives, in Taboo attitudes, also underscored the role of the press in the
treatment of homosexuality: There are certain forms of criminal activity that are not
reported by the newspapers and of which most decent women are ignorant and prefer to
remain ignorant, as the Evening News had asserted, for example. During the Radclyffe Hall
trial, Daily Express had expressed its view by saying: There are certain vices in the world,
which, since they cannot be treated, must be endured, but in silence.236 The question of
the taboo seems to have been particularly topical, with Bertrand Russell analyzing the
taboos on sexual knowledge. He charged that the condemnation of The Well of Loneliness
brought out into the light of day another aspect of censorship, i.e. any discussion of homosexuality in the form of fiction is illegal in England.237 Lastly, H.S. Sullivan talked about
links between homosexuality and schizophrenia in Antiquated sexual culture and
schizophrenia.
By the time of the fourth congress, held in Vienna in 1930, the committee had 2,000
members. Homosexuality was addressed in several forums; Dr. Fritz Wittels, in Sexual
Distress, explained the increase in homosexuality in Germany as a consequence of the
moral rigidity of German women. 238 Ernst Toller explored the relationship between
234. Dora Russell, The Tamarisk Tree, My Quest for Liberty and Love, London, 1975, 304 pages, p.218.
235. WLSR, Sexual Reform Congress, London, 8-14 September 1929, Kegan Paul, 1930, 670 pages,
p.308-309.
236. The Evening News, 12 November 1920, Daily Express, 5 September 1928, cited ibid., p.342. George
Ives also cites the Daily News, 25 August 1927, the Pall Mall Gazette, 16 July 1921, the Star, 7 August 1927,
the Daily Express, 8 September 1927.
237. Ibid., p.401.
238. WLSR, Sexual Reform Congress, Vienna, 16-23 September 1930, Vienna, Elbemhl, 1931,
693 pages, p.45.
84

Detention and homosexuality, Elgar Kern spoke about the difficulty of living in
womens prisons. Finally, Sidonie Frst addressed the Problem of the unmarried
woman and Dr. Hermann Frischhauf dealt with Some psychoanalytical experiments on
young sexual delinquents.
The last congress was supposed to take place in 1932 in Moscow; that was cancelled, and it was held finally in Brno. The 1933 congress was scheduled to be held in
Chicago but it did not take place, for the accession of the Nazis in Germany dealt the
organization a fatal blow. The goal of the League had been to convince governments of the
rationality of sexual reform; with Europe facing economic depression and a gathering
threat from fascism, these concerns paled by comparison.
The League was finally dissolved in 1935 by Norman Haire and Dr. Leunbach, after
Hirschfelds death. It had succeeded, however, in promoting a new outlook in many different countries, and it had served as a forum for the discussion of homosexuality as well
as contraception and divorce. Reformist, but progressive, it contributed to changing
public opinion. It also inspired national initiatives elsewhere, particularly in Great
Britain.
A Lackluster Performance on the Part of English Activists

Toward the end of the 19th century, some marginal homosexual experiments had
been tried in England. In the 1890s, George Ives founded the order of Chaeronea,239 a
homosexual secret society whose purpose was to organize a homosexual resistance and
to promote reforms. Lawrence Housman was involved a friend of Carpenter and
Wilde; and Montague Summers, future Secretary of the homosexuality sub-committee of
the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (BSSP); John Gambrill; Francis
Nicolson treasurer of the BSSP; and A.E. Housman, brother of Lawrence, an academic
and poet. This initiative did not achieve much. English homosexual militancy was characterized in the 1920s by its great discretion. If one excludes the outstanding figure of
Edward Carpenter, one finds few remarkable personalities. The only homosexual
movement, the BSSP, would have liked to become the British equivalent of the WhK but
it was too timid to have any real impact.
Edward Carpenter, socialist utopian and homosexual

The leading English homosexual activist from the end of the 19th century to the
early 1930s was, without a doubt, Edward Carpenter (1844-1929).240 Carpenter was born
in Brighton into a well-to-do family. In his autobiography, My Days and Dreams, he breaks
his life into four parts: from 1844 to 1864, he lived in Brighton in a world that tried to be
fashionable and which detested.241 He was at Cambridge from 1864 to 1874l then, from
239. On Ives and the Order of Chaeronea, see Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out. Homosexual Politics in
Britain from the 19th Century to the Present, London, Quartet Books, 1979, 278 pages, p.118-127.
240. Long forgotten by history, Edward Carpenters role in the history of gay and the socialist
movements has been rediscovered. Homage was paid to him in 1944 on the centenary of his birth and
articles were published in the Time Literary Supplement, The Spectator, The Listener, and The New Statesman.
His book Towards Democracy was reissued. E.M. Forster gave a talk on BBC on 25 September 1944
But, these efforts toward rehabilitation remained without effect until the end of the sixties.
241. Cited by Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out, op. cit., p.68.
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1874 to 1881, he was lecturing in the north of England. Beginning in 1881, he devoted
himself to the working class and his research on homosexuality. He noted that he could
trace his passionate desire for a male relationship back to his earliest childhood, but that
this desire could not be expressed, indeed, it did not have any chance of being
expressed.242
Carpenters sexual reformism falls under the broader rubric of a utopian socialism.
The sexual question fits into his logic: civilization (defined by access to private property)
disintegrated and corrupted man from the inside, and destroyed the unity of his
nature.243 To build a better world, then, would require restoring man to his real nature
by placing the body and sex back at the center of human concerns.
During the 1880s, Carpenter distinguished himself by his defense of feminism, more
than anything else, and by his role within the socialist movement in Sheffield. By 1890, the
sexual question came to the fore, as much for personal reasons (his relationship with
George Merrill began in 1891) as political. His meeting with a wise Indian, Gnani,
revealed to him the Hindus more tolerant attitude toward sexuality and he wanted to
publicize it. In 1894, he published three essays entitled, Sex Love, Woman, and Marriage, at
Manchester Labour Press. In 1896, Loves Coming of Age came out, including a chapter on the
intermediate sex. It had to be pulled off the market, given the repercussions of the Oscar
Wilde trial. In 1902, he published Iolaus: An Anthology of Friendship, A Collection of Essays on
Homoeroticism; in 1908, The Intermediate Sex; and in 1912, Intermediate Types among Primitive
People. Several essays on Walt Whitman and Shelley could be added to this list.
The writings of his friend Havelock Ellis, and of sexologists like Otto Weininger
and Magnus Hirschfeld, influenced Carpenter in the development of his theory, with elements derived from Lamarckian philosophy, Hindu mysticism and the poetry of Walt
Whitman incorporated as well. Much of this writing seems very dated, today, but it was
highly innovative at the time. Carpenter was the first to call for a liberation of sexual
morals and he influenced several generations of readers. What made him unique among
his contemporaries was that he distinguished sex from procreation. At the same time,
while not neglecting the sentimental aspect, he maintained that it was vital to rehabilitate
the physical pleasure of sex in order to remove shame from the act of love. In The Intermediate Sex, he expounded his theory on homosexuality. He refers to Ulrichss idea (the
heart of a woman in the body of a man) and refutes the notion that homosexuality is a
sign of degeneracy. Like others, he seeks to classify uranians in several categories. He
distinguishes extreme cases (queens, etc.), which he suggests are not very representative of average homosexuals who, he says, are not recognizable physically but who are
characterized by a greater sensitivity and a greater emotional complexity (as far as males),
and (as far as females) a penchant for order and a strong sense of organization. Homosexuality may come in any degree, but it is necessarily instinctive, congenital and ineradicable. For Carpenter, homosexuality can only be acquired if the person is carried away
by curiosity, lubricity or a lack of women. However, in his view bisexuality would become
standard in the new society. He also strives to demonstrate that uranians are positive
forces within a nation and he emphasizes their contribution as inventors, professors and
artists.
242. Edward Carpenter, Selected Writings, vol.1, Sex, reedited., London, Gay Men Press, 1984,
318 pages, p.83.
243. Cited by Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out, op. cit., p.71.
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Carpenter shows his limitations when it comes to female sexuality. He declares
that the division of labor between the sexes is the result of biological differences between
men and women; that woman is more primitive, more sentimental, more intuitive and
closer to nature than is man. Nonetheless, he advocates social and economic independence for women and calls for a reform of marriage and for birth control options to be
made available.
Carpenter would not have had such a great and long-lasting effect if he had been
only a theorist. He became a model, a prophet for many homosexuals because he practiced what he preached. In fact, his private life is closely connected with his writings.
Constantly seeking a loving relationship that would satisfy him fully, he suffered long
years of frustration. After various attempts with craftsmen or Socialists (George Hukin,
George Adams, Bob Muirhead and James Brown), he met George Merrill, in 1890, in a
railway compartment. They never parted. Merrill was twenty years old. He grew up in a
working-class family in Sheffield. He was sexually confident and liberated, but his rather
vulgar speech and manners shocked Carpenters friends. Beyond a certain paternalism on
behalf of Carpenter, their relationship rested on a sincere and mutual affection. After a
few years, Merrill moved to Millthorpe, Carpenters home. The notion of two homosexuals living together more or less openly did not sit well with their neighbors, or even
their friends, but Millthorpe took on a kind of symbolic luster as a kind of homosexual
paradise. The property became a place of pilgrimage for all kinds of working class and
progressive homosexual movements who sought to win Carpenter over to their cause.
The reception was always very cordial, be it for personalities like Goldsworthy Lowes
Dickinson, political friends like Edith Lees and Olive Schreiner, or the isolated homosexual in search of a guide.
Scandal was never far from their door and Carpenter had to be mindful of his reputation. In 1909, he was attacked by the puritanical M.D. OBrien, a member of the Liberty
and Property Defence League, which published a lampoon entitled Socialism and Infamy:
The Homogenic or Comrade Love Exposed. An Open Letter in Plain Words for a Socialist
Prophet. He alleged that there was an international Whitmanian plot afoot that
intended to weaken the moral fabric of society.244
Carpenters influence can be seen in the works of the Bloomsbury group, which
placed individual relations at the center of its concerns, in the philosophy of homosexual
novel Maurice by E.M. Forster, and even in D.H. Lawrences writings. Robert Graves wrote
to Carpenter from Charterhouse to tell him that Iolaus and The Intermediate Sex had enabled
him to understand his true nature. Carpenters influence was also considerable on the
244. Cited by Jeffrey Weeks, ibid., p.81. A police dossier revealed the existence of an inquest on
Carpenter; many witnesses provided staggering testimony concerning sexual advances supposedly
made by Merrill. A young man who spent several weeks with Carpenter revealed that he tried three
times to have sexual relations with him and confessed to being a homosexual. Given these different
statements, the Procurator drew the following conclusions: Edward Carpenter is one of the leaders
of a secret organization that is political in nature, whose members are linked by homosexual practices; the leaders of this secret and criminal organization have as their goal to destroy civilization;
they recognize themselves by a secret sign: The hand is placed on the thigh, and pushed strongly.
Beyond the anecdotal aspect of the famous homosexual plot, which here takes on a particularly ridiculous nature, it is hard to understand why, given the existence of such a file, the police remained
inactive. It is possible that Carpenters links to socialist movements raised questions about his real
goals. Rather than indict him on morality charges, the procurator may have sought to pin him with a
more serious crime national treason, perhaps. Carpenters book, Homogenic Love, was withdrawn
from sale, but the sanctions didn't spread to the author (HO 144/1043/183473).
87

British Labour and Socialist movements, the feminists, and even abroad.245 And last but
not least, Carpenter served as president of the BSSP in 1914.
British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (BSSP): A timid reformism
Carpenter was active in the only English homosexual movement of the 1920s, the
British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (BSSP), which was founded in July 1914 by
former members of Chaeronea. Lawrence Housman was named president, and Edward
Carpenter was appointed honorary president for life. The very neutrality of the name
shows how hard the group tried to be discreet. Far from flaunting itself as a homosexual
association, the BSSP sought to hide its affiliation and dissimulated even its ties with the
WhK. In fact, Magnus Hirschfeld had played an essential role in launching the society. In
1912, he had created a British affiliate of the WhK and, the following year, had come to
make a speech at the 14th International Medical Congress, held in London. He created a
sensation there by exhibiting various diagrams and photographs of men and women who
proved the existence of an intermediate sex. This conference was a revelation for many
of the doctors who were present, for sexuality and above all homosexuality were very
little studied. The BSSP was founded partly to cure this ignorance.
The society defined its activities and goals in one of a publication entitled, Policy
and Principles, wherein it sets itself the task of the study of problems and questions
relating to sexual psychology, in their medical, legal and sociological aspects.246 Additional aims were to educate the public on sexuality and thus to pave the way for the necessary reforms.
Three working groups were formed. The first was focused on sex education, the
second on sexual inversion and the third on heterosexual problems. A private library for
members was established; and a sub-committee for libraries to tried to gain access to the
British Librarys catalogue of private matters, which included a list of works kept out of
circulation due to their sexual content. Monthly talks were held for the public at large,
throughout the 1920s, and 17 conferences were published in the form of bulletins. Various
subjects were addressed, but the study of homosexuality remained the central concern.
The first bulletin stated the question of homosexuality clearly, criticizing the conservative approach adopted by the medical, government and society milieux, which basically
refused to tackle the subject. The second one announced the BSSPs stand in favor of
homosexuality, with the publication of The Social Problem of Sexual Inversion, an
abridgement of Hirschfelds famous text, Was soll das Volk vom dritten Geschlecht
wissen? The abridged version recommended the liberalization of social and legal attitudes with respect to homosexuality, noting that there were efforts underway in
Germany to modify the law and the criminal code but offering the opinion that England
would not be ready for such a move until homosexuality was better understood;
[t]herefore, our goal is to discuss and elucidate this question.247 Several pamphlets were
distributed on the subject of homosexuality.248 A special sub-committee was created and
245. Cited by Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out, op. cit., p.80-82. The publication de Loves Coming of Age
led, for example, to the formation in Italy of a group dubbed the Union of young men, which
discussed and reflected on problems of sexuality.
246. Policy and Principles, BSSP, n 1, 1915, 14 pages, p.3. On la BSSP, see aussi Jeffrey Weeks, Coming
Out, op. cit., p.128-143.
247. The Social Problem of Sexual Inversion, BSSP, n 2, 1915, 12 pages, p.3.
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speeches were given by various public figures; Ives, or example, explored the GrecoRoman view of youth and the condition of the adolescent.
What influence did the BSSP have? In July 1920, it had 234 members, which seems
to have been its average size. Up to forty or fifty people might show up at the meetings
and BSSP publications were distributed widely. Still, it is quite unlikely that it succeeded
in reaching the general public; its influence was mainly within the progressive intellectual
milieux. G.B. Shaw, E.M. Forster, Maurice Eden and Cedar Paul (defenders of birth
control, working within the Independent Labour Party, then the Communist Party),
Vyvyan Holland (the son of Oscar Wilde), and the dramatic author Harley GranvilleBarker were members. Radclyffe Hall, Una Troubridge, Bertrand and Dora Russell were
very much involved.249 The society also had contacts abroad, with Hirschfeld and his colleagues, of course, but also with Margaret Sanger in the United States, the Chicago
Society for Human Rights, and the French Society of Sexology. Alexandra Kollonta, the
Russian feminist, was a member of the BSSPs honorary committee in the 1920s. Thus, the
BSSP has a mixed record; it managed to spark some discussions of homosexuality in a difficult environment and it followed a cautious course, looking to educate society in this
area. However, it cannot claim to have made any practical difference. The BSSP stuck to a
line that was reformist rather than radical, and it shied away from militant action. Nevertheless, one might agree with Jeffrey Weeks in noting that until the beginning of the
1930s, it was the principal British organization to deal with homosexuality, and that, in
itself, is a kind of achievement.250
THE FRENCH WAY: INDIVIDUALISM COMES UP SHORT

Unlike Germany and England, France did not experience the formation of homosexual movements in this time period. Perhaps the tolerant legal context accounts for
their reticence with regard to associations there were no repressive laws on the books
that required a concerted fight; but French individualism also played a role. The communal approach, more typical for the Anglo-Saxon or Germanic countries, was not part of
the French make up. Asserting homosexual rights was thus left to a few key figures, who
personally identified with the homosexual cause.
Marcel Proust, Witness of Days Long Past

This is not the place to embark on a complete analysis of Proustian sexuality, but
we can take a look at the overall influence his work may have had on the perception of
homosexuality. His Sodom and Gomorrah can be considered as the starting point in the
248. Lawrence Housman, The Relation of Fellow-Feeling, BSSP, n4; Harold Picton, The Morbid, the
Abnormal and the Personal, BSSP, n12; Edward Carpenter, Some Friends of Walt Whitman, BSSP, n13;
F.A.E. Crews, Sexuality and Intersexuality, BSSP, n 14; H.D. Jennings White, Psychological Causes of Homoeroticism and Inversion, BSSP, n15.
249. Edith Sitwell refused to support it, declaring that she would never have thought that there
was any need to encourage them [homosexuals], and [that] indeed we have more than enough of
them now, without making any new ones, (cited by Philip Hoare, Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen
Tennant, London, Penguin, 1992, 463 pages, p.151).
250. Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out, op. cit., p.137.
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debate on homosexuality in France.251 Proust does not reveal the central topic of his work
in any brutal way;252 homosexual allusions are sprinkled throughout Swanns Way, Within a
Budding Grove, and Guermantes, but they drew little attention. In Swann, for example, there is
the Sapphic scene between Mlle Vinteuil and her friend. The only reviewer to comment
on it was Willy, who alluded to it in Le Sourire, June 18, 1914, and then with delight:
And mind that you keep this away from young ladies, if you know any who have
retained their innocence anything can happen Proust shows us a sentimental
sadist, almost a child, moving in with an older friend, a vicious alexandrine who
enjoys (inter alia) a bad reputation, refuses to close the shutters when they play their
games, and says: If anybody should see us, it will be even better. She ends up picking
up the portrait of her complaisant friends papa off the piano and spitting in his
face.253
Within a Budding Grove appeared in July 1919 and won the Goncourt prize on
December 10. In LAction franaise of December 12, Leon Daudet compares Proust to the
great moralists. Most of the reviews are favorable. The Guermantes Way, Part I, was published in autumn 1920. Paul Souday, in the November 4, 1920 issue of Le Temps, refers to a
nervous aesthete, a little bit morbid, almost feminine. Still, there was nothing to indicate
what the later reactions would be. The critics were mostly preoccupied with questions of
form and style, and Prousts talent as a moralist, rather than any hint of immorality.
It was only upon the publication of Sodom and Gomorrah that the truth burst out into
the open when the character of the baron de Charlus, partially based on the count Robert
de Montesquiou, a Parisian dandy and notorious homosexual, was revealed in full light.
Even then, the critics hesitated to tackle the subject head-on. Sodom and Gomorrah I followed The Guermantes Way, Part II, and Souday, for example, devoted nine-tenths of his May
12, 1921 review to the first volume. Others were more aggressive. Gustave BinetValmer,254 in Coemedia, May 22, 1921, went on the attack:
In 1910, disgusted by the morals which I saw being promoted in certain salons, I
imagined what a great man might suffer, whose son would bear the burden of too
sumptuous a heredity. In the example here at hand, I have frequently stated my admiration for the meticulous genius of Mr. Marcel Proust... but if this monument is to be
crowned by four volumes which study sexual inversion, I think that this is hardly the
proper time... we do not want any more of the aberrations of a false aristocracy (and
international, at that) to invade our literature. I detest snobs.
Many publications considered it prudent to warn the reader. LAction franaise of

August 6 noted: Let us mention, finally, that in its last pages the Proust book introduces
251. For everything concerning how La Recherche was received, I relied on the fundamental work
by Eva Ahlstedt, La Pudeur en crise. Un aspect de laccueil A la recherche du temps perdu de Marcel Proust, 19131930, Paris, Jean Touzot, 1985, 276 pages.
252. He wrote to his publishers in 1912 to warn them that it would be an indecent book with
characters who were pederasts. However, he insisted that this aspect of the book be kept secret
until the final revelation.
253. Cited by Eva Ahlstedt, La Pudeur en crise, op. cit., p.30.
254. Binet-Valmer, a novelist and journalist, had himself published a homosexual novel, Lucien,
which was quite a success. He was also an ardent patriot, decorated during the war, and vice-president, then president, of the Ligue des chefs de section, an association of war veterans.
90

the first chapter of the continuation. Its title is such that we hesitate to print it in these
pages, never mind the subject matter. What a rage to defy all conventions!255
Even so, not all the critics were unfavorable. Paul de Bellen, in La Libre Parole, July 1,
was very positive, but his position did not have anything to do with acceptance of homosexuality: To repress vice, it is necessary to have the courage to denounce and show it as
being odious. It was left to Roger Allard, in the September 1 NRF, to emphasize the innovative aspect of the subject. He saw this as a date in literary history, which breaks a
spell, the aesthetic spell of sexual inversion.
With Sodom and Gomorrah II, published in May 1922, reviewers had to stake their
positions. It became difficult to avoid the subject and, in fact, there was certainly no conspiracy of silence regarding this work. Still, some critics worked brilliantly in the sphere
of euphemism and allusion, and often relied on their readers imagination to appreciate
what was going on.256 Proust was even congratulated on the absence of obscene details.
Souday, in Le Temps of May 12, 1922, noted that the book is more discreet than its title suggests:
Mr. Proust avoids making us eye-witnesses to repugnant scenes. He does not
directly describe the corrupt excesses of these perverts, but studies their psychology
through their vice. This is very bold, and in essence not too interesting, but is useless
rather than truly scandalous. Moreover, in spite of the rather off-putting title, Proust
has taken care not to devote all seven or eight hundred pages to this antiseptic and
repellent study, which in sum remains episodic in this volume and all its precursors.
And indeed, that is all that it deserves: it is even more than one would have wished.
In fact, Souday, like many others, admires Proust in spite of his chosen subject
matter, which interests him not at all it seems shocking and repugnant to him, and he
concedes to refer to it only indirectly, allusively and morally, i.e. allowing the judgment of
vice through the description of the heros misfortunes. The work may have raised questions about Prousts objectivity, but no one made any allusion to his private life. At this
time, only Prousts closest circle of friends was aware of his homosexuality and few suspected him of having direct involvement in the subject matter. Rumors about his sexual
orientation may have been whispered here and there, but were made public only after his
death.
Proust died on November 18, 1922 and the remainder of his writings were published posthumously. From this point onward, the attacks became more and more acute,
against both his work and his person. Lucien Dubech authored a particularly violent
article published on April 25, 1923, in the Revue critique des ides et des livres, asking: Do You
Read Marcel Proust? He himself did not read him; he compared his writings to pornography, and suggested that they reflected a foreign influence.
The Captive was published in February 1924. Some reviews were positive, especially
Soudays, but Franc-Nohain, in Lcho de Paris, sees Proust as a sick person and a pornographer. Le Mercure de France took an original stance; Raphal Cor, in an article signed
Bergotte, calls for tolerance for homosexuals. It cannot be insignificant that this gesture
comes in connection with a volume dealing with lesbians, a less shocking subject for the
255. Signed Orion, the collective pseudonym of Eugne Marsan and Lucien Dubech.
256. Only Binet-Valmer, in Coemedia, Roger Allard in NRF and Andr Germain in Les crits
nouveaux used the term inversion.
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public than male homosexuality. Albertine disparue (1926) (English translations exist,
entitled The Fugitive, or The Sweet Cheat Gone) was not so well-received: Proust was not forgiven for the sudden inversion of Saint-Loup.
The release of this title more or less coincided with the first rumblings about
Albertines real gender and Prousts morals. The year 1926 was a defining year for homosexuality in literature in any case: Gide brought out Les Faux-Monnayeurs (The Counterfeits)
and drew thunderbolts from Souday. Time Regained was first published in serial in the NRF
in 1926, but arrived in the bookshops only in November 1927. The book was greeted as a
great literary event. By now, one could speak of homosexuality directly; the debate was
focused on the moral question and how it related to the arts. Prousts talent was broadly
recognized, but the question of inversion continued to pose a problem. In fact, he was
condemned for having broached the subject, and he was held responsible for starting a
homosexual trend in literature. Some remained resolutely hostile, such Louis Reynaud
in La Crise de notre littrature (1929): Proust, we repeat, is a sick and depraved intellectual.
He brings us the feelings of a sick and abnormal being, a very particular psychology case
from which others will find perhaps nothing worth retaining.
Thus, studying how Prousts writings were received in the French press makes it
plain what a fundamental role Remembrance played in instigating a public debate on homosexuality in France. Before him, the subject was scarcely discussed. His example opened
the door to homosexual writings and discussions. Even if he had relatively few readers,
the polemic reached such scope that the subject matter became quite public. Simply mentioning his name or his works was enough to evoke certain images, among cultivated
people. But, how original was Proust when it comes to homosexuality and what was his
impact on the French homosexual population?
Indeed, if one studies the description of homosexuality as it is given throughout
Remembrance, Proust seems to be firmly rooted in times gone by. His experience of
inversion is typical of the end of the 19th century. Despite the enlightened medical theories, it was still charged with a very heavy sense of shame. According to George
Painter,257 Proust was probably not conscious of his inclinations until the age of twenty,
when he experienced ardent friendships for platonic comrades alternating with crushes
on girls.
His relationship with Reynaldo Hahn marked a decisive stage in the identifying
process; he understood that his friendships were only the sublimation of a repressed
desire and he also discovered shame: he had to lie to his mother, to hide a truth that could
have killed her. Thus, in Proust, one does not find acceptance of homosexuality much
less homosexual pride. The slow maturation of his characters seems modeled on his own
painful process, and seems to be an ultimate fight to deny the obvious and to try to stick
to an ideal and fictitious normality, precisely that of the narrator. The evolution of
Prousts sexuality shows a progressive loss of illusions in love and a turn toward carnal
satisfactions; by the same token, his search for an ideal friend gradually dissolves into a
search for a sexual partner. The young aristocrats whom he admired, like Antoine
Bibesco, were replaced by young working class boys, like Alfred Agostinelli, and then
gradually gave way in the final years to the professionals at Albert Le Cuziat's secluded
house, the htel Marigny, rue de lArcade in Paris. This gradual decline looks like a met257. George D. Painter, Marcel Proust [1959], Paris, Mercure de France, reedited 1985, 2 vol., 464
and 515 pages.
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aphor of Proustian homosexuality: inversion is vice, and it can only turn out badly. Any
attempt to color it with noble and generous feelings is only a fraud; it must don the face of
brutal sex, unhealthy perversion, prostitution. The reader also suffers one disillusionment
after another, as the characters with whom he sympathizes plunge deeper and deeper into
the abysses of vice and corruption. The final revelations of Albertines double life seem to
mark the ultimate stage of a reality test: even the charming lesbians prove they are
damned; their innocent games give way to perversions equal to those of Charlus and their
degradation is illustrated perfectly by Vinteuils profaning of the photograph. The homosexual commits his first crime by betraying his parents; this original sin cannot be erased.
There is a kind of predestination in this: born into vice, the invert has no choice but to
show his vice.
Thus, as innovative as Prousts work may be, from the point of view of homosexual
theory it remains more representative of late-19th-century thought than that of the interwar period. His decision to make the narrator heterosexual may be logical from the point
of view of his work, but it sets up a certain confusion as to whether the author himself is
homosexual. Proust transcribed, in a striking yet fictionalized way, the usual line used by
sexologists on those rare occasions when they dared to touch upon the subject of homosexuality. The meeting between Charlus and Jupien, which serves as a revelation to the
narrator, reads like a botany or zoology treatise. Homosexuality is compared to an
incurable disease and inverts are constantly associated with Jews, whose dark destiny
and bad reputation they share. Proust incorporates a number of other prejudices that
were in vogue early in the century, like the readiness to charge people with treason and
conspiracy. In his anxiety to provide a meticulous description of the homosexual world,
he gives examples that end up looking more like a list of cautions. He reinforces the
notion that homosexuals are very numerous but go undetected by the ordinary population an impression that is confirmed as revelations mount, indicating that most of the
characters in the novel, who had hitherto been above suspicion, exhibit dubious proclivities: ...these exceptional beings, for which we feel so sorry, are actually a whole crowd,
as will be seen in the course of this work, and for a reason which will be revealed only at
the end; and they themselves complain of being rather too numerous than too few.258
Proust heads off any accusations in advance; he neither encourages nor supports
the formation of a homosexual movement, because he is persuaded that it must fail.
[B]ut one would in any case like to avoid making the same disastrous mistake that
happened when the Zionist movement was encouraged, by which I mean creating a
sodomist movement and rebuilding Sodom. The sodomists, as soon as they got there,
would leave the city again so as not to be considered part of it; they would take wives
and entertain mistresses in other cities, where they would enjoy every sort of proper
entertainment. They would only show up in Sodom when they were in dire need, the
way hunger drives the wolf out of the woods in other words, things would continue to go on as they do now in London, Berlin, Rome, Petrograd and Paris.259
Prousts severity misled some of his critics. The chapter on Sodom was considered moral and scholarly. Jacques Rivire himself, who did not yet know Prousts
258. Marcel Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe I, A la recherche du temps perdu, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl.
de la Pliade, 1988, t.III, p.32.
259. Ibid., p.33.
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true nature, was delighted by the tone of the work: I have heard a distorted notion of love
being promulgated too often not to feel a delightful sense of ease in hearing someone
speak about it in such a healthy, balanced way as you.260 Andr Gide harshly judged
Prousts descriptions, which he felt painted too nice a picture of vice, uncontrolled
passion and excessive images of perversion: We have yet, this evening, to speak of hardly
anything but uranism; he says he reproaches the indecision which led him to round out
the heterosexual part of his book by transposing to the girls side all that his homosexual
memories contained that was gracious, tender and charming, so that he had nothing left
for Sodom but the grotesque and the contemptible. But he takes great offense when I say
that he seems to have wanted to stigmatize uranism; he protests; and I understand finally
that what we find deplorable, a laughing matter or an abomination, does not appear
repugnant to him.261 Gide is also hostile to Prousts Platonic references, which equate
homosexuals with the original androgyne: Even worse: this offending of the truth is
likely to please everyone: the heterosexual, whose warnings it justifies and whose
loathings it flatters; and the others, who will now have an alibi and who will benefit by
their scant resemblance to those whom he portrays. In short, given the general tendency
to cowardice, I do not know any writing which is more likely than Prousts Sodom to
encourage wrong-headed thinking.262
In fact, it was the aunts tragic destiny that first fascinated Proust, their mystery,
their flagrant perversion. A standardized homosexuality, uniform, undifferentiated, and
militant like the Germans, managing to integrate into society more or less, would have
interested him very little. His work has the merit of crudely exposing to the eyes of the
public, for the first time, the vicissitudes of homosexual life, its codes and its pitfalls, its
passions and its dramas, its flaws and its beauties.
Proust, a guilt-ridden homosexual, persuaded that he belonged to an accursed
race, could not propagate a positive image of homosexuality, much less pass a precursor
of homosexual militancy. According to Gaston Gallimard, Andr Gide accused Proust of
setting the question back by fifty years. Proust is said to have answered: For me, there
is no question only characters.263 Still, Prousts extraordinary impact on French
public opinion is undeniable: for the first time, inversion became a trendy topic, one that
could be discussed, commented on, and analyzed even if not necessarily in positive
terms. And that was a fantastic revelation.
Andr Gide, A Militant Homosexual?

Andr Gide, constantly cited by French homosexuals, is a very ambiguous figure.
Indeed, just like Proust, Gide built his view of homosexuality on his own personal experience. Gide was not a militant homosexual in a strict sense: he did not fight for homosexual rights, and he did not found any movement or create a magazine for them.
However, by agreeing to go public on his sexuality, by publishing Corydon, by publicly
acknowledging his pederasty, he found himself in the position of a spokesman or a representative for French homosexuals. He neither wished for it nor saw it coming; but it fell to
260. Cited by George D. Painter, Marcel Proust, op. cit., p.388.
261. Andr Gide, Journal, 1887-1925, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1996, 1 840 pages,
May 1921, p.1126.
262. Ibid., 2 December 1921, p.1143.
263. Cited by Marcel Erman, Marcel Proust, Paris, Fayard, 1994, 286 pages, p.227.
94

him because, at least at first, there really was no one else who might have filled such a role.
As a consequence, French homosexuals identified with Gides thoughts on a wide scale,
despite the fact that his ideas were quite specific and not readily applicable to most of
them. Moreover, this completely eliminated lesbians from the field of reflection, as they
were of no concern to Gide. Proust had briefly brought the Gomorrahns out of the closet;
Gide sent them back.
Like Proust, Gide had a before and after.264 Before Corydon, Gide had a reputation as an austere moralist, which he owed to his Protestant origins and his interest in
ethical problems. The book Strait is the Gate (La Porte troite) (1909) was even considered
rigid, cold, and depressing due to its merciless vision of Christian morals. The Immoralist
(LImmoraliste) (1902) was very well-received and Michels attraction to young boys was
prudently left unmentioned, except by Rachilde, who made witty allusions to Gides sexuality in the July 1902 Le Mercure de France. Sal, presented at the Vieux-Colombier Theater
in 1922, drew a sharper reaction. Several critics reproached Gide for choosing an improper
subject, but their tone remained moderate since the episode was drawn from the Bible.
It was Corydon (1924) that definitively established Gide as a homosexual writer.
Since 1895, Gide had been keeping a file entitled Pederasty, in which he collected
information on the subject with the aim of writing a scholarly work on the question. It
was apparently in 1908, during a trip to Bagnols and England with Ghon, Copeau and
Schlumberger that he wrote the first two dialogues. On May 22, 1911, a first version of
Corydon, including the first two dialogues and part of the third, was published anonymously in Bruges under the name of C.R.D.N. Only twelve copies were printed. On March
5, 1920, 21 copies were published anonymously. It was only in May 1924 that Corydon
appeared in its final form.
In his journal, Gide explains that he delayed publishing this text for so long in
order to avoid disappointing those who were dear to him. Now, he feels more mature,
more sure in his mind, and ready to reveal his thoughts. He also intends to respond to
Sodom and Gomorrah, which irritated him deeply, and to Remy de Gourmonts book, Natural
Philosophy of Love (Physique de lamour). An essay on the sexual instinct, published in 1903,
included a chapter on the question of aberrations. His principal influences were Hirschfeld, Moll, Krafft-Ebing, Raffalovitch, Havelock Ellis and Freud. He feels an urgent
need to reveal to the world his true nature, even if it means ruining his reputation: I
cannot wait any more... I have to obey an internal need, more imperative than anything!
Understand me. I need, need, to finally dissipate this cloud of lies in which I have hidden
since my youth, since my childhood... I am choking in it!265
The work is composed of four dialogues, in which Dr. Corydon266 encounters a
heterosexual visitor, who plays innocent. The first two dialogues discuss homosexuality
in nature, and the latter two speculate about its social consequences. In fact, this fundamental work sheds light on both Andr Gides personality and the French model of homosexuality.
The Eulenburg trial serves as a pretext for the meeting between Corydon and his
interlocutor. He has known Corydon for a long time, but he had kept his distance out of
264. Here I refer to Eva Ahlstedts book, Andr Gide et le Dbat sur lhomosexualit, Paris, Jean
Touzot, 1994, 291 pages.
265. Cited by Roger Martin du Gard, Notes sur Andr Gide (1913-1951), in uvres compltes, Paris,
Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1983, t.II, 1 432 pages, p.1375.
266. Corydon was the name of one young shepherd who was in love with another, in Virgil.
95

moral compunction. Now, he decides to question him in order to understand uranism
better. His prejudices are clear from the very start of the visit: he is surprised not to find
the apartment decorated in a more feminine style, but notes the presence of a photograph
reminiscent of Michelangelo and a portrait of Walt Whitman. Gide uses this character as
a herald of normality. Instinctively recoiling from homosexuality, he grudgingly admits
the cogency of certain arguments. He learns to understand Corydon better, in the course
of the discussion, respects him and admires his courage, but he cannot overcome his
innate hostility. He learns tolerance, but not approval.
In the first dialogue, Corydon expresses his desire to write a Defense of pederasty;
he wishes there were a martyr for the cause, somebody who would advance ahead of the
attack; who, without fanfare, without bravado, would brave reprobation and insult; or
better, someone of such prestige and probity that reprobation would be forestalled267
Here, we recognize the ambition of Gide, himself.
Corydon then gives a dramatic recollection of his first awakening. He rejected overtures of love from his girlfriends brother, who then commits suicide. This drama led him
to look into the subject. Gide, like his contemporaries, intended to pique his readers
interest and, to get around any sense of distaste or contempt, drew on their compassion
and pity. However, this introduction is misleading: Gide and Corydon are not positioned as victims. They are proud of their orientation and are rather persuaded of their
superiority.
Corydon immediately drew lines. Now, there was only talk of normal pederasts
and not, like the doctors, of shameful uranists, plaintive and ill. Already, a large portion
of homosexuals were judged and kicked out. Gides dialogues relate only to his own
passion: pederasty. On other matters, he shared the prejudices of heterosexuals. Clearly,
such a limitation played a fundamental part in the definition of homosexuality in France.
Unlike in Germany, which had militant movements for the great mass of homosexuals as
well as for pederasts (Der Eigene), the former had no real defenders in France.
Gide was the proponent of an elitist, aristocratic, intellectual homosexuality. His
model was Platonic, his references, Greek. To explain the origins of homosexuality,
Corydon plunges into natural history first, as medical works do. Then he attacks the
notion that homosexuality is a vice against nature. Heterosexuality, he suggests, is a
matter of habit and not of nature, for everything in our society and our education heads
us in that direction. If homosexuals persist in their inclinations in spite of all the inducements otherwise, it is because their passion is dictated by nature. The third dialogue considers homosexuality in the cultural context. Gide contrasts the natural and superior
beauty of man to the artificial and false allure of woman. He draws parallels between
beauty and art, and associates the exaltation of male beauty with historical periods of
glory and ostentation, and the celebration of Venusian qualities with the centuries of
decline and decay. Lastly, the fourth dialogue looks at the pederasts place in society. The
male having far more resources than can be directed to the reproductive function, he seeks
alternative outlets for his desire. In a monogamist society, prostitution or adultery are the
only other options. Corydon proposes a historical, healthy and noble solution, that of
ancient Greece. Again, like most of homosexualitys defenders at that time, who sought to
bolster their remarks with lists of heroes and men famous, Gide evokes the last brilliance
of Sparta and the Sacred Band of Thebes in support of his thesis. Lacedaemon is not just a
267. Andr Gide, Corydon [1924], Paris, Gallimard, reedited 1991, 149 pages, p.20.
96

random example: the city embodied the warlike spirit, courage, and virile force, the characteristics most diametrically opposed to those popularly ascribed to homosexuals. Gide
pleads, here, for his own way of life. His relationship with Marc Allgret was thus copied
on the Greek tutelary and pedagogic model. The fourth dialogue ends with this demonstration. The visitor leaves without a word by no means convinced, but with no arguments left.
What are we to conclude? Gide was not a zealot. His defense of pederasty was
moderate; and in his other books, he always stressed control and measure, and not abandonment to instinct. However, given the authors social position, the works are courageous. One might even say there is some bravado, an almost puerile will to lay bare his
heart, at last.
Gide set to work to rehabilitate homosexuality and fell into a long tradition that
was well represented in Germany by Adolf Brands group, Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, and
teachers like Gustav Wyneken. The general tone of his essay exudes a clear sense of superiority. Pederasts are intellectuals, artists, aesthetes, who know how to distinguish true
beauty and who care more for the heart than the body. Is Gides work original, then? For
France, it was, since no one else there was really defending homosexuality, and Prousts
works remained under wraps. However, such work was already well underway in
Germany and England, and Gide was hardly innovative if we compare him to Hirschfeld,
Carpenter or Brand. His originality was in the use of the sophisticated and didactic form
of the dialogue, which makes the explanation more pleasant to follow. One might well ask
whether Gides work was in step with its time. Gide started out early in the century, precisely when his foreign neighbors were publishing their essays. By 1924, Corydon seems
rather obsolete. Pederasty was not at the heart of the issue during the inter-war period; on
the contrary, what was needed was recognition of homosexuals in general, inverts,
pederasts, sodomites or what-have-you, without distinguishing between the different
types and tendencies. For all the anonymous homosexuals, Corydon may have offered some
consolation, but hardly any hope. Few could see themselves in this portrait of a moral,
even moralistic, pederast who justifies his vice on the basis of artistic taste and pedagogical concerns.
Gide was extremely distressed upon the books release; he was apprehensive over
the public reaction and expected to be pilloried: When it comes to Corydon, I compare
myself to that caricature by Abel Faivre, depicting a man lying across the train tracks, his
head on the rail, waiting for the train that will slice him in pieces. He pulls out his watch
and exclaims, Sapristi! The Express is late!268
This concern was matched by a certain impatience and a more or less conscious
will to provoke things. In August 1924, he was particularly chagrined by the lack of publicity given his book: Corydon is on sale, but almost nobody knows it, for it is not being
promoted by reviews nor in the bookshops.269 Actually, Corydon was received fairly
coolly. The courage of the author was appreciated, but no one dared pass judgment on his
theories. Most critics did not feel qualified to discuss the question. Jean de Gourmont was
the most virulent; in the Mercure de France of October 1, 1924, he said Corydon was an
268. A letter from Andr Gide to Dorothy Bussy, 26 December 1923, in Correspondance Andr Gide/
Dorothy Bussy, January 1925-November 1936, Paris, Gallimard, Cahiers Andr Gide, 1981, t.II, 650 pages,
p.448.
269. Id., 4 August 1924, ibid., p.476.
97

apology for pederasty and that Gide wrote the book to make people talk about him. In
the Journal littraire, Lon Pierre-Quint noted that the work seems quite dated,... Andr
Gide, intending to give us a scholarly and philosophical work, has given us a work in the
style of the poet in J[ean]-B[aptiste] Rousseau.270 Willy was openly scornful: The dialogues of Corydon, heavily scented with the laboratory and hospital, are hardly likely to
excite the salacity of ones colleagues and then, even if they contain some clever remarks
here and there, one senses the aggressive intolerance of the Great Writer who, as part of
an insulted minority, has the impression that it, and only it, now represents Truth, the
Beautiful, and the Healthy.271
Among the most violent reactions was that of Franois Nazier, who published The
Anti-Corydon, an essay on sexual inversion, in 1924. A parody of Corydon, it starts with a dialogue between Sappho and Casanova. Diogenes, Alcibiade, Lucien de Samosate, Verlaine,
and Rabelais are all invited to speak, in turn. Naziers main quarrel was with Gides lack
of originality and especially his militant and pontificating tone: Corydon is only a demonstration, a shocking one, tis true, of the strange fury of proselytism that, like a sacred
delusion, overtakes the sectarians of reverse love.272
Corydons influence could still be felt until the end of the 1920s. A famous article by
Marcel Rja, entitled, The revolt of the cockchafers, was published in the Mercure de
France on March 1, 1928, making direct reference to the book. The article is an anti-homosexual lampoon, the cockchafer or maybug symbolizing the inverts who were multiplying
so rapidly in literature. The person who was responsible for this situation is indicated
clearly: Corydon, or rather Andr Gide, having declared without the least nod to decency
that homosexuality, far from being a monstrosity, a vice, is the most normal, the most
advisable thing in the world, and having tried to prove it to us by conclusive reasoning, it
is Andr Gide whom we fight courteously, but relentlessly.
Even homosexuals themselves sometimes greeted Corydon with reserve. Klaus
Mann noted in his journal: Many judicious elements, not much new; on the whole, its
rather moving; and especially: It is dangerous to establish a clear distinction between
normal pederasts and inverts, since the line is fluid and even the individual may find
himself on one side and then the other (as Gide himself proves); the only difference is
more a question of quality than of predilection.273
After Corydon, Gide ignored the advice of his friends, who recommended prudence,
and placed himself right at the center of the debate on homosexuality. The Counterfeiters
was published in February 1926. The book presents two homosexuals, douard, a pederast, and the count Robert de Passavant, an invert according to Gides classification.
The two men are competing over the friendship of a young boy, Olivier Molinier. douard
embodies all qualities of the pederast according to Gide: attentive, discreet, anxious to
educate and protect the elect of his heart, fearing to be rejected by a carefree youth keen
for pleasures; in his quest, he is paradoxically encouraged by the childs mother, who
wishes for a sure guide for her son; pederasty receives the ultimate imprimatur here: I
270. Journal littraire, n12, 12 July 1924, p.12.
272. Franois Nazier, LAnti-Corydon, essai sur linversion sexuelle, Paris, ditions du Sicle, 1924,
126 pages, p.11.
273. Klaus Mann, Journal. Les annes brunes, 1931-1936, Paris, Grasset, 1996, 452 pages, 10 and 12 July
1932, p.76. Corydon was translated into German in 1932 and published by Deutsche Verlagsanstalt. By
contrast, it was not publishedin England until after the war.
98

understand how precarious a boys purity can be, even if he seems to be well protected.
Moreover, I do not believe that the purest adolescents make the best husbands later; nor
even, alas, the most faithful, she added with a sad smile. Finally, the example of their
father has made me wish for other virtues in my sons. But I am afraid they may fall into
degrading vice, or get into bad company. Olivier is easily led. You will have the courage to
restrain him. I believe that you will be able to do him good. He only listens to you.274
The only evocation of sexual intercourse between douard and Olivier is summarized in two lines, and even then a certain puritanical reserve is felt: Next to you, I am
too happy to sleep. He wouldnt let me leave until morning.275
The criticism was more abundant now and came from the popular press; opinions
remained divided. The literary qualities of the book were acknowledged, but there were
too many homosexual characters. Some started to suspect that Gides obsession was
becoming less controlled. Many found the book so tedious that they doubted it could
have much of an impact, but others worried about the readers reaction. Paul Souday summarized the general feeling in Le Temps (February 4, 1926):
Oh! there is nothing crude here, as far as the words themselves. Everything is very
discreet, cloaked, and a very innocent reader might conceivably get through it without
understanding what is going on. However, it is only too clear. Really, it becomes
unbearable, especially with this serious tone and this insipid sentimentality. From
that perspective, it is ridiculous! Lets quit talking about the Ancients! Morals have
changed!
This article inspired a survey on homosexuality in literature, in the review Les

Marges. The results were published on March 15, 1926. The reviews editorial committee
had put together a questionnaire which was sent to several writers. They were asked if
the preoccupation with homosexuality had developed after the 1914-1918 war and
whether the introduction of homosexual characters into literature could have a harmful
effect on morals and the arts. Most of the authors agreed on the development of homosexual literature since the war, although some, like Michel Pay, recalled that during the
Belle poque Sapphic literature was very widespread. Some, like Gerard Bauer, said that
Marcel Proust was like the Messiah for these people and, with a kind of genius, released
them from their bondage. Others blamed psychoanalysis; and still others said that literature only mirrors the evolution of society. Henri Barbusse saw the development of homosexual literature as proof of the degeneracy of society and attributed it to a declining
phalanx of intellectuals. He issued a call to young people to purify their minds. Andr
Billy blamed nervous exhaustion from the war, sports, the extreme cerebral quotient of
all contemporary art. Charles Derenne only saw it as nothing but snobbery and fun,
even though he himself would condemn inverts to be whipped and sent to hard labor.
Clement Vautel thought it was just a means of shocking the public. In fact, most saw very
little danger in it, and they merely sighed or made fun of it. Jean Cassou did not express
any interest in the question; Andr Billy and Pierre Bonardi said people should be allowed
to write whatever they wanted; and Franois Mauriac cautiously explained that there
274. Andr Gide, Les Faux-Monnayeurs, Paris, Gallimard, 1926, 499 pages, p.398. The mother's attitude recalls that of Mme de Bricoule in Les Garons by Henry de Montherlant, who preferred her son
have relations with his schoolmates rather than hanging around with loose girls.
275. Ibid., p.403.
99

was nothing to condemn nor to tolerate. Ambroise Vollard, as a good Catholic, did not
read such works and Leon Werth, who found all that quite repugnant, also abstained.
However, there were some zealots who decided to clean up this scourge, be it
through censorship or, if it came to that, why not an auto-da-f? I could not have noticed
the expanding presence of homosexuality in literature, because I immediately destroy any
book that might reflect such a thing, declared Charles Derenne. Robert Randau also
asked that homosexuals be kept from spreading the microbe of their special literature.
Others, like Charles-Henry Hirsch, recommended that doctors ally with legislators to
choke off this disgusting aberration. Camille Mauclair exclaimed: Imagine the sexual
practices between two men and try not to vomit! He concluded, in a gripping way,
unconsciously revealing how public opinion linked homosexuality and foreigners, treason
and national threat: We got over Boches, we will get over the pederasts. George Maurevert called for a return to order, a national rejuvenation: When France has become
again what she ought to be with the help of a strong man, if need be these wicked
morals will disappear on their own. He added: Men make the laws, but women make
the morals, as La Bruyre said. The day when a good, honest Frenchwoman ejects a flamboyant fag from a salon or stops an overdressed dandy at the door, with a hand in his face,
the morals will change overnight. And the men will make the laws. The satirical magazine Fantasio published a report on the survey on April 15, 1926, and underlined, rightly,
the novelty of the debate. The sentence was clear, nevertheless: We have had enough of
literature full of pederasts.
Gide reached an apogee in the revelation of his homosexuality by publishing If It Die
An Autobiography (Si le grain ne meurt) in October 1926. Writing to the critic Edmund
Gosse to justify his attitude, he said:
Dear friend, I have a horror of lying. I cannot hide under that conventional camouflage that systematically disguises the works of X,... Y,... and so many others. I wrote
the book to create a precedent, to give an example of frankness, to enlighten some, to
reassure others, to force public opinion to take account of things that are being
ignored or that one tries to ignore, to the great detriment of psychology, morals, art...
and society. I wrote this book because I would rather be hated than to be admired for
being something that I am not.276
If It Die is a valuable testimony; in it, Gide confesses his homosexuality, and analyzes its progression and his homosexual awakening. At times, Gide seems to want to
apologize for his vice; other times, he glorifies it and takes pleasure in shocking the reader
with salacious anecdotes. He retraces the course of how his homosexuality unfolded,
evoking his first concerns at school, the abrupt revelation that he was different: I am not
like the others! I am not like the others,277 he acknowledged to his mother. But it was in
Tunisia that he first experienced pederasty with young Arab boys like Ali and Athman:
On the threshold of what we call sin, would I still hesitate? No, I would have been too
disappointed if the adventure had ended in the triumph of my virtue which by now
was contemptible to me, a horror.278
276. 16 January 1927. Cited by Eva Ahlstedt, Andr Gide, op. cit.
277. Andr Gide, Si le grain ne meurt [1926], Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1986, 372 pages, p.133.
278. Ibid., p.299.
100

By yielding to the call of the flesh, Gide diverged from his Protestant education and
gave in to pagan values. Anxious to show that homosexuality is not a burden, he presents
his adventures in an idyllic way. His attempts at seduction always result in success and a
complaisant partner, especially in North Africa. Gide moves in a world that is largely
fantasy, where his homosexual desire is always divined, foreseen, fulfilled, with no
obstacle barring his road, not even his own scruples. The press received If It Die with
mixed reviews; several writers praised Gides courage and sincerity but others, like
Souday and Gourmont, reproached him for showing his dirty laundry. Henri de Rgnier in
Le Figaro was very unfavorable.
And after Franois Porch, LAmour qui nose pas dire son nom (Franois Porch, the Love
which dares not say its name) (1927) was published, the attacks against Andr Gide began in
earnest. Pierre Livres article in Le Divan, July-August 1927, was incendiary:
So that we categorize the works of Andr Gide among those things which are so
corrupted by their ending that they are debased and destroyed in their entirety and to
the very core. This is a draught that we do not want to drink anymore, because the last
mouthful leaves a horrible aftertaste. It is a romantic supper at the end of which the
criminal warning makes us forget all the foregoing pleasures: You have been poisoned, Ladies and Gentlemen... It is this pleasure [of perverting] that, in combination
with his love of children which we will not deign to grace with the name that he
has borrowed from the Greek fills him with such indulgence for these vicious kids,
petty thieves, poachers, assassins, tricksters, and cheats whose baser instincts he flatters, and a seductive and rotten troupe of which peoples his works like a choir of evil
cherubim.
His novels may legitimate homosexuality, and Corydon remains the landmark book
of the inter-war period as regards homosexuality, but it would be an overstatement to
claim that Gide was a militant. His discourse remains that of an intellectual who defends
his singularity from a certain height. His argumentation principally aims at showing that
homosexuality is legitimate, that it must be tolerated, and also that the homosexual is a
solitary being, one who chooses his own way and who is thus to some extent superior to
the others.
Gide was indignant at his contemporaries cowardice; they let him fight alone at
the front line:
X and T keep repeating that they have had enough of pretence, that they are
resolved from now on to speak frankly, to face up to the public, to burn their ships,
etc. But they do not burn anything. The courage they take pride in is a courage that
does not cost them anything of that which they still hold onto. And, in the new book
that they give us, they take great care that their confessions are of such a kind and
are so speciously dissimulated that only the very astute can read between the lines; so
that they do not have anything to retract if they convert later on or if they think they
have a chance of getting into the Academy.279
But he never managed to hide his own feelings of guilt, which are plain in his confessions to Roger Martin du Gard; he confides that he is the product of generations of
Puritanical Protestants and concludes: I pay for them, I am their punishment.280
279. Andr Gide, Journal, 1889-1939, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1991, 1374 pages, 8
December 1929, p.960.
101

Inversion, An Isolated Attempt at a Homosexual Review
There was no homosexual movement in France during the inter-war period.
However, a homosexual review did exist, fleetingly, on the German model. (This was not
the first French homosexual periodical; Marc-Andr Raffalovitch and Jacques
dAdelsward-Fersen had already founded Akademos in 1909.281) Inversions was created by
Gustave Beyria and Gaston Lestrade in 1924. Beyria was born in 1896; he was an
unmarried office worker. Lestrade was born in 1898; a postal worker, he lived with a 24year-old Swiss tapestry maker, Adolphe Zahnd.
What is most striking about it is that it was such a marginal initiative; it had
nothing to do with the Parisian homosexual cliques. The publication had no literary godfathers, and neither was it an emanation from the medical community. Of course, it
echoed the theories then in vogue, but it was not the publishing organ of any specialist in
homosexuality. In fact, the only French homosexual review was the work of perfect
unknowns and it received no external aid. It was published anonymously, at 1 rue Bougainville. Its high price (1,50 F) made it a luxury, which few could afford. It was sold at
newsstands, but one could also subscribe and even receive it in a discreet wrapper.
Only five issues were published before it was banned. The first issue came out on
November 15, 1924. Inversions called itself not a review on homosexuals but a review for
homosexuals. We want to cry out to inverts that they are normal and healthy beings,
that they have a right to live their lives fully, that they owe nothing to a morality created
by heterosexuals they do not have to standardize their impressions and their feelings,
to repress their desires, to conquer their passions.
Various authors in homosexual circles contributed to the review, such as the theorist of androgyny, Camille Spiess, and the writer Axieros; but no leading light participated. Inversions was directly inspired by the Greek model and, like Der Eigene in
Germany, made frequent references to Antiquity. The review owed much to the German
movements: it communicated the scientific discoveries of Hirschfeld and sexologists from
across the Rhine. And, like the German periodicals, it offered a varied panorama of subjects relating to homosexuality. The first issue included an article on the Oscar Wilde
trial, medical commentary, an article on inversion in pigeons, a book review and the traditional classified advertisements, very modest (they disappeared in No. 2). Starting with
No. 3, the review was going to be called Urania, which would draw less attention. That
change never took place, because an investigation was already underway for offending
public morality. By No. 4, the German influence is strongly felt, especially in an article by
Numa Praetorius on homosexuality in Germany. There was also a survey for readers: Has
Inversions outraged your good morals? In your opinion, does the investigation against this
review constitute an infringement of your freedom of thought and the freedom of the
press? What is your opinion on homosexuality and homosexuals? Several public figures
responded, expressing a tolerant opinion on homosexuality, for example Suzanne de
Callias (Mnalkas), Claude Cahun, Henry Marx, Havelock Ellis, Camille Spiess and
280. Roger Martin du Gard, Notes sur Andr Gide, loc. cit., p.1373.
281. In the previous centuries, France had known seen fledgling homosexual organizations come
and go, in particular the Ordre de la Manchette, inthe 17th century, and the Secte des Ebugors (an
anagram of bougres) in the 18th. Under the Second Empire, an association called the Socit
dmiles use dto meet in a house in the Grenelle neighborhood. See Claude Courouve, Les Homosexuels
et les Autres, Paris, ditions de lAthanor, 1977, 155 pages.
102

George Pioch, a close relative of Eugene Armand. The review was banned after that, but it
managed to publish another issue under the name of LAmiti (Friendship). Most notably, it
included an article by St Ch.Waldecke, one of Adolf Brands and Der Eigenes collaborators.282
The periodical attracted sarcastic remarks from its competitors. With the
exception of LEn-dehors, Eugene Armands anarchistic publication, the other newspapers
reacted very negatively; Fantasio in particular attacked Inversions. Under the headline,
Lets be French! Long Live Women, for Heavens Sake!, it gave vent to a standard condemnation of inverts, which it repeated from then on. It proclaimed its clear opposition
to the Anglo-Saxon gangrene and asserted the French heterosexual tradition.283 As for
La Lanterne, it suspected Germany of having a hand in it.284
The disappearance of Inversions did not make any waves. Willy, in The Third Sex,
makes an ironical reference to this French misadventure: I do not deplore the disappearance of Inversions, which was too dumb to be believed; but in the end, we should ask,
all the same, what the public wants: that everyone be left in peace, or that all delinquents
should be locked up, without distinction.285
Except for Inversions, there is no trace of any French homosexual militancy. This
odd fact was noted at the time, especially by German observers. Numa Praetorius (a
pseudonym of Eugen Wilhelm), in his article, In connection with homosexuality in
France, in Jahrbuch fr sexual Zwischenstufen in 1922, devoted five pages to the subject. He
supposed that there must be fewer homosexuals in France than in Germany, and he suggested that the absence of anti-homosexual laws and the feminine mythology (specific to
France, according to him) must be factors. Similarly, in The Third Sex Willy observes: This
ornamental sword of Damocles [175] allows fagots who are conscious and organized to
make themselves out to be martyrs, to make claims, and even to attract significant
numbers of heteros to support them.286
Also, while France did have an organized homosexual subculture, there was no
militancy, and French homosexuals remained determinedly individualistic. That is certainly due to the more favorable social climate than in the neighboring countries, but it
also had to do with a certain political immaturity. Discussions on homosexuality
remained confined to the literary sphere, consideration to be a private sphere unlike
that of political writing or social lampoons.
It was only because there was so little discourse that Marcel Proust and Andr
Gide came to be seen as the heralds of the homosexual cause. Talking openly about homosexuality was already a militant act. The French homosexual intellectuals did not present
a united front; Proust and Gide defended opposing theories and Jean Cocteau, another
outstanding figure on the French homosexual scene, squared off against Gide.287 Far from
helping French homosexuals advance, the visibility of homosexual personalities served as
282. Gilles Barbedette and Michel Carassou mention the existence of the review Inversions in
their work, Paris gay 1925, Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 1981, 312 pages. See also AN, BB 18 6174/
44 BL 303 and Chapter Seven.
283. Fantasio, n 427, 15 November 1924.
284.La Lanterne, 19 November 1924.
286. Ibid., p.58-59.
287. Homosexual rivalry, stirred by the quarrel around Marc Allgret, is reflected in books from
those days, such as Les Monstres sacrs de Cocteau (1919) ou Les Faux-Monnayeurs de Gide (1926).
103

a handicap, reinforcing the idea of a vice reserved to an intellectual elite or stuffy sensation-seeking middle class, and paralyzing anonymous initiatives.
***
Were the 1920s the golden age of homosexual movements? To some extent, yes.
Many homosexual associations were formed and it was the apogee of German militancy.
However, this success was tempered by other failures and shortcomings. Throughout the
profusion of periodicals, and lobbying efforts, what is striking is the discordance of the
voices, the disagreement and the competition between the principal leaders, the lack of a
common platform or even of a common definition of homosexuality. The exclusion of lesbians, whose impact within the movements was almost nil, is another proof of how fragmented the German homosexual community was. These divisions were surely one of the
main reasons for the political failure of the movements.
Moreover, in an environment of increasing sexual liberation, in which the homosexual subculture flourished, securing rights seemed like just one more tedious and
formal consideration. This shallow approach had no repercussions under Weimar, but it
took on a tragic significance after 1933. Still, we should not undervalue the attempts at
organization and the assertion of rights. As precursors, these movements were courageous, generous and vivifying. They testify to the precocity of the aspirations to form a
community, which took their first concrete forms in Europe, and a diverse approach to
the problem. Already in the inter-war period, there were many ways of affirming oneself
as a homosexual or lesbian as a militant protestor, as in Germany, through subversive
integration, as in England, or via sensual individualism, as in France.
104
CHAPTER THREE
AN INVERSION OF VALUES: THE CULT OF HOMOSEXUALITY
The militant groups are certainly the most recognized aspect of the homosexual
liberation movement of the 1920s. However, if we are looking to explain the homosexual
apogee, its cultural impact, its resonance in public opinion, we must look at a phenomenon that is less well-known but is perhaps more representative of the novelty of the
period: the propagation of a model of homosexuality in the British upper classes, and
especially among the intellectuals.
Although closely tied to the development of the German homosexual scene, the
cult of homosexuality288 was specific to England, and particularly to the years 19191933. The traditional aversion to homosexuality gave way, in certain sectors of the society,
to a tolerance that soon shifted into approval, and then to adulation. Homosexuality was
spread in the public schools, the universities, and the intellectual circles. It became a
fashion, a life style, a sign of recognition in certain classes and certain circles. The cult of
homosexuality in England was the basis by which homosexuals gained entry into certain
British institutions and began to permeate the literature, thereby imperceptibly molding
the society.
Of course, this does not mean the triumph of the forces of progress, or tolerance for
homosexuals as a group. Moreover, very few lesbians were part of this and there was very
little parallel in France and Germany. However, in spite of its limits, the cult of homosexuality did constitute a unique subversive phenomenon in the traditional institutions and
the affirmation of a positive difference. In fact, the counter-reaction, which dates from the
mid-1930s, was never complete because this pro-homosexual climate had caused an
upheaval in the education of at least two generations of young men.
288. Noel Annan uses this expression in his book, Our Age: English Intellectuals between the Wars: A
Group Portrait, New York, Random House, 1991, 479 pages. In my view, it perfectly reflects the state of
mind of the time, at least among the British upper class and intellectuals.
105

SEDUCED IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The public school289 was commonly held to be a den of vice where homosexuality
was the rule (at least until the introduction of co-education in the Sixties). This is not
limited to England; other European boarding schools and religious colleges also had a
naughty reputation, usually associated with a confined group engaging in promiscuity.
However, the English public school has certain distinctions. First, it is basically the only
form of schooling available for the middle- and upper classes. (In France or Germany,
there are more options available.290) These children are principally raised in boarding
schools and live only among their schoolmates. They spend little time with their parents,
except during the holidays; and they have almost no contact with the external world, particularly girls.291 Then, as we will see, the hierarchical and self-managed operation of the
school encourages special relations to form between the pupils. Lastly, the English public
school often regards homosexuality as normal and the pupils, at various times, may consider it the latest fashion to boast of their homosexual relations. This topic is common in
British literature, even though school headmasters and educational authorities often try
to refute it.292 Thus, the phenomenon of best friends often goes beyond mere friendship,
and it would be foolish to pass it off as a minor thing. The public school largely determines the pupils future life; it is both a model and a reference. By making homosexual
experimentation a standard part of adolescence, it encouraged greater tolerance toward
homosexuality in adulthood. By disseminating a cult of homosexuality among the elite, it
set the stage for more open homosexuality.
289. The public schools system is composed of two levels. The nine biggest ones provide entre to
the upper class and the future lite of the nation. Seven are boarding schools: Winchester (founded in
1382), Eton (1440), Westminster (1560), Charterhouse (1611), Harrow (1571), Rugby (1567), Shrewsbury (1552). Two are day schools: St Pauls (1509) and Merchant Taylors (1561). Most of the public
schools were founded more recently; they are for youngsters of the middle class and their graduates tend
to become executives and middle managers in business, administration and the liberal professions.
The best known are Cheltenham (1841), Marlborough (1842), Rossall (1844), Radley (1847), Lancing
(1848), Epsom (1853), Clifton (1862), Haileybury (1862), and Malvern (1865). To get a sense of the
influence of the public schools, we can take one example: in 1937, 19 ministers out of the 21 in Chamberlains cabinet came from a public school. The public schools are in any case the private preserve of a tiny
privileged minority, which Tawney estimated at 3% of the families in 1939 (cited in Franois
Bdarida, La Socit anglaise du milieu du XIXe sicle nos jours, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points
histoire, 1990, 540 pages).
290. Antoine Prost thus recalls that in France, at the end of the 19th century, the boarding school
model was largely but not exclusively used in private establishments, and was not common for
public lyces. Besides, the boarding schools were more for children from the countryside than the
city. And finally, affluent families could always pay for a tutor. See Histoire de lenseignement en France,
1800-1967, Paris, Armand Colin, 1968, 524 pages.
291. Here, I am going to study mainly homosexuality among boys, but I will also touch on this
question in the girls schools. The problem there was nearly identical, anyway. For this survey I rely
on the book by John Gathorne-Hardy, The Public-School Phenomenon, 597-1977, London, Hodder &
Stoughton, 1977, 478 pages.
292. See Rennie Macandrew, Approaching Manhood, Healthy Sex for Boys, London, The Wales
Publishing Co, 1939, 95 pages, p.67.
106
An Inversion of Values: The Cult of Homosexuality

The Public Schools, Fostering the Cult of Homosexuality
The public schools are for youths from about ten to eighteen years old. The
boarding school system is used for almost all pupils, who spend six years living in an
exclusively male milieu for most of the time. Such living conditions, at the age of full
sexual awakening, are hardly helpful to ones development as far as sex and love. While
heterosexual encounters might be possible during the holidays, the boys do not always
take advantage of the opportunity. There is a very strict code of honor in force in the
public schools, and the boys tend to scorn girls or, at least, to ignore them. Thus, it is no
surprise that romantic or erotic friendships develop within the schools.
The public schools were always dens of sexual iniquity. In Eton, in particular, the
dormitory where 52 pupils slept was well-known for the sexual frolicking and persecution that went on; parents were strongly advised not to send their children there, if
their health was fragile.293 Throughout the 18th and the 19th centuries, orgies and torture
were commonplace in the schools. In the 1920s and 1930s, the situation began to change.
However, a palpable erotic excitation continued to haunt the corridors. When individual
rooms began to be assigned, first by Dartington and Eton, this only further encouraged
sexual activity. Robin Maugham describes his life at Eton in 1929, in his autobiography,
Escape from the Shadow. 294
Homosexuality was in fashion to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the
school and the year. All it took was for enough of the boys in one class to have reached
sexual maturity, and they would quickly promote such practices. Quentin Crisp notes
that, in his public school, it was customary to have an orgy on the eve of the last day of
every quarter. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson remembers the atmosphere in the corridors
of Beomonds, and writes of a scene in the locker room where a crowd of admirers watched
an older boy masturbating against a younger one.295 Cecil Beaton entered Harrow in
January 1918 and stayed there until 1922; he says the situation varied from dormitory to
dormitory; in some, there was little sexual activity, and in others bad behavior went on
openly.
Beaton himself acquired a bad reputation, because he was so good-looking that
everyone assumed he was extremely sexually active. He says that he was calm, weak and
rather effeminate, avoided sports, dressed with care, and tried to look beautiful in order to
please himself; but that because of his good looks he was thought to be a little whore.
Everything he did was seen as reinforcing that view, and he became ill as a result. While
other people were sleeping around, his only partner was Gordon Fell-Clark.296 A class
like that might be followed by one that is more reserved, or even hostile to homosexuality.
What was different about the inter-war period, and especially the years 1919-1933,
is that homosexuality seems to have been everywhere, then. One witness of the time says
that he had fun at school; he got along well with his mates; at that time, it was seen as a
good thing to be homosexual. Almost all the boys had sexual experiences together.297 At
293. Shelley was tortured there and all his life suffered physical and psychological consequences from it. See John Gathorne-Hardy, The Public- School Phenomenon, 597-1977, op. cit.
294. Robin Maugham, Escape from the Shadow [1940], London, Cardinal, 1991, 472 pages.
295. Dennis Proctor (ed.), The Autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson, London, Duckworth, 1973,
287 pages, p.53.
296. Cited by Hugo Vickers, Cecil Beaton, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985, 656 pages, p.23.
107

Oundle, in 1920, when Director Sanderston asked who had been passing notes to their
classmates, half of the school stood up. To paraphrase an alumnus:
There was an enormous amount of sex, enormous. I had my share of it, but I
would have liked even more. You passed somebody a slip of paper: Would you like to
go for a walk with me on the moor? If he agreed, one could be pretty sure that he
would be obliging. The boys adored carrying notes from A to B, if they lived in different houses. One did not have much time. We had to hurry. There was an ideal moment
to make love, between dinner and study time. One could slip into the study hall with
somebody who had caught ones eye.298
Homosexuality in the public schools could take many forms, including the most
brutal. G. Lowes Dickinson speaks of cruel events at Charterhouse. In Wellington, in the
1930s, young boys were violated. In Bedford, during the same period, an alumnus admits
that he and his comrades masturbated regularly another pupil, New. One day they
noticed two live electric wires hanging from the ceiling, and practically burned the boys
penis off: ...there was a terrible flash and he howled. I swear to you that his penis changed
color. I still hear his cries today.
Other practices were less dangerous. J.R. Ackerley describes how the older boys
would make passes at the younger ones, sitting on their beds, evening after evening, whispering and masturbating. He says that one clever fellow had opened the seams of the
pockets in his trousers, so that his hands or those of one of his obliging peers, would
have direct access to the treasure.299
It is impossible to know what proportion of boys had sexual intercourse; John
Gathorne-Hardy suggests that 25% of them made love on a regular basis. Romantic
friendships were formed, as well as erotic crushes. Indeed, the fear of being caught, added
to timidity, and a strict separation by age group made sexual intercourse difficult. John
Betjeman says: The only thing that held me was love. I never would have dared to touch
anybody. I thought that I would go to prison or hell.300 Often, and naturally, the boys
were still too young, too shy, or too frightened to perform the act, even with a boy whom
they loved. In a letter to a friend, the writer and critic Cyril Connolly recalls a failed
experiment: I have spoken to you, I believe, of my fatal repression our last night in the
bathroom, and how timid and awkward I was when he tried to embrace me.301
These differences in conduct only represent different stages in sexual evolution.
Precocity and promiscuity in the schools often went side by side with the purest chastity,
sometimes maintained out of very lofty sentiments the desire not to sully the purity of
a budding love. In these cases, love relationships were copied on the heterosexual model.
One of the boys should be younger, beautiful, and of another social class, if possible. He
needed to be protected and to some extent played the part of the girl. Above all, the relationship between the young boy and his elder was to remain chaste. It was not the ful297. Dudley Cave, in Walking after Midnight. Gay Mens Life Stories, Hall-Carpenter Archives, London,
Routledge, 1989, 238 pages.
298. Cited by John Gathorne-Hardy, The Public-School Phenomenon, op. cit., p.163-164; and in the
following anecdote (p.164).
299. J.R. Ackerley, My Father and Myself [1968], London, Penguin, 1971, 192 pages, p.70-71.
300. Cited by John Gathorne-Hardy, The Public-School phenomenon, op. cit., p.166.
301. Cited by Humphrey Carpenter, The Brideshead Generation, Evelyn Waugh and his Friends, London,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989, 523 pages, p.23.
108

fillment of desire that mattered, but the innumerable difficulties that stood in the way of
winning over the chosen one.
The relationships that sometimes cropped up between pupils and teachers may
also be seen in this light. T.C. Worsley notes that while he was assistant headmaster at a
famous public school (which he does not name), there too, a majority of professors were
definitely homoerotic to a greater or lesser degree.302 Worsley, a homosexual himself,
described the situation facing the faculty when it came to their loves or their desires:
It was a weakness in my position because I had less control over my expressions than [my most prudent colleagues]; but perhaps even more because I was conscious of it. It was not that I had any real reason to feel guilty, since I did not have any
physical desire for any of the boys, even for those with whom I finally fell in love.
And it was the same for my other colleagues in the same situation. We eventually discovered that only one of them had acted scandalously.303
Indeed, it seems that, while a significant proportion of the teachers in the public
schools were homosexual, most never satisfied their inclinations with their pupils.
Worsley supposes that the overall homoerotic climate in the school tempered the urge:
The generalized homoeroticism that I discovered in the organized sports rituals satisfied
my inclinations sufficiently so that I kept them pure.304
In the girls schools, the pattern was fairly similar, although somewhat attenuated.
Also, since there were fewer such schools, we have fewer memoirs; scandals were
extremely rare and it is difficult to draw any conclusions. Sexual intercourse seems to
have been much rarer than among boys, even though each school had its share of lesbians.
However, no scenes of debauchery have been described that would compare to those
evoked above. The most widespread phenomenon seems to have been the crush, when a
girl (between the ages of eleven and fourteen) fell in love with an older girl who did not
reciprocate.
As among the boys, these romantic friendships were patterned on the heterosexual
diagram. The older girl represented the boy; but she could also embody a heroine or the
absent mother. The younger girl showed her affection by carrying her books and
notepads, leaving candies under her pillow or making her bed. There would be endless
discussions analyzing how the older girl dressed, how she talked, the gestures she made;
but each girl kept secret her personal contribution to the worship of the loved one. The
relationships were perfectly innocent: a smile, a simple hello was enough to make a
younger girl happy for a week. It seems that sexual intercourse would have rather signified a failure in the process in love, which consisted in large part in identifying with the
loved one. Differences in age and authority intensified the desire. By the age of fifteen, it
was more common to have a crush on one of the mistresses, and the pupils vied for their
favors:
Signorina is part of Miss Julies clan.
Fancy, says another, the German mistress is a widow!
Yes, the first one answers. But she is in Miss Cara1s clan!305
302. T.C. Worsley, Flannelled Fool. A Slice of Life in the Thirties, London, Alan Ross, 1967, 213 pages,
p.74.
303. Ibid., p.75.
304. Ibid., p.89.
109
Teaching seems to have attracted a significant number of homosexuals, female as

well as male. In England, as in France and Germany, teachers were supposed to be
unmarried. Many of the women were in teaching because they had not managed to marry,
and sometimes their attitude expressed a sense of revenge, fear and hostility toward men.
But, for their pupils, they represented an example of social success, which increased their
prestige. That partly explains the frequent sense of fear and dislike for men that girls
raised in public schools expressed in those days. When they left school, they asked their
favorite mistresses to write to them. This they readily did, and often took the opportunity
to go on giving advice aimed at enabling them to face the outside world without succumbing to its temptations.
Ambiguities in the System

The attitude toward sex in the public schools reflects deep-seated institutional
hypocrisy. It seems that, in spite of all the Puritanical and repressive speeches, a certain
laissez-faire attitude prevailed. Homosexuality among teens was seen as benign, almost
an obligatory rite of passage in ones sexual life.306 Even so, the post-Victorian moralizing
frenzy reached its heights in these establishments. The director of Charterhouse, for
example, would make obscure and alarming references to the sexual vice [masturbation].307 The obsession with masturbation reached dizzying proportions: sermons
were devoted to it, boys prayed to be delivered of it, and they were obliged to be confessed
on this subject. Some schools set up highly complex systems to counter any temptations;
at Rossall, the Masters were not permitted to be in a room alone with a pupil for more
than ten minutes, and even then they had to leave the open door. The older boys had to
keep away from the younger ones, and they were all under constant surveillance. Anything that related to sex was severely repressed. Works that were considered dangerous,
such as D.H. Lawrences writings, were censored. Queenswood, a womens college,
banned Gone With The Wind in the 1930s and the pupils mail was read. T.C. Worsleys headmaster at Marlborough once told him that he might see a kind of white matter running
from his intimate parts; Dont worry, he said, its just a kind of disease, like measles.308
School authorities were often very severe in dealing with what they regarded as
major crimes. At Lancing, Tom Driberg was denounced to the director by two little boys
whom he had tried to seduce; he was deprived of his position as prefect309 and was isolated for the rest of the quarter. In fact, forbidding romantic friendships only made them
more appealing; it was a game that broke the routine of school life. And for that reason
alone, there was little likelihood of breaking them up. Quentin Crisp relates the outcome
of a homosexual scandal in his school: one night, one of the boys walked from one end of
his house to the other, to get to his friends bedroom. The two boys could have met
without the least risk at any time of day in a secluded spot; but desire is stoked by the
atmosphere of challenge, of danger. The boy was caught., and he was thrashed in front of
305. See Olivia, by Olivia (pseudonym of Dorothy Bussy, sister of Lytton Strachey and close
friend of Gide), Paris, Stock, 1949, 148 pages, p.26.
306. See Chapter Five.
307. Dennis Proctor (ed.), The Autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson, op. cit., p.54.
309. An older schoolmate, responsible for discipline; see below.
110

the whole school. Instead of being chastened, he was lionized. A fan-club developed
around him and he became all the more desirable. The administration had to expel him in
order to put an end to it.
While he was a pupil at Lancing, Evelyn Waugh tried to start a discussion on the
subject of homosexuality. As an editorial in the school newspaper, he published a fictitious conversation between a visitor and a schoolboy like him. He wanted to show that
passionate friendships between pupils were not necessarily disruptive or corrupting, and
that the authorities were wrong to intervene in an area that did not concern them.
A few years before, his brother Alec had launched a great offensive against the
public schools through his acclaimed novel, The Loom of Youth (1917).310 In a less wellknown work, Public-School Life. Boys, Parents, Masters (1922) he gives a very detailed
description of homosexuality in the public schools, defends romantic friendships and
denounces the hypocrisy that surrounded the subject.311 Noting that the system of the
public schools is (in this respect) contrary to nature, he says that one must expect results
contrary to nature. He calls the time spent in public school a phase of sexual transition;
and says that most of the active immorality in the schools takes place between fifteenand sixteen-year-old boys; not, as is frequently imagined, between the younger and older
boys. He says that, like everything else at school, homosexuality has to conform to rules;
there are rules for everything, and friendships, like personalities, must fit the mold. It is
the endless talk about homosexuality that keeps interest alive and ensures that the phenomenon will be reproduced.
Waugh also highlights some neglected aspects of homosexual life in the public
schools. First of all, having 18- or 19-year-old boys in some of the houses can only create a
difficult climate, for at this age sexual impulses more definitely demand physical satisfaction. Then, romantic friendships can have harmful consequences for the younger boys.
A young one who becomes the friend of an older boy finds himself suddenly propelled to
the top of the school hierarchy; he gets to know other boys in the upper forms, and he
receives various privileges; boys in his own form become jealous or hate him, and he loses
contact with reality. When his guardian leaves the school, he finds himself alone and
unwanted. Moreover, constantly separating love from sex can cause trouble for the lads
later in life. To change this situation, Waugh became an advocate of coeducation; he
called for a freer discussion of these subjects, and for better public information:
There is so much ignorance to dissipate; the ignorance of the mothers, the ignorance of the fathers who have not themselves been in public school, the conspiracy of
silence among the pupils, alumni and masters. We make too much of immorality, and
at the same time we do not pay enough attention to it. The headmasters assure us that
it only crops up occasionally, but their attitude is like that of a doctor who suspects
his patient has a grave illness and simply goes on observing him, looking for signs.
These attempts to start a discussion of homosexuality were not the only ones and it
wasnt only the pupils who were concerned. Worsley, as an assistant headmaster, with
the assistance of some young teachers, prefects, and pupils, tried to fight the reactionary
310. Loom has many meanings : not only a weaving apparatus, or to appear, but, in Old English,
penis.
311. Alec Waugh, Public-School Life. Boys, Parents, Masters, London, Collins Sons & Co, 1922,
271 pages.
111

spirit of the older teachers, whom he called the Old Guard. One Hoffman, in particular,
promulgated such an insidious, oppressively suspicious atmosphere that it was nauseating. Hoffman looks at each boy as if he thought he was expecting a baby!312 The Old
Guard would make examples of those pupils suspected of homosexuality. The atmosphere at the college was noxious, charged with rancor and suspicion and poisoned by
denunciations and accusations of sexual misconduct, calls from parents in tears and
expulsions in the wake of anti-vice campaigns.
Worsley was fully aware of the ambiguity of the situation and recognized that to
defend the pupils was hardly any better than seeking to condemn them at all costs. In the
end, he admitted to himself that the grounds for his moral indignation at Hoffmans
attitude toward sex could reasonably be considered suspect.313 Initially, his quarrel was
with the relentless inquisition to which the faculty subjected the pupils, and the despotic
control which they exerted. During a council debate over repealing the rule requiring
school caps to be worn while inside the college, Worsley learned that the Old Guard was
resolutely opposed to repealing it because the caps had different-colored ribbons indicating which dormitory the pupils belonged in, which enabled them to catch boys who
were talking with pupils from other dormitories. The director of the college was upset to
find out that there was a law prohibiting pupils from different houses or dormitories
speaking to one another. The cap-wearing rule was repealed at once and it was
announced that all the pupils of the college could speak to each other freely. On another
occasion, a sexologist was invited to speak in the college. The feeling of outrage that that
produced was extraordinary. But what made the question even more outrageous was that
when the sexologist arrived, it turned out to be a woman!314
In any case, the public schools were clearly one of the main forums for spreading,
discussing and understanding homosexuality. This preoccupation with homosexuality
was so overwhelming that school authorities sought to continue to influence their pupils
even after they left school. When Cyril Connolly left Saint Cyprian, he was subjected to
the usual exhortation on the seed from the chaplain and the director, the gist of which
was: We were departing for a world of temptations.... We were to name any boy who
had tried to get into our beds, we were warned never to go with a boy from another
school, never to become friends with a boy more than a year and a half older than us and,
above all, not to play with ourselves.315
Given this apparent desire to maintain a high level of morality in the public
schools, the rampant homosexuality must give us pause. In Eton, the director William
Cory was certainly an adherent of the cult of beauty, especially when it came to the individual, the particularly fine young man. He allowed himself some very romantic friendships with certain pupils.
Some schools, and not only the public schools, were regular training grounds in
homosexuality. Valentine Ackland, briefly attending the Domestic Training College of
Eastbourne, a professional school, was plunged into an entirely lesbian universe. The
director was butch and the other teachers encouraged crushes and affairs.316
313. Ibid., p.107.
314. Ibid., p.132.
315. Cited by Humphrey Carpenter, The Brideshead Generation, op. cit., p.23.
316. See Valentine Ackland, For Sylvia: An Honest Account, London, Chatto & Windus, 1985,
135 pages, p.68.
112

In most cases, it seems that as long as there were no scandals, liaisons and sexual
intercourse between pupils were tacitly allowed, even approved, by those in charge, who
saw their job primarily as training gentlemen who would be respectful of British traditions and loyal citizens of their country. This respect was learned early on, at the public
school, and was reflected in the attachment the alumni felt for their school and the formation of what in adulthood would be the old boy network, a kind of guild, which
allowed graduates of the big schools to identify each other, to stay in touch, and to help
each other enhance their careers and social positions. This friendship-loyalty bond neatly
prefigured the future attachment of the pupil to his fatherland, England. In that sense
homosexual relations, whether based on deep love or physical passion, between boys who
would later be called upon to run the country together, or at least to work toward the
same goal according to the ideals which were inculcated during school, could well be an
asset. They helped to weave a stable social fabric.
The most obvious symbol of the tacit social acceptance of homosexuality in the
name of social cohesion is the institutionalization of the system of fag and prefect.317
Originally intended to protect young people from pressure from the older boys, it soon
became a form of slavery that included sexual aspects. This was reinforced by the fact that
the public schools followed a self-management scheme whereby the prefects were
responsible for handling interpersonal conflicts and discipline, with the masters and the
directors not intervening directly. This inevitably led sometimes to excesses.
The boys were enormously dependent on each other; they learned management
skills and developed a sense of responsibility, but were still bound by diffuse erotic
feelings, as shown by the memoirs of the very frank Christopher Isherwood. He recounts
his elation when, for the first time, he had an office and two fags to clean it. The fags
were two new boys named Berry and Darling; he had great fun calling out, Berry,
Darling! and admits that he was as little suited for authority as most of his comrades, in
fact less so than many, and despite having begun with the friendliest intentions, soon
became unstable, taking offense at imaginary signs of treason. His mood shifts upset his
fags, and generally, he says, he acted like any low level manager. Office holders at that
school could beat their fags and were rather encouraged to exert that privilege.318
On the whole, the school directors attitude toward homosexuality seems to have
been particularly hypocritical. Sex becomes all the more desirable when it is laden with so
many prohibitions. Public school boys were obsessed with sex, reflecting the fundamental contradiction which is at the heart of the post-Victorian system: Nobody must
masturbate and yet everyone does it; thus, everyone must become an idiot and yet nobody
does so; homosexual attraction is a sin, however it is widespread, and cannot be stopped,
even among eminent professors.319
Did the homosexuality that was practiced in the public schools between 1919 and
1939 induce homosexuality in the pupils? That is a difficult question. It was precisely
those alumni who had experienced intense homosexual relations, and then married, who
savagely denied being homosexuals. A Hailesbury alumnus recalls: Oh yes, there were
317. A fag is a young student who has to obey the orders of an older boy (the prefect); he performs
household duties and various services. The system was widespread in the the public schools from the
beinning of the 19th century following the wave of reforms inaugurated by Dr Thomas Arnold at
Rugby.
318. Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows, London, Methuen, 1985, 191 pages, p.26-27.
319. John Gathorne-Hardy, The Public-School Phenomenon, op. cit., p.92.
113

tons of sex. Does that make you a fag? certainly not. The most active person that I
knew at that time became a formidable womanizer.320 In the same vein, Alec Waugh, in
Pleasure (1921), depicts a romantic friendship that is nearing its end; passage into
adulthood and entry into society entails marriage and heterosexuality; woe to anyone
who failed to realize that school was only a brief interlude. Each one had to come to terms
with what was coming. They would forget their friends, would fall in love with a girl, and
all the rest would turn out to have been just a stupid prelude.321
However, the list is long of those who first discovered their future homosexuality
or bisexuality through their experiences at school.322 It seems reasonable to conclude
that, if the public schools did not actually produce homosexuality, they at the very least
sensitized boys to any latent homosexual inclinations; and so they enabled many boys to
clearly determine their sexual identity. The main problem lay in the world outside that
condemned homosexuality; once they became active members of society, alumni often
had difficulty owning up to what they may have liked to consider youthful indiscretions.
Nol Blakiston, in his letters to a former friend at Eton, Cyril Connolly, strives to prove to
him that their relationship was always normal and that they were never homosexual. Yet
when Connolly married, at the age of,323 he admitted that, of course, the problem is that I
am still homosexual, emotionally.36 This, certainly, contributed to the lack of comprehension that prevails between the two sexes, and partly explains the frequent failure of
marriage and the sexual dissatisfaction among the bourgeoisie. The boys regrets are
sometimes echoed by the fears and regrets of the girls. According to Martha Vicinus,
many women seem to have found a more complete love during their adolescence than any
they ever feel for a man.324
Institutional ambiguity with regard to adolescent homosexuality had twofold consequences: having accepted homosexual practices at a given age, it becomes more difficult
to resist them later on; moreover, those pupils who had homosexual experiences tended
to keep on having them in the future, or at least to consider them favorably. The men of
the British upper class are homosexual in everything except their sexual life.325 It shows
in their lifestyle: together in their clubs, hunting, in the City, they live in an exclusively
male environment that recreates as far as possible the atmosphere of the public schools. If
homosexuality became a fashion in the 1920s, if homosexuals had a chance to express
themselves more freely, it is primarily because many members of the leading classes were
secretly allied with them.
320. Cited by John Gathorne-Hardy, ibid., p.164.

321. Alec Waugh, Pleasure, London, Grant Richards Ltd, 1921, 320 pages, p.44.
322. Among the famous examples from this period are W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood,
Stephen Spender, E.M. Forster, Cyril Connolly, Cecil Beaton, J.M. Keynes, Goldsworthy Lowes
Dickinson, Lytton Strachey and Bertrand Russell.
323. Cyril Connolly, A Romantic Friendship, The Letters of Cyril Connolly to Noel Blakiston,
London, Constable, 1975, 365 pages.
324. Martha Vicinus, Distance and Desire: English Boarding-School Friendships, 1870-1920, in
Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey Jr. (dir.), Hidden from History, London,
Penguin Books, 1991, 579 pages, p.219.
325. A testimony cited by John Gathorne-Hardy, The Public-School Phenomenon, op. cit., p.178.
114

Paradise Lost: The English Model
The cult of homosexuality, as we have seen, started in the British education system,
which, in point of fact, tolerated homosexual practices. It was bolstered, above all, by the
exaltation of adolescent love affairs, and mythologized by the literature of public schools
and the memories of the alumni. This is uniquely British.
Indeed, various first-hand accounts exist, telling of homosexual practices in the
boarding schools in France and Germany, but adolescent loves were not cherished as
dearly and homosexuality was considered, at best, as an obligatory rite of passage, and at
worst as a disastrous consequence of an education system mired in vice. To understand
better what was different about the English model, we can take a closer look at what was
taking place in the neighboring countries.
In France and Germany, as in England, education experts did warn that boarding
schools were dangerous, and fostered homosexuality. In Germany, surveys were conducted in the schools to try to determine how widespread homosexuality was. In 1928, a
synthesis was published by the National Ministry for Education, entitled, Sittlichkeitsvergehen in hheren Schulen und ihre disziplinare Behandlung (Attacks on morals in the
secondary schools and their disciplinary treatment). The survey was conducted between
1921 and 1925, with a population of 552 pupils 467 boys and 85 girls. A total of 36 boys
acknowledged having had homosexual experiences; no girls. That is a very weak result,
but of course one must take account of the undeclared cases. The authors of the research
distinguished two different groups: that of older boys who took the active role, going out
with younger boys who were passive. For the most part, they did not have sex but only
mutual passion, kisses, and caresses. Then, there are the boys who were victims of
seduction by an adult, who were lured by gifts (theater tickets, alcohol, etc.). These conclusions were repeated in 1936 by Gerhard Reinhard Ritter in Die geschlechtliche Frage in
DER deutschen Volkserziehung (The sexual question in German popular education). It
called the rate of homosexual acts in colleges very high, but suggested that this represented only acquired, not real, homosexuality.
Indeed, it is difficult to determine how widespread homosexuality was in the
French and German schools, for alumni accounts on this subject are quite rare. However,
there are a few reports that seem to substantiate the claim. Golo Mann, in his memoirs
entitled A German Youth, speaks quite naturally about his early loves: One day, at school or
in the yard, I saw Erika and Klaus with a boy whom I liked enormously, without knowing
why. But from then on, I was in love, without knowing the cause and without even
knowing the word.... It was my first love for the bigger kids in the playground, and it was
not to be the last.326 Even though the school was co-ed, the officials were terrified that
any homosexual activity might take place. The headmaster, Kurt Hahn, was a closet
homosexual himself; he carried out a virtual Inquisition against what he termed promiscuity and which was considered to start when a pupil put a hand on the shoulder of
another. In the spring of 1925, a new pupil arrived at the boarding school and Golo fell
vaguely in love. The headmaster was suspicious and forbid to them to go bicycling
together for Pentecost.
For Golo Mann, the adolescent years did not cause any real problem or raise any
question; it was a normal and transitory phase. But others were permanently scarred by
326. Golo Mann, Une jeunesse allemande, Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 1988, 412 pages, p.27-28.
115

their experiences in school. The novelist Ernst Erich Noth was at the center of a tragedy
at the College of Steglitz. Gnther Scheller shot and killed the apprentice cook, Hans
Stefan, on June 27, 1927, and then committed suicide. Scheller was seeking revenge for
being supplanted in the favors of a rich patron who was known to invite his protgs on
trips to Paris. Noth himself had been known to take advantage of his charms: I was considered a pretty boy; perhaps I was. The caresses of the old man were not always innocent,
but his infirmities prevented him from lavishing more specific favors on me.327 For Noth,
homosexuality was acceptable and profitable: And yet, in spite of the very prudish
public discourse, pederasty was already an indisputable reality in Germany at that time.
Since the third grade, we already knew that some of our peers, all sons of good families,
were making pocket money by regularly visiting some old Berlin degenerates.328 Such
accounts, although extreme, do tend to indicate that homosexual experiences were relatively widespread in German schools.
The French were not left behind. In Le Livre blanc (The White Book) (1928), Jean
Cocteau depicts a scene at the Condorcet College, in Paris: The senses were awakened
and flourished unrestrained, and grew like crab grass. There were only perforated pockets
and soiled handkerchiefs. He notes, however: But Condorcet was a college of externalities. These practices did not go as far as falling in love. They hardly went beyond the
scope of a clandestine game.329 In Les Enfants terribles (The Terrible Children) (1925), he
evokes a schoolboys emotions: This love was all the more devastating as it preceded
knowledge of love. It was a vague, intense feeling, for which there was no remedy a
pure desire without sex and without any goal.330
In like fashion, in The Sabbath Maurice Sachs tells of his education in a school that
was run according to the English method. Sachs felt a chaste love for his captain, then
he was wised up by one of his buddies. Another one granted him favors in exchange for
a tennis racquet. The general atmosphere recalled that of the boarding schools and the
cadet academies:
A great wave of sensuality swept through the school. A luxurious surfeit washed
over everybody, in every grade level, and it is no exaggeration to say that out of a hundred pupils, more than fifty were making love with each other. Only the very youngest
were exempt, or some boys of solid virtue voluntarily kept away from these games.
The older ones went after the younger ones. Sometimes wed go, eight or ten at a time,
to roll around and fondle each other in the hay in a barn.331
As elsewhere, the vice was ignored, even tolerated by the school authorities for a
while. Then, like a thunderbolt, they made a clean sweep.332
327. Ernst Erich Noth, Mmoires dun Allemand, Paris, Julliard, 1970, 506 pages, p.57.
328. Ibid., p.98.
329. Jean Cocteau, Le Livre blanc [1928], reedited, Paris, ditions de Messine, 1983, 123 pages,
p.22-23.
330. Jean Cocteau, Les Enfants terribles [1929], reedited, Paris, Grasset, 1990, 130 pages, p.19.
331. Maurice Sachs, Le Sabbat [written in 1939, publi en 1946], Paris, Gallimard, 1960, 298 pages,
p.35. To the French, England is a prime example of depravity in the schools. In La Libert ou lAmour!
(1924), Robert Desnos presents a scene of lesbian sadism in a British boarding school, HummingBird Garden, where the mistress enjoys whipping the girls.
332. Violette Leduc was thrown out of school for having a sentimental and sexual relationship
with one of her comrades, Isabelle. See Violette Leduc, La Btarde, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, 462 pages.
116

It was surprising that the authorities seemed not to see a thing. One day, something came to their attention and they suddenly undertook a major clean-up campaign. I had, as it was considered at the time, the honor of appearing pretty high up on
the list of pupils who were dismissed, and we were sent home with such remarkable
courtesy that our parents, fortunately, were easily deceived... I think the reason for
this indulgence lies in the fact that more than one of our teachers, and particularly the
English ones, were guilty.333
So, homosexuality was hardly absent from French or German schools. However, it
would be too much to say that there was a cult of homosexuality. Indeed, there is an
essential difference between the educational institutions of the three countries: in France
and Germany, there were boarding schools and there was no co-education;334 but the
boarding school was not the only form of schooling. Consequently, most pupils spent less
time alone together; they had the restraining influence of their families; and they stayed in
contact with society. Special friendships might have developed, but a cult of homosexuality would not be likely to evolve, since that presupposes the existence of a microsociety, partly independent of adults and controlled by a system of codes that the pupils
were held to, under penalty of being snubbed and excluded. One might hypothesize that
day schools, by releasing pupils from the authoritative influence of the group, only allow
for the formation of those homosexual friendships that were inevitable, i.e. between boys
who would have been homosexual whatever the circumstances. Boys in a boarding school
who try out homosexuality, in imitation, or out of social pressure, simple curiosity or to
gain confidence, do not have the opportunity in a more open school system. Thus, homosexuality has less chance to develop on a large scale and to have a lasting impact on a
whole generation. That would especially explain the contrast between French homosexual individualism the result of personal homosexual experiences and free of any
group influence and the English cult of homosexuality, resulting from a shared homosexual culture and homosexual history.
An examination of the literature is particularly convincing in this respect. The
public school novel is almost a genre of its own, in English literature; and, along with
works aimed at teenagers directly, one finds accounts intended for the nostalgic adult. By
emphasizing the group spirit, fair play, the latent homoeroticism of a unisex society, the
author allows the reader to identify easily. The reader internalizes his homosexual experience as an obligatory rite of passage, a decisive test that proves his integration into the
society. French literature, and incidentally German literature, are strikingly different.
Neither considers the homosexual experience as anything but a rupture of solidarity, an
assertion of the ego, a will to set oneself apart. The reader, even if he recognizes himself in
the novel, relives an incidence of rejection, either radical or disguised (a penchant for
secrecy, codes, messages, etc.). Homosexuality can never constitute a common reference
in adult society. It is concealed and considered to have been a unique experience.
We can verify that hypothesis by reviewing a whole series of literary works. In
Germany, the novel The Cadets, by Ernst von Solomon (1933) transposes the vocabulary,
conventions, and rules identical to those of the most sexually emancipated English public
schools onto a Prussian military academy:335
333. Maurice Sachs, Le Sabbat, op. cit., p.35.

334. Except for some experimental schools, like Wynekens at Wickersdorf.
117

There was a new boy in the barracks. Emil Tillich was the smallest boy in the
company, but his limbs were nimble, his eyes full of life and he was well formed. A
nice rabbit, said Gloecken and I hated him for it. It was the first time that such a
remark had annoyed me. I spat back, You, you always think of those things right
away. But he was only expressing the general opinion. Everybody liked Tillich.336
The arrival of the pretty new boy led to all sorts of changes in the behavior of his
comrades: rivalries intensified, each one tried to outshine the others and to spend as much
time with him as possible. Goslar went out of his way to have the boy in his swimming
class.337 The narrator, Schmidt, was in love with Tillich, but was afraid that Goslar had
already monopolized him. He soon discovers otherwise:
During a walk, outside the institution, he simply took my arm. At first, that frightened me. He held my arm so calmly that at first I thought maybe he had no ulterior
motive. And then, this took place on the little paved path that went around the
meadow and which, by a hallowed tradition, was reserved for pupils of the upper
classes. If Tillich was walking there, it became obvious to everyone that I had him. He
could not have been unaware of that.338
[From then on, the two boys had a perfectly traditional romantic friendship. In
the pupils honor code, a system equivalent to that of the English fags and prefects was
semi-official.] He bore the seal of my friendship. If somebody hurt him, he was attacking me. Of course, there were no secrets between us, except with regard to feelings
which a delicate modesty kept us from revealing. It is true that he had to polish the
buttons of my uniform, to keep my things in order and to give me his larger slice of
bread during recreation. That was well-established tradition. But, in exchange, I was
always there when he needed me.339
[Schmidt, like many public school boys, wants to preserve his love from any sexual temptation, any risk of moral debasement. The character of Goslar allows him to
create a revealing contrast between this penchant for chastity and the sexual tension
that reigned inside the school.] Obviously, there remained the possibility of kissing.
But between desire and realization stood a wall... Goslar, for his part, did not seem to
suffer from any such inhibition. I found his behavior coarse, low, proletarian, as we
said in such cases. He maintained a noisy cheerfulness with respect to Tillich, grabbing his buttocks during exercises and, during work, never passed by his chair without giving him a friendly cuff on the ear.340
It all ends in disillusionment; Schmidt discovers that Tillich has been deceiving
him from the very beginning with Goslar and avenges himself by humiliating him.
The system goes on, just the same. As Gloecken observes: A true rabbit is afraid of
any lasting ties.341 In the homosexual micro-society of the school, a young boy, if he is
pretty, if he has the good luck to be appealing, has a considerable advantage over his comrades. Far from being a victim of the system, he is the principal beneficiary and reserves
335. See also Robert Musil, Les Dsarrois de llve Trless [1906], Paris, ditions du Seuil, 1960,
260 pages.
336. Ernst von Salomon, Les Cadets [1933], Paris, Correa, 1953, 277 pages, p.167-168.
337. Ibid., p.169.
338. Ibid., p.171.
339. Ibid., p.172.
340. Ibid., p.173.
341. Ibid., p.174.
118

the right, when he grows older, to have rabbits in his turn.342 In the end, it is romantic
boys like Schmidt who suffer most from the ambient cynicism.
Another German work, The Child Manuela, or Girls in Uniform (1934) by Christa
Winsloe, is quite representative of the existence of homosexuality within the boarding
schools.343 This book was made into a play and then a movie. Christa Winsloe was clearly
inspired by her personal experience. She was sent as an adolescent to an institution for
noble girls in northern Germany. In the book, written in a simple and straightforward
style, the young Manuela is sent to a military college for girls, when a scandal breaks out:
she is believed to have fallen in love with a young man. In fact, she loves his mother. At the
boarding school, the atmosphere is charged with secret passions. Pupils wear lockets
engraved on the inside with the initials of a professor, in a heart pierced by an arrow. At
the same time, pupils are falling in love with each other, offering gifts and exchanging
notes. Manuela falls passionately in love with the most popular mistress who, in turn, is
not insensitive to her affection but hides her feelings. In the end, Manuela reveals her
feelings to the whole school during a costume ball. The scandal is enormous. The
director speaks of abnormal feelings, and upbraids the teacher, saying: And do you
know what the world our world thinks of this kind of women? Manuela is isolated
from her comrades and her teacher; in desperation, she throws herself from the window.
Miss von Bernburg holds her in her arms one last time as she lies on the paving stone.
In fact, compared to the English works, German works relating to homosexual
loves at school depict a more morbid and sadistic atmosphere. The ties between the boys
are clearly established in terms of power and competition, and those who struggle to keep
their loves pure are bound for disillusionment. In the girls schools, the strict rules relentlessly prevent any personal expression and deny the pupils any right to tenderness and
freedom. This depressing and negative presentation of the situation in the schools
explains why no cult of homosexuality developed; readers who could have found any
childhood memories in these books were not encouraged to recall them in positive terms.
This situation is less striking in France, where the majority of homosexual writers
evoked their adolescent years in a context other than the boarding school. They were
more sheltered. Furthermore, the education system placed its emphasis on intellectual
prowess and not on sports. Relationships between boys were not based on physical violence and brutal games. Lastly, French literature dealing with homosexuality in the
schools was generally not written by homosexuals seeking to regain the happiness of
their lost loves, but on the contrary by those who opposed homosexuality and who
sought to discredit the type of education that fosters it.
The most famous work in France was Claudine lcole (Claudine at School) (1900);
that came before the era we are looking at, but it still has quite an impact. Unlike other
French authors, Colette did not approach the subject from a moralistic and morbid angle.
The adventures of Claudine and her friends are shown as normal, amusing, part of the
accepted adolescent amorous adventures, a prelude to more lasting attachments to
men. Only the relationship between Aime and Miss Sergent turns sinister, precisely
because the director is no longer a girl and she places Aime in a perverse, socially unac-
342. See also, in 1929, Classe 22 by Ernst Glser and Alf by Bruno Vogel.
343. This novel, first adapted for the theater by its author in 1931, was followed by a movie that
was a big success the same year and was published only in 1934.
119

ceptable situation. Unlike the English novels, the book aimed above all to titillate the
reader and for that sole purpose makes many a Sapphic allusion.344
The account that comes closest to the English cult of homosexuality is that of
Henry de Montherlant, in his very fictionalized book, Les Garons (The Boys). Montherlant
relates his adolescence at the college of Sainte-Croix, in Neuilly, from January 1911 (when
he was admitted) to March 1912 (when he was thrown out). This short episode made a
lasting impression on him and he recalled it time and time again. He brings it up once in
La Ville dont le prince est un enfant, a play that was written in 1929 (but only published in
1951).345 His memory of this period sounds quite like the English accounts: Love made
the college fabulous.346
Montherlant developed two themes in The Boys: adolescent love and the fascination
which it exerts on adults. The heart of the work is the relationship between Alban de Bricoule and Serge Souplier, which fits into an extremely precise and codified protocol. The
school of Our-Lady-of-the-Park is divided into groups of boys classified according to
various aesthetic criteria and their stage of sexual awakening. Those who were part of
this coterie, which they called the Group, all wore their ties outside of their jackets, as a
rallying sign. But Louchard, who was not part of them, started to wear his tie on the
outside, too. Then everyone in the clique put theirs back inside.347 Lists of protgs
were circulated, and were known even to the professors who maintained this atmosphere of homoeroticism: Binet said to Salins: Brulat as a protg, what an idea! How
could you choose him, with his big ears! When one takes a protg, one chooses one with
lovely, sweet little face. I asked him: And you, Sir, did you have little protgs when you
were our age? He replied: Oh! Me, I had tons of them!348
The system was classic: An older one is going with a younger one? OK. But two of
the older boys together?... Revolting, or rather, unthinkable.349 Love often took the form
of torture: the older boys made martyrs of the younger ones to prove their interest in
them. The whole school seemed to be centered around love affairs: After studies (or
before), the only occupation and the only concern, at Our-Lady-of-the-Park, were these
friendships.350 The atmosphere was permeated with sex, and everything that happened
all day had erotic overtones: And this Park vocabulary!One would think we were
talking about the shows at the Moulin-Rouge. Couldnt you speak a little differently?
Everyone talks like that here, the abbots and Profs as well as the kids, as you very well
know.351
Alban and Serge become friends; it all starts in a relatively traditional way: admiration, kisses, caresses; they are baptized the ideal couple. In this closed adolescent
344. On Claudine, see Chapter Five.

345. Montherlant reprised this work in 1947, encouraged by the publication of Amitis particulires by Roger Peyrefitte (1943); similarly, Les Garons, which he had been working on since 1919, did
not come out until 1969.
346. Cited by Pierre Sipriot, Montherlant sans masque, t.I, LEnfant prodigue, 1895-1932, Paris, Robert
Laffont, 1980, 500 pages, p.39.
347. Henry de Montherlant, Les Garons, Paris, Gallimard, 1973, 549 pages, p.187.
348. Ibid., p.26.
349. Ibid., p.35.
350. Ibid., p.91.
351. Ibid., p.294-295. Montherlant gave estimates that don't appear to conflict with the English
examples: a little more than a third of the whole were part of the protection, and in some years it
was close to half.
120

world, complications inevitably originate from the few adults who maintain contact:
Albans mother clearly savors her sons revelations, vicariously enjoying the erotic thrill of
the unhealthy situation. But the abbots in particular maintain this noxious climate. They
tolerate close friendships, but only to the extent that they do not interfere with their
authority or encourage any emancipation the of young people. Like Albans mother, they
enjoy it all from the sidelines, and the palpitations of the boys reverberate in them and
disturb them deeply. Adolescent homosexuality becomes a problem only when it reveals
adult homosexuality: the abbot de Pradts is in love with Serge Souplier, and works hard
to keep from admitting it. He convinces Alban that his love (for Serge) is impure, that he
must keep the moral well-being of his little friend in mind. Soon, the situation is reversed:
Virtue came back into fashion. Lastly, when Alban and Souplier are found closeted
together, the wheels start to roll: Pradts gets Alban expelled, but the superior, who
knows what Pradts is up to, throws out Souplier, as well.
The dnouement is edifying, for it perfectly sums up the cult of homosexuality. The
scandal at the institution is revealed, and the abbots are dismissed and replaced by newcomers. The new generation at Park will not be protected. Alban discovers girls, and his
situational (or occasionel) homosexuality comes to a sudden end. Adolescence is a
closed world to which it is impossible to return: The abbot de Pradts replied to the
superior, who told him to find Souplier one day: It will be too late, and to Alban: The
kids, its over so quickly. So it was all a question of age.352
Still, Montherlant does not leave the question of adolescent homosexuality as
merely a rite of passage; he shows that, consciously and unconsciously, it affects ones
future life: De Pradts tore up the photographs of Serge. Alban went out of his way not to
pass in front of his house. Linbourg preferred not to have to see kids around. Later, they
all send their children to Park, just as all those English fathers send their children to the
same public school that they knew.
Homosexual relations in the religious schools are a fairly traditional topic. Daniel
Gurin, at Bossuet, relates that he also discovered, as a result of an indiscretion, that
certain abbots and their favorite pupils exchanged rather thorough embraces, in a dark
little room close to the vault.353 In Le Cahier gris (1922), Roger Martin du Gard makes
veiled allusions to a romantic friendship between Jacques Thibault and Daniel Fontanin;
there is no sign of the licentious atmosphere of the boarding schools, here. The young
boys, candid, sincere and passionate, exchange fervent poems and oaths of eternal loyalty.
They do not even suspect they are doing wrong. It is the abbot who, discovering the book,
condemns the relationship as sinful: The tone, the content of the letters, alas!, did not
leave any doubt as to the nature of this friendship.354
Cheap popular novels exploit the theme of special friendships at religious schools,
implying that they are a hotbed of perversion. This set of themes is part of a long anticlerical tradition; some examples would be Adolescents: murs collgiennes, by Jean Rodes
(1904), Antone Ramon by Amde Guiard (1914), Les Adolescents passionns by Albert Nortal
and Charles-tienne (1927), and LEnfant de chur by Ren tiemble (1937). Rodes states in
his foreword that he does not intend to criticize only church schools but the entire school
352. Ibid., p.469, and 484.

354. Roger Martin du Gard, Le Cahier gris, in uvres compltes, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la
Pliade, 1981, t.I, 1 403 pages.
121

system and the very foundation of our moral system. His novel takes place at a college in
Gascogne; it is run by Jesuits who follow the British style. Special friendships develop as
a result of such an abnormal education and the de-virilizing scholastic program. The
characters are caricatures and the tone is melodramatic. The romantic machinations are
observed by a chaste pupil, who severely condemns the system and quits the school, complaining of the strange doctrines that rule at Saint-Vincent, according to which kissing a
woman is an unpardonable shame, an offense infinitely worse than same-sex licentiousness.355
LEnfant de chur (The Choirboy) develops the same theme. The hero, Andr Steindel,
makes friends with another new boy, Maurice. The older boys jump in, immediately: Ah
hah! Thats a good one! Already taking rabbits. You are way ahead of yourselves. Thats
not allowed.... Only big kids are entitled to rabbits.356 The system very quickly pulls
them apart. Andr becomes the rabbit of a bigger boy and, by Christmas, Maurice had
slit open his left pocket.357 Andr becomes a choirboy with Maurice; they make love in
the sacristy. In 1924, the climate changes: new students are no longer violated, and there
is less rampant vice. The author indicates that the homosexual fad was related to the
relaxation of morals and the loss of parental authority after the war. The situation would
return toward normal within a few years.
In Antone Ramon, the institution is given as St. Francis de Sales of Bourg; the 13-yearold hero, Antone Ramon, falls in love with an older boy who takes him under his wing.
Due to a series of misunderstandings and some malicious maneuvering on the part of
some of their comrades, plus the opposition of Georges parents, he loses his friend. He
then sinks into more and more degrading conduct. The book ends with his accidental
death, which comes as the just desserts for the sins he has committed.
Nortal and Charles-tiennes book was a frontal attack on religious schools. The
foreword sets the tone: The calm of a friendly interview would be far preferable to the
confessional booth where the ecclesiastic, by the pall of his very breath, by his perfidious
questions, can create an incendiary vice, can ignite a full-blown debauchery.358 The three
heroes, pupils at St. Allaix college, run by the Fathers, are described as near caricatures
fair, slender, delicate. They are rivals for the attentions of Jean-Louis Massias, a feral,
feline-like dissolute, with destructive inclinations. In the study hall, thoughts of
debauchery permeate the air, flitting through everyones minds, brutal, fast, fleeting, and
shameful. The book obligingly renders the details of the complex relations between the
boys. One, who is ugly, contents himself with looking at photographs of beautiful young
men. Another, called pet, rabbit, or Jesus, is under Massiass thumb. Their relationship starts with a love letter, whereas, generally, this kind of union begins with a
pummeling or a stinging cuff on the ears.359 The competition was relentless: Bgot
kissed me on the neck and Bahier went after me in the urinal.360 The atmosphere is
noxious; Page and Massias sleep together, but after the holidays Page is replaced by
355. Jean Rodes, Adolescents: murs collgiennes, Paris, Socit du Mercure de France, 1904,
219 pages, p.211-212.
356. Ren tiemble, LEnfant de chur, Paris, Gallimard, 1937, 251 pages, p.25.
357.Ibid., p.45.
358. Charles-tienne and Albert Nortal, Les Adolescents passionns, Paris, Curio, 1928, 253 pages,
p.13.
359. Ibid., p.37.
360.Ibid., p.45.
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Ferrari. Massias is also secretly in love with his male cousin. Fernand sinks into sex and
promiscuity; his health and his grades suffer. There are rapes and other attacks; the boys
are expelled; some fail their baccalaureates. When Massias tells his cousin he loves him,
the other condemns him, saying: I was born normal, not every schoolboy is full of vice.
He has read medical books in his fathers library and understands whats wrong with
Massias. He offers to take him to the doctor, but Massias defends his own point of view,
citing Oscar Wilde, Jean Lorrain, Pierre Lous, Rachilde, Proust, Gide and Havelock Ellis!
During a night of drinking, Massias sleeps with his cousin. The book ends, after some
further adventures, with Massias committing suicide. Once more, adolescent homosexuality is shown as the result of the corrupting influence of a misguided teaching establishment that fosters an unhealthy environment. The pupils have only two possible
choices: to give themselves up to vice and sink into prostitution, or to die.
Thus, in France and Germany, the school years left a sense of disillusionment. Adolescent loves left an aftertaste of betrayal, vice and guilt. Those who were confirmed
homosexuals hardly wished to revive such memories; and those who turned to women, in
adulthood, preferred to forget such wayward behavior. In England, by contrast, the literature celebrates the adolescent years and definitively associates the cult of homosexuality
with that of the public school. The teen years are depicted as pure and free, an ideal of
friendship that can never be found again. After the passionate attachments that formed at
school, adult loves will always appear to lack the spontaneity and enthusiasm of youth.
The cult of the public school was also widespread as regards girls. Starting in 1902,
alumnae of Roedan would come back to the school on weekends; theyd wear their old
uniforms, and act as if nothing had changed. Other public schools would hold events
where the school anthem was sung and girls would talk over the good old days. A literature developed on this theme, as well, albeit to a lesser extent. Enid Blyton published a
dozen works on the subject.361 Angela Brazil had a successful series celebrating the days
spent at public school.362 Her tales of friendship between schoolgirls, and sometimes
teachers, include kissing scenes and nave jealousies. It is hard to say whether any readers
identified with characters called Lesbia Ferrars or Lesbia Carrington, The Lady Lavender, or were attracted by titles like A Terrible Tomboy.363 Gillian Freeman suggest that
although Angela Brazils writing was based on her own memories of youth and personal
experience, she was not conscious of the sexual implications of her novels. But, for the
reader, the atmosphere of the schools seems heavily charged with eroticism and sentimentality. That thousands of readers saw themselves in such descriptions does indicate that,
361. One wonders why the novels of Enid Blyton were in such disrepute in France, in contradiction to her phenomenal success in the bookstore. This literature is centered around just one theme:
life in autarky of children or teenagers (The Club of the five, The Clan of the seven, etc.). Police schemes
serve as a pretext for a survey of adolescent mores, in a closed world, made up of secrets and codes.
Even more striking are the scenes directly dedicated to life in boarding school (the Mallory School
cycle, The Two Twins). In each book, exclusive relationships are formed that provoke jealousies typical
of love; relations between the girls are sensual, passionate. The subversive character of this literature
is obvious: it develops feelings in the reader which cannot be manifested in the French school system,
which doesn't encourage the formation of a team spirit and the development of a homoerotic climate
founded on admiration.
362. Gillian Freeman, The Schoolgirl Ethic. The Life and Work of Angela Brazil, London, Allen Lane,
1976, 159 pages; Rosemary Auchmuty, Youre a Dyke, Angela! Elsie J. Oxenham and the Rise and Fall
of the Schoolgirl Story, in Lesbian History Group, Not a Passing Phase. Reclaiming Lesbians in History,
1840-1985, London, The Womens Press, 1989, 264 pages.
123

however much real sexual activity was going on, such passionate attachments between
girls were far from uncommon.
The subversive aspect of these works cannot be ignored; these novels were very
unpopular with school directors. In 1936, a novella about St. Pauls in London was
severely denounced by the principal, Ethel Strudwick, who then announced at morning
prayers that she would collect all the Angela Brazil books and burn them.364
Public school and the homosexuality that was implicitly linked to it took on
mythic connotations in the English culture, gaining legitimacy and glorification. Christopher Isherwood accurately traces the process of idealization that occurs in adulthood,
noting that gradually, in absolute secrecy, he started to develop a cult of the public school.
Not that his own progress through school had been marked by anything particularly
romantic, heroic, dangerous, or epic. Rather, he concocted a fantasy in which he was an
austere young professor called in unexpectedly to head up a bad house, surrounded by
scornful detractors and declared enemies, and that he set himself to combat the delinquency and moral decay, severely repressing his own romantic feelings for a younger boy
and, finally, triumphing over all the obstacles, having passed the test, and emerged a
man.365
The myth and the idealization reach their climax in the imagination of Isherwood
and his friend Edward Upward, then in his relations with W.H. Auden. With this last, he
imagines heroic sagas, whose heroes would be the alumni of their school. For Auden and
Isherwood, adolescent sexuality is the referent, the ideal, and at the same time the symbol
of an immaturity which they sought to preserve as long as possible:
Their friendship was deep-rooted in the memories of schoolboys and the
nature of their sexuality was adolescent. They had slept together, without romanticism but with much pleasure, during the ten last years, every time the occasion presented itself, as they now did. They could not see themselves in quite the same terms
as before, however, sex had brought an additional dimension to their friendship. They
were aware of that and it bothered them, a little in fact, sophisticated adults were
embarrassed by their sexual partners from school.366
Cyril Connolly also recalls how his experiences at school prefigured the rest of his
love life. At the age of 30, he looks back on his youth at St. Cyprian: The boy that I
loved during my last three years at [school] was small, brunette, vigorous, good at
sports... His type kept turning up throughout my life, giving me trouble... At the age of 12,
363. In 1936, Lord Berners amused his friends in London by publishing a satire entitled Les Filles
de Radclyffe Hall, by Adela Quebec. The book is a double parody: on the one hand, it describes relations
between girls at a college, caricaturing the schemings of Angela Brazil, but in a spicier style; and the
name of the boarding school is, obviously, that of one of the best known British lesbians: John
Radclyffe Hall; and then, it proves to be a rigorously exact transposition of events and relations in
love concerning well-known homosexuals, notably Cecil Beaton and Peter Watson. Cecil Beaton
actually succeeded in having nearly all the existing copies destroyed. See Hugo Vickers, Cecil Beaton,
op. cit., and Adela Quebec, The Girls of Radclyffe Hall, printed for the author for private circulation
only, London, 1935, 100 pages.
364. Reprted by Gillian Freeman, The Schoolgirl Ethic, op. cit., p.19.
365. Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows, op. cit., p.47-48.
366. Christopher Isherwood, cited by Humphrey Carpenter, W.H. Auden, a Biography, London,
Allen & Unwin, 1981, 495 pages, p.63.
124

the four types to which I was sensitive had already appeared.... the Faun, the Redhead, the
Extreme Blond, and the Brunette Friend.367
When the boys separated, at the age of 18, they exchanged addresses and promised
not to forget each other. They should not have worried on that score; they never forgot.
Several years later Connolly went to the theater with a friend, and suddenly noticed a
man with a ruddy face and a white moustache, and looked at him long and hard. In the
taxi going home, he suddenly burst into tears, saying: At... school... he smelled... of tangerines.368 A symbol of lost youth, fleeting love, and vanished dreams, homosexuality
thus became the ideal of a generation. The public schools contributed substantially to the
creation of the myth.
TWO GENERATIONS OF HOMOSEXUAL INTELLECTUALS

In England, the cult of homosexuality was propagated by many intellectuals who,
for the most part, had experienced public school life personally. When they went on to
university, the high point of British homosexuality, it only reinforced their tendencies.
Their many personal accounts, in the form of novels or autobiographies, disseminated the
mythical view of the 1920s as years of homosexual liberation, unique and never to be
repeated.
The First Homosexual Generation: Precursors

The first homosexual generation grew up at Cambridge, and then went on to form
the Bloomsbury Club. This was a meeting ground for intellectuals who valued human
relations and combated the Victorian spirit; they made themselves known by their militant pacifism during the First World War and their political, economic and moral liberalism. This generation of intellectuals, born in the 1880s, played a central role in changing
how homosexuality was looked upon in England. By 1919, they were the role models for
the next generation.
Cambridge and the Apostles

For this first generation, Cambridge was the symbol of the cult of homosexuality.
The majority of the professors encouraged male relationships, which they practiced themselves more or less openly. A.E. Housman was a famous poet praising pedophile loves. His
poem, A Shropshire Lad (1896), was a kind of touchstone for homosexuals during the
inter-war period. The philosopher C.G. Broad expressed a clear penchant for Scandinavians. D.A. Winstanley, a professor of Victorian history; Gaillard Lapsley, a medievalist;
H.O. Evennett; F.A. Simpson; Andrew Grew; and the economist A. C. Pigou (who took his
prettier students along with him for hikes in the Alps); A.F. Scholfield, the librarian; professor of ancient history F.E. Adcock; and, finally, the vice-chancellor himself, J.T.
Sheppard, were also known. The most famous figure was Oscar Browning, professor of
367. Cited by H.Carpenter, The Brideshead Generation, op. cit., p.22.
368. Cited by John Gathorne-Hardy, The Public-School Phenomenon, op. cit., p.180.
125

history, tutor to E.M. Forster, and a former director of Eton, but who was fired in the
wake of an enormous homosexual scandal.369
The tendency was appreciably the same among the students. It is fair to say that,
from 1895 to approximately 1910, Cambridge was as idyllic a setting for homosexuals as
Oxford was in the inter-war period. One observer noted that:
in Cambridge there is, considering the nature of the business, an unusual number people of such a [homosexual] temperament, although they are not always conscious of it; and I do not doubt that besides the relations between the young people
themselves, relations of a personal nature with obliging professors may be the best
thing that Cambridge has to offer.370
However, whereas Oxford looked to the triumph of aestheticism and proclaimed

the glory of homosexuality, Cambridge was characterized by its discreet tolerance, good
taste, and restraint. The students, if they were homosexual, regarded this preference as an
almost intellectual choice and very often kept their sexuality within a framework of
asceticism and chastity. The adoration of boys was asserted as a philosophical ideal
derived from the Greeks; it was idealized to the point of removing any sensuality and any
concrete sexual implication. These ideas had a lasting influence on the first generation
which on the basis of such premises could defend homosexuality as a noble activity,
an ideal of purity and abnegation as opposed to heterosexual debauchery and the
shameless quest for pleasure. At the same time, this attitude did nothing to facilitate a liberation of morals; the ideas were tolerated but the acts were not.
The first reflections on homosexuality were developed by those who went on to
become the founding members of the Bloomsbury Club and who were, at the time,
members of the Apostles, a secret society founded in 1820. Many of its members are now
famous: Bertrand Russell, Desmond MacCarthy, Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, E.M.
Forster, H.O. Meredith, Clive Bell, Thoby Stephen and J.M. Keynes. In addition to intellectual concerns, most of the Apostles also shared a taste for boys. After Keynes was
elected to join the Apostles, students came to be recruited more for their beauty and
charm (Arthur Lee Hobhouse) than for their intelligence (although Rupert Brooke combined both). Bertrand Russell noted that homosexual relations became common, whereas
they hitherto had been unknown.371
A theoretical basis for homosexual love was developed in tandem with this new
trend, and that was decisive in the expansion of the cult of homosexuality. Love of boys
was defined as the highest form of love (higher sodomy) that one could experience,
women being inferior in body and spirit. E.M. Forster wrote, in Maurice, I feel the same
thing for you as Pipa for her fianc, only far nobler, deeper, more absolute; neither sensuality nor medievalism disincarnate, but a particular harmony of the body and soul of
which I think women can have no idea.372 Here, we find Platonic themes renewed, an
apologia for masculine relations that defines homosexuality as the final stage in intel-
369. Cited by Noel Annan, Our Age, op. cit., p.102.

370. Cited by John Gathorne-Hardy, The Public-School Phenomenon, op. cit., p.146.
371. See Robert Skidelsky, J.M. Keynes, Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920, London, Macmillan, 1983,
447 pages.
372. E.M. Forster, Maurice [written in 1914], Paris, Christian Bourgois diteur, 1987, 279 pages,
p.97-98.
126

lectual and aesthetic development, the only choice for a man of taste. The Apostles theories were tinged with misogyny, which exasperated Virginia Woolf. While their
influence was liberal, in the sense that they removed the shame from homosexuality, their
actions were consistent with a conservative masculine and patriarchal framework.
The Apostles tended to see a link between intelligence and homosexuality. The
perception of homosexuals changed, little by little; and after the war, the new generation
internalized this model and had no further qualms about asserting its homosexuality as a
positive thing.
Deprived of female company and generally living in a closed world, students at
Cambridge organized their life around male friendships. This helped them preserve some
sense of their childhood and isolated them from a world which they perceived as hostile.
Swithinbank said that, at college, emotions and desires were directed almost exclusively toward the male sex. [He] did not know anyone, in other words, who ever gave any
thought to women. That does not mean that there was much sex; that was looked down
on with a disapproval that was not entirely free of envy on the part of those who
repressed their desires out of timidity or virtue.373
Sentimental friendships were the prevailing trend; homosexuality was more a myth
that an act and the first generation certainly could not be accused of indulging in unfettered sexuality. The school years remained highly evocative in the homosexual imagination; the final chapter of Maurice recreates that eternal nostalgia: To the end of his life,
Clive was never sure of the exact moment when [Maurice] departed and, over the years,
he came to doubt that he had ever left. The blue room radiated gently, the ferns undulated
and, with Cambridge in the distant background, he seemed to see his friend making signs
to him sign, haloed by the sun, among the confused rumor and the perfumes of the May
trimester.374
Bloomsbury
March 1905 is the accepted date for the foundation of the Bloomsbury Club, since it
was then that Vanessa, Thoby, Adrian and Virginia Stephen launched their Thursday
soires at 46 Gordon Square, in London. It is more difficult to pin down when the Club
dissolved, but we can date it to roughly 1931 (when Lytton Strachey died) to 1934 (when
Roger Fry died). It would be hard to draw up a complete list of the groups members, for
some maintained fairly loose ties throughout the entire period, and some took an active
part for a limited time. Still, we can name the most essential active members: Leonard and
Virginia (Stephen) Woolf, Vanessa (Stephen) Bell (her sister) and Clive Bell (Vanessas
husband); Adrian Stephen (their brother), Lytton Strachey, James and Marjorie Strachey,
E.M. Forster, David Garnett, Desmond and Molly MacCarthy, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant,
Saxon Sydney-Turner, J.M. Keynes and Francis Birrell.375
The meetings were informal, friendly get-togethers to discuss painting, literature
and life in general. The very idea of men and women discussing such things together freely
was already avant-garde. But Bloomsbury also went on to develop a theory of sexuality
373. Bernard Swithinbank, cited by R. Skidelsky, J.M. Keynes, op. cit., p.104.
374. E.M. Forster, Maurice, op. cit., p.279.
375. According to the list given by Quentin Bell in Bloomsbury [1968], London, Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1990, 127 pages, p.15.
127

and human relations which questioned the moral foundations of the Victorian Era. They
were influenced by the Neo-Pagans, whose followers had been students with them in the
same colleges. Virginia Woolf had caught everyones attention by skinny-dipping in a
pond with Rupert Brooke at Cambridge and going camping with him without a chaperone. The influence of Edward Carpenter can also be felt. E.M. Forster had met Carpenter and Merrill at Millthorpe. According to Forster, Carpenter exerted a magnetic
influence on him and Merrill, by touching his lower back, gave him a new erotic sensation that left a lasting impression.376
They were up on all the latest sexual theories: Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf,
Vanessa and Clive Bell had read and discussed Havelock Ellis; and all of them had felt the
influence of G.E. Moore, whose book Principia Ethica would be used as the basis of their
ideas. For Moore, state of mind was more important than action or achievements. Since
love is generally considered a very positive state of mind, it becomes almost synonymous
with a successful life (the good life). The innovative aspect of Moores philosophy lay in
the difference he delineated between what is good from the human perspective and
what is good from the moral perspective. This distinction was re-examined by
Bloomsbury, which always put the human considerations first. Consequently, the Club
repudiated both politics and accepted sexual conventions as symbols of hypocrisy; it
replaced religion with skepticism; it rejected material success in favor of glorifying art;
and it rejected the ineluctability of the First World War by defending the pacifist cause.
Most of the men in Bloomsbury were homosexual and at least one woman, Virginia
Woolf, had lesbian tendencies.377 Homosexuality could not have failed to be a frequent
topic of discussion. Bloomsbury promoted very free speech when it came to sexuality,
regardless of gender differences or any question of decency. Vanessa Bell noted that one
could speak about intercourse, sodomy, fellatio or a cat, without raising any eyebrows.378
And Virginia Woolf seconded her, saying that sexuality penetrated the conversation regularly, with the word pederast coming up all the time; copulation was discussed with
the same fervor and freedom as the question of what is good.379
Virginia Woolf frequently complained about the superficial nature of certain
meetings, where the men amused themselves describing their conquests in terms of visits
to a urinal. Still, this freedom of language was revolutionary and, by taking away the
shock value, by looking at homosexuality as a personal and not a social matter,
Bloomsbury denied the dangers of perversion and the need to isolate homosexuals.
The following generation took this teaching to heart. As Virginia Woolf saw it,
There was nothing one could not say, nothing one could not do at 46 Gordon Square. It
was a great progress in civilization. Pederast loves may not be a subject of paramount
importance (if one is not a member of that brotherhood); but the fact that one can
mention them openly leads to the fact that there is nothing wrong with them if they are
kept private. Also, many customs and convictions were revised. Indeed, the Bloomsbury
376. This encounter inspired him to write Maurice. Francis King, E.M. Forster, London, Thames
& Hudson, 1978, 128 pages.
377.Ottoline Morrells daughter remembers that epoque in these terms: I do not recall ever
meeting a man who was sexually normal at my mothers.
378. Cited by Robert Skidelsky, J.M. Keynes, op. cit., p.248.
379. Virginia Woolf, Instants de vie [1976], Paris, Stock, 1986, 273 pages, p.240-241. Virginia
Woolfs remarks, in her Journals, cited by Philip Hoare, Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant,
London, Penguin, 1992, 463 pages, p.152.
128

that was to come would prove that one can play many variations on the topic of sexuality
and with such happy results that my father himself would have hesitated before thundering the single word he considered the only one appropriate for a pederast or an adulterer; which was: Scoundrel!380
But the tolerance was not only verbal in Bloomsbury. While the Club did not
exactly consist of sexual anarchists, it was still very much the creator of an extremely
relaxed way of life. Homosexuality or bisexuality was standard, accompanied by a frequent change of lovers or partner-swapping. Honesty of feelings took precedence over
jealousy. Most members of Bloomsbury had extremely active and agitated sex lives, which
they discussed among themselves in detail. Keynes, for example, had had several affairs at
school (in particular with Dilwyn Knox, Bernard Swithinbank and A.L. Hobhouse), then
he conceived a passion for Duncan Grant. Grant initially had been the lover of Lytton
Strachey (who had, himself, coveted Hobhouse). Grant subsequently left Keynes for Hobhouse, then for David Garnett. The same David Garnett had had a fling with Keynes, who
then kept up a parallel liaison with Francis St. George Nelson (seventeen years) and
Francis Birrell. Dora Carrington, who was in love with Lytton Strachey, married Ralph
Partridge, with whom Strachey was enamored, and they lived together in an eternal triangle.
It is useless and basically impossible to draw an exhaustive diagram of the various
connections which linked the members of the group; but it is quite obvious that such
nonconformity influenced young people like Christopher Isherwood who came to visit.
Even those who had less turbulent love lives all the same followed their inclinations
freely. E.M. Forster, who had been in love with H.O. Meredith in school, had his first
sexual experience in India with Mohammed el-Adt, a tram driver; then, he had several
flings, in Alexandria especially; in London, he lived with a police officer, Bob Buckingham,
for several years.
Forsters example illustrates another aspect of the Bloomsbury message. Homosexual liberation must not to be limited to unbridled sexuality; the purity of homosexual
feelings must be confirmed. In Maurice, Forster expresses what thousands of boys had
hitherto felt, without daring to acknowledge it: He vaguely visualized a face, he
vaguely heard a voice saying to him: Here is your friend, and he awoke bedazzled and
bewildered by tenderness. He would have been willing to die for such a friend, he would
have accepted that such a friend should die for him; they would have made any sacrifice
for each other, not caring about either the world or death; nothing could have separated
them, neither distances nor obstacles.381
For this reason, Maurice can be regarded as the manifesto of a generation. Written
in 1914, it was published only after Forsters death 1970. But the book circulated among
homosexuals and was recognized as the expression of their desire to be free to fully
exercise their love. For the first time, male homosexuality was described without shame
nor remorse and without either punishment or separation at the end of the road. Two
together can defy the world, that was the general idea.382 A new feeling had been born:
pride.
380. Virginia Woolf, Instants de vie, op. cit., p.241.

382. Ibid., p.149.
129

At the end of the novel, Maurice and Alec give up their bourgeois life, their careers
and their social aspirations, to live their love completely. This happy end, full of hope,
nonetheless leaves the reader unsure. Maurice does not guarantee that their love will
succeed; it merely heralds a new age where such a love will be possible. Also, the message
which Bloomsbury bequeaths to homosexuals is balanced, but rich in hope. It stresses the
importance of the individual and the sacred character of human relations. Only connect,
wrote Forster: we must recreate the bond between the body and the soul, which Victorian morals had so efficiently severed. By celebrating the wisdom of the body and the
regenerative power of love, Bloomsbury opened the way to more radical combat. Homosexuality became the symbol of a generation.
The Second Homosexual Generation: The Apogee

To summarize the entire generation of the 1920s and 1930s in just three names may
seem bold, but given the works of W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Stephen
Spender, it may be justified. They embodied the common attitude of the intellectuals of
their epoch,383 and that of most of the middle- and upper-class homosexuals as well.384
They described their experiences and their opinions in their novels (Isherwood), their
poems (Auden), and their autobiographies (all three). The amount of dissimulation or
alteration (even involuntary) of which their testimony might be accused is, in itself, indicative of the era, its desires and its fears. In that, their accounts are irreplaceable. Christopher Isherwood was born in 1904, W.H. Auden in 1907 and Stephen Spender in 1909.
The years 1919-1939 are those of their youth, their first sexual intercourse and, at least
until 1933, of their exploration of Germany, which was to mark them deeply. For
Bloomsbury, sexual nonconformity was closely tied to rejection of Victorian society. The
succeeding generation did not have this reference mark, and therefore it would build its
design of homosexuality on new values.
The Succeeding Generation

The succeeding generation wanted above all to claim the legacy of Bloomsbury and
in particular that of E.M. Forster, whom Isherwood met in 1932. My England is that of
Edward Morgan,385 he would say. Isherwood read Maurice. Although he was bothered by
the use of certain euphemisms (to share, rather than to make love, for example), he was
impressed and felt indebted to those who had fought these earlier battles for him. He
credited Forster with the miracle of producing this novel in the age when it was
written, the ability to get beyond the jungle of prejudices of the pre-war period and
managing to express in words such inadmissible opinions.386 And when Forster humbly
asked him what a member of the generation of the 1930s might think of Maurice and
whether he found the novel dated, Isherwood answered him: Why shouldnt it be
383. Noel Annan, Our Age, op. cit., p.98-135.

384.For anonymous homosexual testimonies, see Kevin Porter and Jeffrey Weeks (ed.), Between
the Acts. Lives of Homosexual Men, 1885-1967, London, Routledge, 1991, 153 pages.
385. Christopher Isherwood, Down there on a Visit, London, Methuen, 1962, 271 pages, p.134.
386. Id., Christopher and his Kind [1929-1939], London, Methuen, 1977, 252 pages, p.99.
130

dated?387 The book announced, indeed, that a happy ending is possible for homosexual
loves; thenceforth, it was only a question of proving it.
The succeeding generation would take a more advanced position on homosexuality. It not only wanted to be frank about its homosexuality, it was proud of it. The sentiment was, Who wants to be encumbered with women? Theyre no fun. They think
only of themselves. Our best moments were those that we spent together, werent
they?388
The issue was not to be able to advertise everywhere a practice that was still
criminal in England, but to stop making a mystery of it. Audens and Isherwoods friends
and parents knew their inclinations. When their first works were published, some part of
the well-read public also found out.389 Not content with admitting their homosexuality,
the members of the rising generation aspired to change society. In Down There on a Visit, one
of the characters describes, tongue in cheek, the kingdom which he hopes to found one
day. There, he thought, it would be impossible to legalize heterosexuality right off the bat
there would be too many protests. Maybe after twenty years or so, the resentment
would die down. In the meantime, officials would close their eyes to heterosexual acts
committed in private; and there might even be special bars in certain parts of town for
people afflicted with such proclivities. Of course, care would have to be taken to protect
innocent foreigners from straying in by mistake and getting upset by what they saw. And
for anyone who did wander in, in error, We will have a psychologist on hand to explain
to him that such people exist, that it is not their fault, and that we must feel compassion
for them and try to find a scientific means of reconditioning them.390
From now on, homosexuals had only one battle to fight: their own. Anyone who
refused to help them was regarded as an enemy. Isherwood commented that Girls are
what the State and the Church and the Law and the Press and the Medical Profession
approve and command me to desire. My mother approves of girls, too. She silently, brutally asks me to marry and give her grandchildren. That is the will of Almost Everyone,
and their will means my death. MY will is to live according to my nature, and to find a
place where I can be what I am... But I must admit this even if my nature made me like
them, I would still fight them in one way or another. If boys did not exist, I would have to
invent them.391 From now on, homosexuals were a symbol of societys oppression of
minorities. Homosexual liberation and the liberalization of morals became part of a larger
game plan that questioned the domination of the middle-class. On the eve of the war,
homosexuality became political.392
One of the first pillars of middle-class (i.e., patriarchal, conservative and authoritative) morality to be called into question was the family. Audens and Isherwoods relations with their mothers were already strained. And then, they were constantly
expressing their contempt for family, using one of their favorite weapons, derision, which
they wielded against that respectability that is so dear to the bourgeoisie. One of the
forms this would take was the factitious marriage, whose only purpose was political.
Auden married Erika Mann (daughter of Thomas Mann) in order to obtain a passport for
387. Ibid.
388. Christopher Isherwood to one of his friends, Waldemar, in Down there on a Visit, op. cit., p.156.
389. On this topic, see Norman Pittenger, Wystan and Morgan, in Gay News, n 156.
390. Christopher Isherwood, Down there on a Visit, op. cit., p.83.
391. Id., Christopher and his Kind, op. cit., p.17.
392. See Chapter Six.
131

her to leave Germany; David Gascoygne did the same with a German girl named Ingrid,
and John Hampson married Erika Manns friend, the actress Therese Giese.
But it was their unbridled sexuality that was the most severe attack on family
values. While sentiment may not have been entirely absent, the search for partners specifically for sexual ends became more prevalent, and more open. Audens behavior in this
sense is typical: at Oxford, he would spend entire evenings downtown seeking partners
and, upon his return, he would treat his stunned but secretly envious friends to clinical
accounts of the experience. He would report on the fellatio (his preferred form of sex) in
detail, in order to liberate his audience, to show to them that the sense of guilt can be
overcome. Following his example, the new generation rehabilitated sexual pleasure
the greatest taboo still attached to homosexuality. However, it is difficult to free oneself
from secular prejudices; while they were free in their attitudes, the new generation still
had to fight doubt. Audens position vis--vis his homosexuality was not always clear. In
1922, he fell in love with one with his comrades, Robert Medley, when he was 15 years old.
In his public school, Gresham, the code of honor was very strict on this point; and one
may assume that at that time he was not completely sure of his feelings. From then on, his
detachment, even his cynicism, alternated with phases of remorse and doubt. In 1927, he
wrote that he still felt that there was something indecent in sharing homosexual relations. And even in 1933, he noted: Homosexuality is to a certain extent a bad habit, like
sucking ones thumb.393 In spite of these periods of depression, his concerns remained
quite circumscribed and his friends saw him as the apostle of their liberation. Auden
didnt feel at all ashamed or guilty about his sexual preferences. He felt guilty only on
those occasions where, according to him, he had shown himself to be heartless, cruel or
negligent.394
In the 1970s, Christopher Isherwood would become a very active member of the
homosexual liberation movement in the United States; he seems to have been acting out
of a guilty feeling that he should have done more during the inter-war period. Isherwood
deeply regretted that he had not been more explicit in his first autobiographies and
novels, had not publicly announced his homosexuality. Installed in Santa Monica, having
lived to see the blossoming of the homosexual community in San Francisco, he set to
work to correct the errors of his youth and to analyze the homosexual experiences of the
earlier days. Other members of his generation never really did come to terms with their
condition and went as far as to repudiate it. Stephen Spender would complain of choking
in this world of pederasts, and he ended up marrying, in 1939, when the homosexual cult
was over.
Oxford
Everyone in Oxford was homosexual at that time.395 Such a generalization is
undoubtedly exaggerated, but Oxford (much more than Cambridge) certainly went
through a great period of homophilia between the wars. Since Oscar Wilde, the university
had always seen waves of effeminate young men, dressed in the fashions of the preceding
century, posing in their rooms filled with blue porcelain. In the 19th century, Oxfords
393. Cited by Humphrey Carpenter, W.H. Auden, op. cit., p.105.
394. Norman Pittenger, Wystan and Morgan, loc. cit.
395. John Betjeman, cited by Noel Annan, Our Age, op. cit., p.113.
132

theatrical companies had made a specialty of farces featuring young men disguised as
women. However, after the war, Nol Annan noted that homosexuality has become
normal. Evelyn Waugh is one of the more striking examples of the homosexual trend in
Oxford in those days. Isaiah Berlin remembers having seen him on a settee of the Club of
Hypocrites kissing a friend, and Christopher Hollis knew him to have had at least two
major homosexual relationships, one with Richard Pares, the other with Alastair
Graham.396 However, Waugh married upon graduating from the university and claimed,
afterwards, to hate homosexuals. Nevertheless the implications of this university homosexual activity are undeniable.397 While homosexuality continued to be illegal under
English law, it suddenly became the ideal for cultivated youth. The heterosexual poet
Louis MacNeice comments that he discovered that, at Oxford, homosexuality and intelligence, heterosexuality and musculature went hand in hand. He remained an outsider,
and turned to drinking.
As in the public schools, homosexuality was encouraged by the relative restriction
of the students, who spent most of their time at the university. But in the inter-war
period, homosexuality was fashionable, too; it was a choice. Students could go into town,
and some were known to pick up waitresses; moreover, there are female colleges affiliated
to Oxford, which could have facilitated heterosexual relations. That such relationships
did not materialize can be attributed to the fact that heterosexuality carried negative connotations, it was scorned as vulgar and degrading. One writer observed that, to run
after the easy petticoat catalogued you irremediably. Romantic love affairs, even prudent
physical experiments disastrous, preferably outside of the university and during the
holidays were tolerated, and might even earn you a certain respectful consideration. But
the mere mention of the female colleges that were already popping up in the university
could render you ridiculous.398
In fact, the cult of homosexuality in Oxford is clearly linked to an omnipresent
misogyny, a contempt for woman, born mainly of ignorance and fear. This education given
by men to men, without contact with any aspect of the female world, guaranteed the
cohesion of the elite, bonded by shared experiences and goals. From the day they entered
public school, the pupils were encouraged to get rid of the only notable female influence
that could block the educational process: that of the mother. The public school substituted maternal protection by the protection of a bigger boy, with or without sexual conditions, thus institutionalizing homosexuality to some extent. Upon their arrival at
university, these boys had little desire to confront the female universe that was so deeply
foreign to their rites and their childish myths. This public school past often had a strong
influence on the sexual orientation of the students at Oxford; and to that a discreet but
396. Christopher Hollis, Oxford in the Twenties, Recollection of Five Friends, London, Heinemann, 1976,
136 pages; and Franoise du Sorbier (dir.), Oxford 1919-1939, Paris, ditions Autrement, srie
Mmoires, n 8, 1991, 287 pages. The character of Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited would be
modeled on Alastair Graham (Evelyn Waugh, Return to Brideshead, Paris, Christian Bourgois diteur,
1991, 429 pages).
397. Waugh himself admitted in an interview addressed to a specific public: Have you had
homosexual experiences? Yes, first at school, and even later. You mean that you fell in love with
another boy. But surely that happens frequently, when one is young. Yes, but the school years
mark you for the rest of your life. I have always lived at the edge of homosexuality, and I have always
been influenced by it, (in Gay News, 14-27 June 1973).
398. J.M. Stewart, in Oxford 1919-1939, op. cit., p.23. Les femmes ont t admises Oxford in 1920;
elles ne le seront Cambridge quin 1947.
133

ongoing incentive was added. Graham Greene arrived at Oxford after going through Berkansted, a day school, and thus he had not imbued the homosexual culture of his comrades; he kept himself at a distance from these milieux, but he was conscious of the
strangeness of his situation. Perhaps, he wrote, this was really just my naivety.... That
never appealed to me or interested me. Evelyn Waugh used to tease me. He claimed
that I had missed a lot by not going through a homosexual phase.399 As in the public
schools, homosexuality was encouraged by certain professors; at Oxford, professors F.F.
Urquhart and Maurice Bowra were known for their talents as go-betweens. Bowra, for
example, having learned of Cyril Connollys interest in Bobbie Longden, expressed his
approval to him and let him know that his friend spent time in certain dubious places; he
advised him to invite him along to an isolated spot on the Oxford campus. Anthony
Powell found that the university authorities were indifferent to homosexuality but disapproved of heterosexual interest.400
The younger generations attraction to homosexuality can be also understood as a
reaction to their parents generation, which had condemned Wilde and then kept silent
on this type of subject. John Betjeman was corresponding with Lord Alfred Douglas; his
father found out and subjected him to a sermon along these lines: He said: You have
received letters from Lord Alfred Douglas. I could not deny it. Do you know what kind
of man he is?... He is a fag. Do you know what fags are? Fags are two men who put themselves in such a state of mutual admiration that one of the two sticks his prick up the
others bottom. What do you think of that?401
Above all, homosexuality, as well as literature and art, would be used to distinguish
a certain faction of the avant-garde, young people in the know, up on all the latest trends
of modernity. Alan Pryce-Jones summarized the situation, saying: It was chic to be a fag,
the way it was chic to know a little something about dodecaphony or the Nude Descending
A Staircase by Duchamp.402
At Oxford, indeed, homosexuality was not only a practice, it was also a way of separating the college into two mutually detesting clans: the heterosexual athletes (the
hearties) and the homosexual aesthetes. Stephen Spender sums it up To them, my
interest in poetry, painting and music, my lack of interest for sports, the eccentricity of
my clothing and my personal appearance were signs of decadence.403
In fact, the aesthetes were pleased to accentuate the originality of their costume
and practiced affecting poses in response to what they regarded as the brutishness and
the coarseness of the athletes. In this play-acting, one can distinguish the origins of a
homosexual identity and a disguised rejection of the conformist bourgeois society. And
Spender adds that he became affected, wore a red tie, cultivated friendships outside of the
college, became a bad patriot, declared himself a pacifist and a socialist, a genius. He
hung reproductions of Gauguin, Van Gogh and Paul Klee paintings on the walls. And
when the weather was fine, he made a habit of sitting on a cushion in the courtyard,
reading poetry.404 The athletes, for their part, painted an ironic and afflicted picture of
those whom they regarded as degenerates. One of them recounts that when he met one of
400. Ibid., p.113.
401. Ibid., p.81.
402. Ibid.
403. Stephen Spender, World within World [1951], London, Faber & Faber, 1991, 344 pages, p.33.
404. Ibid.
134

them and asked him his name, the pretty young man answered: Franois Capelle. In fact,
his name was Frank Curtis. He wore a pink jacket, a tuxedo waistcoat and purple
trousers, which was hardly common, even in those days. And when he asked him which
college he was going to, he said: My dear, I dont even remember, really.405
The center of aesthetic and homosexual activity was the Club of Hypocrites, where
young men danced together in spite of prohibitions. Evelyn Waugh explains that its
members were known not only for their drunkenness, but also for the flamboyance of
their costumes and their manners, which were in certain cases obviously homosexual.406
The George Restaurant was also a meeting place for Oxford homosexuals during the
inter-war period. The most flamboyant homosexuality at Oxford was embodied by two
aesthetes, Harold Acton and Brian Howard, who had already been together in Eton from
1918 to 1922. Their homosexuality was aggressive, pretentious, and based primarily on
style, posing, effect. Similarly, their aestheticism was intended to be a philosophy of life,
a literary and artistic viewpoint, and not solely a sartorial caprice. Acton and Howard
were at the avant-garde of an Oxonian aestheticism which strove to be in touch with the
modern world and not locked up in a dusty fin-de-sicle cult. In distinction to their comrades, who concentrated on cultivating their uniqueness while never venturing beyond
their own rooms and by associating only with certain carefully selected people, they met
enormous numbers of people and made a name for themselves through their social talent
and their journalistic or poetic writings, and they organized a propaganda campaign for
their movement. Martin Green describes them as children of the sun (Sonnenkinder)
who refused to grow up after the war and who embodied all the adolescent arrogance at
the heart of the Oxonian homosexual myth.407 Evelyn Waugh saw Brian Howard as an
incorrigible homosexual, and his total lack of shame frightened him. The aesthetes made
no mystery of their homosexuality, but it was not so much that as their affectations and
the sense of their artistic superiority which earned them the hatred of the athletes. And if
the hostility between the two camps frequently led to the ransacking of the aesthetes
rooms by tipsy athletes, it was more a means of defense against a lifestyle and sexual orientation that was beginning to submerge them than a witch hunt organized against the
untouchables. Homosexuality may still have been under attack, but it was already recognized.
However, the climate of license and permissiveness often placed the university in a
difficult position. The scandals and the expulsion of certain pupils for offending decency
caused waves of hostility in the national press, which called Oxford a den of debauchery
and effeminates and implied that the majority of students were actually little women
with made-up faces and precious gestures.408
Between approximately 1930 and 1933, there was a sudden proliferation of writings
devoted to Oxford; some paint a severe portrait of a life characterized by laziness, drunkenness and vice, whereas others set out to defend, often apologetically, their dear Alma
Mater calumniated by philistines. In the first category, one may cite Oxford in the MeltingPot, by P.H. Crawfurth Smith, and Letter to Oxford, by T.E. Harrisson. The former does not
405. Sir Isaiah Berlin, in Oxford 1919-1939, op. cit.
407. See Martin Green, Children of the Sun: A Narrative of Decadence in England after 1918, London,
Constable, 552 pages; and Harold Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete [1948], reedited., London, Hamish
Hamilton, 1984, 416 pages.
408. Isis, 14 and 21 October 1925.
135

refer directly to the students supposed homosexuality, but emphasizes the decadent
atmosphere of the university and the lack of virility in everything they do: Let me repeat
that the entire atmosphere of Oxford is foreign to labour and to study. It is unhealthy, it is
superficial, it is saturated with sex.409 Harrisson, for his part, establishes a clear distinction between Oxford, the place (which he venerates), and the students, who enjoy
dishonoring this sanctuary of culture. In his chapter Oxsex, he focuses particularly on
homosexuality and paints an appalling picture of the students sex life, rife with masturbation and perversion.410 He links this phenomenon to the public schools (as he must):
When one says Harrow, one says perversion. It is one of the principal by-products of general public schools; and certain people are so seriously bitten that they
never recover from a sexual hydrophobia [?]. Oxford is full of perverts at least 20%,
in my opinion. That is not counting the masturbators, who are the British standard.
Some of the more outstanding perverts learned their tricks at Oxford.411 [One may
note that his inveighing against homosexuality is tinged with a vague argument
against modernity and the cultivated elite:] Evenings for perverts are a characteristic
of the university. The details are not printable, but I hope to publish them soon.
Homosexuals and lesbians... flourish, particularly within the super-intelligentsia.412
Oxford alumni tried to clear their university of these attacks. Some, like Edward
Thomas, in Oxford, stayed away from potential litigious subjects and contented themselves with ardent panegyrics, saying things like: What an incredible thing it is to be a
student at the university of Oxford! Other than being a great poet or a financier, there is
nothing so absolutely fine available to a man!413 Others employed all their talent to
defend the practice of homosexuality at Oxford. Terence Greenidge, in Degenerate Oxford?,
in 1930, justified the basically homosexual life and feelings as a unique and enriching
experience in a young mans life. He denounced the popular press for promoting scandals,
asserting that it has already been mentioned that the popular press preferred the athletes,
and those are the students who are favorite heroes for the writers of magazine articles, as
well.414 By contrast, the aesthetes were qualified as decadent and degenerate.
Greenidge may have preferred the homosexuals, but he endeavored to play down
the extent of homosexual practices at Oxford, bearing in mind the fact that relations
between men (other than platonic) were illegal. He claimed that, in any event, romances
at Oxford were often not pursued in any way that could generate conflicts with the penal
code, for the simple reason that the students were immature enough to see value in platonic affections. Strange things may occasionally occur, he acknowledged, among those
who come from too emancipated a public school. And perhaps some among us have read
Havelock Ellis and learned to see sex calmly and clearly.415 He even declined to speak
about homosexuality, preferring the term Romantism. The attraction of a man for a
man, I will call it Romantism. One word is always preferable to two the expression
409. P.H. Crawfurth Smith, Oxford in the Melting-Pot, London, The White Owl Press, 1932,
24 pages, p.22.
410. T.E. Harrisson, Letter to Oxford, Reynold Bray, The Hate Press, 1933, 98 pages, p.24.
411. Ibid., p.27.
412. Ibid., p.28.
413. Edward Thomas, Oxford, London, Black A. & C., 1932, 265 pages, p.103.
414. Terence Greenidge, Degenerate Oxford?, London, Chapman & Hall, 1930, 245 pages, p.40.
415. Ibid., p.90.
136

romantic friendship is too heavy, and I do not approve of homosexuality, for it seems too
sinister and suggests more than is at question.416
Greenidge finds three justifications for the Romantism at Oxford: the boys are
beautiful, Oxford is so original a city that conventional frivolities with conventional girls
simply would not do,417 and, finally, the authorities keep the two sexes separate: To
invite coeds to take tea at the college is in any event too difficult... There are always the
complicated rules of chaperonage, and consequently one must invite a whole troop of girls
or none at all.418 As for the girls in town, it is far too dangerous to pursue a relationship with one of them to any degree whatsoever. The critics seem to keep an exact list
of all the ladies of Oxford who could be suspected of entertaining romantic dispositions.
If you are seen speaking with one of these ladies, your university career is in danger.419
Greenidge also describes the more or less apparent homosexual culture which
reigned at Oxford. He mentions that the college magazines often published love poems
addressed to students. Like everyone, he recalls the athletes aggression of the aesthetes,
the shouts You, dirty aesthetes, you love men,420 but he is right to bring out the
ambiguity of these relationships. Very often, indeed, an aesthete was in love with an
athlete and the athlete admired the aesthete. Such complementary friendships could be
beneficial. Homosexuality then served as a cement between different individuals, different ways of thinking. It helped preserve the unity of the college, and in a certain way it
is the very spirit of the school: Students who are not entirely lacking in personal charm
and few are see no harm in lunching with one admirer, taking a long walk in the
countryside with another, dining in some comfortable club at the university with a third
and, perhaps, finishing the day with a whisky bottle in the company of a fourth.421
Greenidge, in fact, hardly knows which side to take. He wants to defend Oxford
against the charges of perversion, but he cannot deny the facts. Moreover, he is endeavoring to get the public to see the positive aspects of this peculiar feature in Oxonian life,
but without shocking sensibilities. That leads him to make some contradictions and compromises. Thus, he says that he is in favor of coeducation, as the only way to end
Romantism; which he thus ends up exposing.
In the last lines of his book his fragmented outlooks appears most clearly, in sentences that recall the end of Maurice and that once again illustrate the permanent imprint
left on a generation by these university years tinged with homosexuality:
When I contemplate the arid years which I spent since I left Oxford, alone in
this old and tedious Bloomsbury and trying without much success to become an
important actor, I can only go on eternally playing the role of Cyrano de Bergerac, I
can only go on eternally regretting my dead friend and my lost happiness.422
And so, Oxford in the 1920s became a myth, the symbol of the triumph of homosexuality in England. Alumni-turned-writers sought to describe the happiness of their youth;
examples include Christopher Isherwoods Lions and Shadows, Stephen Spenders World
416. Ibid.
417. Ibid., p.95.
418. Ibid., p.96.
419. Ibid., p.97.
420. Ibid., p.92.
421. Ibid., p.105.
422. Ibid., p.245.
137

within World and, especially, Evelyn Waugh with Brideshead Revisited the book that most
successfully disseminated the mythical image of Oxford as a homosexual paradise.
Waugh captures the very essence of Oxford, the romantic passions (between Charles
Ryder and Sebastian Flyte), the unrestrained aestheticism and flamboyant homosexuality
(Anthony Blanche) and the nostalgia for adolescence (embodied by Aloysius, the teddy
bear that Sebastian refuses to leave). Beyond the idyllic picture of a place that a whole
generation would struggle to regain, he offers us a life-like description of homosexual life
in those years. Love comes first and foremost,423 and the rivalry between the athletes and
aesthetes is reported with humor,424 but homosexual pride in particular is displayed for
all to see with panache, irony and lubricity.
The character of Anthony Blanche,425 facetious and extravagant, allows Evelyn
Waugh to describe with a great flourish the cult of homosexuality that suffused the
Roaring Twenties:
At the age of fifteen, to win a bet, [Anthony Blanche] allowed himself to be
dressed as a girl and taken to the big gaming table at the Jockey-Club in Buenos Aires;
he had occasion to dine with Proust and Gide, and knew Cocteau and Diaghilev well.
Firbank sent him his novels, embellished with enthusiastic dedications; he caused
three inextinguishable vendettas in Capri, practiced magic at Cphalonie; got into
drugs and underwent detoxication in California, and was cured of an dipal complex
in Vienna.426
This passage touches all the literary and society landmarks of the homosexual
world in the inter-war period. Homosexuality, for the elite, was more than a sexual proclivity; it was a style, a way of life.
In a scene where he is confronted by the athletes, Anthony Blanche shows his total
lack of inhibition, his lack of complexes, and his natural affirmation of his homosexuality
and ends up defeating his adversaries:
He was approached by a horde of some 20 young people of the worst kind, and
what do you think they were chanting? Anthony, we want Anthony Blanche, in a
kind of litany. Have you ever seen anyone declare himself so, in public?...My very dear
fellows, I said to them, you resemble a band of very undisciplined lackeys. Then one
of them, a rather pretty bit, honestly, accused me of sins against nature. My dear, I
said to him, it may be that I am an invert, but I am not insatiable, even so. Come back
and see me some day when you are alone.427
The character of Anthony Blanche428 embodies the cult of homosexuality; confronted by a hostile or disconcerted society, the invert no longer hides his true nature.
Once more, the contrast with the neighboring countries is great. In France, for example,
there was no establishment that could entertain the myth that homosexuality was intel423. For me, life at Oxford began with my first meeting with Sebastian, (Charles Ryders
confession in Return to Brideshead, op. cit., p.35).
424. Stephen Spender describes similar episodes, in World within World, op. cit., p.34; as does Christopher Isherwood, Down there on a Visit, op. cit., p.93.
425. He might be compared to the character of Ambrose Silk, in Down there on a Visit.
426. Evelyn Waugh, Return to Brideshead, op. cit., p.61.
427. Ibid., p.64-66.
428. Evelyn Waugh based this character on Brian Howard.
138

lectually superior, the way Oxford and Cambridge did.429 Of course, there are some personal accounts reporting on homosexual experiences in the universities, but they are
individual cases which one cannot equate with a widespread social phenomenon. Daniel
Gurin describes drinking with a good-looking neighbor who was a fellow student at the
Saint-Cyr Military Academy and the rough-housing, pillow fights and wrestling that
verged on more, and the arousal that resulted.430
The teacher training colleges were strongly associated with homosexual conduct,
and sometimes they were presented as hotbeds of lesbianism. Thus, in Claudine in Paris
(1902), Anas continues her exploits and describes how it is done: Nothing special, she is
with a third year student...As you know, the dormitories are composed of two lines of
open cubicles, separated by an alley for monitoring. Anas found a way to go and find
Charrelier almost every night, and they were never caught.431
The Advanced Teacher Training School of Svres was also supposed to be a
breeding ground of homosexual friendships. Several old novels mention it, including Les
Svriennes (1900), by Gabrielle Reval, and Jeunes filles en serre chaude (1934) by Jeanne Galzy.
LInitiatrice aux mains vides (1929), by the same author, presents the emotional vacuum that
overcomes a young educator, once her school career is finished. The years spent at Svres
come to seem like an enchanted time, where hopes could still flourish.
Antoine Prost points out that these girls were in a very uncomfortable situation, in
any case: the young high school graduates disembarked in a provincial town where there
was nobody to welcome them. Their dubious status kept them apart from the townspeople, who viewed them with suspicion because of their independence and their culture.
Only strong personalities could survive there, without sinking into depression. Simone de
Beauvoir, having been appointed to a school in Rouen, was the object of attention for a
number of her pupils, in particular one Olga Kosakiewicz, a 17-year-old White Russian
who would go on to become Sartres lover.
In 1936, in Paris, Simone de Beauvoir and Olga went to bars for women and posed
as lesbians, even while denying there was any erotic component to their relationship.432
However, they are a special case, and not very appropriate for generalization; their
example is not enough to show that the university years could claim to be a decisive
moment in the process of forming ones identity nor to have much to do with spreading a
cult of homosexuality in youth. Conversely, for many English students, Oxford offered a
real environment of homosexual freedom; Evelyn Waugh says that during those years he
experienced an extreme homosexual phase which, for the short period that it lasted, was
without constraint, emotionally and physically.433 Former students retained traces of
their youthful experiences. Cyril Connolly has described the mentality of this new
English elite as adolescent, with a spirit of school [camaraderie], affected, cowardly, sentimental and, in the final analysis, homosexual.434
429. In 1921, a pacifist bulletin, La Jeune Europe, published by some students including Pierre Brossolette, was banned after the third edition because of an article on homosexuality in boarding
schools. In fact, the kind of relations with girls that was acceptable in the school from 1924 onward
recall those of the Oxford students with regard to womens colleges: coldness and mistrust. See JeanFranois Sirinelli, Gnration intellectuelle, Paris, PUF, 1994, 720 pages, p.212.
430. Daniel Gurin, Autobiographie de jeunesse, op. cit., p.155.
431. Colette, uvres compltes, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1984, t.I, 1686 pages,
p.323.
432. See Deidre Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, Paris, Fayard, 1991, 854 pages.
433. Cited by Humphrey Carpenter, The Brideshead Generation, op. cit., p.124-125.
139

However, real homosexuals understood very quickly upon their departure from
the university that they did not have any place yet in England. In their quest for new pleasures and freedom, they sought a place that would welcome them. Hints and echoes
reported by friends returning from holidays, or something read in the scandal sheets, gave
them reason to think that happiness lay in Germany. From this point until 1933, the
history of English homosexuality would follow the German model.
Escape to Germany
For Christopher, Berlin meant boys.435
Germany is the only place for sex. England isnt worth a
thing.436
In homosexual mythology, foreign lands have always held a great fascination. They
seem to offer men who are often considered pariahs in their native land the possibility of
escape or rebirth. It is simply easier to enjoy a satisfactory sexual experience abroad,
where the weight of social strictures seems more distant. For this reason, the colonies
became very fashionable at the end of the 19th century. This probably originated with the
military: Frances Africa Army was famous for its homosexual practices, symbolized at the
highest level by Marshal Lyautey. By the same token, many of the imperial proconsuls of
the English colonial army married extremely late (like Milner, Layard, and BadenPowell), or not at all (like Rhodos, Gordon, and Kitchener). Most of them were surrounded by a circle of favorites. Similarly, explorers like Stanley and Edward Eyre always
chose young men to be their companions on each expedition.
This phenomenon was not limited to the army. The lure of the exotic, and the
rumors (strongly colored with colonialist attitudes) of willing natives, contributed to
making the colonies seem like safe and discreet homosexual paradises. A French book,
LAmour aux colonies (Love in the Colonies) (1932), by Anne de Colney, describes how easy
homosexual relations were in certain regions. First, the Asian countries: Pederasty, an
exceptional act in Europe, is accepted in Chinese mors as well as prostitution and
opium, and that at all levels of the social caste. This characteristic is explained by resort
to racist theories. Thus, the Annamite is a civilized old man, who has all the flaws
inherent in a refined mind. This kind of justification fended off any reproach with regard
to Europeans practicing sexual tourism and taking advantage of their dominant position.
Asia did not have a monopoly on homosexuality. The Arab is a born pederast.437
This type of talk found an echo with certain homosexuals, who developed the myth of
foreign lands that were open to homosexuality. Often, a stay in the colonies seems to have
been a revelation. J.R. Ackerley, who was posted to Bombay in 1923, noted that the court
of the Maharajah was the scene of homosexual orgies. These discoveries led him to
berate his own country for its sexual hypocrisy, noting that he liked to see men and boys
holding hands when they walk, or standing with their arms around each others
shoulders, [as he had also seen in Egypt and in other Mediterranean countries]. But the
434. Ibid., p.443.
435. Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and his Kind, op. cit., p.10.
436. Stephen Spender, Le Temple [1929], Paris, Christian Bourgois diteur, 1989, 310 pages, p.24.
437. Anne de Colney, LAmour aux colonies, Paris, Librairie Astra, 1932, 214 pages, p.14, 45 and 92.
140

English would find that unmasculine in the extreme (or worse); and, he hinted, the Scots
were still more hopeless.438
Those who were caught up in a scandal in their country of origin tended to retreat
to the colonies. Robert Eyton, vice-chancellor of St. Margarets, Westminster, exiled
himself to Queensland in 1900 after a major scandal.439 In the 1930s, two-thirds of the
men posted to Malaysia were homosexual. Many were indicted after a Chinese male prostitute spilled the beans; deportations and two suicides followed.440 Tangier also attracted
many visitors in the 1930s Bohemian intellectuals and homosexuals. Stephen Tennant
explains this fascination for the city that symbolizes exoticism and expatriation. It is
curious, he says, but here so close to Spain just thirty miles away the sea is
warmer, and the sun is burning. The spirit of Africa, which one breathes, which radiates
in the streets which is exhaled by the ground and the sidewalks, is strangely pleasing
to me.441
Homosexual tourism was born in the colonies. For the foreigner, everything was
easier: the fear of being recognized disappeared, and legislation could not reach him. The
exoticism of the place added to the eroticism of the situation. Gide eulogized these easy
relations. There were boys all over, blossoming in the sun, with gilded skin, marvelously
complaisant, always available, free of prejudices and inhibitions.442 Boys were passed
from hand to hand. In the company of Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, Gide discovered
that the trade in boys was organized for the purpose of satisfying demand from foreign
visitors; one wonders whether he really was unaware that this was prostitution in disguise, that he believed in the spontaneity of the boys who were offered to him.443 In If It
Die and AMYNTAS: North African Journals, money is never mentioned. However, tipping or
baksheesh was commonplace and pederasty is directly associated with those who have
money. The colonizer, in his financial superiority, is sure to obtain satisfaction one way or
another; consequently, he goes out of his way to show that money plays no part in his
relations. The reader himself loses his faculty of judgment and Gide is an accomplice in
that, for he makes a show of his weaknesses, his shortcomings, his hesitations. But, while
he may question his sexuality, he never doubts his choice of partners.
Like Gide, Montherlant evokes life in Algiers as a continuous source of sexual
adventure. He tours the Jardin dEssai, and Bab-el-Oued, and goes to the cinema looking
for yaouleds, Arab adolescents, whom he renames with his liking: The Thorny Rose of
Blida, Jasmine of Belcourt, Gent of Mda, He who opens the doors of the sky.
According to Montherlant, the North African colonials came to fulfill their fantasies in
Algiers for all sorts of reasons: there was the French dream: to conquer, control, exploit;
the artistic dream: dancers, jasmine, young men; and the human dream: assimilation,
justice, fraternity.444
438. Cited by Peter Parker, A Life of J.R. Ackerley, London, Constable, 1989, 465 pages, p.74.
439. Ronald Hyam, Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience, Manchester, Manchester University
Press, 1990, 234 pages.
440. Ibid., p.109.
442. Andr Gide, Si le grain ne meurt [1926], reedited., Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1986,
372 pages.
443. See on this subject Hdi Khelil, Sens, jouissance, tourisme, rotisme, argent dans deux
fictions coloniales dAndr Gide, Tunis, ditions de la Nef, 1988, 172 pages.
444. Cited by Pierre Sipriot, Montherlant sans masque, t.II, cris avec ton sang, 1932-1972, Paris, Robert
Laffont, 1990, 505 pages, p.30.
141

Beyond the colonial experience, the Mediterranean countries were attractive in
general. There again, the place is idealized, made legendary. Italy was particularly celebrated, by E.M. Forster and others; his novels, like A Room with a View, contrast an Italy
bathed in sunlight, open to love, to an England that is Puritanical, sad, and dark. But the
context remains strictly heterosexual. It was in his novellas, many of which were published only posthumously, that Forster expands on the idea of Italy as a homosexual paradise.445
Like the colonies, Italy was often selected as an adoptive homeland after various
scandals drove one out of his country of origin. Douglas Norman, a friend of J.R. Ackerley,
had been convicted of committing a moral offense on a sixteen-year-old minor; he exiled
himself to Florence, where he could satisfy all his inclinations freely. J.R. Ackerley, who
had barely disembarked from England, was flabbergasted to hear Normans description of
the young waiter standing before them, with the invitation, When can you join us?446
Ackerley visited Florence, accompanied by an Italian guide who was a friend of
Douglas Norman, Giuseppe Pino Orioli, J.R. Orioli claimed that the Florentines wore
gabardine trousers with the aim of displaying their attributes, and one of his favorite
games was to stare at a young man, raising his gaze from the trousers to the face, with the
aim of obtaining an erection. However, while the lads were often obliging, they did not
wish to embark on a serious relationship: after a night with his lover (who swore eternal
fidelity), Orioli followed him and discovered that he went into a brothel.
Colonial and Mediterranean loves relate more directly to the first homosexual generation, that of Wilde, Gide, and Forster.447 They preserve strong elements of Victorianism, especially with regard to their sexual choices: the object of desire is a young
adolescent, even a child. Moreover, the relations are always venal, and the social and economic superiority of the visitors is constantly asserted. In Germany, the second homosexual generation began to go with their own peers, with males of the same age, without
the contrast of exoticism or any other clear differentiation. The young lover was no longer
inferior, even if money continued to play a part since the lovers were often male prostitutes or working boys who tacitly agreed to be being kept. Even more important,
young Germans represented the former enemy. Therefore, sexual liberation was mingled
with social provocation. In this sense, escaping to Germany played a major role in the
process of homosexual assertion.
So Germany, too, seemed like paradise to the English homosexual. Artistic innovations could be enjoyed along with the pleasures of the sun, flirtation, and sex. At least
until 1933, Berlin was hot and became a very fashionable place. Charlotte Wolff, a doctor
and lesbian, noted: Berlin, with its reputation as the most permissive city in Europe, had
become a paradise for homosexuals. They came from all over the world, but particularly
from England, to enjoy a freedom which their own country denied them.448 By the end of
the 1920s, a number of homosexual intellectuals, writers and artists were staying there,
inter alia Christopher Isherwood, Brian Howard, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Michael
and Humphrey Spender, T.C. Worsley, Francis Bacon, Wyndham Lewis and John
445. See for example Un instant dternit et autres nouvelles, Paris, Christian Bourgois diteur, 1988,
305 pages.
446. Peter Parker, A Life of J.R. Ackerley, op. cit., p.55.
447. Si le grain ne meurt, written in 1919, partially published in 1921 and in its entirety in 1926,
relates events that happened as early as 1893.
448. Charlotte Wolff, Hindsight, London, Quartet Books, 1980, 312 pages, p.72.
142

Lehmann. Isherwood lived there uninterruptedly from 1929 to 1933. Stephen Spender
spent six months a year in Germany between 1930 and 1933.
Hamburg and Munich were also homosexual meeting grounds. Germany is surrounded by a mythical aura that quickly extended beyond specific locations. The publicity for Isherwoods second book, The Memorial (1932), plays up this sinful reputation: In
the deliciously prohibited world of Berlin of 1928, a World War aviation ace finds love in
the muscular arms of his German lover.449
Germany was an eye-opener for English homosexuals. Isherwood says that his first
visit to Berlin was short, a week, ten days but sufficient; it was one of the decisive
events of [his] life.450 They discovered that they were not alone, but belonged to a world
community that was standing up for its rights. A visit to the Hirschfeld Institute was a
revelation for Isherwood. For the first time, he saw his tribe. Hitherto, he had acted as if
homosexuality were an intimate way of life that he and his friends had discovered for the
first time. Coming from a privileged background and having lived until then in a
restricted circle, he discovered how Hirschfeld was fighting for the abolishment of 175,
the help he was providing for men who could not express their sexuality, and the hostility
to which many were subjected by the Nazi Party. Once he overcame his initial reserve,
Isherwood, like many others, took up the cause and joined the nascent homosexual
movement.451
But Germany was not only the battlefield where this conflict was being played out,
it was a playing field in general. Post-war England still found it difficult to throw off its
Victorian prejudices, but in Germany the body was coming into vogue. Stephen Spender
discovered sun worshipping there: the naked body, healthy, shamelessly exposed.
According to him, the sun was one of the primary social forces in Germany. Nudity is the
democracy of the New Germany, the Weimar Republic.452 The heroes of the time were
the naked, bronzed boys basking in the sun around the public swimming pools, or along
the lakes and rivers. The sun had healed the war wounds, and that made them even more
conscious of the beauty and the frailness of the body. The idea of sin seems to have been
dissipated by memories of the great inflation of 1923; the only goal now was to live from
day to day and to take advantage of what is free: sun, water, friendship and bodies. But it
was not easy for these Englishmen to meld into this universe free from prejudices.
Spender, for example, remarked that at first he was so nervous, so inhibited and complexed by his physique that it kept the young Germans from behaving with him as they
did among themselves. However, he soon blended in, and found that all one had to do
was undress.453
In Germany, English homosexuals found both repose and exhilaration. In a country
where homosexuality was seen as natural, they no longer had to hide or, conversely, to
show off; in the many entertainment spots that were offered, they learned of the existence
of a whole homosexual lifestyle, conceived solely for male pleasure. They discovered easy
sex and love expressed in broad daylight. There was a compete confusion of values and
449. Cited by Paul Fussell, Abroad, British Literary Travellers between the Wars, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1980, 246 pages.
450. Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and his Kind, op. cit., p.10.
451. According to anecdote, Isherwood visited the Hirschfeld Institute with Gide, who seems
not to have apreciated the display of clinical cases.
452. Stephen Spender, Le Temple, op. cit., p.65.
453. Id., World within World, op. cit., p.109.
143

nothing was really important. The boys looked feminine, the girls took on a masculine
allure and the sex of ones partners didnt matter: I was grabbed by the waist, by the
neck, I was kissed, embraced, tickled, with my clothes half off, I danced with girls, boys,
two or three people at the same time.454
Lasting passions were born, between Isherwood and Heinz, Spender and Joachim,
Auden and Pieps, Brian Howard and Toni. The Englishmen were fascinated by the beauty,
the strength, the gleaming health of these boys, and also by their ease. In their novels and
their autobiographies, they would try to express the admiration and desire that they
inspired in them.455 The German boys appeared to be something right out of a homosexual fantasy: 16 or 17 years old, tanned, with longish blond hair. They seemed like hooligans with disarming smiles, and beneath their innocent airs they hid considerable
experience. They were very proud of their bodies, which they built up by various exercises and which they liked to show off in rough-housing. The English male submerged
himself in this physical force, from which he drew an energy that he was lacking. In the
confrontation of these bodies, two nations met and understood each other briefly. The
Germans had strength; the English had will. Otto is only a body, Peter is only a head.
Otto moves with fluidity, without effort. His gestures have the wild, unconscious, grace
of an elegant and cruel animal. Peter [has only a] will . 456
But Germany was more than sun and water, and Berlin was reputed to offer visitors
sensations far less innocent than these vacation pleasures: Berlin is a dream for pederasts.
There are 170 male brothels under police supervision. [My friend is] a cross between a
rugby player and Josephine Baker. D.H. Lawrence would pass for a choir boy. I am
covered with bruises.457 The young Englishmen sometimes had trouble recognizing that
they were dealing with male prostitutes, they created such a friendly and convivial relationship: Either Heinz did his job very well, or he sincerely liked me. We spent ten days
happy together making a tour of the city and going out on excursions oh, German
excursions! to the surrounding lakes.458 The relationship was in fact very simple: I
like sex and Pieps likes money; it is a good exchange, W.H. Auden would soberly
observe.
There was also an element of danger, and that rendered this form of sexual pleasure
more exciting: John Layard is quoted as describing his friend Wystan as liking to be mistreated a little: It happened once in my room. It started with a pillow fight, but ended
up with fists; then they made love. Wystan did not much like to be seen this way.459
For T.C. Worsley, and for other homosexual English who never or almost never
had sexual intercourse in their home country, the German male prostitutes were a
godsend and a revelation. He says that:
454. Christopher Isherwood, Mr Norris Changes Train [1935], London, Chatto & Windus, 1984,
190 pages, p.48.
455. Ibid.
456. Id., Adieu Berlin [1939], Paris, Hachette, 1980, 246 pages, p.99.
457. W.H. Auden, cited by Humphrey Carpenter, W.H. Auden, op. cit., p.90. On the nature of prostitution in Berlin, see Chapter One.
459. John Layard, cited by Humphrey Carpenter, W.H. Auden, op. cit., p.90.
144

one could judge [his] lack of experience by the surprise, the skepticism that he
showed, when one of [his] colleagues . [told him] that there were places in Germany
Munich for example where boys offered their services for a modest sum. Guys
who gave out! Did such a thing really exist? [He] arranged to leave for Germany for the
upcoming holidays.460
Distance, combined with the liberal attitude and the skill of the German boys, got
them over their own taboos. The English intellectuals initiated sexual nomadism. W.H.
Auden, for one, started to draw up suggestive lists in his journal.461
When Hitler put an end to the liberal and carefree Germany of the Weimar
Republic in 1933, English homosexuals cherished the memory of practices and sexual
experiences which they decided to continue in their own country: After Berlin, everything was different.462 At the same time, they were unable to be reconciled with their
home country and become perpetual travellers and refugees. Isherwood, Howard,
Spender, John Lehmann, Auden were eternally uprooted, drifting from one country to
another to preserve a sexual freedom that was, in fact, nonexistent even in their new
adoptive homes. When Heinz, Isherwoods lover, was arrested in 1933 by the Nazis and
convicted of perverse sexual practices, he was accused of having committed reprehensible
acts with his friend in fourteen different countries, in addition to Germany.
The future of the English homosexual struggle was forged in the German crucible,
through the experiences of an adventurous youth whose hours of happiness were all the
more precious since they were halted by repression and the war. Germany thus has its
place in the cult of homosexuality which defines the years 1919-1933. To the mythic
dimension, it added the joy of liberation fully experienced, which proved that homosexuality was not universally condemned to secret nor to frustration.
The role Germany played in the homosexual consciousness is understood more
intuitively through the homage paid by W.H. Auden in six of his poems. Despite his poor
command of the language, he wrote most of them in German; they evoke the Berlin cafs,
the one-night stands, and the holidays in the sun with eroticism and tenderness, and
humor:
Es regnet auf mir in den Schottische Lnde
Wo ich mit Dir nie gewesen bin
Man redet hier von Kunst am Wochenende
Bin jetz zu Hause, nicht mehr in Berlin
So kommt es inner vor in diesen Sachen
Wir sehen uns nie wieder, hab dein Ruh:
Du hast kein Schuld und es ist nichts zu machen
Sieh immer besser aus, und nur wenn Du
Am Bahnhof mit Bekannten triffst, O dann
461. The boys I had in Germany: 1928-1929: Pieps/ Cully/ Gerhard/ Herbert/ an unknown transient/ a stranger from [the name of the bar is illegible]/ a stranger in Cologne/ stranger from [the
name of the bar is illegible]/ Otto/I regret [name illegible]. He wasnt nice and was very dirty. The
others were great (cited by Humphrey Carpenter, W.H. Auden, op. cit., p.97).
462. Christopher Isherwood interviewed in Gay News, n 126.
145
Als Sonntagsbummelzge fertig stehen

Und Du einstigen willst, kuk einmal an
Den Eisenbahn die dazwischen gehen.
Sonst, wenn ein olle Herr hat Dich gekusst
Geh mit; ich habe nichts bezahlt; Du must.463
***
Ronald you know, is like most Englishmen,
By instinct he s a sodomist
but he s frightened to know it
So he takes it out on women.464
The cult of homosexuality was an original and complex phenomenon that concerned primarily the British male elite. Women had little part in it and one cannot truly
speak of a cult of homosexuality in France and Germany, even though traces of quasiinstitutionalized homosexual activities may exist.
It is very difficult to analyze this phenomenon. First of all, it testifies to the sexual
liberalism that began to be seen after the First World War. The death of thousands of
young men on the battlefields traumatized the cadets, who set about celebrating the
beauty of their school-fellows and reveling fully in the hallowed years of their adolescence.
The works of the Bloomsbury intellectuals and the second generation, that of
Auden, allowed more open discussion of sexual questions; homosexuality was no longer
taboo and, in certain sectors of society, it was no longer accompanied by shame and
remorse. The cult of homosexuality made it possible for many homosexuals to express
their sexuality more freely, without fear of being stigmatized and rejected. A whole generation became familiar with this sexual practice; it would be more tolerant and more
understanding. The compelling experiences of youth would render unacceptable to the
adult those prejudices based on ignorance and fear.
Nevertheless, limits to the tolerance were clearly perceptible: outside of a
restricted and protected milieu, the British homosexual, even if he came from the elite,
was at the mercy of the dictates of society, and that explains why they fled to Germany.
We must not exaggerate the changes taking place in British society. While the cult of
homosexuality had to do with a greater sexual freedom, it was also a symptom of an
identity crisis among the English youth, which sought to disavow the Victorian generation that generated the war and to establish a new values system. The boys lived in a
closed environment, all male, and that was their only frame of reference. Woman was an
unknown being, almost an enemy imposed by societys morals. Homosexuality was
463. Septembre 1930. Literal translation: It rains on me in the Scottish lands/ Where we were
never together / One speaks of art here at the weekend, / I am at home. I am not anymore in Berlin. / /
It always happens like that in these matters / We will never meet again, be calm: / Youve done
nothing wrong and there is nothing to do/ Become more and more handsome, and only / / If you meet
some friends at the train station, oh then / When the Sunday buses are ready to leave / And you want
to get on, watch / The big trains that go between them. / / Otherwise, when an old gentleman kisses
you / Leave with him; I didn't have to pay. Go ahead.
464.D.H. Lawrence, Pansies.
touted as a sexuality of subversion, a sexuality that could be substituted for the patriarchal model; it was a fraternal sexuality that protected its members and created
unbreakable bonds. It was also a rebellious adolescent sexuality that disputed and
destroyed. Outside the mainstream and proudly so, it could not really contribute to any
lasting transformation of British morals, but it did secretly wear away at their foundations. In its sexual dimension, the cult of homosexuality must be considered as the proud
assertion of a difference finally assumed; but it must also be understood as the symbol of a
total rejection of society, a deeply political act. The inversion of moral values and bourgeois traditions presaged more radical upheavals, like the turn to communism on the part
of certain homosexual intellectuals.465
The years of homosexual liberation can be summarized in the impressions of an
American writer who lived in France, Julien Green. He experienced both the Anglo-Saxon
and Latin trends. In an American university he saw the equivalent of a cult of homosexuality, or in any case the diffusion of a liberal homosexual model. His literary activity
brought him into contact with the French homosexual elite, while his travels in Germany
brought him experiences similar to those of the British homosexuals. His mixed cultural
background kept him from identifying with any particular milieu; and he constantly tried
to reinterpret his experiences in the light of Catholicism. All the homosexual hopes and
illusions of the inter-war period show in him. Klaus Mann summarized this complex personality in his journal: ...it is astonishing how he keeps any hint of his private life from
creeping into his books; he maintains a strict compartmentalization: There is another Me
who writes my works. To recover, he writes homo texts every day. [He is] incredibly
passionate and at the same time [has a] cold relationship with all that is sexual. He
shows me pornographic works by Tchelitchev: heroic pyramid of vice.466
465. See Chapter Six.

466. Klaus Mann, Journal. Les annes brunes, 1931-1936, Paris, Grasset, 1996, 452 pages, 27 March
1933, p.132.
PART TWO
UNACKNOWLEDGED FEARS AND DESIRES:

AMBIGUOUS SPEECH AND STEREOTYPED IMAGES
HOMOSEXUALS BECOME COMMONPLACE DURING THE INTER-WAR PERIOD
Private faces in public places
Are wiser and nicer
Than public faces in private places.
W.H. Auden, Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957
149
150
Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
AWAKENING: WORKING TO CONSTRUCT A HOMOSEXUAL
IDENTITY
In the 1920s and 1930s, references to homosexuality were everywhere. Scholarly,
artistic, anecdotal, or moralistic, they all add up to show that the collective imagination of
the time was fascinated with homosexuality. The often-caricatured images that were
current were balanced by representations developed by homosexuals themselves. The
process of forging an identity was underway. The homosexuals and lesbians were on their
way to asserting their singularity.
The homosexual identity, unlike the homosexual act, is a historical phenomenon. It
is not universal, but temporal; it is not induced, but constructed. Therefore, it supposes
the creation of a specific environment and an awareness that enabled homosexuals to
define themselves as a group.467
The origin of the homosexual identity is difficult to pin down. At what moment can
one say that a person recognizes himself as a homosexual? Is it simply that time when he
accepts his sexual preferences, when he calls himself homosexual, or is it only when he
asserts his membership in a homosexual community, as a political statement? Just as it is
hard to say when one person takes on the identity of a homosexual, it is hard to say when
the homosexual identity was created at all. Indeed, the date varies, depending on the
country, the region (the notion of a homosexual identity emerges earlier in major cities
than in rural areas) and the social class. (An intellectual can more readily define himself as
homosexual simply because he will have access to the debates on the question of homosexuality, to medical writings, and so forth.)
Depending on how you look at it, the theorists of homosexuality have assigned a
wide range of dates to the birth of the homosexual identity.468 For some, the presence of
homosexual signals in clothing and language, and the existence of meeting places, are
enough to mark the existence of a homosexual identity.469 If we take that view, the
homosexual identity must have existed from time immemorial, since one can find homosexual codes, camouflaged to a greater or lesser extent, in every society and every era.470
Others say that the homosexual identity could only have been constituted very recently,
with the beginnings of gay militancy in the 1970s.471
467. The question of the homosexual identity is at the heart of homosexual historiography and
raises many questions. Here and in the following notes I list some of the works that shed light on the
topic: Salvatore J. Licata and Robert P. Petersen (dir.), The Gay Past: A Collection of Historical Essays,
New York, Harrington Park Press, 1985, 224 pages; David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1988, 635 pages.
468. For a discussion on this topic, see Kenneth Plummer, Homosexual Categories: Some
Research Problems in the Labelling Perspective of Homosexuality, in Kenneth Plummer (dir.), The
Making of the Modern Homosexual, London, Hutchinson, 1981, 380 pages, p.53-76.
469.Mary McIntosh proposes that the 17th century was seminal period in creating the homosexual identity in ENgland. See The Homosexual Role, ibid., p.30-44.
470. See for example, in Amour et sexualit en Occident, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points
histoire, 1991, 335 pages: Maurice Sartre, Lhomosexualit dans la Grce antique; Paul Veyne,
Lhomosexualit Rome; Michel Rey, Naissance dune minorit.
471. John Marshall, Pansies, Perverts and Macho Men: Changing Conceptions of Male Homosexuality, in Kenneth Plummer (dir.), The Making of the Modern Homosexual, op. cit., p.133-155.
151

Most historians of homosexuality, however, agree to date the emergence of a homosexual identity to the end of the 19th century, when the term homosexual came into
wider use, doctors defined homosexuality precisely, and condemnations of homosexual
acts were definitively inscribed in the laws of the European countries.472
This is a sound view; however, various nuances must be taken into account. The
first homosexual generation was deeply marked by the medical theories and the scandals
of the turn of the century. Bonded by their shared status as social outcasts, they remained
very much affected by public opinion and had difficulty in asserting any positive image of
themselves. In fact, only a male elite was truly capable of asserting a homosexual identity.
By comparison, it was easier for homosexuals of the second generation to identify themselves as such. They integrated more easily into the nascent homosexual scene, and they
were less at the effect of moral judgments. A lesbian identity appeared, based on a certain
number of female models in particular. Consequently, a homosexual community was
formed, unified by a shared a culture and frame of reference but that did not necessarily
induce a feeling of solidarity.
THE MEDICAL MODEL: AN IDENTITY IMPOSED FROM OUTSIDE

The homosexual identity was built around different definitions of homosexuality,
arising from the abundant turn-of-the-century medical literature, among other sources.
Since the theories varied, it is certainly hard to say what was their effect. However, the
arrival of the doctor on a scene that had been reserved for the judge was certainly significant.
By inventing the new field of perversions,473 psychiatry created types, and the
homosexual was one of them. A new creation as far as other people were concerned, the
label was news to homosexuals themselves, too they were now reduced to a single
sexual characteristic, generally represented as a disease, if not proof of degeneracy.
Other preexisting identifying characteristics became blurred, like the social bonds that
were formed by socializing at the same places, the knowledge of certain codes, the
wearing of certain signs. If they survived the medical shock, they became accessories
to the development of a new round of definitions that pretended to be globally applicable.
However, the extraordinary variety of the definitions that were proposed, and the contradictions that they revealed, not to mention the extreme confusion of the vocabulary, all
contributed to muddying the waters and that left homosexuals the opportunity to
build their own identity, personally and to a large extent independently.
The Doctors Intrude

Until the end of the 19th century, the field of sexual perversion had remained the
prerogative of the courts of justice. The law punished acts like sodomy, but did not rec472. See Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out. Homosexual Politics in Britain from the 19th Century to the Present,
London, Quartet Books, 1979, 278 pages, and Sex, Politics and Society, London, Longman, 1989,
325 pages.
473. The term perversion was used for the first time in 1885 par Victor Magnan, in a communication on fetichism.
152
Awakening: Working to Construct a Homosexual Identity

ognize a particular criminal status. But then, the psychiatrists began to take an interest in
sexual perversions. Now, the criminal was defined by his perversion: he was a homosexual, pedophile, sadist, or fetishist.
But he was also a victim (of heredity, his genes, his education), which meant he was
not responsible. He no longer belonged in the dock, but at the doctors.
Until the mid-19th century, reports on trials and collections of jurisprudence had
provided the bulk of the scientific knowledge on homosexuality.474 However, the law
did not define specific categories of perversions nor of perverts; it used fuzzy but defamatory terms, which were intended to encourage the reader to recognize the horror of the
act without being able to describe it precisely.
The medical study of homosexuality arises from this incapacity of the law to define
homosexuals and thus to work out a specific repressive strategy. The most famous work
of the time, Psychopathia Sexualis (1885) by Krafft-Ebing, is subtitled: A medico-legal study
for the use of doctors and lawyers. Krafft-Ebing was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Vienna and a medical examiner for the courts. Similarly, Tardieus pioneering
work in France, Pederasty (1857), testified to a new interest in homosexuality and paved
the way for other books which sought to define the homosexual criminal books like La
Prostitution antiphysique (1887) by Franois Carlier. Tardieu based his conclusions on the
study of 205 individuals whom he had examined with a maniacal care, looking for signs
of pederasty.475 His research was conducted in the guise of forensic medicine and was
intended to enable a more effective monitoring of homosexual locales that had been
linked to robbery, prostitution and blackmail.
Following Tardieu, many doctors took an interest in homosexuality. While it may
have been studied first as a demonstration of hysteria, it soon spilled over into the realm
of mental illness and came to form its own distinct category, with its own characteristics,
internal classifications and symptoms. The new researchers relied on the preceding
works, and they often based their speculations on existing depictions of homosexuals, if
they were not content merely to roughly summarize earlier analyses. Havelock Ellis notes,
for example, that he knew many doctors who had never encountered a case of sexual
inversion. Thus, research on homosexuality, even though it made spectacular strides in
the late 19th century, rested on a very narrow base. The picture remained very blurry,
despite the outpouring of books and articles.
The theorists of degeneracy were the first decisive influence. At least they denied
the criminal basis of homosexuality, while insisting on its innate character; but they
did not offer any but a very negative model, centered on the concepts of perversion and
degeneracy, which so deeply marked the first generation. Thus, Carl Westphal, a young
Berlin neurologist and the first psychiatrist to study inversion on a scientific basis,
asserted (just like Johann Ludwig Casper) that homosexuality was a congenital disease
and not a vice. According to Arthur Schopenhauer, male homosexuality was provided by
nature as a means of regulating the birth rate. Albert Moll, a neurologist, was more circumspect: in his principal work, Die kontrre Sexualempfindung (1891), he clearly distinguished innate homosexuality and acquired homosexuality; however, he regarded the
474. See Jean Danet, Discours juridique et perversions sexuelles (XIXe-XXe sicle), Nantes, universit de
Nantes, 1977, 105 pages.
475. For example, the infundibuliform deformation of the anus is a sign of active pederasty.
153

latter as exceptional.476 The baron von Schrenck-Notzing gained a name for himself in
1892 by claiming to have cured homosexuality by hypnosis.
The uncontested expert in homosexuality was Richard von Krafft-Ebing. In Psychopathia Sexualis, he distinguishes four stages in the constitution of a homosexual personality, from the simple perversion of the sexual instinct to the belief in sex changes. He also
distinguishes four stages of homosexuality: the psychosexual hermaphrodite, who preserves some traces of the heterosexual instinct; the homosexual; the effeminate; and the
androgyne.
Only Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, himself a homosexual and the inventor of the concept
of uranism (the heart of a woman in the body of a man), stood out. He agitated for the
decriminalization of homosexuality, initially under the name of Numa Numantius, then
under his own, and asserted that homosexuality was not a disease but a simple sexual
variation which was of no more consequence than the color of ones hair.477 His definition
of homosexuals as a third sex, which he tried to define through a complex classification
system, met with an extraordinary success and was picked up by Hirschfeld.
In France, Brouardel, Lacassagne, Chevalier and Raffalovitch studied homosexuality. Raffalovitch published a major work in 1896, Uranism and Unisexuality. Nevertheless
Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893) and Victor Magnan (1835-1916) were the first
Frenchmen to abandon the criminal model of homosexuality in favor of a medical and
pathological model. They authored the first publication on the subject, Inversion du sens
gnital et autres perversions sexuelles, initially published in numbers 7 and 12 of the
Archives de neurologie in 1882. Their theories were still being discussed in the inter-war
period.478
French psychiatrists looked at sexual inversion primarily as it related to hysteria,
and homosexuality was studied only in relation to neurosis; this bias skewed their conclusions in an inevitably perverse and pathological direction. Homosexuality was only an
isolated symptom of a general disorder, degeneracy. However, the discourse was more
innovative than one might expect; Charcot based his work on the study of a case which he
describes in close detail; the patient, a man of 31 years, had been attracted to boys since
his childhood, he practiced Onanism up to the age of 21, and would have liked to dress as
a woman. Charcot notes that he was not in any way effeminate, that he was large, quite
well-built, and cultivated a certain military style. He was consulting the physician not
because he suffered from his homosexuality,479 but because he had been prone to hysterical attacks since the age of 15. For Charcot, he was quite a unique sexual anomaly,
476. Albert Moll did an about-face in 1936 in his autobiography, Ein Leben als Arzt der Seele. There,
he claimed that homosexuality is as a rule the result of unhealthy sexual experiences and that only a
small fraction of homosexual cases are innate. This reversal enabled him to welcome the repressive
measures of the Nazi regime.
477. And they tried him just because of the color of his hair (A.E. Housman, about the trial of
Oscar Wilde).
478. Freud was inspired by Charcots studies on neuroses, which he carried further. In his book
Le Centenaire de Magnan (1935), Claude Vurpas recalled his studies of sexual inversion. Similarly,
various works at the popular level made much of it such as Invertis et homosexuels by Dr Georges
Saint-Paul (preface by mile Zola), published in 1896 and re-printed many times (Paris, ditions
Vigon, 152 pages) and De linversion sexuelle la dtermination des sexes by Dr Henri Allaix (Le Chesnais,
Imprimerie moderne de Versailles, 1930, 10 pages).
479. He never actually acted upon it, which is a recurrent phenomenon in the choice of examples
offered by doctors as though it were more tolerable to present imaginings rather than actual experiences.
154

but that was only the most salient sign of a much more serious psychopathological state.
He prescribes what is a fairly classic treatment for that era (putting him in touch with a
woman, physical and moral hygiene, cold showers, bromide), but only the hysteria was
regarded as disabling. Since homosexuality was considered to be innate, the subject was
not responsible. As a mental patient, he could not be regarded as a criminal.
Female homosexuality does not seem to have stirred the interest of more than a
very finite number of doctors. In fact, the number of medical models offered to lesbians
proved particularly restricted, which perhaps helps to explain the delay in creating an
identity. Moreover, the poverty of the analyses is striking a consequence of a lack of
interest on the part of both doctors and the public (lesbianism was not condemned by
law), and also of the low number of cases observed. Krafft-Ebing, the first to take a closer
look, had distinguished four types of female deviants in his Psychopathia Sexualis: women
who do not betray their abnormality by their external appearance or by their mental characteristics, but who nevertheless are responsive to approaches by masculine-looking
women; women who prefer to wear masculine clothing; women who pretend to be men;
and, finally, the last stage of degenerate homosexuality. The only female attribute
remaining to the woman of this type is her genitals: her thinking, feelings, action, and
external appearance are those of a man.480 According to this analysis, true lesbians are
those who most resemble men, and any masculine aspiration in clothing or behavior is a
symptom of lesbianism.
Such assertions were still a mainstay after the War, promulgated by such writers
as Mathilde de Kemnitz, in Erotische Wiedergeburt (1919); Dr. Caufeynon, in La Perversion sexuelle (1932); and Andr Binet, who claims, in La Vie sexuelle des femmes (1932), that complete
inversion is rare in women; more often, one observes bisexuality.481 Similarly, Albert
Chapotin, after having described lesbians as having, accentuated facial features, breasts
of the virile type but with nipples very elongated and erectile, thighs of the male type,
contralto voices, affirms: What one euphemistically calls light inversion is very frequent among women, marked and well-developed inversion is rarer.482 Erich Stern, Julie
Bender and James Broch still considered it worth publishing articles in Zeitschrift fr Sexualwissenschaft (in 1920, 1921 and 1929, respectively) tending to prove that lesbianism did
exist.483
Countering the theory of innate homosexuality was the view of a congenital
anomaly susceptible to being treated. This was very much the minority view, but
interest in it was renewed in the 1930s and was exploited and encouraged by the Nazi
power. Steinach was the leading proponent of this view; from his experiments on rats, he
deduced that it was possible to cure homosexuality by a surgical operation on the testicles. His research was periodically seconded by German doctors, for instance Dr. Josef
Kirchhoff, in Die sexuellen Anomalien (1921); and Heinz Schmeidler, in Sittengeschichte von
480. Krafft-Ebing, cited by Esther Newton, The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and
the New Woman, in Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey Jr. (dir.), Hidden from
History, London, Penguin Books, 1991, 579 pages, p.287.
481. Andr Binet, La Vie sexuelle de la femme, Paris, LExpansion scientifique franaise, 1932,
240 pages, p.183-184.
482. Albert Chapotin, Les Dfaitistes de lamour, Paris, Le Livre pour tous, 1927, 510 pages, p.18 and
183.
483. Erich Stern, Zur Kenntnis der weiblichen Inversion (1920), Julie Bender, Zur Frage der
Homosexualitt der Frau (1921), James Broch, ber Tribadie: eine Jungfrau als Konsulatssekretr
(1929), in Zeitschrift fr Sexualwissenschaft, vol.6, 7 and 15.
155

heute, die Krisis der Sexualitt (1932). In Zum Problem der Homosexualitt (1921), Dr. Otto
Emsmann weighed the various medical theories on homosexuality and emphasized
Steinach and Schrenck-Notzings research: homosexuality could be cured either by
implanting healthy sexual glands, by the transplantation of healthy testicles, or by hypnosis. Nevertheless, in the most serious cases such treatment would not suffice; in those
cases, the will of the patient is the determining factor in the success of the treatment.
At the first congress of the World League for Sexual Reform, the fight between the
psychiatric and the organic approach was at the heart of the discussions. Dr. Rogge and
Haag gave a presentation on the significance of Steinachs research for the question of
pseudo-homosexuality. Here, the explanation lay in the sexual glands of both sexes
being present in one individual. Dr. Weil, speaking on Proportions of the body and intersexuality of forms as expressed by internal secretions (!), asserted that homosexuality is
primarily constitutional, as did Dr. Schwarz, who maintained that homosexuality could
be modified by injecting hormones.
Medicine at the Service of Homosexuals

As a counterpoint to the new psychiatric theories, certain doctors were gaining
renown (in public opinion as well as in homosexual circles) for the originality of their
analyses and the progressive stance they took. The most famous was obviously Magnus
Hirschfeld. We will not recapitulate his hypotheses here, as they are covered in Chapter
Two; but it should be stressed that his theory of the third sex was an essential part of
the foundation of the homosexual identity, since, in a way, the latter was built upon it and
as a reaction to it. Indeed, the theory could apply only to a fraction of the homosexual
population, those who felt feminine, the heart of a woman in the body of a man.
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, in a letter to his friend Frederick Schiller, devotes a
good ten pages to an analysis of his homosexuality according to the theory of the third
sex, saying that
It is a curious thing to have a feminine soul captive in a mans body, but it
seems that that is my case. This physical impulse, however, has never been the key to
my relations with men, because on the spiritual plane I have a still more urgent need
to preserve my independence and my self-respect, and I have had in fact as much to
give as to receive.484
Still, the theory of the third sex posited the bases of a powerful homosexual
identity, autonomous and assertive, since as a group apart from society in general homosexuals would have to unite to claim their rights and to make the world recognize their
difference. However, as we have seen, this view was severely criticized by the proponents
of pederasty, who situated homosexuality in the Greek tradition and vigorously denied
any femininity. Misogynists, they looked on homosexuality from the historical and cultural, but also the political, point of view. This view was defended in Germany by Adolf
Brand and Hans Blher, and in France by Andr Gide.
Hirschfelds theories were promoted in his books, which became bestsellers. They
were translated into French and English, sometimes in digest form in order to be more
484. Dennis Proctor (ed.), The Autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson, London, Duckworth, 1973,
287 pages, p.10.
156

accessible to the general public; and they had considerable impact. Another figure,
however, was also important, for the construction of the homosexual identity as well as
for the evolution of public opinion, in particular in England.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) was the most influential sexologist of the inter-war
period. He was close to the radical socialist faction which emerged in the 1880s, and associated with leading figures of the new left like H.M. Hyndman, Eleanor Marx, Edward
Aveling and the first Fabians. He was familiar with the works of Hirschfeld and Freud,
with whom he disagreed, rejecting in particular the notion that sex is at the basis of all
human behaviors. There are certain psychoanalysts, he said, who, when they recognize
signs of homosexuality, accept them, as most people do, as signs of homosexuality. But
when they see the opposite, even a strong antipathy, they also take that as a sign of homosexuality, the reaction of a repressed desire. Heads, I win; tails, you lose, they seem to
say.485 For his part, he preferred a personal approach of medicine and worked starting
from accounts which were spontaneously brought to him by his correspondents and visitors. Unlike other doctors, Ellis was very familiar with homosexuality. He had strong
friendships with recognized homosexuals like J.A. Symonds and Edward Carpenter (who
brought him several homosexual autobiographies, including his own). His wife Edith
Lees was a lesbian, and left him to live with women. His biographer, Vincent Brominates,
raises the question of whether Ellis himself was not a repressed homosexual; he did not
have any sexual intercourse with men, but all the women in his life complained about a
lack of virility, about his scant sexual desire. His main work, Sexual Inversion (1897), was
inspired by Symonds.
Sexual Inversion was definitely a landmark for homosexuals in the 1920s; it presented
homosexuality under a more positive rubric than its contemporaries, affirming that is was
an inborn characteristic and refusing to regard it as a disease. Right in his introduction,
Ellis justified his view: I realized that in England, more than in any other country, the law
and the public opinion combined to place a heavy criminal burden and a severe social stigmatization on the expression of an instinct which, for the people who have it, frequently
seems natural and normal.486 In its form, the work is not very original, citing preceding
works and listing animals, countries, and civilizations that were known to exhibit homosexuality; but then Ellis presented many cases of homosexuals who and this is what
was new were not neurotic. Its limitations were many, however: sexual practices are
scarcely documented, and sodomy, although some examples are presented, is largely
avoided no doubt because it was a crime according to English law and because in his
quest to rehabilitate homosexuals in public opinion, Ellis wanted to marginalize certain
types (sodomites, cross-dressers, queens), who in any case had difficulty find a place in
the incipient homosexual community. Also, the analysis of lesbianism appears less relevant, perhaps because of personal reservations having to do with his wife and also
because few female cases were studied. Ellis charts Sapphism along a scale which starts
with passionate friendship and ends in active inversion. He states that, the principal
characteristic of the female invert is a certain degree of masculinity. Ellis builds the
485. Cited by Vincent Brome, Havelock Ellis, Philosopher of Sex, London, Routledge & Kegan, 1979,
271 pages, p.220.
486. Havelock Ellis and J.A. Symonds, Sexual Inversion [1897], New York, Arno Press, 1975,
299 pages, p. XI.
157

lesbian couple on the heterosexual model. The pseudo-lesbians are in fact really heterosexuals who have been seduced by true homosexuals, suggesting that,
These women are different from the average normal woman in that they are not
disgusted and do not repel advances from members of their own sex. Their faces may
be unattractive or even ugly, but they often have a good figure, which is more important for the inverted woman than the beauty of the face. They are affectionate by
nature... and they are feminine. One might say that they are among the elite of the
women whom the average man would reject. This must be one of the reasons why
they are open to homosexual advances, but I do not think that it is the only one...They
seem to have a natural preference, although not precisely sexual, for women rather
than men.487
That is a pretty negative description. However, it formed the basis for separating
true and pseudo lesbians, two models which turned out to stay with us for a long time
and they influenced the identifying process profoundly.
Sexual Inversion was published in Germany in 1896, but the English edition ran into
trouble. In the maelstrom of the Oscar Wilde trial, the 1897 edition had to be revised and
Symonds name was removed. The second edition was immediately withdrawn and the
book was banned. The lawsuit proceeded without any scandal, but the book was classified as obscene. It was then published in the United States. The publicity generated by
the lawsuit had positive consequences: hundreds of homosexuals wrote to Ellis to share
their experiences with him. He then used this documentation as the basis for further
research.
Moreover, the book became the main reference work on homosexuality prior to the
Second World War, and Hirschfeld noted that Sexual Inversion was very important for the
homosexual question in Germany. The spirit of the book was so noble and scholarly that
we preferred it to Kontrre Sexualempfindung de Moll. From this point, the name of Havelock
Ellis became very popular in Germany.488 In England, Ellis had more influence than
Freud; moreover, his attentive and sympathetic treatment of homosexuality enabled him
to influence people who would have remained insensitive to a purely medical
approach.489
Psychoanalytical Shock
Psychoanalysis brought about a major shift in the concepts, the approach, and the
way of thinking about homosexuality; it created a shock by its method as well as by its
conclusions and played a part in shaping the identifying process.490 Freud did not start
from scratch, however; in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), he pays homage to the
487. Ibid, p.87.
488. Cited by Vincent Brome, Havelock Ellis, Philosopher of Sex, op. cit., p.95.
489. A surprising number of books have been devoted to him and they show a profound sense of
admiration: in 1926, Havelock Ellis. A Biographical and Critical Survey, by Isaac Goldberg; in 1928, Havelock
Ellis, Philosopher of Love, Houston Peterson; in 1929, Havelock Ellis in Appreciation, under the direction of
Joseph Ishill, who compiled a panegyric based on celebrities opinions on Ellis from the likes of
H.L. Mencken, Edward Carpenter, Henri Barbusse and Thomas Hardy.
490. Clearly, Freudians have made immense contributions in many domains and, equally clearly,
we do not intend to present here a complete history of psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic theory
between the wars.
158

research of his predecessors Krafft-Ebing, Moll, von Schrenck-Notzing, Lwenfeld,
Eulenburg, Bloch and Hirschfeld, and he uses their inventory of examples as well.491
However, he draws very different conclusions: where they say innate, he says
acquired; and he counters their biological explanations with the hypothesis of
seduction in childhood: the homosexual is neither a criminal nor a congenital mental
patient, he is a neurotic: the predisposition to homosexuality arises in a man from the discovery that the woman does not have a penis. If he cannot give up the penis as the
essential sexual object, he will inevitably be turned off by a woman. She may even represent a threat, if the absence of the penis is perceived as the result of mutilation (castration anxiety).
Freud goes much further in his analyses: he establishes a parallel between neurosis
and perversion. [N]eurosis is so to speak the flip side of perversion.492 According to
him, symptoms of inversion can be found in the unconscious life of all neurotics (especially the hysteric).493 In fact, neurosis is the product of the repression of perverse tendencies. This theory unfortunately opened the door to many erroneous conclusions, for
Freuds readers were quick to equate neurosis and perversion.
As regards female homosexuality, Freud initially paid it relatively little attention;
later, he filled in with several psychoanalytical cases.494 The genesis of female homosexuality is symmetrical to the male; castration anxiety still plays an essential role, for, if the
girl does not accept her lack of a penis, she will struggle to assert her masculinity.495
Freud insists that it is almost impossible to cure homosexuals; he does not even seem to
think it desirable. He notes that most of the people who come to consult him do so primarily for social reasons. The women are generally brought in by their families, who absolutely want to marry them off or who fear a scandal. According to him: Psychoanalysis is
not going to solve the problem of homosexuality. It must be satisfied to reveal the psychic
mechanisms which lead to the decisions governing the choice of the object and to trace
how these mechanisms relate to instinctual drives.496
What did Freud contribute to the study of homosexuality? First of all is the importance of method: all conclusions are drawn from interviews with patients; this process
was already used by other doctors, but Freud systematized it and transformed it by the
practice of analysis. Then, Freud refuted the old concept of degeneracy, the idea of innate
homosexuality and, finally, the myth of a psychic hermaphrodism. He made the point that
the most complete psychic virility is compatible with inversion.497 According to him,
inverts go through an intense phase of fixation on their mothers during childhood, and
then, identifying with her, they take themselves as sexual objects (in the narcissistic way
p.81.
491. Furthermore, Freud went to Salptrire to learn from Jean Martin Charcot.
492. Sigmund Freud, Trois essais sur la thorie de la sexualit [1905], Paris, Gallimard, 1987, 211 pages,
493. On this topic, see the chapter Les fantasmes hystriques et leur relation la bisexualit, in
Nvrose, psychose et perversion (1894-1924; Paris, PUF, coll. Bibl. de psychanalyse, 1992, 303 pages). By
the same token, Freud maintains that the paranoac is struggling with homosexual tendencies.
494. See the chapter Sur la psychogense dun cas dhomosexualit fminine, in Nvrose,
psychose et perversion.
495. Helen Deutsch worked out a different psychoanalytical theory of feminine homosexuality:
for her, giving birth and motherhood were at the heart of the feminine homosexual relationship and
originated in a pre-dipal attachment to the mother a hypothesis that is in stark contradiction to
the Freudian orthodoxy.
496. Sigmund Freud, Nvrose, psychose et perversion, op. cit., p.270.
497. Id., Trois essais sur la thorie de la sexualit, op. cit., p.47.
159

of young boys, they seek someone similar to themselves whom they will love as their
mother loved them). Freud insists that all men are capable of making a homosexual
choice, as that is formulated in the unconscious. The heterosexual choice also depends on
a complex process and thus is no more natural than the other one. There exists, according
to him, a considerable proportion of latent homosexuality in heterosexuals. He goes on to
distinguish the absolute invert, whose sexual object can only be homosexual; the
amphigene, that is, in fact, the bisexual; and the part-time or occasional homosexual,
who may have homosexual relations only because of circumstances. In fact, Freud tended
to think that mankind was originally bisexual;498 and in so doing he raised questions
about the foundations of patriarchal society and opened the gate to all kinds of minority
movements. Indeed, if sexual attraction comes in all gradations, if anyone is likely to be
attracted by a member of his or her own sex, it becomes difficult to condemn homosexuals unilaterally.
The Freudian theory was picked up by many disciples, who always did not follow
his conclusions to the letter. Whatever the validity of the Freudian analysis as to the
causes of homosexuality, it had the merit of not stigmatizing inverts and of questioning
the idea that heterosexuality = normality. Those who popularized his work often forgot
this detail, including Sacha Nacht, who claimed that the invert is impotent vis--vis
women, before he is homosexual.499 The Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Alfred
Adler, in Das Problem der Homosexualitt (1930), blames the feminist movements for
spreading the plague and affirms that homosexuality is a temporary and unnatural
expedient that is not well understood on behalf of men who have difficulty accepting
female independence.500
Freuds successors developed divergent theories on the homosexual question. For
Wilhelm Reich, homosexuality is a purely social phenomenon, a question of education
and sexual development;501 it only develops when normal relations between men and
women are impossible or difficult.502 The best means of avoiding it, therefore, is coeducation and the practice of sexual relations whenever desired. Reich called for the decriminalization of homosexuality, a disease which he said caused great suffering to the
individual. He did, however, believe it possible to cure some of them by following a
suitable psychic treatment. Reich is the only psychoanalyst to consider the homosexual
question in its social dimension, while giving it a political significance:
Many young proletarians, because of their poverty, are also led to give themselves
to homosexuals from wealthier backgrounds. Thus, in politically reactionary circles,
such as among nationalist students or among officers, homosexuality plays a role
which is not insignificant and which is very closely related to the strong imprint of
moral and sexual inhibition in these milieux.503
498. Freud sems to have borrowed this theory from a doctor in Berlin, Wilhelm Fliess. For the
renewed interest in the theory of androgyny, as it was initially proposed by Plato, see Chapters Five
and Six.
499. Sacha Nacht, Pathologie de la vie amoureuse: essai psychanalytique, Paris, Denol, 1937, 198 pages,
p.155.
500. Alfred Adler, Das Problem der Homosexualitt, Berlin, Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1930, 110 pages,
p.65.
501. Wilhelm Reich, La Lutte sexuelle des jeunes [1932], Paris, Maspero, 1972, 148 pages, p.90.
502. Ibid., p.89.
503. Ibid., p.90.
160
Carl Gustav Jung was not much interested in homosexuality, either. Like Freud,
when he explained that homosexuality corresponded to an infantile phase of sexual life,
Jung claimed that it was a resurgence of a primitive phase of humanity. He called it psychological immaturity, and thus a behavioral disturbance. Psychoanalysis would enable
the homosexual to mature psychologically, to pass from a state of individualism to social
integration.
Freud met stiff opposition in France.504 The usual hostility ignited by his theory of
initial seduction was intensified by a fundamental hostility to any idea of German and
Jewish origin.505 Moreover, the French, proud of their own psychiatric discoveries, were
not much inclined to recognize any other authority. The pioneers of French psychoanalysis thus set out to diminish the role of the initial seduction and to emphasize instead
that of the imagination.
Angelo Hesnard, a member of the French Society of Psychoanalysis,506 was particularly interested in homosexuality.507 He borrowed heavily from Freud,508 but he worked
from a broad variety of sources, as much medical (Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld) as
artistic (he cited Proust, Margueritte, Binet-Valmer, Miomandre, Carco, Gide, Porch).
However, his approach remained conventional: he opposes the Freudian analytical rigor
with the usual recitative tone, descriptive, more sociological than scientific and, following
the example other works of the time (except those of Freud), he begins his discourse with
a history of homosexuality through the ages. While in broad outline he follows the
Freudian theory, he distinguishes certain telling points: he sees the homosexual as disgusted by sexuality, a chaste sensibility offended by female sexuality. According to
him, homosexuals have completely dissociated tenderness and sensuality: The homosexual only seldom obtains complete satisfaction.509 Such an assertion is based on his
unilateral interpretation of sexuality according to heterosexual terms: ....the absence of
complete satisfaction which only normal intersexual relations can give, the only ones
that conform to the physiology of the respective organs develops the unsatisfied sexual
appetite to the point of exasperation.510 On lesbianism, he puts forward the novel idea of
a female predisposition to homosexuality: Woman is, in the psychogenetic sense, originally homosexual. The normal adult woman is a being who has had to triumph over her
504. Freud began to be tranlated into France in 1922; the Socit franaise de psychanalyse and
the Revue franaise de psychanalyse were launched in 1926.
505. Poincars Minister of Education is quoted as saying, in 1928: I am told that German youth
have been poisoned by Freud. Freudism is nordic phenomenon. It cannot take hold in France (cited
by Marcelin Pleynet, La Socit psychanalytique de Paris, in Olivier Barrot and Pascal Ory [dir.],
Entre-deux-guerres, Paris, Franois Bourin, 1990, 631 pages).
506. There were nine founding members: Princess Georges of Greece (ne Marie Bonaparte),
Evgnia Sokolnicka, Angelo Hesnard, Ren Allendy, Adrien Borel, Ren Laforgue, Rodolphe Loewenstein, Georges Parcheminey and douard Pichon. This group was formed rather tardily, as psychoanalytical societies had existed in Vienna, Zurich, Budapest, Berlin, London, and the United States
since 1914.
507. This subject features prominently in LIndividu et le Sexe. Psychologie du narcissisme (Paris, Stock,
1927, 227 pages), Psychologie homosexuelle (Paris, Stock, 1929, 208 pages) and Trait de sexologie normale et
pathologique (Paris, Payot, 1933, 718 pages).
508. According to Marcelin Pleynet, Hesnard practiced a moderate anti-Freudism; he saw
Freud as no more than one scholar among many; see Marcelin Pleynet, La Socit psychanalytique
de Paris, loc. cit.
509. Angelo Hesnard, Psychologie homosexuelle, op. cit., p.109.
510. Ibid., p.113.
161

original homosexuality to arrive at the result, which is harder for her than for the man, of
sexual development, heterosexual and in accordance with the rules.511 In conclusion, he
draws a facile parallel between lesbianism and frigidity; the lesbian is in fact only seeking
simple body contact, not specifically genital in nature, and may have somewhat sadistic
tendencies.512
In fact, the Freudian influence in the design of the homosexual identity is paradoxical. Freud was mostly known through those who popularized, and often distorted,
his thought, particularly in France. Certain countries (like England) were little influenced
by Freudian theory for, in fact, the biological theories dominated. In Germany, the psychoanalytical movement was divided since the mid-1930s.
Moreover, psychoanalysis did not liberate homosexuals. On the contrary, it
imposed on them an external explanation of their condition, an obligatory model which
they could hardly contest, since all their protests could be dismissed by the notion that it
was unconscious. Lastly, categorizing homosexuality as an arrested stage of development
could hardly be considered as favorable.
However, there was a fascination with psychoanalysis during the inter-war period,
especially among French intellectuals, thanks to the influence of Evgnia Sokolnicka, a
student of Freud, and the Nouvelle revue franaise group where she met Paul Le
Bourget.513
Andr Gide notes in his journal how much the Freudian revelations matched his
own concept of homosexuality:
Freud. Freudism... For ten years, fifteen years, I have been [homosexual] without
knowing it.514
[Analyzing his own case, he resorts to characteristic medical jargon:] No, I do not
believe by any means that my particular tastes could have been transmitted by heredity: [these are] acquired characteristics, non-transmissible. I am this way because I
was thwarted in my instincts by my education, and the circumstances... what I imagine, you see, is that I must have inherited an inordinately demanding sexuality, which
was thwarted, repressed voluntarily by several generations of ascetics, and of which,
to some extent, I am now subjected to the built-up pressure.515
In 1921, he read the Introduction to Psychoanalysis and participated in six psychoanalysis sessions with Evgnia Sokolnicka; she had opened a salon in Paris in the autumn
of 1921, and already was seeing a number of Parisian intellectuals, including Roger Martin
511. Ibid., p.198.

512. Ibid. the same kind of assertions show up in the work of other psychoanalysts, like Ren
de Saussure in his book, Les Fixations homosexuelles chez les femmes nvroses (Paris, Imprimerie de la Cour
dappel, 1929, 44 pages). Saussure Saussure especially insists on the desire for a penis and the feeling
of castration, and the notion that women see the vulva as a wound.
513. On this topic, see Jean-Paul Nordier, Les Dbuts de la psychanalyse en France, 1895-1926, Paris,
Maspero, 1981, 274 pages; and Marcel Scheidhauer, Le Rve freudien en France, 1900-1926, Paris, Navarin,
1985, 227 pages. Bergsons influence was a determining factor in arousing the literary worlds curiosity about psychoanalysis.
514.Andr Gide, Journal, 1887-1925, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1996, 1840 pages,
p.1170-1171. Gide seems to have learned about Freudism through his friend, Dorothy Bussy, the sister
of James Strachey, who translated Freud into English.
515. Avril 1921, cited by Roger Martin du Gard, Notes sur Andr Gide (1913-1951), in uvres compltes,
Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1983, t.II, 1 432 pages, p.1374.
162

du Gard, Jules Romain and Jules Schlumberger. Gide gives a hilarious report on these
meetings in his journal.516
The best example of the influence of psychoanalysis in homosexual intellectual
circles comes from England, at the very center of the Bloomsbury Club. James and Alix
Strachey were indeed the official translators of Freuds works into English and they contributed largely to its recognition in Great Britain. Both had a history of homosexual
activity. Alix, born Sargant-Florence, suffered from neurotic disorders; she was a friend of
Rupert Brooke, and had done her studies at Bedales, then at Cambridge. She had had
romantic friendships with several women, without actually engaging in the act, itself. A
nervous breakdown brought her to Vienna, for analysis by Freud, then to Berlin, and Karl
Abraham. James Strachey was the brother of Lytton; he was in love with Brooke, like so
many others, while he was studying at Cambridge, and he became a member of the
Apostles and sacrificed to the homosexual fashion of the moment. Thereafter, he dismissed the sexual experimentation of his youth, joking that they divided their time
between sodomizing one another and listening to the Appassionata being massacred by
Donald Tovey.517 He was in love with Alix, and explained his choice as follows: Women
are hateful, except for one delicious young lady at Bedales who resembles a boy.518 James
Strachey is the perfect example of the young man from a good family but who associated
with Bohemians, who rejected his homosexuality but still could not face women. He thus
chose a woman who was, herself, androgynous, and who was likewise unable to clearly
define her sexual identity. It is interesting to note that it was precisely these two pure
products of their time and their background who were charged with promoting Freuds
work in England. Their writings, universally recognized, are regarded as the best interpretation of Freudian thought. As a result of their social origin and their social ties, they
brought psychoanalysis into the most brilliant intellectual circles of England, thus contributing to its adoption in a country that had been quite closed to these new techniques.
Medical theories also played an essential part in the process of crafting an identity.
Traces of these theories crop up throughout the homosexual literature of the time. Radclyffe Hall based the book The Well of Loneliness on Krafft-Ebings and Havelock Elliss theories. Prousts uvre is an admirable digest of the latest medical theories; Proust read the
principal authors and managed to weave in, almost imperceptibly to the unsuspecting
reader, a whole series of specific signals suggesting homosexuality. In In Search of Lost Time,
he expands on the hypothesis of the third sex so dear to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and
Magnus Hirschfeld; he also evokes psychiatric and Freudian interpretations, Carpenters
theories, Walt Whitmans homosexuality and the Greek tradition. Having boned up on
the medical literature, many homosexuals sought to explain their own cases in light of the
most recent discoveries. Medicine had granted them the right to speak about homosexuality, and by discussing the theories, homosexuals took back some of the right to define
their own identity.
From now on, the struggle to define their identity started with scientific comprehension. To be homosexual involved a host of questions which could only be answered by
reading specialized works: Medical books were the only thing that existed in great
516. Andr Gide, Journal, 1887-1925, op. cit., 17 March 1922, p.1173.
517. Perry Meisel and Walter Kendrick, Bloomsbury/Freud. James et Alix Strachey, Correspondance 19241925, Paris, PUF, 1985, 395 pages, p.31.
518. Ibid., p.37.
163

number. We got Hirschfelds books, but ended up limiting our readings to clinical cases;
to get them, these books, I called myself a doctor, and I hid them under my bed.519 The
idea of a hypothetical treatment for homosexuality was in the air and homosexuals discussed this possibility among themselves. Virginia Woolf reported that when she discussed it with E.M. Forster, he said that Dr. Head could convert sodomites. Would you
like to be converted? asked Leonard Woolf. No, certainly not, Forster answered.520
Moreover, the meeting between patient and doctor was very often disappointing.
The homosexual who had expected to find help from his doctor ran into distrust and
incomprehension: [The doctor] had not read scientific works on the question. There
werent any, back when he was attending hospitals, and those that had appeared more
recently were in German, and therefore suspect. Temperamentally opposed to these
morals, he endorsed societys verdict, i.e. his condemnation was of a religious nature. One
would have to be completely depraved, he felt, to turn toward Sodom, and when an individual who was morally and physically fit confessed this penchant to him, he spontaneously cried, Nonsense!521
Michel Foucault showed that medicine and psychiatry were the disciplines best
positioned to authoritatively explore the territory of sexuality.522 Psychiatry claimed to
hold the key to sexual knowledge: it could diagnose and even cure. While the judge could
only consider delinquents, the doctor could meet all sorts of deviants. As Jean Danet said,
According to all the evidence, then, the law and psychiatry are obviously competing to
impose their own form of control over the perverts.523
The medical discourse was tending toward an emancipation movement in favor of
homosexuals, but it was destructive at the same time. Instead of perceiving the doctor as
an external agent in the service of the dominant power, homosexuals thought they could
rely on him as an ally, an accomplice, even a savior. Instead of calling for the abolition of
anti-homosexual laws in the name of justice and equal rights, homosexuals pleaded irresponsibility. Without necessarily realizing it, they sided with the medical men on this
and contributed to their victory.
BEING HOMOSEXUAL: PROCLAIMING AN IDENTITY

The homosexual identity is more than a set of medical clichs. In the slow process
of forming ones identity, other factors come into play: the social environment, contact
with the homosexual scene, individual experience. To be homosexual means, first of all, to
define oneself as such, to recognize ones uniqueness and to try to accept it. Depending on
the case, this identity may by accepted very early on, or maybe only as a result of a long
and painful process. There must be as many identifying constructs as there are indi519. Testimony of Andr du Dognon, recorded by Gilles Barbedette and Michel Carassou, in
Paris gay 1925, Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 1981, 312 pages, p.60.
520. Cited by Philip Hoare, Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant, London, Penguin, 1992,
463 pages, p.161.
521. E.M. Forster, Maurice [written in 1914], Paris, Christian Bourgois diteur, 1987, 279 pages,
p.178.
522. Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualit, t.I, La Volont de savoir, Paris, Gallimard, 1976,
211 pages.
523. Jean Danet, Discours juridique et perversions sexuelles, op. cit., p.46.
164

viduals, but the study of first-hand accounts indicates that there are certain constants and
certain standard patterns, beyond the whims of individual fate.
Homosexual confessions proliferated.524 They are often presented as justifications:
whether they were memoirs intended for publication, collections of personal correspondence, or private diaries, the author sought to explain what made him different. If the
same individual had been heterosexual, he would not likely have considered it useful to
explain to the reader what he thought was the key to his sexual orientation. As a homosexual, however, he feared that his proclivities would be misunderstood. By relating how
he came to realize that he was a homosexual, he has a chance to emphasize the innate
nature of his sexual preference and to wipe out any suspicion of perversion. More rare
were the militant homosexuals who testified in order to advance their cause and who did
not hesitate to be provocative.
Reading these personal accounts, one can evaluate the degree to which each individual accepted his situation; of course, that varied enormously according to the personality and his education. Age, too, played a big part. Homosexuals of the first generation
(born in the years 1870-1890) rarely felt serene about their inclinations, but that was less
and less true for the following generation (born between 1900 and 1910). Even if we adjust
for the a posteriori revisions that one might expect to have crept in (even in good faith), the
accounts are instructive as to the image that the writer wished to project.
An Early Revelation
For many, the revelation of homosexuality came quite early, generally during
childhood. Maurice Sachs says,
I passionately wished to be a girl, and I was so unaware of how grand it was to be
a man that I went so far as to piss sitting down. Even better! I refused to go to sleep
before Suze [his nanny] had sworn to me that I would wake up to find my sex had
been changed..As this occurred when I was about four years old, one would have to
believe that since my earliest childhood I had inclinations which very especially predisposed me toward homosexuality.525
Sometimes, homosexuality was revealed during an initial sexual experience, which

might be precocious. Generally, the younger boy is initiated by an older boy. Marcel Jouhandeau had his first experience at the age of eight, with a 19-year-old employee who
showed him his sex; at the age of ten he had his first pleasure with a boy of the same age,
who masturbated him. Thereafter, he had many revelations at school.526
Most of the authors obligingly relate all the details of their youthful adventures.
This will to peg their homosexuality to a remote, almost indefinable past, has to do with
the individuals need to attach his sexuality to his most profound sense of self; it also corresponds to the influence of medicine, and in particular of psychoanalysis, as deciding
524. The written testimonies essentially come from the middle and upper classes. Among the
oral histories, some concern the working class, but they are rare. We have no reports relating to the
peasantry. One must hope that new archives will be discovered that will enable us to balance this
presentation.
525. Maurice Sachs, Le Sabbat [written in 1939, published in 1946], Paris, Gallimard, 1960,
298 pages, p.21-22.
526. See Chapter Three.
165

factors in the construction of the sense of identity. When inversion is defined as innate, or
as the consequence of an dipal complex that was handled poorly, the homosexual seeks
at all costs to fit his personal experience into a general outline. This initial stage, recognition by his peers, is fundamental.
Homosexual Discomfort
This first awakening is, however, seldom positive. Most of the writers admit their
discomfort. Recognized homosexuals whom one might have thought would have no complexes acknowledge fighting every minute against their inclinations. The photographer
Cecil Beaton acknowledged as much, even while admitting that his friendships with men
were more marvelous than with women. He was never in love with a woman and [he did]
not think that [he] ever would be in the same way as with a man. [He was] really a terrible, terrible homosexualist and [he tried] so much not to be.527
Hans Henny Jahnn met Gottlieb Harms, his great love, at the age of fourteen at the
Sankt Pauli school in 1908. He fought his sexuality until 1913. After their wedding, in
July of that year, they still could not reconcile their physical desires with their spiritual
aspirations: We talked it over. He told me that having lain together with me made him
insane . He perceived me, my man, as if I were a prostitute sick with desire. He felt
disgust for my body and my soul. Now, I am dirty and sinful, and he is, too. And we
cannot purify ourselves.528
Somerset Maugham was haunted all his life by the thought that his homosexuality
might be publicly revealed. He always discouraged biographers and requested that his
letters be burned after his death. After going through Cambridge, he met John Brooks and
discovered Capri in 1895, the year of the Oscar Wilde trial. The scandal upset him and he
understood that it would be impossible to go on as a homosexual and maintain a professional career as well: I tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and only
one-quarter homosexual whereas in fact the opposite was true.529 Until the end of the
First World War, he tried to pursue heterosexual relations, but his male friendships
always won out. Thus, although he married Syrie Bernardo in 1917, he lived with his secretary, Frederick Gerald Haxton, whom he had met in Flanders in 1915. The marriage was
a failure and Maugham held Syrie responsible. From 1920 on, Maugham was exclusively
homosexual and he had relationships with various young writers and journalists who
visited him, like Godfrey Winn, Beverley Nichols and Alan Frank Searle. However, within
the Moorish villa where he received his friends, the homosexuality remained hidden.
For some, recognizing their homosexuality or, at least, bisexuality was absolutely
impossible. D.H. Lawrence wavered between a violent aversion for the homosexual act,
which he expressed particularly in his contempt for Bloomsbury, and an irresistible
attraction for the myth of virile friendship, which appears many times over in his
writings, in particular in Women in Love. Astute people were not deceived; Violet Trefusis
noted that it was not difficult to guess, judging from the relations between Birkin and
Gerald, what kind of man is Mr. Lawrence. He betrays himself at every turn.530 In fact,
527. Cited by Hugo Vickers, Cecil Beaton, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985, 656 pages, p.40.
528. Cited by Friedhelm Krey, Hans Henny Jahnn und die mannmnnliche Liebe, Berlin, Peter Lang,
1987, 458 pages, p.423.
529. Confided to his nephew, Robin Maugham, cited by Robert Calder, Willie. The Life of
W. Somerset Maugham, London, Heinemann, 1989, 429 pages, p.68.
166

it seems that it was the war that awoke D.H. Lawrence to the fear of being homosexual.
He was haunted by images of the war, by the thought of rape. He acknowledged a violent
hatred of sodomy and complained of nightmares on this subject; however, he did not find
sodomy with a woman revolting. Talking with Bertrand Russell, he told him that he could
not bear the odor of Cambridge, which he associated with decay and depravity. He
explained to David Garnett that [he] simply could not bear it [love between men]. It is so
bad... as if it came from some internal slime a kind of sewer!531 However, he seems to
have managed to consummate his love for a farmer, William Henry Hocking: one finds an
echo of this relationship in Kangaroo.532 Lawrence has a very ambiguous vision of homosexuality: for him, as for Bloomsbury, it is the highest form of love, which goes beyond
simple sexuality and must lead to a total, mystical fusion of the two partners, but at the
same time sexual intercourse between two men appears impure to him, perverse, against
nature, the female body being naturally more beautiful than the male body. These two
themes are constantly opposed in his life as in his work, and prevent any complete satisfaction.
T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) is also an excellent example of maladjustment to sexual reality. He was attracted by men but never went beyond platonic
enthusiasm and he restrained desires which he judged unhealthy. Confronted by homosexual advances at Oxford, he affected not to understand. His friend, Vyvyan Richards,
evokes this episode with bitterness:
There was in him neither flesh nor sensuality of any kind: he quite simply did
not understand. He accepted my affection, my sacrifice, in fact, finally, my entire subordination as if they were his due. He never showed in the least way that he understood my reasons or guessed my desires.533
The most painful episode of his life, his capture and rape by the bey,534 accentuated
his feeling of shame and guilt. His repulsion with respect to sexuality was lifelong, and
never found a solution. In a letter to a friend in 1937, he described himself as a chaste
bachelor; he does not deny the restrictive nature of his situation, but says he prefers it to
friendships which can be easily transformed into sexual perversions. Barracks life is
odious for him because of the libidinous climate that reigns there and he expresses indignation at the vulgar carnal instincts. However, at other times, he savagely denies the
existence of homosexual relations within the army: the men are too dirty, there, and physically too close for any one to be attracted to the others; and they wish to stay in good
shape. His attraction to young RAF aviators does not seem to have been fulfilled in any
specific physical action.
The difficulty of accepting oneself as homosexual shows up differently, depending
on the individual. Some manage to overcome their fears and their anguish, sometimes
with outside help. Such was the case of the composer Benjamin Britten: until the age of
530. Letter dated 19 July 1921 Vita Sackville-West, in Violet Trefusis, Lettres Vita, 1910-1921,
Paris, Stock, 1991, 509 pages, p.493.
531. Cited in Brenda Maddox, The Married man: A Life of D.H. Lawrence, London, Sinclair-Stevenson,
1994, 652 pages, p.203-204.
532. Similarly, in Le Paon blanc, the bathing scene is an evocation of his friend Alan Chambers, and
Femmes amoureuses recalls his friendship with amiti avec Middleton Murry.
533. Cited in Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence dArabie, Paris, Denol, 1994, 1 288 pages, p.84.
534. See T.E. Lawrence, Les Sept Piliers de la sagesse [1926], Paris, Payot, 1989, 820 pages.
167

26, he did not have any sexual intercourse and expressed the greatest reserve with regard
to any physical relations. His friends W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, very liberated, badgered him with advice, without much success. In one of his poems, Underneath an Abject Willow, written in March 1936, Auden evokes Brittens physical
loathing and urges him to get into a loving relationship. The death of his mother in 1937
seems to have been truly liberating for Britten; released from maternal judgment, now he
could live for himself. In 1937, he met the tenor Peter Pears, who was three years older
than him. Pears had had several adventures in Lancing, his public school, and then at
Oxford, and he had no trouble accepting his homosexuality. However, the two mens
friendship took a long time to mature; Pears finally seduced Britten during a trip to
America, to Grand Rapids, in June 1939. After that, they stayed together. Their relationship was patterned after the adolescent model of the public school: Pears was the
dominating lover, uninhibited and physical, whereas Britten was more dependent,
anxious and romantic.
In a different way, J.R. Ackerleys inability to find satisfaction shows in his
unending quest for the ideal friend. Despite his years of wanton sexual activity, totaling
200-300 conquests, Ackerley was still driven by a romantic faith in absolute love which
he summed up by saying, Incapable, it seems, of finding sexual satisfaction in love, I
started a long quest for love through sex.535 Like many other homosexuals of his time, he
thought that other homosexuals were not real men and that they consequently were not
desirable. A heterosexual, on the other hand, would constitute a valuable conquest. Ackerley tended to believe that the men who agreed to sleep with him must inevitably love
him, whereas most of the time it was a casual fling, for them, an adventure with no future,
easier to manage than a mistress. Forster and Daley constantly tried to draw his attention
to this contradiction, without success:
When one wants to give a normal young man long kisses on the mouth (ugh!)
and to entertain him with endless romantic speeches on eternal love (you and I under
the arbor, oh my love, etc.), one must recognize that there is little chance a soldier who
offers himself in a pub for 10 shillings a go will fit the bill.536
Ackerleys very explicit autobiography seems to have been undertaken partly in

order to confront these problems.537
The rejection of homosexuality could be even more violent. Marcel Jouhandeau
could not reconcile his spiritual aspirations and his sexual life. His book De labjection is a
terrible testimony of self-rejection: Rot! I am nothing but flesh. Is this all that so many, so
noble, promises have amounted to?538 The recognition of a broken life and career is
535. Cited by Peter Parker, A Life of J.R. Ackerley, London, Constable, 1989, 465 pages, p.117.
536. Ibid., p.119.
537. Ackerley also suffered from premature ejaculation.
538. Marcel Jouhandeau, De labjection, Paris, Gallimard, 1939, 156 pages, p.130. Jouhandeau went
hrough phases of self-acceptance and disgust. Thus, in Chronique dune passion, published in a private
edition in 1938, then re-released in 1949, he rejects the judgment of society, and notably of the
Church: After the Father's departure, I retract into myself, I correct my confessions, I regret them:
that is this disorder that he spoke of? What was so serious about it? What was so bad, after all, about
disturbing an order that is, itself, so artificial, so miserable as the conjugal order? All night long I
cursed myself for having calumniated homosexuality in my last book; it doesn't necessarily lead to
abjectness, when sentiment plays a part, (Chronique dune passion, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, 223 pages,
p.135-136).
168

added to this feeling of dirtiness and failure. Homosexuality becomes the major sin which
determines all ones existence.
Asserting Oneself
Homosexuality is not inevitably experienced as a burden. Harold Nicolson seems
to have expressed his homosexuality without any major difficulty. He managed to
maintain a traditional family life, a diplomatic career and homosexual relationships, in
parallel, with perfect serenity. Unlike many of his friends, he never expressed the least
attraction for men of the working class and preferred the company of young intellectuals
of the same social background as his. For him, homosexuality was only one aspect of his
personality, a part of his life that was amusing, distracting, that it was best not to take too
seriously and which there was no need to brag about.539
Rare, however, are the homosexuals who can completely accept their sexuality and
their lifestyle, and who dare to assert it. Daniel Gurin, in his Autobiographie de jeunesse
(1972), lists many flings that entailed no heart palpitations nor romantic illusions:
The contact of naked bodies, which the Church and my education had made seem
dramatic, was nothing more for me than a hygienic formality, like drinking and eating...whats more, the skins which I dared to rub belonged to the proscribed sex.
Taboo was routed. Freedom triumphed. I tasted pleasure in its pure state, without
mixing in either sensitivity, nor intelligence, nor self-respect. I was not embarrassed
anymore by what had become for me mere accessories (the fumbling and small talk of
sublimation), and I sought the essential. The essential: a young naked body in fresh
bedclothes.540
Quentin Crisp is the best representative of the flamboyant homosexual and his
course throughout England in the 1920s and 1930s is rather unique. He recalls his youth in
his autobiography, The Naked Civil-Servant (1968), which is as impertinent and funny as he
was himself. While he is quite critical of the homosexuals of his era, he also has trouble
seeing himself in a positive light: I looked on all heterosexuals, even the lowliest, as
superior to every homosexual, even the noblest. 541 However, Crisps assessment of
homosexuality was not unilateral. Thus, while he could not prevent himself from feeling a
sense of inferiority personally, he did not intend that others, especially heterosexuals,
should think the same way. When he heard that one of his friends had been engaging in
thievery, he noted: I did not object to these crimes because they were against the law. My
very existence was illegal. I was embarrassed by their pettiness and angry because, if I
were apprehended in relation to one of them, the snow-white image of the homosexual,
which I had been working on intermittently, would have been sullied.542
Indeed, Crisp took it upon himself to educate the public about homosexuality.
Rather than try to fit into one of the prevailing models, he decided to reinforce his singularity by exposing it publicly:
539. See James Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson, a Biography (1886-1929), London, Chatto & Windus,
1980, t.I, 429 pages.
541. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant [1968], London, Fontana, 1986, 217 pages, p.68.
542. Ibid., p.44.
169

I became not only a confirmed homosexual, but a blatant homosexual. That is, I
submitted my case not only to the people who knew me but to those who were completely foreign, as well. It was not hard to do. I wore make-up at a time when, even on
women, eye shadow was a sin.543
This will to assert himself before all the world led him to display his difference
under every circumstance and to face up to all affronts. He said that what he was looking
for, in a regular job,
was the opportunity to interact with the heterosexual world in order to be
accepted as a homosexual. This evangelical zeal was the sole motive for all that [he]
did.544
For the same reason, Quentin Crisp also liked to make a spectacle. One can only
picture him, in the 1920s, on this suicide mission to make the man in the street accept the
flagrant homosexual: With a weary voice, [the police officer] beseeched [the crowd] to
circulate. I was excited, exhausted, and annoyed by the crowd, but, as it had not yet torn
me to pieces, I was not frightened. Because I believed that I could educate them, I was
happy.545
Homosexuals did not build their identity on single experiences. One can, however,
find recurring arguments in their speeches, which Quentin Crisp summarizes roughly as
follows:
Soon I learned by heart almost all the arguments which could be raised in the
climate of the time against the persecution of homosexuals. We were not harming
anyone; we could not help it; and, although it was not necessarily irrefutable from a
juridical point of view, we had enough to deal with, already. Certain speakers went so
far as not only excusing our sin but glorifying it, by designating it a source of national
culture. The great names of history since Shakespeare were recited one after another
like the beads of a rosary.546
It was through these exercises in self-justification that homosexuals built a

common identity in the inter-war period. It required a fundamental reversal of perspectives. Crisp remarked that: By this process I managed to transform homosexuality from a
burden to a cause.547 The homosexual identity was built with, and against, the others.
There was, however, a considerable difference in perspective between the first generation of inverts, who often had lived their homosexual lives in secrecy, even in shame,
and often without achieving sexual fulfillment, and those who were twenty years old in
the 1920s or 1930s, who benefited from medical advances, better social visibility, greater
sexual opportunities and the example of other activists engaged in the cause.
543. Ibid.
544. Ibid., p.73.
545. Ibid., p.50.
546. Ibid., p.30.
547. Ibid., p.33.
170

A Generational Example: Thomas and Klaus Mann
The example of Thomas and Klaus Mann enables us to study a member of the first
and second generation in parallel. Both were homosexuals, but they experienced their
sexuality in very different ways and one may read their stormy relationship as a metaphor
of the construction of the homosexual identity in first half of the 20th century.
Thomas Mann had a very difficult relationship with his sexuality; he always tried
to restrain his instincts, either through continence, or through marriage.548 At the age of
25, he fell in love with Paul Ehrenberg, a young painter who reminded him of one of his
first schoolboy infatuations (Armin Martens, who became Hans Hansen in Tonio Krger).
Ehrenberg was a ladies man and he did not respond to Manns overtures. Indeed, Thomas
was always attracted by men who could not satisfy him, men who were his exact
opposite: fair, with blue eyes, heterosexual, lacking in artistic sense. He desired them
because he aspired to be like them, to join the normal world. Four years later, in 1905, he
married Katia Pringsheim, who fascinated him. However, his journals from 1918 to 1921
reveal that he had great difficulty in overcoming his homosexual desires. For instance, in
May and June 1911, he stayed in Venice with his wife and her brother Heinrich; and it was
there that he met the Polish family and the beautiful adolescent who would be used as
models for Death in Venice. The young boy cast a spell on Thomas Mann, who made no
secret of his enthusiasm: My husband was very much struck by him. He immediately had
a weakness for this adolescent, whom he liked extraordinarily, and he did not stop
watching him on the beach, him and his comrades. He did not follow him all over Venice,
no, but the boy had fascinated him and he often thought of him.549 When Mann published his novella, he indirectly acknowledged his homosexuality. His character Tadzio
also represented an evolution on the sexual level: he is not a grown man, but an adolescent. From now on, Thomas Mann recognized his true sexuality by his taste for young
beardless lads, whom he seduced and dominated.
Thomas Manns journal allows us to follow his psychological evolution fairly
closely; all his failures, misgivings, and desires are there. He wanted to make his marriage
succeed, but was only too conscious of his handicap: Approached K[atia]. Am not very
clear on my state on this subject. Certainly it can hardly be a question of true impotence,
but rather confusion and the usual unpredictability of my sex life. No doubt, there is a
weakness that might be exacerbated, as a consequence of desires that go in the other
direction. What would happen if I had a boy under my hand? In any case, it would be
unreasonable to allow myself to feel depressed by a failure whose reasons are not new to
me. Not to be concerned, good humor, indifference, and self-confidence are the appropriate behaviors, if only because they are the best remedy.550
The disorder increased as his son Klaus reached puberty; his androgynous beauty
made him desirable. In his journal, Thomas makes many allusions to the ambiguous
charms of his child: In love with Klaus these days. Elements for new Father and Son
(July 5, 1920). Charmed by Eissi [Klaus], pretty enough to be frightening, in the bath...
Eissi was reading in bed, and his tanned chest was bare, which disturbed me (July 25,
548. For this analysis, see Marianne Krll, Les Magiciens. Une autre histoire de la famille Mann, Paris,
ditions du Seuil, 1995, 398 pages.
549. Katia Mann, cited by Marianne Krll, ibid., p.174.
550. July 1920, ibid., p.190.
171

1920). Read a story of Eissis yesterday, imprinted with a heart-rending melancholy, and
criticized it at his bedside while lavishing caresses on him which pleased him, I believe
(July 27, 1920). I heard some noise in the boys room and surprised Eissi, completely
naked, in front of Golos bed doing silly things. Strong impression of his startling and
already almost virile body, what a shock (October 17, 1920). The fathers feelings for the
son are very ambiguous and the familys biographers, Gerhard Hrle and Marianne Krll,
judge that his desire had a destructive effect on the son.551
Klaus Mann was aware of his fathers attraction to him, and that he kept it hidden;
he himself already felt homosexual inclinations, but saw in his fathers attitude only dissembling and confusion. This false situation influenced his own course toward identification; he took the opposite tack, provocative, assertive. In 1926, he married Pamela
Wedekind, who was probably his sister Erikas lover; at the same time, Erika married
Gustaf Grndgens, a homosexual actor. They would divorce in 1929. These fictitious marriages, willfully grotesque, may be seen as a denunciation of the paternal example, of his
falsely proper life, his concessions to normality. Marriage did not make any sense, it did
not represent the truth, so one might as well make it completely ridiculous. Thus, all that
his father kept under wraps, Klaus exposed in an outrageous and grandiloquent way, and
as a consequence attracted the paternal disfavor. Thomas Mann discovered his double,
lubricious and wanton, the side of his personality that he had always refused to recognize
in the name of moderation and propriety.
Klaus Mann was aware of his homosexuality from an early age; in 1921, he fell in
love with various schoolmates. He was 16 years old when he met Uto Gartman: I did not
dare to understand the warnings and the signs of my destiny.552 Then he read Wilde,
Whitman, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Stefan George. He did not make any secret of his
homosexuality, and he did not hesitate to tackle the question in his writings. He mingled
with all the homosexual intelligentsia of the time, Cocteau, Sachs, Green, Gide, Crevel,
Auden, Spender, Isherwood, and Forster, but he preferred not to discuss the subject in
public and did not mention it in his correspondence with close relatives. Nevertheless, his
sexuality very quickly became known to the general public, since he and his sister Erika
were involved in many scandals. Together they plunged into the shady swirl of Berlin and
Klaus quickly found himself torn by two strong impetuses: the desire for freedom associated with homosexual pleasure, and guilt stemming from his bourgeois education. The
loose morals of Berlin in the 1920s led to instability more than to fulfillment. What can
one fight, what can one stand up for, when everything is possible, when everything is
allowed? We could not deviate from a moral standard: there was no standard.553
This lack of purpose explains why he did not engage in German homosexual movements: Pr. Magnus Hirschfeld invited me, with the greatest civility, to make a speech in
his Institute on the role of eroticism in modern literature. Der Eigene paid me homage in
the most compromising way. 554 His privileged situation seems to have dimmed his
judgment, for a time; he did not realize that other homosexuals were not enjoying this
551. 5 May 1932: I dreamed about the Magicians secret life as a homo (his liaison with Kruse
[Werner Kruse, a musician]) (Klaus Mann, Journal. Les annes brunes, 1931-1936, Paris, Grasset, 1996,
452 pages, p.208).
552. Klaus Mann, Le Tournant [1949], Paris, Solin, 1984, 690 pages, p.164.
553. Ibid., p.161.
554. Letter to Erika Mann, 1926, cited by Stefan Zynda, Sexualitt bei Klaus Mann, Bonn, Bouvier
Verlag, 1986, 156 pages.
172

kind of freedom; thus the letter which he sent to Stefan Zweig after the publication of La
Confusion des sentiments: Thank heaven that a destiny as horrible as that of the professor is no
longer possible today or is at least no longer inevitable.555 His friend, the editor Fritz
Landshoff, felt that this attitude was explained by too great a certainty of the acceptance
of homosexuals, not by an egoistic lack of awareness: The equal rights of homosexuals
were so obvious to him that he did not believe that it had to be included as an agenda
item for the homosexual combat.556 This attitude would change radically in 1933, when
Klaus realized that homosexuals were among the first targets of Nazism.
The crumbling of values went hand in hand with the banalization of the act of love
and of sexual choice. Mann was fully aware of the charge of decadence associated with
the Berlin liberation. His romantic aspirations found no outlet in casually waltzing from
partner to partner:
They are all well matched, it doesnt matter. This girl is just as well suited to
this young man as to any other, and if the young lady has pretensions (perhaps she has
a special relationship with her horse or her chef), the two young men hup! hup!
can manage very nicely and have plenty of fun without the girl at all 557
His novel Pious Dance (1925), very representative of the social environment in those
days, was the first openly homosexual novel in German literature. It draws an oppressive
picture of German youth, drifting, trying to find meaning in sex, drugs or art; most of the
characters are homosexual, like Miss Barbara, strong and virile, flaunting her relationship with a pallid dancer who often spends the night with her, or Petit-Paul, hopelessly in love with the hero, Andras, who is himself enamored (in vain) of Niels, a gigolo.
Disappointments in love end in suicide or in a slow decline, as evoked in the song that
Andras languidly sings in a basement cabaret:
And now were walking the street
A red scarf at our neck,
Walking, walking the street,
And really, who gives a fuck!
Soon, well collapse,
No one lasts long this way,
Its straight down hill, to rack and ruin
And then comes Judgment Day! 558
After he finished his number, he is mobbed by bourgeois gentlemen filled with
desire for his dubious beauty.
Thomas Mann took his sons public confession very badly; however, at the same
time, he was giving himself up in complete abandon to a 17-year-old boy, Klaus Heuser,
555. Letter to Stefan Zweig, September 1927, ibid., p.58. Underlined in the original.
556. Cited by Stefan Zynda, ibid., p.87.
557. Ibid., p.167.
558. Klaus Mann, La Danse pieuse [1925], Paris, Grasset, 1993, 272 pages, p.107.
173

and revealed his feelings to Klaus and Erika. Curiously, he warned Klaus-Eissi not
interfere in his concerns: he most particularly did not want his affair to be known; on the
other hand, he seems to have been boasting that he, too, was able to give in to passion, as
Klauss example had convinced him to throw himself into the swirl of life. One gets the
impression that father and son influenced one another, without ever arriving at an accord:
Eissi is invited to keep out of my affairs.[and not to rock the boat]. I am already old and
famous; why would you be the only ones to sin because of that?... the secret and almost silent
adventures of existence are the greatest.559 Thomas Manns love for Klaus Heuser was apparently one of most significant in his life. It was the ultimate fulfillment, the experience he
had wished for all his life, the unique abandonment to his deepest instincts: [This experience] was the unhoped-for realization of something I had longed for all my life, happiness as it is
recorded in the book of humanity even if not in that of practice and because its memory means me
too.
Writing, finally, was the only means of fully realizing his homosexuality, for Klaus
Mann as for his father. Several of his works depict young women in homosexual relations.
In Flucht in der Norden (Escape to the North), the heroine, Johanna, a girl who resembles a
boy, stands in for Klaus Mann. The tale evokes his trip to Finland in 1932, when he fell in
love with a young landowner, Hans Aminoff. In Pathetic Symphony, he pays homage to
Tchaikovsky; significantly, he modifies the ending so that Tchaikovsky does not die of
cholera but commits suicide. In fact, in most of his novels, homosexuality is presented as a
very dismal thing: death or suicide seems to lie in wait for the hero. Thus, in The Volcano,
Martin Korella (another disguised portrait of Klaus Mann) has relations with Kikjou, but
cannot save him from destruction. All around him, his homosexual friends were committing suicide, most notably Ricki Hallgarten and Ren Crevel.560
Thomas Mann did not help his son to accept his sexuality, and the latter absorbed
to a degree many homophobic prejudices. In his journal, he recalls an extremely revealing
dream: I was followed by the police at a seaside resort, for various reasons: Eukodal, my
homosexuality... But they were hoping, thanks to my homo relations, to obtain some
information on the position of the Austrian army.561 However, Klaus was not really conscious of his doubts and mixed feelings, and he held dear the myth of complete liberation
and fully asserted sexuality. He was obsessed with his relationship to his father and, in his
journal, he compares the homosexual identity of each generation.
Tonight, reading Wagner, noted that the theme of seduction is very characteristic for the Magician [Thomas Mann] contrary to me. The motif of seduction:
romanticism music Wagner Venice death sympathy with the abyss
pederasty. The repression of pederasty as causes of this motif (going beyond the
seduction of Nietzsche; see Wagner). Different for me. Primary influence: Wedekind George. Concept of sin didnt have it. The cause: lived fully. Pederasty.
Intoxication (including that of death), always accepted with recognition as exaltation
of life; never as seduction.562
559. Cited by Marianne Krll, Les Magiciens, op. cit., p.239, as well as the following citation. Italics
in the original.
560. In La Mort difficile, Ren Crevel had already depicted the fatality of love based on sex. His
hero Pierre, a homosexual cocaine addict, falls in love with a sensual young man, Arthur Buggle (who
is attracted as much by men as by women), and commits suicide when he abandons him.
561. Klaus Mann, Journal, op. cit., 24 March 1932, p.64.
562. Ibid., 4 April 1933, p.134.
174
Thus, according to his own interpretation, for the first generation homosexuality
was a seduction, an external influence, which one could resist, one could fight against. It
is associated with negative images death, downfall. Therefore it was necessary to stifle
ones feelings and, at least, to hide them from the world. For the second generation, on the
other hand, homosexuality was not a sin, nor an external seduction, but a constitutive
principle of being, to which one must give oneself up, which one must assert. However,
the idea of death remained present, associated with drugs or suicide. Haunted by paternal
rejection, by his failures in love, the disastrous demise of his friends, Klaus Mann gradually went down. The Nazi repression that came crashing down on homosexuals and the
Berlin life of his youth reinforced his fears and bitterness. He traveled, he fought, he wrote,
but failure dogged him.
After several suicide attempts, he finally died on May 21, 1949. The long road to recognition came to a dead end: the suicide of Klaus Mann, symbol of Berlins golden age, testified to the failure of a dream: that of homosexuality recognized, militant, affirmative;
and to the retreat of homosexuals back to the private sphere, where his father had lived.
DEFINING ONESELF AS A LESBIAN AN IDENTITY UNDER CONSTRUCTION

There is a problem in defining the lesbian identity: is it simply a variation on the
homosexual identity, or is it something distinct? Some might even ask whether it exists at
all. Before the 1920s, lesbians never formed a coherent group. While the 19th century did
include some lesbian lifestyles,563 they were either evanescent (no sexual intercourse,
strong sentiment without recognition of the nature of the desires), or they were
extremely peripheral: the aristocratic or financial periphery like Natalie Barneys circle,
the social periphery the Sapphic loves among prostitutes, or peripheral experiences,
like the Ladies of Llangollen, a lesbian couple who served as an example for following generations and who gave credence to the idea that lesbianism could be admitted and
accepted.
Since the 1920s, thanks to the creation of the Berlin scene, to the propagation of
lesbian models disseminated by public figures, and to changes in womens roles in society,
a lesbian identity began to take shape. Homosexual women, like homosexual men, could
live out their sexuality in a very different way. And similarly, the lesbians of the second
generation had more opportunities to express themselves than those born at the turn of
the century. However, the reality of the lesbian experience did not match that of homosexual men, and most of the time they had nothing to do with each other. Admittedly, lesbians were very much in the minority; but they had the benefit of legal tolerance, even
though a particularly wild set of anti-lesbian themes was promoted during the inter-war
period. Moreover, they could pass as normal in social settings, for they were often thought
of as old maids. This relative lack of danger means that they were under no pressure to
form an interdependent and militant lesbian community, so that in the inter-war period
the lesbian identity was in an earlier stage of formation than the homosexual identity.
563. See Lilian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, New York, Morran & Cie, 1981, 496 pages.
175

The Dominant Model and Alternatives
At the end of World War I, Sapphism was marginalized and reduced in its definition to a particular type of women: the masculine lesbian (butch, mannisch). Whereas
the model of the effeminate invert had been rejected and denied by homosexuals, the
model of the masculine lesbian would be retained as a symbol not only by the public, but
by lesbians themselves, and for many long years this meant that they were associated with
medical cases one could only look upon with pity. This restrictive representation of the
lesbian is a direct consequence of the medical discourse, and of the influence of certain
famous lesbians, in particular Radclyffe Hall. However, this image was not accepted
everywhere and certain women succeeded in developing a different model, in terms of
both appearance and conduct.
Radclyffe Hall
Marguerite Radclyffe Hall must have been the most famous lesbian of the inter-war
period; she was known as John (1880-1943).564 Just like Stephen Gordon, the poetess
and novelist Radclyffe Hall embodied the heroine of her book, The Well of Loneliness (1928)
the image of the lesbian in the eyes of the public. Her life and manners may have
shocked proper English society, but one cannot say that John led a scandalous existence.
Beginning in her adolescence, she developed romantic friendships with two of her
cousins, but it was her meeting with Mabel Batten Ladye, a woman of great beauty,
mature, and married, that was the turning point. John was then a very lovely young
woman who dressed rather severely (but still as a female, until about 1920), and wore her
ash-blonde hair long. Ladye introduced her to the existence of a lesbian world, and in particular to the salon of Winaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac. In 1915, John also met Una
Troubridge, likewise married, with whom she would spend the rest of her life. She was
more feminine than John; Una never wore mens clothes. Thus, the two women typically
embodied the lesbian couple such as it was defined in those days by Havelock Ellis and
the majority of sexologists: a true lesbian, Radclyffe Hall, who was identified with the
man, and a seduced lesbian, playing the traditional role of the woman, Una Troubridge.
This life match was satisfactory and Radclyffe Hall (unlike, for example, Vita SackvilleWest), did not go on chalking up conquests. Only Evgenia Souline, in the late 1930s, disturbed the arrangement between John and Una.
The name of Radclyffe Hall remains associated with the image of the lesbian in this
period largely because she embodied the New Woman to the extreme, and because her
principal book, The Well of Loneliness, drew the attention of British society to Sapphism and
opened the eyes of many people who had been completely unaware of the very existence
of lesbians. Radclyffe Hall took to wearing mens clothing more and more, after 1920: very
strict tailoring, ties, mens hose with garters, heavy shoes with flat heels, and gaiters, with
a pipe or cigarette without filter. In 1930, she tried wearing trousers. Finally, she had her
hair cut extremely short. She socialized with the smart lesbian set: Natalie Barney,
Romaine Brooks, Renata Borgatti, Mimi Franchetti, Marchesa Casati, and also Edy
Craigs more circumspect circle in Rye.
564. See Michael Baker, Our Three Selves: A Life of Radclyffe Hall, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1985,
386 pages.
176

Radclyffe Halls first poems and novels touch on the topic of lesbianism only indirectly. They show a strong autobiographical influence; After Many Days refers implicitly to
her relations with Ladye and Una. The novella Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself and the novel The
Unlit Lamp are particularly revealing. However, The Well of Loneliness remains paramount: in
it, John endeavors to recount the painful destiny, from childhood to maturity, of a young
invert who has always felt that she is different from the other girls. Judging from its repercussions among lesbians as well as the broader public, this novel may be taken as the best
representation of the New Woman. Stephen Gordon is a model; thanks to her or
because of her lesbians of the inter-war period wanted to be masculine. The book
seems to have been inspired by a reading of Havelock Elliss Sexual Inversion: John recognizes himself in that description of the congenital invert. The portrait which she traces of
the heroine, Stephen Gordon, was very much influenced by the medical model, but is also
based on personal experience. It has been said that such a book could be written only by
an invert, as only they would be qualified enough through personal knowledge and experience to speak in the name of a misunderstood and misjudged minority.565
Hall also read many authors who dealt with homosexuality, like Clemence Dane,
Rosamund Lehmann, Natalie Barney, Colette, Liane de Pougy, Willy, Proust. She did not
model her books on them, however, for she wished to display her own vision of the
lesbian. She thus eschewed adolescent loves, which society finds easier to excuse, and
focused on adult homosexuality. Armed with good intentions, Hall wanted to awaken the
public to the painful fate of the invert. To achieve that objective, she did not hesitate to
exaggerate and draw an apocalyptic picture of a life of suffering, frustration and sacrifice.
Hall summarizes the heroines childhood through a series of medical banalities. Her
parents wished for a boy, and they baptize her with a boys name; as a child, Stephen likes
neither dresses nor long hair, and falls in love with the maid. Her mother does not love
her, and her father, who suspects the truth, spends his time reading medical works, such
as Ulrichs and Krafft-Ebing. Upon reaching adulthood, she is more or less shunned in the
local community; she repulses one suitor, then falls in love with a married woman (who
initially responds to her advances, then, frightened by the girls passion, reveals everything to her husband). A scandal erupts; Stephen is driven out of the house and leaves for
France. There, she achieves literary success and discovers the Parisian lesbian community,
at the side of Valerie Seymour (a pseudonym for Natalie Barney). When the war breaks
out, she signs on with the ambulance corps and distinguishes herself brilliantly. She
meets a girl, Mary, and falls in love. They settle together in Paris and live in harmony for a
few years; but Mary finally falls for a man and Stephen sacrifices herself for her happiness.
Beyond the melodrama, certain points are worth mentioning. First, the congenital
invert looks masculine. One passage basically says,
That night, she stood looking in the mirror; and even at that moment she
detested her body with its muscular shoulders, small, compact breasts, and the slim
hips of an athlete. All her life she would have to drag along this body like a monstrous
weight imposed on her spirit.566
565. Una Troubridge, cited in Gay News, n 148.

177

The difference is physical, it is visible, it is immediately apparent to a casual
observer: It is my face; there is something wrong with my face,567 she notes. Stephen
does not think there is any hope of fitting in; she is shut out by her body, and then by her
sexuality.
The only solution is exile; there, life is easier, but it is also depressing and humiliating. Going out with women, lesbian bars, everything is only makeshift since public life
is prohibited. Love itself is fleeting; Stephen suffers for not being able to marry Mary, not
being able to offer her either security or public recognition. If she sacrifices herself, it is
because she knows that only a man is able to guarantee her honor in the eyes of society.
In that, Radclyffe Hall ratifies the separation between the masculine lesbian, the
true lesbian, whose destiny is inevitably dismal, and the pseudo-lesbian, feminine,
romantic, who can always revert to the traditional role. The two women who shared her
life were both married. One may suppose that she felt she was in direct competition with
the men and that to supplant them in the heart of her friends would be a fitting revenge
and proof of her true virility. The masculine lesbian is the one who must take on the challenges and face the external world. This very traditional understanding of the couple,
copied on the heterosexual model, shows clearly that Radclyffe Hall took in the prejudices of the external world and perpetuated the concept of male domination.
Her lesbianism is not feminism. In fact, John regarded himself as a man captive in a
womans body; she regretted that she did not receive the regard that is due to one of her
true nature. Therefore, her attire and her conduct were intended to reveal her true
identity to the world. Moreover, like Una Troubridge, she openly acknowledged her lesbianism in society and professed only scorn for lesbians who were ashamed to show
themselves. This distinctive attitude does not mean, however, that Radclyffe Hall
accepted her sexuality easily. The fatalism which underlies her novel is the consequence
of a very profound sense of guilt and inferiority, reinforced by her adherence to the
Catholic religion. For John, inversion was certainly not a natural thing; it was a disease, a
mark of destiny, which made her a being apart.
In describing Stephen Gordon this way, in showing her difficulty in adapting to
society, Radclyffe Hall voluntarily places lesbians in a marginal position. By taking up the
cause of masculine lesbians, Radclyffe Hall not only ratified the classifications of the sexologists, but she posed a cruel choice to the pseudo-homosexuals: from now on, they had
to come out in public in order to get themselves accepted as lesbians (and thus risk
derision and exclusion), or savor the sweetness of their romantic friendships without ever
knowing what view of womanhood to identify with.568 Halls vision of lesbianism is at
the foundation of a very powerful sense of identity, for it rests on the acceptance of difference and exclusion. By making lesbians unique, she reinforced the bonds between them
and called for solidarity based on their shared fate. Even long after her death, Radclyffe
567. Ibid., p.71. It is interesting to note that, to bolster her theory of physical predestination to
homosexuality, Radclyffe Hall had the oortraits of her as a child touched up. On one of them, where
she was shown with her face framed by long blond curls, she had the bottom repainted to show her
hair very short, like a little boys.
568. This question is at the heart of modern feminist historiography. The Well of Loneliness is reexamined from the perspective of its influence on the lesbian identity; the faulty assimilation between
lesbianism and masculinity is criticized briskly. For a discussion on this topic, see Lilian Faderman
and Ann Williams, Radclyffe Hall and the Lesbian Image, in Conditions, n 1, April 1977; Lilian
Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, op. cit., p.322-323; Anne Koedt (dir.), Radical Feminism, New York,
Quadrangle Books, 1973, 424 pages, p.240-245.
178

Hall enabled thousands of young women to recognize themselves as lesbians, to forge a
system of references. However, while The Well of Loneliness may be held to be the symbol of
one generation of lesbians, there were other models which refuted the assumption of masculinity.
Natalie Barney and Colette

The Parisian lesbians were first to reject the vision of the New Woman. They
exemplified the Sapphism of the aristocratic and intellectual milieux, mixing Greek references into the French erotic tradition. Natalie Barney is the best representative of this
trend.569 With Rene Vivien, she tried to found a school of poetry to the glory of Sappho
at Mytilene, then founded a lesbian salon at 22 rue Jacob, dubbed the Temple of
friendship. In fact, the rediscovery of Sappho played an important part in the crafting of
the lesbian identity; she appeared to be the requisite model in antiquity, at a time when
homosexuals were making constant references to the Greek example to justify their
existence. Natalie Barney and Virginia Woolf even undertook to learn Greek in order to
better understand the poetess.
Natalie Barneys refuge, a cult hang-out during the Belle Epoque, continued to illuminate the lesbian world of the inter-war period. Rich, good-looking and famous lesbians
mingled there, enjoying a precious and cosmopolitan atmosphere: Young women,
transported by literature and champagne, danced like mad in each others arms,
remembers Matthew Josephson.570 Janet Flanner, who was a regular there, summarizes
these get-togethers as introductions, conversations, tea, excellent cucumber sandwiches
and divine little cakes baked by Berthe, but the result was a new place of rendezvous for
women who were enamored of each other or who simply wished to see each other
again.571 Barneys salon thus created a specific, although restricted, lesbian culture and
identity. The visitors love lives were the main topic of conversation; sexual freedom was
extensive and homosexuality, at last, was not interdicted. When someone asked Natalie
Barney about one of her new conquests, she replied: Do I love her? God in heaven, no, we
made love, thats all.572
Natalie Barneys declaration was regarded as the basis of future lesbian combat: I
do not feel any shame; one does not reproach the albino for having pink eyes and white
hair, why should anyone hold me accountable for being lesbian? It is a question of nature;
my homosexuality is not a vice, it is not deliberate and does not do any harm to
anybody.573
To Barneys great credit, she rejected any definition of lesbianism imposed by
society, and in particular by the medical world. She was hostile to the theories of the third
sex and to the idea of a woman that is half man, and she rejected compassion and the
status of victim. At the same time, she remained on the periphery of lesbianism according
569. Much has been written about Natalie Barney; particularly interesting are George Wickes,
The Amazon of Letters, Natalie Barney, London, W.H. Allen, 1977, 286 pages; and the remarkable work by
Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank, Paris 1900-1940, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1986,
518 pages.
570. Cited by Lilian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, op. cit., p.369.
571. Ibid., p.370.
572. Ibid.
573. Ibid.
179

to Radclyffe Hall, because she rejected provocation and the strategy of exclusion. For her,
acceptance meant integration into the rest of society and not the formation of separatist
groups. Nevertheless, the elitist atmosphere of her salon, her dilettantism, her tendency to
consider homosexuality as a game of love and a good excuse for intrigues, make her more
of a hold-over from the 1900s rather than a representative of modernity. Barney was 43
years old in 1919, and hardly resembled the Amazon. However, her influence remained
strong throughout the inter-war period.
Her New thoughts of the Amazon wonderfully illustrates her concept of female loves
and her taste for a lascivious woman, fully given over to passion, completely detached
from man (materially as well as physically): They came to us with burning hands,574 she
confided. Barney contrasts the idea of the Butch with the extreme sophistication of an
aristocratic femininity: I travel as badly as a basket of raspberries.575 She looked down
on women who took on a more masculine style. She herself posed as a nymph, sporting
long hair floating freely and tunics modeled after antiquity. She cautioned against confusing radical thought with radical appearances, the latter being only a pale substitute of
the first. According to her, masculine women were only a passing fashion, having more to
do with societys aspiration to androgyny than any real lesbian movement; they even contribute paradoxically to the standardization of the genders and the victory of masculine
values. Thus, her lesbian theory is also a feminist reflection.
Natalie Barney was one of the first to affirm lesbian sexuality as a form of liberation
for women. As lesbians, they retained control of their own bodies, and no longer needed
to fear the violence of the heterosexual act and childbirth. This counter-model, while it
has the advantage of not reducing the lesbian to a medical anomaly, offers little grounds
for claiming rights or asserting differences. It is an individualistic, even independent,
model and would be preferred by women who were already free socially and financially.
On the other hand, it seems to have had no impact on the main population of lesbians,
who were indifferent to Greek tradition and who were in no position to impose on those
near and dear to them a scandalous and sumptuary mode of life.
Colette, who frequented Barneys salon, however, managed to detach herself from
Sapphic mythology and build a modern image of woman. She thus embodied a model of
lesbianism that the general public could grasp, in her widely disseminated novels as well
as in her private life (which was full of scandal). Colette separated from Willy in 1905 to
be with a woman, Missy, i.e. Mathilde de Morny. The lesbian scandal was exacerbated
by the womens appearance: Missy was a masculine lesbian, 42 years old. Colette was 32.
With Missy, she discovered lesbian nightclubs in Paris like Palmyre, on place Blanche.
She made a spectacle at Natalie Barneys, dancing naked as Mata Hari. At the Moulin
Rouge, January 3, 1907, she danced a mime with Missy, Dreams of Egypt: Colette was
naked, Missy embraced her, and the scandal was enormous. In 1929 and 1930, like so many
others, she was in Berlin, sizing up the distance between Parisian lesbianism and German
militancy. In 1932, she wrote the subtitles of Girls in Uniform for the films previews in
France.
Colette felt the need to clarify her position on lesbianism after The Well of Loneliness
was published. Like many others, reading the book dismayed her; she also wrote to Una
Troubridge to explain her position: One who is abnormal must never feel abnormal; quite
574. Natalie Barney, Nouvelles penses de lAmazone, Paris, Mercure de France, 1939, 215 pages, p.198.
575. Ibid., p.122.
180

to the contrary.576 It was in response to Radclyffe Hall that she published The Pure and the
Impure. It caused her great pain to write that book: It makes me vomit, of course, she
declared to Lucie Delarue-Mardrus.577 Sapphism, which had been presented in a ludic
form in her novels, is displayed here under a cruel light. She denounces the Don Juans, the
goules, the lesbians out for conquest and pleasure, restless and incapable of true
feelings: There can never be enough blame put on the casual Sapphos, those of the restaurant, the dance hall, the Blue Train (Le Train bleu was a posh rail link to the Riviera) and
the sidewalk, those who are merely provocative, who laugh instead of sighing.578 Such a
woman leaves only disaster in her wake; thus, her credits consist of despairing young
girls, young women committing suicide under her window, broken households, and
sometimes bloody rivalries.579
This condemnation of the lesbian way of life must be placed in its context,
however: that of very liberal Paris during the inter-war period and relating only to a
narrow segment of society that could shrug off criticism. Colette is an eye-witness of her
milieu. Her reproaches are not limited to flirtation and sexual nomadism. The principal
danger which threatens lesbians, according to her, is that of masculinization; on this
point, she agreed with Natalie Barney: You understand, a woman who remains a woman
is a complete being. She does not lack anything, even with regard to her friend. But if she
gets it into her head to want to be a man, it is grotesque. What could be more ridiculous,
and sadder, than a ... fake man?580
In spite of this denigration, Colette admired unusual personalities. She draws up an
intriguing portrait of the Chevaliere, a determined and influential butch who is perfectly comfortable with her masculine side and who makes no concessions to fashion. She
leads a solitary life, outside of time and without any lover, for her aspirations are too far
apart from those of the new wave. This lack of solidarity between the generations testifies
to the fragility of the lesbian community. Colette contemptuously notes that these
women who are so sure of themselves, so open, suddenly become discreet and conformist
as soon as their social position is at stake. Love affairs are only acknowledged privately:
Only one dared to say, ma lgitime (my wife),581 and they have no stomach for
scandal when it cuts too close to them: It is not that I am hiding it, the viscountess of X
briefly explained, ... it is just that I do not like to make a show of it.582
The Pure and the Impure, a book that was celebrated for its tolerance and its sincerity,
is undoubtedly a deeply lesbian book, a book about the love of women. But it is also a critique, sometimes indulgent, often severe, of the circumscribed Parisian world, the
meanness and superficiality of those lesbians who had made it and who did nothing,
despite their position, to advance the lot of other women.
576. Cited by Herbert Lottman, Colette, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1990, 496 pages, p.295.
577. Ibid., p.296.
578. Colette, Le Pur et lImpur [1932], Paris, Hachette, 1971, 189 pages, p.123.
579. Ibid., p.109.
580. Ibid., p.112.
581. Ibid., p.78.
582. Ibid.
181

Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
Perhaps the most modern counter-model and most relevant to contrast to Radclyffe Hall is that of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. The two women greeted The
Well of Loneliness with considerable reservation. They considered it not only poor in form,
but also dangerous in its premises. In fact, Virginia Woolfs and Vita Sackville-Wests
lives and loves are evidence that a lesbian model could exist that was different from the
one asserted by sexologists and the militant lesbians, and that it was valid. However, it
was largely obscured by feminist historiography, because it was incompatible with the
very strict definition of the lesbian identity as it had been formulated: starting with selfsufficiency with respect to men, a self-sufficiency which often meant the complete
rejection of men. Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, and Violet Trefusis were married.
Their meetings, their exchanges of often passionate letters, and their sexual intercourse
conducted with discretion and reserve were closer to the model adopted or
dreamed of by the anonymous lesbians than to the hard-hitting arrogance of Radclyffe
Hall.
Vita Sackville-West certainly did not conform to the prototype of Stephen Gordon.
True, she too had dreamed since her earliest childhood of being a boy, but that came out
mainly in an extraordinary vitality, an exuberance mixed with authoritarianism. If she
preferred mens clothes (they were more practical), she leaned toward riding breeches
and gaiters, not Radclyffe Halls tuxedo. And if she regretted that she was not a man, it
was above all because she could not inherit the family palace. By no means did Vita consider her masculine traits as symptoms of a congenital inversion. In her love affairs, she
showed all the enthusiasm of a seductress, a magnetism intended to bend her conquests
to her whims.
Vita was aware of her deep nature very early on; she seduced her childhood friend
Violet Keppel. In a journal that she was keeping at the time,583 she describes her conquest
in detail, with a striking freedom and absence of guilt. On November 11, 1918, the two
women left on a journey to Paris; there, Vita (who was going by the name of Julian),
dressed as a boy. During the day they went visiting, and they ended the night in a hotel, on
their way to Monaco. According to Vita, It was marvelously amusing, especially as one
was always likely to be discovered. For her, there was no difference between homosexual
love and heterosexual love, and there were certainly no moral implications. She was perfectly frank about her sexual passions and her needs. I took her along [to my room], I
treated her savagely. I made love to her, I possessed her, I made fun of her, I simply wanted
to hurt Denys [Violet was engaged at the time to Denys Trefusis], even if he would never
know it.584 Not until March 15, 1919 did Vita agree to join her husband, Harold Nicolson,
for a peace conference. On June 16, 1919, Violet married Trefusis; that very night, Vita
created an incident at the hotel and took Violet. The following days were terrible; Denys
and Violet stayed in separate rooms during their honeymoon in France. Returning to
England, Violet took up again with Vita and planned a new escapade to Monaco, in
October-November. After a new scene with Denys in February, Violet was separated from
583. This journal was published by her son Nigel Nicolson in 1973 in Portrait of a Marriage (Portrait
dun mariage, Paris, Stock, 1992, 319 pages).
584. Vita Sackville-West, cited by Lilian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, op. cit.
182

Vita by her family, who banded together to put an end to the scandal. By then, Vita began
to lose interest, having learned that Violet had slept with her husband.
Both women presented their versions of this adventure in novels. Vita SackvilleWest started to write Challenge ( Ceux des les) (1924) during their escapade in Paris and
Monaco. It was at the same time a self-justification, the vision of what her love for Violet
could have been, and an account of suffering. Likewise, Violet Trefusis tried to justify her
behavior in Broderie anglaise (1935); the book, written in French, was not translated into
English. Rather than rewrite the history of a love affair, Violet sought to examine the
reasons for its failure and the personalities concerned.
Virginia Woolf had a different fate. Her childhood was painful: she lost her mother,
Julia Stephen, then her sister Stella was 13 years old. After a first period of insanity, she
was sexually accosted by her half-brother, George Duckworth.585 She fell in love with
two women, Madge Waugham and Violet Dickinson; but Vita Sackville-West was her
great flame. She was already over forty, and had been married to Leonard Woolf since 1913
when she met Vita for the first time. Virginia Woolf had always been very reticent with
respect to sexuality, and her love of women was closely related to the softness that it
offered in contrast to male brute force. Woolf herself said that the vague and unreal
world, without love, heart, or passion, without sex, that is the world that [suited her] and
that [she was] interested in.586 Even her husband, for whom she felt a deep tenderness,
did not inspire any physical desire in her.
However, she was aware of her lesbian inclinations and when she met Vita, in 1922,
she was dazzled by the elegance and self-assurance of the young woman. I love her and I
love to be with her, in her splendour.587 To Virginia, Vita represented woman, and to
Vita, Virginia represented the writer; their relationship was built on these images. In her
letters to her husband, Harold Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West reveals the feeling of tenderness mixed with protection which she felt with regard to Virginia. Nevertheless, she
struggled to avoid getting into a physical relationship, which she feared might have consequences for Virginias mental health. Woolf did have some physical experiences with
Vita Sackville-West, but that was not the basis of their relationship. Sackville-West soon
began to seduce other women again, but she continued to see and to love Woolf.
Woolf wrote Orlando (1928) for Vita a kind of dreamed autobiography of Vita
and a lesbian anthem. Orlando is a young aristocrat who, after many adventures, finds
himself transformed one day into a woman. From then on, time is abolished, and he/she
traverses the centuries, in love alternately with men and women. Orlando casts a very different image than The Well of Loneliness. In lieu of fate and the separation of the sexes, Woolf
displays the glory of the androgyne, the confusion of the genders, the negation of categories: As Orlando had never loved anyone but women and since it is human nature to
hesitate before adapting to new conventions, though a woman in her turn, it was a
woman whom she loved; and if the awareness of belonging to the same sex had any effect
on her, it was to revive and deepen her formerly male feelings.588 The book is a satire of
the precise constructs of sexologists and a celebration of beauty and of sex which resist
585. For detail on this period in Virginia Woolfs life, see Instants de vie [1976], Paris, Stock, 1986,
273 pages.
586. Letter from Virginia Woolf to Madge Waugham, June 1906.
587. Louise de Salvo and Mitchell A. Leaska (ed.), The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf,
London, Hutchinson, 1984, 473 pages.
588. Virginia Woolf, Orlando, Paris, Stock, 1974, 351 pages, p.178.
183

being used throughout the centuries. Whereas powers dissipate, dynasties die and countries are devastated, Orlando lived on, always beautiful and always loved. Woolf thus
affirmed the historical vocation of the lesbian (who is not an invention of the 1920s but is
one of the many faces of woman), her scorn for oppressive powers and her ambition to live
serenely within society, despite being different. For Woolf, and as Sackville-West had
shown so well, Sapphism was good luck, not bad; an additional reason to live and love: It
is certain that she collected a double harvest, the pleasures of life were increased for her....
She exchanged for the rigor of trousers the seduction of the petticoat, and so knew the joy
of being loved by both sexes.589
Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West had wanted to prove that what was valid
for homosexuals was also valid for lesbians. They lived out their inversion freely, with
discretion but without fear. They proved that Sapphism could fit into society, because
lesbians were women like others. But lesbians of the inter-war period did not rally around
the model of Orlando, although the book resonated here and there.590 In choosing Radclyffe Hall as their emblem, most lesbians set themselves in reaction against society. They
gained an identity, but lost any chance of integration.
Individual Answers
Reading the accounts of lesbians who lived in the inter-war period, one is struck by
the ignorance that prevailed. The scarcity of meeting places does not explain it fully. Lesbians, like other women, suffered from a want of information on sexuality. Many accounts
confirm the existence of indubitable lesbian tendencies, and sometimes they were acted
upon, in parallel with a total ignorance of the significance of such practices and with the
pursuit of normal marital activity.
Ignorance
Like a good many others, Rachel Pinney discovered that she was a lesbian by
reading The Well of Loneliness in the 1930s. She had had a fling with a woman at the age of
eighteen at Bristol University, without being particularly affected by it. She had married
out of conformity and only came to understand that she was lesbian during the first days
of the war. Similarly, Charlotte Wolff, a German Jew who became a doctor specializing in
female sexuality, acknowledged her long sexual ignorance; she considered that her good
fortune. Unconscious of being different, she lived freely: Neither Ida [her friend] nor I
had ever heard the term homosexual and we did not know anything either about love
between two people of the same sex. We enjoyed our relationship without any fears or
labels, and we did not have any model for making love.591
Homosexuality was often an abstract concept that young women did not think of
as having anything to do with their day-to-day experience.
589. Ibid., p.239.

590. A woman has written to tell me that she has to stop and kiss the page when she reads
O[rlando]: I imagine she is of the same race. The percentage of lesbian is on the rise in the United
States, all because of you (Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, February 1929, in Vita Sackville-West/Virginia Woolf, Correspondence, Paris, Stock, 529 pages, p.379).
184

When did I recognize myself as a lesbian? It is a concept which came to me only
very late. I lived as I was without saying, I am a lesbian. That kind of problem did not
affect me. I had [girl] friends, I was attracted to women and I had been, I believe, from
my early youth... I had what now seems like a great amount of experience, without any
difficulty, because I basically did not realize, I did not ask questions, I lived like that
because I wanted to, thats all.592
In the same way, B insists she was completely unaware:

I always had fancies for others apprentices in the couture houses down the
street... It was my mother who figured out what that meant.593
Pat James remembers that at the age of thirteen she understood her inclinations,
and was not troubled about it:
I did not even wonder what was going on, I did not feel different, I did not even
think about it. I just wasnt much interested in boys that way.594
This ignorance of sexuality particularly affected the lesbians of the first generation,
born in the mid-19th century. And it was not only the uneducated women who missed
defining themselves as lesbians. The English writer Vernon Lee (Violet Paget, 1856-1935)
had female relationships all her life, without drawing any conclusion; the limits of a good
Victorian education and the negation of the body kept her from the realization:
Vernon was homosexual, but she never could face sexual realities. She was perfectly pure. I think that it would have been better if she had admitted it. She went
through a whole series of passions for women, but they were all perfectly correct. She
avoided physical contact. She was completely frustrated.595
Charlotte Mew, an English poetess born in 1869, had a series of disastrous loves:
she was passionately attracted by a young woman, sought to give her her support, to
show her love to her, but did not know how to go about it; finally she was rejected by the
young lady, who refused to consider going further. This pattern was repeated without any
solution.596 The relationship between Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby was more
complex, but also revealing. They met in Somerville College, one of the female colleges at
Oxford, in 1919. After completing their studies, they shared an apartment; and when Vera
Brittain married George Catlin, Winifred continued to live with the couple. Their
friendship ceased only when Winifred died. However, neither of the two women saw the
592. Testimony of A., recorded by Claudie Lesselier, in Aspects de lexprience lesbienne en France, 19301968, mmoire de DEA de sociologie, Paris-VIII, under the direction of R. Castel, November 1987,
148 pages, p.57.
593. Testimony of B., ibid., p.56.
594. Pat James was born in 1921; since the age of 8, she worked at the market. Memoir recorded
in Suzanne Neild and Rosalind Parson, Women like us, London, The Womens Press, 1992, 171 pages,
p.57.
595. Irene Cooper Willis, heir and friend of Vernon Lee, cited by Burdett Gardner, The Lesbian
Imagination (Victorian Style): A Psychological and Critical Study of Vernon Lee, New York, Garland, 1987,
592 pages, p.85.
596. For further details, see Penelope Fitzgerald, Charlotte Mew and her Friends, London, Collins,
1984, 240 pages.
185

relationship as lesbian. On the contrary, Vera Brittain, a notorious feminist, took care in
her memoirs to deny it. She also took the trouble of editing out of her letters any tendentious allusion.
Winifred Holtby was less reserved in her writings. She contested Radclyffe Halls
definition of lesbianism, which she refused to regard as pathological; and she refuted the
presumed linkage between celibacy and frustration. Vera Brittain, on the contrary,
adopted a traditional vision of sexual relations: marriage is essential, and celibacy is a
source of neuroses for women. Brittains position is also symptomatic of a conflict
between feminists and lesbians, with feminist concerns always coming first.
The case of Edith Sitwell is even more unusual; her strange physique was not
attractive to men and she never had any sexual adventures. In addition, she was surrounded by homosexuals, notably her brother Osbert, and she fell in love with the
Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchev, also homosexual. Observers of the time took her for a
lesbian, although she never had relations with women. She found Wyndham Lewiss caricature of her in The Apes of God (1930) and her portrait as a lesbian by Nol Coward
revolting. It is difficult to determine, here, whether this was a case of homosexuality that
was never accepted or simply an inability to face sexuality in general, a result of a difficult
childhood and significant physical complexes.
Assuming an identity
Still, it would be a mistake to believe that most lesbians kept their loves platonic,
without daring to give physical expression to their sexuality. Natalie Barney racked up
many conquests and she is considered to have had more than forty lovers, not counting
casual flings. Many lesbians gave full expression to their attraction for the female body
and their pleasure in making love. The tell-all book by Djuna Barnes, LAlmanach des dames
(The Almanac of ladies) (1928), hails the female pleasures in a devilish satire of the Parisian
lesbian microcosm. Djuna Barnes arrived in Paris in 1919 with her friend, the American
sculptor Thelma Wood. She did not regard herself as lesbian: I am not lesbian. I only love
Thelma, she replied to an insinuation by Ottoline Morrell.597 Marguerite Yourcenar also
lived out her homosexuality very freely. In the 1930s, she led a dissipated life including
many love affairs, until she met the American academic Grace Frick, in 1937, with whom
she shared the rest of her life. She was a regular on the Paris lesbian scene, at the Th
Colombin, rue du Mont-Thabor, and Wagram, 208 rue de Rivoli, and she was a mainstay
of the local night life.
The most remarkable example is definitely Vita Sackville-West, whose extraordinary vitality we noted above. Her life was marked by a series of scandalous episodes,
like her flight with Violet Trefusis, and she was considered responsible for breaking up
several marriages, including that of Dorothy Wellesley. Other affairs were pursued with
the tacit agreement of her husband, including with Mary Campbell and Virginia Woolf. A
veritable Dona Juana, Sackville-West took one lover after another, without the least
scruples. The list includes Rosamund Grosvenor, Margaret Voigt, Hilda Matheson,
Evelyn Irons, Christopher St John, and Gwen St Aubin, inter alia.
Her marriage with Harold Nicolson was a perfect incongruity in English high
society of the inter-war period. Both were homosexual, and both pursued their affairs in
597. Cited by Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank, op. cit., p.245.
186

parallel, without any concerns and without denting their deep attachment to each other.
Sackville-West was also sympathetic to the news that her elder son, Ben, was homosexual. She wrote him a long letter, in which she managed to reconcile the defense of
homosexuality with an apologia for marriage, the gist of which said,
But Daddy was wrong on one point: that doesnt bother me. What would
bother me, is if you believed that that will inevitably keep you from what you call all
the happiness and joys of marriage. Remove that idea from your head immediately.
Two of the happiest married couples that I know, whose names I must conceal out of
discretion, are both homosexuals. For you undoubtedly know that homosexuality
exists among women as well as men. And then, look at Duncan [Grant] and Vanessa
[Bell]; they are not really married, but have lived together for years, which amounts to
the same thing. They love each other as Daddy and I do, although Duncan is completely homosexual. Therefore, you can see that it is not necessarily an obstacle to our
kind of happiness.598
Violet Trefusiss letters to Sackville-West reveal a bubbly temperament, a great

emotional freedom and total abandon to sexual desire. There is no sign of the reserve
which one might expect from a well-bred young lady. In her letters, Violet often calls Vita
by a mans name, whether Julian, Dimitri or Mytia, and she boldly makes the most compromising statements. Furthermore, it is Vita who moderates their relationship and tries
to keep it within manageable bounds, whereas Violet, in the exaltation of her love, clearly
would have been willing to sacrifice her reputation. Oh my God, Mytia, a demonic
force has broken out in me, I would have you with me before you had time to do a thing,
and you remain blind. One of these days, the clouds will burst and you will be carried
with all the rest.599. Trefusiss love is explicitly carnal; she loves Sackville-West with all
her body and sends explicit invitations and erotic provocations, with no decency, no
shame. Sex is natural, love is healthy: My days are consumed in an impotent desire for
you, and my nights are haunted by unbearable dreams.... I am dying of hunger for you, if
you really want to know.600
Katherine Mansfields journal similarly reveals that a young lady from a good
family, raised in an environment sheltered from sexual realities, could fully enter into and
assume her sexuality, without scruples or remorse. One passage may be summarized thus
I spent last night in her arms and this evening I hate her which, once you
think about it, means that I adore her: that I cannot lie in my bed without feeling the
magic of her body... I feel more deeply with her than with any man all those impulses
known as sexual... And now she is coming and pressed against her, holding her
hands, her face against mine, I am a child, I am a woman, and more than half a man.601
There were other very original alternative lifestyles developed during the inter-war
period which called into question the bases of patriarchal society. One of the best
examples of an experiment in lesbian life fully engaged is the community founded in the
598. Cited by Victoria Glendinning, Vita, la vie de Vita Sackville-West, Paris, Albin Michel, 1987,
437 pages, p.290.
599. Undated letter [1918?], in Violet Trefusis, Lettres Vita, op. cit., p.169.
600. Ibid., 30 June 1919, p.154.
601. Katherine Mansfields journal, 1 June 1907, about her relations withEdie Bendall, cited by
Antony Alpers, The Life of Katherine Mansfield, New York, The Viking Press, 1980, 466 pages, p.49.
187

1930s by Edith Craig, daughter of the actress Ellen Terry. Edy lived with Christopher St
John (a pseudonym of Christabel Marschall) until his death, in 1947. Christopher defined
himself as a congenital lesbian, whereas Edy was bisexual. She established a triangle with
Christopher and Clare Atwood (Tony) in Smallhythe, in the English countryside, and
they made their house a special meeting place for lesbians. In July 1931, she invited her
neighbors Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge (who lived in Rye) to attend a show at the
Barn Theatre. Everyone dressed as a man for the occasion. In 1932, Vita Sackville-West
was invited to read her poem, The Land; her husband Harold Nicolson, Virginia and
Leonard Woolf, Stephen Spender, Raymond Mortimer and William Plomer were also
invited the flower of British homosexuality. In 1933, Virginia Woolf joined the group.
The sexual intercourse was very free; Vita Sackville-West even spent a night with Christopher. The neighbors did not appear to have any problem with these goings-on; the
threesome was considered an intriguing eccentricity and did not set off the hostility to
which Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge, for example,602 were accustomed.
This type of experiment remained very rare, however. Most lesbians of the interwar period, whether well-known or unknown, stuck to a traditional-looking family life
which in the end differed very little from the heterosexual model. Such cases were more
numerous, but there are few accounts on them since they did not attract attention.
Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier fit that picture perfectly. The shy young
American met Monnier in 1917 while visiting her bookshop. They were friends until 1937,
when they broke up. With Monniers assistance and advice, Beach founded the Shakespeare & Co. bookshop. They led an undramatic life; for entertainment, they would go to
visit Natalie Barney and thus they were in touch with the Parisian lesbian community.603
Neither one was very loquacious about their relationship, which appears to have been a
model of equilibrium. They did not mimic heterosexual roles, but each assumed her own
identity, without reference to male models, and they did not fall into conflict and
destructive relations.
The journalist Janet Flanner (Broom), too, avoided any public show and preferred
discretion to the flamboyance some of her friends. An American by origin, Flanner was
part of the loose group of Left Bank lesbians, intellectuals and artists who gathered
around Natalie Barney. Like many others, she left the United States in order to be able to
live more freely, without being subjected to the constant pressure of public opinion. Her
relationship with the writer Solita Solano was unremarkable; both felt that their way of
life was normal and natural, so there was little scope for making them the subject of any
scandal or scene.
Many anonymous lesbians who were interviewed also insist that their relationships were natural. Me, I always considered myself very normal... But at the same time I
was normal and I was glad to be different. Because, fundamentally, I was in rupture with
the idea of family, whereas everyone had a family; I was in rupture with marriage, whereas
all the women were marrying; I was essentially lesbian whereas most women loved men...
I was rather glad to be different, thats all.604
602. For further details, see Joy Melville, Ellen & Edy: A Biography of Ellen Terry and her Daughter
Edith Craig, 1847-1947, London, Pandora, 1987, 293 pages.
603. For further details, see Noel Riley Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, New YorkLondon, W.W. Norton & Co, 1983, 447 pages; and Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank, op. cit.
604. Testimony of N., recorded by Claudie Lesselier, Aspects, op. cit., p.60.
188

The relationship with ones parents was complex, however. Sylvia told me, One
did not speak about sex at that time, but from the age of eleven I started falling in love
with girls. When it became more apparent, my mother started making fun of my
feelings.605
However, not all lesbians inevitably suffered from peer pressure, and the assertion
of ones homosexuality did not necessarily cause a break with the parents. An affair with
another girl, if it remained discreet, was less likely to attract scandal than a too evident
flirtation with a young man. Thus, B testifies: My mother left me a great deal of freedom.
The only thing she was terrified of was that I might become pregnant without being
married. You can do what you want, but not that, she said. To be an unmarried mother,
to her, was an abomination. Seeing that I was not attracted to boys, she thought: at least,
she wont have a baby that way! Then she left me more freedom than my sister...606
Another says: They allowed my friend to visit at our house, and one day after she left,
there was one of those scenes between my mother and me, my mother saying that this
was unacceptable, that I was heading for trouble,... that she did not understand me, etc. I
answered: Okay, mom, if thats the way it is, Ill leave. My father, who usually did not get
involved, basically a good and reasonable man, said to me: Okay; you can leave tomorrow,
on the understanding, have no fear, that we will talk it over again here. Actually, no one
ever mentioned it again. It was settled then and there.607
A. lived with her friend for forty years, and the rest of her family considered her a
full member. The couple was accepted in the neighborhood, and in the village they moved
to thereafter: We didnt have any problems... For decades, we lived in peace; we were
two friends, we were the little household at Number 25, if you will, and it should be said
that we never had serious trouble, in our case. Me, I was pretty quiet, and I didnt get in
anyones way. Maybe they laughed behind our backs; I couldnt have cared less.608
Charlotte Wolff, who came from a middle-class Jewish family, also enjoyed a great
tolerance: The Jewish middle class in general was ignorant on subjects like unorthodox
sex, but my parents and their family were not. I was agreeably surprised when my aunt
Bertha once remarked: I believe you are in love with Mrs. X. I answered: In love, but not
very much attracted. She smiled. Wolff noted: I was accepted for myself in my private
and professional circles, and I suppose that I naively assumed that the whole world would
do the same.609
Relations with ones parents were not always so easy. For Valentine Ackland, adolescence was the major turning point. Paradoxically, it was her parents who revealed to
her that she was different and led her to become radical. In 1922, at the age of sixteen, she
fell in love with Laura, who was three years older. In all innocence, they embraced,
exchanged gifts, and wrote passionate letters which were soon discovered. Father and
daughter clashed, in mutual incomprehension:
605. Testimony of Sylvia in Women like us, op. cit., p.63.

606. Testimony of B., recorded by Claudie Lesselier, Aspects, op. cit., p.56.
607. Testimony of A., born in 1907 in Paris, to a father who worked and a mother who stayed
home, ibid., p.74.
608. Ibid.
609. Charlotte Wolff, Hindsight, op. cit., p.73.
189

I did not understand at all what he sought to discover. I said to him that we loved
each other. I have a very sharp memory of the expression of disgust on his face... He
became completely furious more furious than I had ever seen him. He asked me
whether I knew what an indecent thing I was doing. I said no, I had not done anything
indecent; it may have been weird, but it wasnt evil. I thought that some of us must
have been built wrongly. He asked me, in a rage, what I meant. I answered that Laura
ought to have been a man. I thought that Laura must have been one in an earlier incarnation.610
After the scene with the father, who felt that his authority was being flouted, Valentine had to face maternal recriminations: No man will ever want to marry you if he
hears of this; It is a disgusting thing, unpardonable. If Valentine remained unimpressed,
Laura was convinced: Her mother said that unless she married, she would remain an old
maid, dishonored, poor and rejected.611
The arguments of respectability were powerful in a society governed by others
opinions. When that was not enough, medical arguments would be used to terrorize
them: Valentine was told that she would go blind and lose her mind if she continued her
practices against nature. Standing up to her parents, Valentine gradually discovered the
realities that were being hidden, and she came to terms with her identity. After an unconsummated marriage, she decided to live independently. She had her hair cut in a bob and
developed female friendships. In 1926, she met Sylvia Townsend Warner. They moved in
together in 1930, composing poems together and settling in Dorset. They were very committed politically, fighting Fascism and serving in the volunteer ambulance corps in
Spain. They lived independently for forty years and managed to assert their lesbian
identity without any major problems.
Self rejection
Not all lesbians managed to accept their identity and to live their lives accordingly.
Many women did not admit they were different, or rejected the most extreme aspects. A
freedom of morals and provocative dressing might go hand-in-hand with a certain conformity and an uncomfortable question about ones identity. The painter Romaine Brooks
exemplifies this schizophrenia. Like others, Brooks built her identity gradually, in
reaction to her mother, who rejected her, and then as a result of contact with the cosmopolitan homosexual community which she became a part of in Capri and then in Paris.
Brooks remained sexually innocent for a very long time, although she fell in love with
several of her counterparts during her adolescence. She had difficulty accepting her sexuality and the fact of being different. Far from being a positive experience, for her lesbianism seemed to be a matter of bad luck and a flaw. This feeling was reinforced by many
failures in love. Her meeting with John Brooks turned the corner. Like other British
homosexuals, Brooks had left England following the Oscar Wilde trial and had settled in
Capri, where he shared a house with E.F. Benson and Somerset Maugham. He met
Romaine, whose mother had died and bequeathed an immense fortune to her, and he
married her at her request; neither one was in love. The marriage lasted only one year
610. Valentine Ackland, For Sylvia: An Honest Account, London, Chatto & Windus, 1985, 135 pages,
p.67.
611. Ibid., p.68-69.
190

because Brooks, keen to retain his respectability, was unable to accept his wifes transformation: she cut her hair and started dressing like a man. Then she struck up friendships
with the princesse de Polignac, Ida Rubinstein, Renata Borgatti, DAnnunzio, Montesquiou, Cocteau, and Whistler. She met Natalie Barney in 1912, and that was the great love
of her life.612 However, that hardly provided any satisfaction either: Barney went on with
her conquests, without regard for Romaines fidelity.
Romaine Brookss attitude with regard to the lesbian community is ambiguous.
She was a full member, a celebrity among the homosexuals of Paris, and was satirized in
Extraordinary Women (1928)613 by Compton Mackenzie, whom she depicted in a savage and
cruel portrait in her own work. Her two favorite targets were Radclyffe Hall and Una
Troubridge, whose affectations and victim mentality she despised. Still, she socialized
with them constantly and she herself wore only mens clothing. Her portrait of Troubridge, one of her most famous tableaux, is a caricature of the New Woman, and an
indictment against lesbian stereotypes, in all:
A hard gaze, the left eye magnified by a monocle, the mouth pinched, the hair
short and tight,. And clothing that is hardly more flattering: the high collar of a white
shirt interrupted by a tie which strangles the neck; a black jacket over a gray and
black striped skirt this is the kind of overdone costume, the type of get-up that
encourages ridicule of lesbians.614
Brooks never managed to get beyond these contradictions. According to her biographer, Franoise Werner, she adored traditional values; make no mistake: the great
rebel, the nonconformist, enjoyed her female society that saved appearances.615 Her
inability to accept herself as a lesbian reflects on her social attitude: she didnt like women
who resembled her too much. This love-hate relationship led her to take a political stance
to the far right. 616
Sometimes, the different road is too fraught with suffering, and too lonely to be followed to the end. Annemarie, Klaus and Erika Manns friend, was born in 1908 into an
ultraconservative Zurich family of wealthy industrialists who became Nazi sympathizers.
Her mother, Rene Schwarzenbach, a very respectable woman of the upper middle class
and the daughter of a general, was nonetheless lesbian. Her invasive personality stifled
her daughter, whom she forbad to admit her homosexuality, all the while encouraging her
masculine tendencies and her attraction for women. She herself had an affair with the
professional singer Emmy Krger, who lived in their house. In 1928, Annemarie left home
for Paris, then Berlin. Everywhere she went, her attractive and desperate beauty inspired
passions including in Erika Mann, Carson McCullers, Ella Maillart, Barbara Hamilton
and the baronne Margot von Opel. Her whole life was one long escape into drugs, travel,
and writing. In Nouvelle lyrique (1933), she creates a male stand-in for herself, a depressed
man in love with Sibyl, a cabaret singer. The impossibility of homosexual love is represented here in the opposition between the well-bred young man on his way to a diplo612. On Romaine Brooks, see Meryle Secrest, Between Me and Life: A Biography of Romaine Brooks,
London, Macdonald & Janes, 1976, 432 pages; Franoise Werner, Romaine Brooks, Paris, Plon, 1990,
334 pages; Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank, op. cit.
613. See Chapters Five and Seven.
614. Franoise Werner describing the picture, in Romaine Brooks, op. cit., p.267.
615. Ibid., p.262.
616.See Chapter Six.
191

matic career, and the muse of Berlin night life. Looking for a pretense of stability,
Schwarzenbach married the homosexual Claude Clarac, Second Secretary at the French
embassy in Persia, in 1935. In spite of all, she sank into a morphine habit and died at the
age of 34 in a fall from a bicycle, after having made several suicide attempts.
Thus, the first lesbian identities appeared in the 1920s, but they still remained very
polemical. The majority of lesbians were defined according to the model of the masculine
lesbian, patterned on Radclyffe Hall. I believe I liked it better when we all martyrs!
declares Valerie Seymour, in The Well of Loneliness.617 However, this model was not the only
one and we should not forget that certain lesbians were able to propagate optimistic
ideals and an identity based on acceptance of oneself and integration into society.
THE BIRTH OF A HOMOSEXUAL COMMUNITY?

Was there any homosexual community to speak of, in the 1920s? The term conjures
up images of coherent homosexual groups, interdependent, sharing the same cultural reference, the same aspirations and, presumably, the same goals (militancy, educating the
public, mutual support) and so forth. And can we speak of a homosexual community in
the broad sense (homosexuals and lesbians) or must we keep them in mind as two separate groups? Based on what we have seen, there appears to be little basis for imagining a
homosexual and lesbian community. The two groups lived completely autonomously;
they had little or nothing to do with each other, and they did not have the same references
and certainly not the same goals: lesbians were not under any legal pressure in any of the
three countries concerned. The first point is more delicate. In fact, the most persuasive
sign that there was a homosexual community and at the European level is that of
shared references. English, French and German homosexuals all looked to a certain
number of famous ancestors, they read certain authors, they went to see certain plays
and enjoyed certain painters. This reality exists and it unites the homosexual populations
more effectively than the militant movements, which affected only a minority. On the
other hand, the homosexual community was certainly still not very coherent: it may have
functioned relatively well at the level of the elites, but it was far from integrating all the
social classes and all the categories of homosexuals.
Sharing a Common Culture

Between the wars, the foundation for a homosexual community was laid in the
establishment of common references. Literature was one of the most fertile fields for
developing the essence of the homosexual culture. Certain names were quoted time and
again, demonstrating that there was a sort of homosexual literature. The classics, like
Plato, played an important part for students, who might discover the mysteries of Greek
love through hints and allusions when the text was not expurgated: Mr. Cornwallis
stopped the student who was going over the text and indicated, in a neutral voice: You
can skip that line, it is just an allusion to the unmentionable vice of the Greeks. 618
617. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness, op. cit., p.391.
192

Certain texts developed a wicked reputation, including Shakespeares Sonnets,
Marlowes plays and, more recent, the works of Walter Pater and Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The very name of Oscar Wilde was an evocation of vice, as was that of Rene
Vivien in France which became part of their attraction: I have all the works of Rene
Vivien in the original, my friend knew my passion for Rene Vivien very well and, every
time she could, she took the opportunity to buy one of those little books from Lemerre,
illustrated...619
In England, uranian poetry enjoyed certain a vogue in homosexual milieux.620
Many of the poets were related to the BSSP, besides. A Shropshire Lad (1896) by A.E.
Housman became a cult poem enjoyed by a whole generation. Contemporary poets were
the most read, and they were often quoted, for they were able to evoke the personal experiences of homosexuals who identified with the choices, the doubts, the suffering, and
sometimes the struggle and the pride evoked. In the first generation, Edward Carpenter
and J.A. Symonds were very popular in England, as well as Ronald Firbank (whom Siegfried and Cecil Beaton enjoined Stephen Tennant to read). Among the best-known novelists and poets in England were D.H. Lawrence, Compton Mackenzie, Walt Whitman,
E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Rupert Brooke and, a little later, Christopher Isherwood.
Radclyffe Halls book, for its part, clearly became the touchstone of the lesbians in
the inter-war period. It is constantly cited by women when they are asked to name their
major influences. Eleonor read it when she was sixteen: We all wanted at all costs to get
our hands on The Well of Loneliness and we passed it around, even when it was forbidden. It
was completely dog-eared. We thought it was marvelous simply because we knew we
were like that.621 Its scope went far beyond England. Even Frenchwomen testify to its
impact in their life:
That was a big thing, it was a whole poque (which I did not live through, in its
entirety, of course...) But finally, when we in France started to read this book which
had been burned in England... Then, obviously, that created a certain fashion for lesbians to carry it around... I always the think of the ties from Sulka, the tie was a little bit
an imitation of Radclyffe Hall In the end, it wasnt great literature, but it was dear to
the hearts of lesbians.622
In Germany, Thomas Manns writings were replete with homosexual insinuations,

skillfully dissimulated. His son Klaus soon made himself a reputation as a homosexual
writer, in particular with the publication of his very explicit book, The Pious Dance. The
high priest of homoeroticism was Stefan George, whose poetry celebrating the beauty of a
young boy was reserved for a very limited elite readership. Jelena Nagrodskayas novel, The
Bronze Door (1911), was a great success. It went through five printings in Germany and was
translated into several languages. The 1000-page novel by A.E. Weirauch, Der Skorpion,
became the major reference of the lesbian public. Hilde Radusch, a former municipal
adviser of the KPD, noted: For me, the book was a revelation, I recognized myself
619. Testimony of A., recorded by Claudie Lesselier, Aspects, op. cit., p.102.
620. For a complete study on this topic, see Timothy dArch Smith, Love in Earnest, Some Notes on
the Lives and Writings of English Uranian Poets from 1889 to 1930, London, Routledge & Kegan, 1970,
280 pages.
621. Eleonor, testimony reported in Women like us, op. cit., p.34.
622. Testimony of A., recorded by Claudie Lesselier, Aspects, op. cit., p.101.
193

there.623 In 1931, Die Freundin described it as the most beautiful of all the womens
novels. The work was fairly traditional, at that, in the homosexual coming of age genre
with all its obligatory stages. And it imitates Halls novel, The Unlit Lamp (1924), in many
points.
In France, of course everyone was reading Verlaine and Rimbaud, and the turn-ofthe-century dandies like Robert de Montesquiou and Jean Lorrain, whose Monsieur de
Phocas (1901) tells the story of a man obsessed by the death of one of his friends at the age
of eleven. The Proustian influence is undeniable; even those who did not read his works
knew how ambiguous they were. The homosexual elite read Sodom and Gomorrah, but they
did not always like it. On the subject of male homosexuality, the dispute usually centered
on Prousts dissimulation of his own homosexuality, and in particular his use of the subterfuge of Albertine: That Proust, for example, made Albert into Albertine, makes me
doubt the whole work.This cheating kills our confidence.624
When it came to the lesbians, they harshly disputed both his description of their
morals and his general view, which they considered masculine, partisan and degrading:
But was he confused, was he ignorant when he assembled such a Gomorrah of
abysmally vicious girls, denounced an understanding, a community having lost the
comfort of the earth-shaking truth which guided us through Sodom the fact is,
with all due respect to Mr. Prousts imagination or error, that there is no Gomorrah.
Puberty? loneliness, prisons, aberration, snobbery... Those are thin seedbeds, not sufficient to account for the generation and feeding of a vice so widespread, so well-established, and the indispensable solidarity that goes with it. Intact, enormous, eternal,
Sodom contemplates from above its pale shadow.625
Reading Proust also amounted to a provocation the pleasure of finally seeing the
subject broached and being able to wave the book around without actually knowing what
to make of it. Vita Sackville-West wrote to Virginia Woolf, to that effect, in 1926: The
rest of the time, I read Proust. Since no one on board had ever heard of Proust, but had
enough French to be able to translate the title, they rather looked at me askance.626
But it was Gide who became the ultimate reference on homosexuality in France in
the inter-war period. Gide was read by the men, and by lesbians alike: Andr Gide, that
was when I was at the teachers college, so I was nineteen years old (1936). If It Die was
about a mans homosexuality, but I understood that it was the same problem. Corydon? I
read that one, too. He was a great guy, Gide.627 For some homosexuals, Gide was a revelation; his influence is palpable: At a certain moment, having read Andr Gide, families
I hate you, Nathanal I threw it all in. I left the teachers college, I left my family, I left
everything. I came to Paris (1937).628
Homosexual culture was not limited to the private pleasures of literature. It was
entirely possible to go into town to see homosexual shows. In addition to the traditional
transvestite cabarets that could be found in many homosexual establishments and of
623. Cited by Claudia Schoppmann, Der Skorpion, Frauenliebe in der Weimarer Republik, Berlin,
Frhlings Erwachen, 1984, 81 pages.
624. Ren Crevel, Mon corps et moi, Paris, ditions du Sagittaire, 1926, 204 pages, p.62-63.
625. Colette, Le Pur et lImpur, op. cit.
626. Vita Sackville-West/Virginia Woolf, Correspondence, op. cit., p.129-130.
627. Testimony of N., born in 1904, living in the provinces with her grandmother, recorded by
Claudie Lesselier, Aspects, op. cit., p.104.
194

which Germany had made a specialty, it became possible to see homosexual spectacles in
perfectly traditional settings. In England, the literary and art critics were openly prohomosexual. New Stateman and Listener, one due to T.C. Worsley, the other due to J.R. Ackerley, defended homosexual artists.629
In addition, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes had made the treatment of homosexuality on stage a familiar item since before the war. Diaghilevs homosexuality was notorious, as was his affair with Nijinsky. The success of the Ballets Russes among the
homosexual intelligentsia was extraordinary: Proust, Cocteau, Lytton Strachey became
fanatics.
After 1919, the dancer Ivor Novello and the actor Nol Coward630 perpetuated the
homosexual myth in the world of entertainment. All his life, Coward distinguished
himself by his relative discretion; he never made a public statement about his homosexuality and, while his immediate entourage was perfectly aware of his tastes, those watching
his ambiguous plays often remained unaware of the subtext. Still, he helped to popularize
the image of the chic, decadent homosexual on the British stage in the 1920s. In The Young
Idea (1923), the two heroes, Sholto and Gerda, embody the two extremes of the androgynous fashion, the effeminate boy and the flapper. In The Vortex (1924), Nicki Lancaster
takes drugs, which was interpreted by critics as a substitute for homosexuality. In 1929,
he put together Bitter Sweet, a musical based on the homosexuality of the Oscar Wilde generation, in another skillful maneuver. One outstandingly transparent allusion is in the
line, We are the reason for the Nineties being gay. And, finally, in Design for Living
(1930), he broaches the topic of bisexuality.
The best-known English actors of the time, John Gielgud, Max Adrian, Gyles
Isham, Henry Kendall, Charles Laughton, Ernest Milton, Esme Percy, Eric Portman, Ernst
Thesiger and Frank Vosper, were homosexual or bisexual. In Germany, actors like
Wilhelm Bendow, Max Hansen, Adolf Wohlbrck, Hubert von Meyerinck, and Hans
Heinrich von Twardowsky made no secret of their homosexuality. In France, Jean Marais
was the biggest celebrity. Among women, Marlene Dietrich, Zarah Leander, and Greta
Garbo were bisexual. Many homosexuals were also found in the fashion and art world, in
particular, in England, the interior decorator John Fowler, the set designer Oliver Messel,
the great dressmaker Norman Hartnell and the photographer Cecil Beaton.
In Germany, there was an attempt to create a homosexual theater, the Theater of
Eros, which was founded in Berlin-Steglitz on July 6, 1921, by Bruno Matussek. It was an
itinerant theater which put on shows for private individuals or in hotels. It specialized in
plays with homosexual themes like Satire et tragdie de Caesareon, which was about the life
of an invert. The homosexual newspapers published the program in their advertisements.
Der Hellasbote, in its May 26, 1923 issue, announced the June 4 presentation of a play by
628. Ibid. For her part, Vita Sackville-West read Les Faux-monnayeurs and Si le grain ne meurt in
March 1927 and was not charmed in the least: The African part bored me; I don't think that lust is
interesting as such, and it did not inspire me in any way to know that Gide had a young Arabian boy
five times in one night But the part relating to Wilde is good, although revolting, (Vita SackvilleWest/Virginia Woolf, Correspondence, op. cit., p.238).
629. All references in Noel Annan, Our Age: English Intellectuals between the Wars: A Group Portrait,
New York, Random House, 1991, 479 pages, p.114-115.
630. On Coward, see Philip Hoare, Noel Coward: A Biography, London, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995,
605 pages.
195

Reinhold Klugs entitled Who is Guilty? Not much is known about this experiment; it seems
that, for all his goodwill, Matussek lacked dramatic talent.
Several plays with homosexual themes were played in a more traditional setting in
the inter-war period. In Germany, Klaus Manns play Anja and Esther was directly inspired
by the adolescence of the Mann children. On stage, Erika and Klaus interpreted their own
roles, Esther was played by Pamela Wedekind and Jakob by Gustaf Grndgens. This was
already scandalous in itself, since Pamela was Erikas lover, and Klaus and Gustav were
also homosexual. The play was put on simultaneously in Munich and Hamburg in
October 1925, but was not received very favorably. In 1926, it went on the road, with a different cast, and it had a great success, especially in Berlin and Vienna. Another play with
homosexual overtones, Le Mal de la jeunesse (1925) by Ferdinand Bruckner, also deals with
young people adrift in a Berlin pension. The gender dictates the conduct: out of love for a
boy, a girl goes into prostitution; another commits suicide out of love for her friend.631 In
England, J.R. Ackerleys The Prisoners of War (1925) was announced as the new homosexual play, and it was the first to cover the subject in a contemporary way. The reviews
were good and the homosexual intelligentsia was delighted: Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, T.E. Lawrence, and Siegfried Sassoon raved about it. Ackerley was
having an affair at that time with Ivor Novello, anyway. The Green Bay Tree, by Mordaunt
Shairp, was produced in London for the first time on January 25, 1933, at the St Martin
Theatre, with Laurence Olivier as a young man seduced by an aging homosexual. In
France, Roger Martin du Gards Un taciturne was shown in 1931 at the Louis-Jouvet
Theatre. The play is very dark and dramatic.
The most famous play with homosexual themes of the inter-war period was
unquestionably The Captive (La Prisonnire), by douard Bourdet.632 It was played in France
for the first time on March 6, 1926 at the Femina Theatre and was also staged in England
and Germany. It became a cultural mainstay for homosexuals in that period, and was constantly cited as an example of the recrudescence of lesbianism. The heroine, Irene, is
under the influence of a married woman. Her father pressures her to marry a childhood
friend, Jacques, who is warned by the husband of the older woman, that,
They are not like us. Stay away from them! Under cover of friendship, a woman
introduces herself into a household whenever she wants, at any hour of the day, and
she poisons everything there; she ransacks everything before the man whose home is
being destroyed sees what is happening. By the time he realizes it, it is too late, he is
alone! Alone, facing the secret alliance of two beings who understand one another,
who divine each others wishes, because they are alike, because they are of the same
sex, from a different planet than him, the foreigner, the enemy.633
The play is striking in its fundamental anti-lesbianism and the number of prejudices it reveals. Curiously, its success was attributed to its modernity, and its temerity(!);
it was judged by many to be scandalous and symptomatic of the epoch. It became a
symbol of the homosexual culture of the period, and sparked a fashion for strict tailoring,
ties and a short haircut La Prisonnire.
631. Many plays taking Oscar Wilde or the Eulenburg affair as their themes were also presented.
632. douard Bourdet, La Prisonnire, a comedy in three acts, Paris, Les uvres libres, 1926,
116 pages.
633. Ibid., p.70-71.
196

That same year, another play which also gave the worst possible view of lesbians,
Les Dtraques (Ruined), was played at the Theatre of the Two Masks, featuring two
criminal, homosexual teachers.634
Few movies that could be called homosexual were made in the inter-war period,
but there were some interesting references.635 Generally, the homosexual themes are disguised or barely hinted at. In a German comedy from 1927, Der Frst von Pappenheim (The
Prince of Pappenheim) by Richard Eichberg, Curt Bois plays an actor in a variety show who
does a transvestite number. The film was later used by the Nazis to associate Jews and
homosexuality. In Geschlecht in Fesseln (Chains), by Wilhelm Dieterle, 1929, a man in prison
discovers homosexuality. When he is released, his lover makes him sing; he ends up committing suicide.
These examples show that, as far as cinema, homosexuality was still treated in a
very simplistic way. The homosexual is either a transvestite, the source of comic misunderstandings, or a figure of tragedy, guaranteed to end in dishonor and death. The only
completely homosexual film, Anders als Andern (1919), had already dealt with the topic of
homosexuality in a tragic mode. At least, it provided a message of hope.636 In another pessimistic film, Mikael, by Carl Theodor Dreyer (1924), a painter falls in love with his model,
Mikael, who is only interested in his money and leaves him for a woman. Dying, the
painter makes Mikael his sole legatee.
In 1929, Revolte im Erziehungshaus (Revolt at the reformatory) and, in 1931, Karl Antons
Der Fall des Generalstabs-Oberst Redl (Colonel Redl) also featured homosexual characters. Zro
de conduite (Zero for Comportment), by Jean Vigo, in 1933, broke the paradigm and used homosexuality as a sign of rebellion, of rejecting the established order. Now, it took on a
political, anarchistic dimension. The film was called subversive and was banned until
1945.
Lesbianism was treated in a very limited way in movies; examples are Claudine At
School, by S. de Poligny, 1937, and especially Girls in Uniform by Lontine Sagan (after
Christa Winsloe), 1931 the most famous lesbian film of the inter-war period. It marked
a generation of lesbians as surely as Radclyffe Halls book. I must say that one film that
changed me, when I was young, was Girls in Uniform. I even said so, to my grandmother:
I have to go see this film. And what a film! I was fourteen or fifteen years old when it
came out. I had seen the posters, and that is what made me say to my grandmother: You
know, you have to give me money to go to the movies.637
The film gets its power from the faithful evocation of the noxious atmosphere of a
German boarding school. One of the most remarkable scenes takes place in the dormitory,
where all the girls wait until their beloved teacher, Miss von Bernburg, gives them a goodnight kiss. The girls are kneeling by their beds, heads lowered. The heroine, Manuela,
gives herself fully to the kiss, in ecstasy. In the novel, the drama culminates in Manuelas
suicide. In the movie, when she is about to jump out the window, she is held back by her
comrades and carried forth in triumph, the whole college revolts against the authority of
the director all the pupils having, in fact, been in love with a fellow pupil or a professor,
like Manuela. This triumphal and entirely improbable dnouement show that there was a
634. Andr Breton raved about this play in Nadja.
635. For further details, see Bertrand Philbert, LHomosexualit lcran, Paris, Henri Veyrier, 1984,
181 pages.
636. See Chapter Two. Most copies of the film were burned during the 1930s.
637. Testimony of B., recorded by Claudie Lesselier, Aspects, op. cit., p.105.
197

desire to break the fatalistic paradigm of homosexuality, substituting certain death with
an awakening and a revolt. In this sense, the film could be considered a call to rise up, to
form a lesbian movement and assert ones rights and proudly affirm ones identity. At the
time, it was especially interpreted as a criticism of Prussian authoritarianism, and homosexuality was seen as a sign of political dissidence.
The other major film touching on lesbianism was Loulou (1929), by Georg Wilhelm
Pabst, with Louise Brooks in the principal role. Countess Geschwitz is in love with Spitz,
who toys with her, without ever giving her satisfaction. The ambiguity of the relationship
did not escape the censors. In several countries, England in particular, scenes with the
countess were removed. The film did not suggest a lesbian identity as powerfully as Girls
in Uniform, for homosexuality was only as minor topic; and the character of Spitz, an easy
woman, a femme fatale, reproduced the inevitable stereotype of the lesbian as a depraved
woman, eager to try any new sensation.
However, even if the cinema in the inter-war period was still marked by prejudices
and conventional treatments, it was an eye-opener for many homosexuals. They could
identify with a hero of their own sex, and certain figures became cult figures of camp, like
Marlene Dietrich or Zarah Leander.
Popular songs also became homosexual references. French lesbians looked to Susy
Solidor, a singer and manager of a lesbian nightclub, who put out a record (for limited distribution) in 1932, Lesbian Paris. The singer Damia, a bisexual, was also much appreciated:
I always listened to Damia. I remember [the lyrics] that could apply to two women as
well as to a man and a woman, so we took them for ourselves. Many things were not
intended for lesbians, but they were transformed; instead of masculine, we cast them as
feminine.638
Another emblematic figure of the time was Barbette, the transvestite trapeze artist
who fascinated the crowd, and in particular Maurice Sachs, who was a spectator in 1926:
I may never have seen anything more graceful than this girl dressed in feathers who
sprang so boldly from the trapeze, did a somersault and caught herself in full flight by a
foot, and then, taking a bow, pulled a big curly wig off her head and revealed that she was
a young man! This little American appears at the Variety under the name of Barbette; I
went to see him at the Daunou Hotel where he is staying, and found him lying completely
naked on his bed, his face covered with a thick layer of black pomade. Bisexual on the
stage and bi-colored at home. He had just three books on his bedside table: Ulysses, Le
Grand cart, and Havelock Elliss Onanism Alone and for Two.639
The homosexual community finally recognized itself in certain artists who took a
homoerotic approach in their work.640 At the end of the 19th century, male homosexuality was often only suggested. It appeared in certain works in the aesthetic (and decadent) movement, in Antiquity or a medieval context, in the form of languid, androgynous
young men for example, in the tableaux of the pre-Raphalite painter Burne-Jones.
Kitsch paintings by the autodidact Elisar von Kupffer, a member of Gemeinschaft der
Eigenen, evoke the androgynous figure of disguised adolescents, transported to a homosexual paradise. More suggestive were the photographs of Baron von Gloeden, Guglielmo
638. Ibid., p.106.
639. Maurice Sachs, Au temps du Buf sur le toit [1939], Paris, Grasset, 1987, 235 pages, p.194.
640. See Emmanuel Cooper, The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the Last 100 Years in the
West, London, Routledge & Keagan, 1986, 324 pages; also 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung, Berlin, Schwules
Museum, 1997, 384 pages.
198

Plschow and Baron Corvo, featuring nude young Sicilians; there was little attempt to
mask their homosexual motivation. The erotic drawings of Aubrey Bearsdley, full of beautiful young men and satyrs with oversized phalluses, were equally unequivocal, as were
those of the German Maurice Besnaux (Marcus Behmer), a member of the WhK, who also
illustrated Oscar Wildes Salom and whose drawings appeared in Simplicissimus and Die
Insel.
Homosexual and lesbian themes were shown far more directly in the 1920s. Particularly in Germany, many painters and illustrators contributed to re-examining homosexuality or had links to the homosexual movements. Many homosexual books included
illustrations. Several houses published such works, in particular Editions Heinrich
Bhme, Zweemann, and Paul Steegemann. The art merchants and publishers Fritz Gurlitt
and Alfred Flechtheim were the principal intermediaries in Berlin for this kind of production.
The artists were no longer presenting
idealized figures of androgynous young men, transported to an imaginary Antiquity, but
the modern Berlin scene, its bars, its balls, its openly sexual atmosphere.641 Homosexual
leaders were also used as models: Magnus Hirschfeld was caricatured in Simplicissimus by
Eduard Thnys in April 1921; Erich Godal made two portraits of him. Rudolf Schlichter
represented him in the company of his friends, while Peter Martin Lampel painted
Richard Linsert, the Secretary of the WhK, in 1928. Arnold Siegfried did a portrait of
Adolf Brand in 1924. Otto Schoff (1884-1938) produced many homosexual drawings and
he illustrated books by Pierre Lous and August von Platen. He also made many drawings
of the Berlin homosexual subculture, including people like Christian Schad, Guy de Laurence (Erich Godal), Rene Sintenis, Georg Ehrlich, Martel Schwichtenberg, Margit Gaal,
Paul Kamm and Karl Arnold.
Most of the drawings showed only very young people; it was still taboo to depict
adults. The painter and educator Peter Martin Lampel, who had ties to the WhK and
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, specialized in portraits of young boys on their own in the big
German cities. He started out as a member of the Irregular Forces, then joined socialism
and militated for youth education. He tried to help the unemployed youth and the male
prostitutes who were victims of the economic crisis. He made a portrait of these young
people in his book Jungen in Not (1928), then mounted a play, Revolte im Erziehungshaus,
which soon led to the film mentioned above. Most of his paintings and drawings have disappeared.
Homoerotic art was also finding a place in France and England, but it was less
clearly integrated into the homosexual subculture. In the 1930s, Cocteaus drawings, for
example, emphasized the plastic forms of virile soldiers and sailors, pure products of the
homosexual phantasmagoria of the time. Stephen Tennants illustrations for Lascar testify
to the same inspiration. Duncan Grant, a member of the Bloomsbury Club, produced
paintings that sometimes showed his bisexuality in particular Bathing, (1911) where
a naked man with a muscular body, dives, swims, then climbs up into a boat. The photography of Cecil Beaton, like that of Horst P. Horst and Herbert List in Germany, also had a
powerful homoerotic connotation.
In England, one of the specialists in homosexual art was H.S. Tuke (1858-1929).642
His canvases of nude young boys enjoying nautical activities were very much in vogue in
641. On this topic, see Andreas Sternweiler, Das Lusthaus der Knaben, Homosexualitt und
Kunst, in 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung, op. cit.
199

homosexual circles. One of the professors who taught at the same public school as T.C.
Worsley hung a large Tuke painting, Dreams of Summer, on the wall of his room,
showing a nude adolescent lying in the grass.
Lesbian art made particularly great strides in the 1920s, developing its own references and at the same time coming out from under the shadow of male homosexual works
and the traditional Sapphic representation. Among the most famous lesbians artists were
Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein), Dora Carrington, and Romaine Brooks, whose severe precision emphasizes the tortured personalities of her portraits. Her nudes present the ideal
of an asexual female body, pale, very thin, with a childs breasts, and no pubic hair. The
Crossing (1911), which represents Ida Rubinstein as basically a white line on a black
background, is the best example. Thelma Wood, the American who was the partner of
Djuna Barnes, evoked the female genitalia through floral compositions, and the Argentinean migr Leonor Fini (who moved to Paris, the heart of surrealism), produced
women-goddesses with mysterious powers, with long hair framing a face of transparent
palor.643
Jeanne Mammen, a German, may be the most famous: her caricatures of the Berlin
lesbian scene, published in Simplicissimus, fixed in the minds eye the sharp-edged features
of flappers, with elongated eyes, plaited hair and cigarettes, dancing corps-a-corps in
mens suits, in tuxedos, in smoke-filled clubs. Mammen also worked for fashion magazines; she illustrated many homosexual reviews and did a number of book covers. Most of
her work was destroyed during the war and most of the magazines were burned by the
Nazis.
The homosexual culture was particularly rich in the inter-war period; the public
was not over-reacting when it protested that the mainstream was being overrun with
scandalous images. This new visibility reinforced the homosexual identity by creating literary and visual types, and by providing a stock of references common to all.
Solidarity and Exclusion

The image of a homosexual coterie forming a universe apart, ruled by codes and
secret signs of recognition, is one of the dominant topics of homophobic thought. It is as
though homosexuals had founded a mafia of vice, with its affiliates infiltrating everywhere, recognizing each other without ever being seen, understanding without speaking
and, in particular, taking care to introduce any new arrival to his fellow-members, who
will welcome him with open arms or who, by paying for his favors, will give him the
means to earn a living if he has no resources a form of mutual aid.644
This fantasy vision contains a shadow of truth: like any persecuted minority,
homosexuals tended to live in hiding and to develop codes accessible only to initiates.
Quentin Crisp notes that the atmosphere of perpetual danger in which they lived bonded
them together.645 Homosexuals were frequently shown in the inter-war period to make
642. See Emmanuel Cooper, The Life and Works of H.S. Tuke, 1858-1929, London, Gay Men Press, 1987,
72 pages.
643. Portraits of Tamara de Lempicka, a Polish woman who emigrated to the US, shows a
woman brimming with sexual energy, nicely shaped,
jouissant de la vie et soffrant indiffremment aux hommes et aux femmes.
644. Franois Carlier, La Prostitution antiphysique [1887], Paris, Le Sycomore, 1981, 247 pages, p.94.
200

up a parallel group within the society, linked by sexual ties and banding together in some
occult way. Michel de Coglay thus speaks of an international pederastic freemasonry.646 Franois Porch, in the same vein, imagines a broadly ramified secret society:
Consequently, homosexuality will be, firstly, a collection of individuals who share
certain morals; but in the second place, it will be a view of the world, which includes a
philosophy, an ethics, an aesthetics, even a politics, with freemasonry, cards, newspapers
and reviews, affiliated salons, expositions, press campaigns, intrigues, secret agreements,
and various forms of fraternity and mutual support.647
However, homosexuals are different from other minority groups in that they have
no distinctive sign. Thus, whereas the Jewish community has held together over the centuries due to a family and social solidarity, the homosexual remains an isolated individual.
His homosexuality generally becomes clear to him only at adolescence and thus the discovery that he is different comes late. Young homosexuals can turn neither to their family
nor their usual associates. Homosexual solidarity, like homosexual militancy, always has
to start over: nothing is passed down through the family or society. Young homosexuals
born during a period of social tolerance do not work to protect their interests in case of a
backlash. Very often, homosexual solidarity is purely fictitious and homosexuals do not
feel linked by their sexuality. Thus we may question the extent to which the nascent
homosexual community could have been a coherent and interdependent structure, protecting the interests of its members and sticking together in adversity.
The most original phenomenon of the era was the Homintern. Indeed, the cult of
homosexuality among English intellectuals led them to form a distinct group within
society, linked only by a sexual factor. The constitution of a homosexual community
within the elite only intensified the publics mistrust and jealousy with regard to intellectuals, who were reproached for being a cult, a polarizing force, an anomaly within English
society. This growing antagonism was summed up in the nickname Cyril Connolly (a
homosexual, himself) gave to the homosexual intellectuals: The Homintern.648 The word
play is significant. From the inception of the Comintern, these homosexuals had been
seen as a symbol of a foreign force that had penetrated the country and was trying to
convert followers.649
W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, who had been lovers since college, personified this sexual and intellectual fraternity. The poet and the novelist were one of the
pivots of the Homintern due to their open homosexuality as well as their leftist sympathies. In fact, the Homintern did function as a secret society whose members, unperceived
by the public, recognized each other and defended their common interests. The group
was bound by the knowledge of intimate details of its members lives and by the use of
personal signs in alluding to homosexuality. In Fosters Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, the
writers homosexuality is camouflaged, but this biography became a cult item for Auden,
Sassoon and Isherwood, who, knowing the history, could read between the lines and recognize references to Edward Carpenter, Gerald Heard, Joe Ackerley and Dickinson
himself. The system of dedications also reveals the interactions within the group. W.H.
Auden, Christopher Isherwood, and Stephen Spender dedicated their works to each
646. Michel du Coglay, Chez les mauvais garons. Choses vues, Paris, R. Saillard, 1938, 221 pages.
647. Franois Porch, LAmour qui nose pas dire son nom, Paris, Grasset, 1927, 242 pages, p.134.
648. Arthur Waley called Forster, Ackerley and Plomers group a homosexual gang.
649. In 1951, when two English diplomats, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, went East, it
only confirmed the suspicion that there were ties between the two organizations. See Chapter Six.
201

other; Spender dedicated several of his works to T.A.R. Hyndman, his secretary and lover.
Forster dedicated Abinger Harvest to William Plomer, Joe Ackerley, Bob Buckingham and
Christopher Isherwood, all four homosexuals.
In the same manner, an auxiliary group came together around Lionel Charlton, who
had served as a general during the First World War, then as a brigadier general in the
Middle East. He retired with an old RAF pal, Tom Wichelo. He wrote his autobiography,
dedicating it to Wichelo, Forster and J.R. Ackerley, and then wrote adventure novels for
adolescents, featuring athletic boys who loved aviation. Personalities like Raymond Mortimer, Duncan Grant, and actors like John Gielgud revolved around him. They met in
London at Gennaros, in New Compton Street, which was famous for the beautiful
waiters selected by the owner during visits to Italy.
These groups of homosexual intellectuals were generally open to people from the
outside, mainly good-looking young men. They might be students at Oxford, but boys
from more modest backgrounds were also recruited, primarily for their looks. That is how
Forster met Bob Buckingham, a police officer who became his companion, during an
evening organized by J.R. Ackerley in 1930. Buckingham was there as a friend of Harry
Daley, Ackerleys lover.
What bothered people about the Homintern was that it succeeded in setting up a
loose network of influence intended to help homosexual young people improve their
social position. Jackie Hewit describes the homosexual world of the 1930s, saying that
the gay world of those days had a style that it no longer has today. There was a
kind of intellectual freemasonry that you do not know about at all. It was like the five
concentric circles [sic] of the Olympic emblem. A person in one circle knew those in
another, and thus people met. And some people, like me, went from one to another. I
was not a whore. Amoral perhaps, but not a whore.650.
John Pudney, Audens former lover, was working for the BBC and secured positions
for Auden and his friend, the composer Benjamin Britten, collaborating on a program on
Hadrians Wall. Stephen Spender found a part-time job for his lover Hyndman with the
Left Review, then asked Isherwood to participate in it, as well. John Lehmann, a homosexual publisher, also published his friends, including William Plomer, Forster, Isherwood, Spender and John Hampson. According to E.M. Forster, Joe Ackerley always
helped his friends; as a literary and artistic director of Listener, he supported the careers of
his many young lovers. Reviews of Ackerleys own works were written by Isherwood or
Forster. Ackerley got into the BBC in 1928 thanks to one of his homosexual friends, Lionel
Fielden. Subsequently, he used his influence to find work for a number of his acquaintances: E.M. Forster became a regular on BBC, G. Lowes Dickinson had a show on Plato,
Lionel Charlton gave a talk on pacifism. Lytton Strachey was invited, but his voice was
not good enough. Virginia Woolf, Desmond MacCarthy and Harold Nicolson followed
one after the other. In March, 1929, he invited one of his lovers, Harry Daley, to talk about
the daily life of a police officer on the radio. And Hilda Matheson invited Vita SackvilleWest and Hugh Walpole to discuss the modern woman on the BBC. Wyndham Lewis
called these practices the intense esprit de corps des hors-la-loi, the solidarity of those who
are above the law.
650. Cited in Donald Mitchell and Philip Reed (ed.), Letters from a Life, Selected Letters and Diaries of
Benjamin Britten, vol.1, 1923-1939, London, Faber & Faber, 1991, 619 pages, p.606.
202

This was not anything really specific to homosexuals: these intellectuals helped
each other first of all because they had done their studies together, they came from the
same social background, they visited the same families, they had the same friends. But
what is striking to an outside observer is the sexual specificity and the sometimes tendentious nature of the recruitment, which was not always necessarily conducted according to
professional criteria. That is apparently what was most shocking to contemporaries. One
Mrs. Leavis actually published a vengeful article saying, in substance,
Here is how these elegant members of the unemployed infiltrate the highest
places of journalism and even the university world, and how reputations are made: all
you have to do is go find the good people, whom you already know or to whom you
have just been introduced, and have one write the best things about you in the best
places. The odious spoiled children of Mr. Connolly and the childhood friends of so
many other writers arrive en masse in the universities to become stupid, pretentious
young people, and then they go on to invest the literary milieu, where they replace a
batch of the same species. Mr. Connolly and his group hope to succeed Rupert Brooke
and are watching out right now to make sure that the literary world remains a private
hunting preserve for them. Those who have been wondering how critics who are obviously so unqualified could gain such prominent positions in our literary magazines no
longer need torment themselves. They were the finest young men at school, or had a
feline charm, a sensual mouth and long lashes.651
The arrogance of the intellectuals, added to their elitism based on sex, must have
been a contributing factor in the conservative wave that swept through an England that
was apprehensive to see a pole of subversion developing in the very heart of the leading
classes. However, when Stephen Spender talks about those days, he probably comes
closer to the true essence of what was baptized Homintern than most of its detractors:
I never lost that need for friendship, that desire to share my intellectual adventures
with a man whose quest was similar to my own.652
However, homosexual solidarity, apart from these few examples, seems to have
been very limited. Admittedly, the German homosexual militants were working toward a
common goal, but they also fought each other. The elites had a sense of solidarity, but it
was often based on factors other than homosexuality, which on the contrary could be a
source of discord and rivalry. It was quite difficult to belong to Gides circle and Cocteaus
at the same time. In fact, homosexuals did not display a united front and personal quarrels
often took precedence over the common fight.
Klaus Mann evokes a typical instance of this absence of homosexual solidarity: In
the Nouvelle revue, a disgusting and repugnant article by Andr Germain: Klaus Mann, the
Narcissus of the mud pit the worst spite that could come from an aunt. I would
take great pleasure in crushing that spider.653 More serious were certain typical scenes
of denunciation between homosexuals, which would seem to be a form of self-punishment. The homosexual, who dislikes himself, transfers his guilt feeling onto one of his
peers and treats him particularly severely, in line with his own self-deprecation. When
the political situation was deteriorating in Germany, Christopher Isherwood asked his
651. Cited by Valentine Cunningham, British Writers of the Thirties, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1988, 530 pages, p.149.
653. Klaus Mann, Journal, op. cit., 8 March 1932, p.60.
203

friend Heinz to come to join him in England. Heinz was stopped at the border by the
immigration department, which asked the purpose of his journey. The immigration officer
refused to believe that Heinz could be Isherwoods domestic servant and sent him back to
Germany. When Isherwood expressed his astonishment, Auden explained: As soon as
I saw his bright little rats eyes, I knew that we were done for. He sized it all up at first
glance, because he was the same as us.654
The desire to be integrated into society fueled the most profound injustices. As a
stigmatized group, the homosexual community reproduced the same exclusion of which
it was the victim. Even as the homosexual community was affirming its legitimacy, even
as it was managing to obtain a certain amount of recognition (for example, by opening
homosexual clubs), it was developing more conservative standards and imposing a consensual view of what the homosexual should be: blending in, discreet, a good sort. The
militancy of Quentin Crisp, his insistence on playing the queen, thus made him a particular victim of homosexual ostracism. As he says, himself,
In my most optimistic days, I went into two or three of these homosexual clubs
and I observed that every year they became more respectable or, at least, more sober.
Even in the beginning, when they were slightly sordid, I did not feel at home there.
The management feared that my arrival and my departure might draw the inopportune attention of the authorities. That, I could understand, but it was with a pained
fright that I came to see that, even among the clientele, my arrival caused a thunderous
moment of silent resentment. I started to meet a greater number and a larger variety of
homosexuals and I had to face the fact that, almost without exception, they did not
like me.655
This phenomenon of exclusion even at the heart of the homosexual community was
a disturbing experience for those who were its victims. Crisp notes: To discover that
homosexuals did not like me was more difficult to bear than the hostility of normal
people.
In the same way, the Parisian lesbian and homosexual circles prized discretion. The
princesse de Polignacs salon was made up almost exclusively of homosexuals of both
sexes. When a new potential member was introduced to her, she simply asked: You are
homosexual, arent you? Of course. Then, its perfect.656 Moreover, there was stiff competition between the various Parisian homosexual salons; the princess did not host the same
people as Natalie Barney or Gertrude Stein, and the competition was savage. Maryse
Choisy, a friend of Rachilde, was reproached for her infidelity:
... I went twice to cocktails at Natalie Barneys. Rachilde made such violent scenes
when I went to rue Jacob that I gave it up. Natalie and Colette both have bad reputations, I do not want you to see Colette.657
654. Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and his Kind [1929-1939], London, Methuen, 1977,
252 pages, p.125.
656. Michael de Cossart, Une Amricaine Paris. La princesse de Polignac et son salon, 1865-1943, Paris,
Plon, 1979, 245 pages, p.173.
657. Maryse Choisy and Marcel Verts, Dames seules, Paris, Cahiers Gai-Kitsch-Camp, n 23, 1993,
53 pages, p.33.
204

Similarly, Ruth Rllig, who published The Lesbians of Berlin in 1928, saw the lack of
female solidarity as the explanation for the weakness of the lesbian movements: But, as
we know, all women, without exception, have no team spirit, and even lesbians do not
derogate from this rule. For this reason, there can be no question of forming a united
front.658
The lack of common goals is another explanation for the lack of solidarity between
homosexual and lesbians. Lesbians always kept away from the homosexual movements,
because they themselves were not targets of police repression. On the other hand, the
homosexual community held a very chauvinistic attitude toward women that often went
beyond heterosexual prejudices. Many homosexuals based their identity on the cult of the
penis, the celebration of virile friendships, the rejection of women. Misogyny is very
apparent in certain novels. In Maurice, the women are incapable of real feelings and are
described as little idiots; in A Handful of Dust (1937), by Evelyn Waugh, the woman is
behind the destruction of the hero. Women are almost entirely absent from Isherwoods
novels, if one excludes the character of Sally Bowles.
By the same token, certain lesbians entertained a deep revulsion with regard to
homosexuals. In a letter which she sent to Hemingway, Gertrude Stein listed the prejudices, basically asserting that:
The act between homosexual males is ugly and repugnant and then they are
disgusted with themselves. They drink and take drugs to compensate, but they are
disgusted by this act and they change partners constantly and cannot really be
happy. Women do not do anything of which they can be disgusted and nothing
which is repugnant, and then they are happy and they can lead a happy life
together!659
Thus, the question of homosexual solidarity remains doubtful. While obvious

examples of solidarity existed, they did not prevent the formation of clans according to
criteria that went far beyond sexuality alone: social origin, profession, financial means,
personal affinities, and partisan orientation. Therefore, we can only speak of the homosexual community in the 1920s in a very measured way. It was a new phenomenon, still in
gestation, and certainly cannot claim to have encompassed the whole of the homosexual
population of the countries concerned.
***
The homosexual identity was built on two axes: self-discovery, ones view of
oneself; and other peoples views. Homosexuals took advantage of the relative permissiveness of the 1920s to establish a personal definition. The slow course toward self-affirmation had begun, before the war, with the popularization of medical theories and the
beginnings of German militancy. But these efforts, at first, had only a peripheral effect. In
the 1920s, the homosexual identity became a reality, for it was disseminated by more
powerful media (primarily cultural), and by the homosexual scene, which offered anonymous meeting places. The lesbian identity was less well-anchored and more conflicted,
658. Ruth Rllig, Les Lesbiennes de Berlin [1928], Paris, Cahiers Gai-Kitsch-Camp, n 16, 1992,
140 pages, p.41.
659. Cited by Emmanuel Cooper, The Sexual Perspective, op. cit., p.112.
205

because it was more recent and it did not benefit from such an organized structure.
Moreover, the lesbians did not have any well-defined combat to carry out.
In sum, during the early part of the 20th century, homosexuality enjoyed something of a vogue; it was no longer unmentionable, although it was certainly still fraught
with negative perceptions among the general population and among homosexuals,
themselves.
Advances on a personal scale were not matched by advances at the community
level. The lack of solidarity is partly due to dissatisfaction with the initial definitions.
While they tried to assert themselves personally, they did not really succeed in detaching
themselves from externally imposed concepts. Many did not want to be associated with
proponents of the third sex or with congenital inverts, and they did not do much to
support theses which they did not believe in and which they suspected of serving contrary interests.
In Volume Two, we will examine the position of the Church, then watch the
changing tide as the Roaring Twenties gives way to an era that was far less broad-minded.
The memory and mythology of both the good old days and the backlash that followed are still with us today, coloring perceptions and projecting models to emulate or
avoid.
206
CHAPTER FIVE
BREAKING THE SILENCE: HOMOSEXUALS AND PUBLIC OPINION
Homosexuality was a trendy topic in the Twenties. While it had been taboo until
the beginning of the century, in the aftermath of the war there was a virtual explosion of
homosexual themes in literature and the arts. More subtle was the emergence of homoerotic imagery in broad sectors of society, especially among young people. Sports events
became an opportunity for promoting images of naked bodies strongly charged with
erotic connotations, with androgynous appeal, while the proliferation of single-gender
organizations and group activities, whether fitness-related or educational, took on a
certain homosexual mystique. The public showed an interest tinged with concern; the
trend was perceived as representing the new, the modern, a phenomenon that was typical
of the post-war period and steadily growing. A few sounded the alarm in the 1920s, complaining of decadence. The image of the homosexual was crafted as a curious mix of old
prejudices, new medical definitions and visual stereotypes.
The concept of public opinion is very difficult to define; for our purposes, we will
use the term to refer to the expression of the community vis--vis a particular phenomenon, and also as the assertion of a prevailing viewpoint within a social group1; in
fact, it is neither fixed nor immutable but, on the contrary, is subject to infinite variations, shifts, and reversals depending on events, external pressures and its own evolution.
While public opinion is a collective phenomenon, it is not readily reducible to major
entities such as the press, the Parliament, associations or any other manifestation that
makes such a claim. By the same token, it is not programmatically a function of the social
level, demographic origins or religious or political affiliation. However, each one of its elements contributes to shaping and influencing it. Thus, we must be careful, particularly
when dealing with a subject as polemical as homosexuality, resonating as it does in the
collective imagination, loaded with the weight of judgments from earlier times. Studying
public opinion comes under the rubric of the social imagination; it does not reveal what
was true about a given era, it only translates the fears and fantasies of the times.
1. Pierre Laborie, De lopinion publique a limaginaire social, in XXe sicle, n 18, April-June 1988.
207

THE WEIGHT OF PREJUDICES
The key question is tolerance, which I will define not as approval of a phenomenon,
but its acceptance. The preponderant tendencies in public opinion show that negative
prejudices were still common with regard to homosexuality, and were relayed by the
principal institutions and the mainstream press, even if there was notable progress compared to the pre-war period. Certain topics, like links between feminism and lesbianism,
protecting young people, or fear of foreigners, were used as excuses for promoting
homophobic fantasies.
Guardians of Traditional Morals

We can look to what the institutions were saying as a basis for defining what was
the standard attitude with regard to homosexuality. As public expressions, they were
endowed with historical and political legitimacy; passed on by the major media, they
became the bases for much of private discourse. Whether due to indecision, indifference
or simple conformity, many people adopt the official line as their own personal opinion
and they base their opinion on that of the majority. They pick up the prejudices of their
group, be it denominational, social or partisan.
The Churches
The influence of the Churches was still quite strong in the three countries in
question during the 1920s and 1930s, even if there was talk of a religious crisis stemming
from urbanization, conflicts between Church and State, and the economic crises.2 In fact,
in Western, Christian civilization, the attitude toward homosexuality was above all a
function of the religious discourse. Sodomy, a gratuitous practice, unnatural, was
unacceptable, as were contraception, sex during menses or pregnancy or while breastfeeding, and masturbation. Religious condemnation was one of the reasons most frequently cited to justify homophobia. However, John Boswell3 showed that religion is very
often only a pretext to justify personal prejudices.
The Catholic Churchs position on the question changed very little during the
inter-war period. Although it now recognized the legitimacy of sex education (as long as
it was handled within the family and in collaboration with the Christian Marriage Association, and recognized two goals in marriage: procreation, but also the subjective satisfaction of the spouses), homosexuality was still condemned, as was contraception, in
spite of the fact that the Ogino Method had been publicized since 1934. This attitude
came under the more general disapproval of the quest for physical pleasure, which diverts
man from spiritual concerns and endangers the moral environment.4 Homosexuality is a
2. On the influence of the Churches, see Roland Marx, LAngleterre de 1914 1945, Paris, Armand
Colin, 1993, 175 pages; Dominique Borne and Henri Dubief, La Crise des annes trente, 1929-1938, Paris,
ditions du Seuil, coll. Points histoire, 1989, 322 pages; Detlev J.K. Peukert, La Rpublique de Weimar,
Paris, Aubier, 1995, 301 pages.
3. See John Boswell, Christianisme, tolrance sociale et homosexualit, Paris, Gallimard, 1985, 521 pages;
Peter Coleman, Christian Attitudes to Homosexuality, London, SPCK, 1980, 310 pages.
4. Pierre Guillaume, Mdecins, glise et foi, Paris, Aubier, 1990, 267 pages.
208
Breaking the Silence: Homosexuals and Public Opinion

blatant example of sexuality without any purpose and without any constraint. The Protestant Churches and the Anglican Church did not express much greater tolerance on the
subject, although the latter did recognize, for example, the legitimacy of birth control in
1930.
The decline of morals and the spreading of homosexuality were much decried in
religious publications, Catholic, Anglican and Protestant alike. Claudels indignation
upon learning of Gides homosexuality in 1924 is indicative of most Catholics opinion on
the subject, as was Bernanoss article in the Les Nouvelles littraires of April 17, 1926, wherein
he reproaches Prousts writings for their lack of spiritual concern and religious and moral
striving. Medical theories did not show any significant change; one Protestant work
notes: Aversion for the opposite sex, which clearly indicates that homosexuals should be
classified as medical cases, and dangerous ones, since they are constantly on the look-out
for new partners particularly women among children new partners whom they will
make abnormal in their turn; but the moral suffering of the inverts does merit our compassion.5 Works published for the use of the various clergies continued to reject homosexuality en masse and propagated a particularly retrograde view of sexuality. In his book,
The Problem of Right Conduct (1931), the canon Peter Green maintained that homosexuality
must be dealt with like other cases of insanity (he cited homicidal madness and kleptomania) and punished by law.6
Certain religious congregations adopted a more extreme attitude and declared war
against the spreading of homosexuality, which they had found worrisome since the end
of the war. One such case was the German Evangelical Church committee, led by
Reinhard Mumm, in association with other groups both lay and religious.7 Mumm was
also appointed to the Reichstag and became a member of the DNVP (German National
Peoples Party), which incorporated conservative and far right forces. He conducted an
active campaign against pornography and smut (gegen Schund und Schmutz), and
worked to protect youth and to limit abortion, venereal disease, prostitution and homosexuality. The aim was to avoid at all costs any liberalization of the criminal code. The
tone was direly pessimistic: Never was humanity on the brink of such an enormous
catastrophe as today!8 The cover of one of Mumms publications, Das Schundkampfblatt,
depicts St. George slaying the dragon.
The symbolism is clear. The question of homosexuality took up a lot of these
groups attention, even though it was only one of their concerns. The activity report of the
Union of Schleswig-Holstein (July-September 1920) refers to homosexual groups, in particular WhK, and their various initiatives like the film Anders als die Andern. It reproaches
Hnisch, the Minister for Culture, for his March 1, 1920 visit to Magnus Hirschfelds
Institute, a visit which lasted four hours. It takes issue with the journal Die Freundschaft,
which dared to publish an article entitled The Christians among us. Mumm and various
5. Theodore de Felice, Le Protestantisme et la Question sexuelle, Paris, Librairie Fischbacher, 1930,
78 pages, p.73.
6. For greater detail, see Peter Coleman, Christian Attitudes to Homosexuality, op. cit.
7. For instance the Peoples Union for Medical Science (Verband fr Volksheilkunde) in Essen, The
Lay Union for Sexual Ethics (Laienbund fr Sexualethik), The Schleswig-Holstein Province Union for
Public Morality (Schleswig-Holsteinischer Provinzialverein zur Hebung der ffentlichen Sittlichkeit) and the
Ecclesiastic Social League (Kirchlich-Sozialer Bund).
8. For more of Mumms propaganda and his campaign gegen Schund und Schmutz: BAB, 90 MU 3
506-532, Nachl. R. Mumm. This excerpt is from the Aufruf zum Beitritt in den Laienbund fr Sexualethik,
1924 (Membership appeal for the Lay Union for Sexual Ethics, BAB, 90 MU 3 506).
209

associations launched a petition entitled Proclamation! The future of the German people
is in danger. It particularly took issue with modern women and with their masculine
way of dressing and doing their hair, and asked the government for a law against pornography and muck and for the protection of youth, a stricter application of 184 (on
obscene publications), a law on theaters, a ban on the saxophone, negro dances, [and]
nude performances, a crack down on drugs, morphine and cocaine. Similarly, on March
14, 1928 the Kirchlich-Sozialer Bund called for several homosexual publications to be outlawed Das Freundschaftsblatt, Die Bltter fr Menschenrecht and Die Freundin.9 The battle
gegen Schund und Schmutz was a success. On June 19, 1928, most of the homosexual
periodicals were registered on the list of pornographic and dirty writings. In 1928 and
1929, Die Freundin was banned for twelve months and in 1931 Garonne was also condemned.
The fight against homosexual movements was waged on all fronts. The magazine
Christliche Volksmacht ran an article in March 1921 by Primary Education Superintendent
Eberhard entitled, The wave of Inversion. In February 1922, Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenausschuss reiterated its opposition to the abolition of 175.10 A pamphlet, Keep 175!
was published by the German Catholic Central Committee Working for the Public
Morality (Zentralarbeitsausschuss der deutschen Katholiken zur Frderung der
ffentlichen Sittlichkeit). At the same time, the German Womens League (Deutscher
Frauenkampfbund) led by Martha Brauer launched a virulent campaign, denouncing
homosexual publications and Magnus Hirschfeld: A manifestly abnormal man cannot
advise healthy people in the field of sexual ethics. Leftist parties were also attacked,
having become an easy target for the conservatives: One must particularly bear in mind
that it is the protection of the socialist and communist parties that allows this erotic revolution to spread. Protecting women was an essential part of this propaganda.
Womens roles were limited to those of daughter, wife and mother, embodied in the
famous three Ks, Kirche, Kche, Kinder (or church, kitchen and kids). In 1924-1925,
a campaign was waged to have 175 expanded to cover women.
The German Evangelical Churchs battle remained relatively isolated; in general,
the subject was brought up very rarely apart from polemical pamphlets or in handbooks
on sex education. On the other hand, isolated instances illustrate original attitudes or
even deviant viewpoints that only underscore the fact that, even within the Church, the
question of homosexuality remained problematic and ambivalent. The White Cross
League, under the Church of England, stepped forward in 1929-1930 to help young male
prostitutes in London. The organization, which was already offering support for women
prostitutes, sought to address the increase in amateur prostitution resulting from the economic crisis. The League placed the lads in question in receiving centers and tried to find
them jobs in order to reinstate them in society. One can also find traces of the cult of
homosexuality within the ranks of the Anglican hierarchy. The Oxford Movement (a
movement to reform the Church of England, begun at Oxford University in 1833) was
accused of homophilia; its leader, John Henry Newman, was known to have romantic
liaisons with young boys. By the same token, certain ecclesiastical personalities managed
to match their functions with their inclinations; the Reverend E.E. Bradford was, for
example, a notorious pedophile poet. Oxford students led by John Betjeman used to go
9. BAB, 90 MU 3 509, R. Mumm.
10. Potsdam, 90 MU 3 507, R. Mumm.
210

and pay their respects to him, after he retired to his parish; Bradford was of the opinion
that his languid tenderness for the boys/ came to him more from Christ than from
Socrates, but he was nevertheless the author of sufficiently explicit poems to be in contradiction with the principles of the Church. These examples were, however, exceptional.
The public authorities

Official views on homosexuality, among governments, members of Parliament, legislature or judiciary, were quintessentially bureaucratic views. They reflected the institution and could not claim to represent public opinion as a whole, even if they were
shaped by, and helped to shape, the latter. These views may have reflected the personality
of the individuals and their social milieu, but went beyond the personal perspective to
become the point of view of the State. Broadly speaking, in the 1920s and 1930s, the public
authorities were unfavorable to homosexuality, out of concern for protecting morals and
ensuring the survival of the population. Male homosexuality was said to weaken the traditional hierarchies, as it encouraged middle-class and working-class men to intermingle
in the search for a partner. Female homosexuality generally enjoyed a greater tolerance,
for it did not undermine the social structure and a woman, under the authority of her
father or husband, or under social pressure, could be forced back into line.
In England, the First World War had seen a sharp outburst of homophobia. Thereafter, the English political leaders took a severe line on male homosexuality, while the
campaign against lesbianism reached new proportions. Homosexuality was an easier
target than birth control or the right to divorce, and thus it made an ideal showcase to
illustrate the States commitment to morality. Moreover, figures who played key roles in
the fight against homosexuality had close ties with virtue groups or puritan movements.
Sir Thomas Inskip, who served as the Crowns legal adviser off and on between 1922 and
1936, was an ardent member of the evangelical Church. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Archibald Bodkin, had been a member of the board of the National Vigilance
Association. Above all, the Minister of the Interior from 1924 to 1929 was the ultra puritan
Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix); he was behind the banning of Radclyffe Halls book, The
Well of Loneliness, and was a party to or a consultant in many lawsuits concerning homosexuals. The fear of homosexuality especially heightened due to the fear of the decline of
the Empire, deduced from an erroneous and tendentious analysis in Edward Gibbons
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Rome had fallen, other nations had fallen,
and if England were to fall in its turn, it would be because of this sin, and its lack of belief
in God, and it will be her own loss.11
The pressure against homosexuality did not spare the leading elite.12 In 1922, a
liberal deputy, the Viscount Lewis Hartcourt, committed suicide for fear that his homosexuality would be exposed in public. He had made advances to a young man from Eton
by the name of Edward James while he was spending a few days at his estate of Nuheham
Courtney in the company of his mother. In 1931, Count Beauchamp, a knight of the Order
of the Garter, governor of Cinque Ports and leader of the liberal party, suddenly resigned
11. Reverend J.M. Wilson, Sins of the Flesh, cited by Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, London,
Longman, 1989, 325 pages, p.107. The sin referred to here is masturbation, which at that time was
directly associated with homosexuality.
12. See H. Montgomery Hyde, A Tangled Web, Sex Scandals in British Politics and Society, London,
Constable, 1986, 380 pages.
211

all his functions and left the country. His brother-in-law, the Duke of Westminster, had
threatened to reveal his frolicking with the many young fishermen and other farmhands at
his property of Walmer Castle. He returned to England only five years later for his sons
funeral, after having received assurances that he would not be arrested. George V, when
he heard of the scandal, soberly commented: I did think they were frying their brains.
Homosexuality could also be used for partisan ends. There was a political scandal
in France, in late October 1933, after the murder of Oscar Dufrenne, an impresario,
director of the variety show The Palace, a city councilman of the 10th arrondissement
and a homosexual. His employees had seen him cozied up in his office with a sailor. Then
one of them found his naked body, with the skull smashed to pieces. The culprit was
never found. After Malvy gave a funeral eulogy, the Order published a ferocious article
stating that: The spectacle provided by the life and death of Oscar Dufrenne is symbolic:
it denounces the corruption of our democracy. Leon Daudet wrote that, the murderer, a
sailor, nephew of a political figure, having had part of his male organs amputated, had
been undergoing treatment in a private clinic in Neuilly. In Germany, leftist parties commonly levied charges of homosexuality, in particular against the NSDAP (National
Socialist German Workers Party).13
The press
A review of the days press should help in determining more precisely what degree
of tolerance there was for homosexuality. As both an expression of public opinion and
also the catalyst for new trends, it had a major impact. And in the 1920s, information
media developed dramatically. The press expanded considerably and radio and the
cinema became widespread. Popular journalism grew rapidly in the United Kingdom,
Germany and France and it was backed by considerable capital.14
The large national press had little to say on the question of homosexuality. Le
Temps15 published on average two or three articles on the subject per annum. The same
was true of The Times16 and, in some years, the subject was never brought up at all. The
German press was more prolix, primarily because of the debates over reforming the Penal
Code and the possible abolition of 175, and because of the militancy of the homosexual
movements that were busy holding conferences and sending petitions. There were four
rubrics under which one might encounter references to homosexuality: literary and
theater criticism, the legal chronicle, reports of parliamentary debates, and polemical
articles on the degradation of morals. A fifth category also existed, but it was more of an
exception: political articles with polemical overtones, primarily denunciations of oppo-
13. See chapter six.

14. For this study, I systematically perused a wide range of French and English daily newspapers,
and I sampled the German partisan press as well. I also drew upon the conclusions of W.U. Eissler,
who in his book Arbeiterparteien und Homosexuellenfrage zur Sexualpolitik von SPD und KPD in der Weimarer
Republik (Berlin, Verlag Rosa Winkel, 1980, 142 pages) systematically surveyed the German socialist
and communist press for anything touching on the question of homosexuality, with a special focus
on Vorwrts and Neue Zeit, both of which were organs of the SPD, and Berlin am Morgen, Welt am Abend
and Die rote Fahne for the KPD. I also read one satirical review per country. However, clearly, such a
survey cannot be comprehensive.
15. Le Temps, an evening newspaper, had a print run of 70,000.
16. The Times, a conservative newspaper, plateaued at a print run of 200,000.
212

nents who were accused of being homosexual. These various possibilities showed up in
varying degrees, depending on the newspaper.
In Le Temps, there is generally no sign of homosexuality in the legal chronicle. There
is no mention, for example, of Marthe Hanaus lesbianism or Oscar Dufrennes homosexuality. A brief on December 16, 1928, suggests a homosexual affair. For about three weeks
the bank clerk Raymond Bernard had been visiting daily with Mr. Hermann Goldschmidt. When he arrived on the morning of the 15th, the valet showed him into his
masters bedroom, as usual. Some time afterwards, he heard the sound of someone falling
down. Bernard fired three shots. He was apprehended by the servant, but he committed
suicide. The write-up on the 17th read: A wealthy Dutch investor, wounded by his young
friend Raymond Bernard, died just a few hours after the tragedy. The circumstances of
the drama, like the reference to his young friend, makes it sound like a falling out
between a homosexual and a gigolo.
The question of homosexuality does not appear in the parliamentary debates,
either, nor even in articles ranting about modern women or young people. It never comes
up in the political arena, except for certain articles on Hitlers Germany.
Thus literary and theater criticism became the main forum for debates on homosexuality. The first article, full of allusions, was on Marcel Prousts Sodom and Gomorrah I,
which came out shortly after Guermantes II. Paul Souday wrote, I must add that in the
final chapter the narrative moves in a direction that is difficult to follow. According to
Saint-Simon, there were people in the royal families similar to Mr. Prousts baron de
Charlus; but the author of Memories borders on suggesting something rather more widespread.17 The second article was published exactly a year later, when Sodom and Gomorrah
II came out, May 12, 1922. The third appeared in August of the same year.17 It is a review of
Roger Martin du Gards Le Cahier gris. This is when Paul Souday inaugurated his new way
of referring to homosexuality: by reference to Proust. Since blunt references to homosexuality were out of the question, it was hinted at through allusion: The Masters thought it
was one of those annoying relationships like those of Mr. de Charlus sprinkled
throughout the novel by Mr. Marcel Prvost [sic]; it was actually only an innocent but
exalted and mystical friendship, with a suspicious-seeming vocabulary the significance of
which the naive children did not understand. When Abel Hermants series on Lord
Chelsea was published on February 21, 1924, the allusion took on a new life: Thus, Lord
Chelsea is a kind of English Charlusor an Oscar Wilde, an aesthete like the one in the
story, but just a lord like the baron de Charlus, and not a man of letters. The sense of irritation was already gone: The poor things. Couldnt they at least do their business in
silence, instead of humiliating themselves publicly? Virtue and vice benefit equally from
modesty.
On February 4, 1926, in a famous review of Gides The Counterfeiters, Paul Souday
reached the limits of his tolerance. The theater critic Pierre Brisson was next, with his
review of The Captive at the Fmina theater March 8. The play was performed in the nude,
and was characterized as an extremely remarkable work on a bold and strangely
embarrassing subject. The subject is actually never specified, for by spelling it out one is
likely to give it that brutal appearance that M. Bourdet has managed to avoid with such
fine skill. In the second act, the discussion broadens, taking on its human significance
17. Le Temps, 12 May 1921.
213

and all its gravity. Unfortunately that is the precise moment when it becomes most difficult to make any sense of it.
Paul Souday weighed in again on December 23, 1926 with a review of Gides If It Die.
It is far more pathetic than it is pleasant. He was not being coy in order to mislead the
readers, who were assumed to be jaded after Sodom and Gomorrah: This is not comparable
at all to the adventures of Charlus and the consorts of Marcel Proust, which at least have
something picturesque to offer. We have no qualms about Mr. Andr Gides private life,
and no one is bothering him. Why does he have to hang out his least defensible fantasies
for all to see? Souday followed up on November 17, 1927, with a piece on Le Temps retrouv.
The second half of the novel especially upset him: Any hack novelist could have churned
this out. On September 25, 1931, Andr Thrive, a literary critic who replaced Souday,
wrote a few lines on Leon Lemonniers biography of Oscar Wilde. He makes no explicit
allusion to his homosexuality, but mentions the almost innocent curse from which he
suffered, some appalling details and an excessive liberalism when it comes to morals.
Then on October 23, 1931 when Ernest Seillires monograph on Marcel Proust and
Ramon Fernandezs on Andr Gide were published, Thrive wrote a long paragraph on
Prousts and Gides homosexuality, but again without using explicit terms. And of
course, I will pass over an even greater flaw, which makes it possible to explain almost
everything that is inexplicable about this writer. The negative tone dominates, especially
in the following paragraph, which compares Gide with Proust: It is not for us to dwell on
such an awkward subject, essential as it may be. It is enough to know that the Proustian
pessimism is answered by Gides Nietzschean optimism, and Proust sees in his confreres a
sign of dark and Saturnian predestination, while his second is keen to see that they are the
ones who are normal and in good health....Which is the more dire propagandism? The
latter, I think. At least, the topic of homosexuality, even if it was not mentioned outright,
was being discussed.
In fact, the articles touching on the subject of homosexuality became more frequent
in the early 1930s. Theatrical output encouraged it. The Champs-lyses Comdie staged
Roger Martin du Gards play Un taciturne (The Silent Man) November 2, 1931. Pierre Brisson
described it as one of the most scabrous of plays in which the authors greatest skill lies
in his ability to avoid the actual subject of the debate. On January 11, 1932, Le Mal de la jeunesse (The Pains of Youth) by Bruckner was produced at the Theatre du Marais; and on June
20, 1932, Jeunes filles en uniforme (Girls in Uniform) was put on at the Studio of Paris.
October 10, 1932 was the first time Le Temps used the words invert and homosexual,
talking about La Fleur des pois (The Snobs) by douard Bourdet that was playing at the
Theatre de la Michodire. Brisson found the play disappointing: I do not reproach Mr.
Bourdet for a second for having written a play in which, in the presence of the abnormal
beings that he brings to the stage, he avoids expressing any condemnation. Not only do I
not reproach him, but I congratulate him for his generosity of spirit. I find moralistic
theater, so-called right-thinking theater, thoroughly distasteful in principle, futile, and
soon out of date. What I do reproach him for is having reduced so perilous a subject to the
trivial fun of anecdotic dialogue.
Andr Thrive came up with a positive review on March 24, 1932 for Colettes book
Ces plaisirs (Those Pleasures), underscoring that it was dangerous for the weak but useful
for those who are strong. A corner had been turned: on February 25, 1935, Maurice
Rostands play Le Procs dOscar Wilde (The Trial of Oscar Wilde) was shown at the Thatre des
Arts and, in spite of circumlocutions, this time Pierre Brisson used the expression
214

Uranian love and Dorian Gray is described as the patron saint of sodomy, apostle, confessor and martyr of his faith.
However, this was the last review concerning a play or novel with homosexual
themes to appear until 1939. The abrupt hiatus can be attributed to the drop in public
interest in homosexuality. The media turned its attention to the crisis, international tensions and the threat of depopulation.
Meanwhile, The Times stayed resolutely impersonal. Homosexuality was generally
mentioned only in the context of legal notes. The description of the facts is concise, to say
the least. For example, on January 11, 1919, in a brief criminal note we read January 10.
Before Judge Rentoul, William Frederick Gammon, 38 years old, gardener, was found
guilty of having committed an act constituting a serious moral offense and was sentenced
to twelve months in prison by the second division. Still, this kind of entrefilet is rare and
is negligible among the number of sentences pronounced annually.
Apart from these chronicles, there was a bit more press reporting on the lawsuit
over Radclyffe Halls The Well of Loneliness. Here again, the newspaper maintained a strict
neutrality and merely retranscribed the debates, almost in their entirety.
Lastly, homosexuality was also touched upon in connection with Hitlerian
Germany, at the time of the assassination of Rhm and the raids against the gay bars. The
word homosexuality is never employed. Rhms proclivities were evoked as unfortunate tendencies, and the bars were said to have a certain reputation. Thus we can see
that major media made little effort to familiarize the reader with homosexuality. By comparison, the satirical press was far less reticent to mention it. Still, significant differences
existed between the three countries.
Homosexuality was clearly visible in the German satirical press, as can be seen in
the German weekly magazine Simplicissimus. Many homosexual caricatures had already
been published in Simplicissimus before the war, during the Eulenburg affair and in connection with the activities of the WhK. Then there were no more until after the war,
when they gradually began to appear again. In the period 1919-1939, one may find fifteen
homosexual caricatures. The majority appeared between 1924 and 1929, which corresponds to the apogee of the Berliner homosexual subculture. There was none in 1919, and
there are no more after 1933. The last was published on May 15, 1932. Most of the caricatures depict lesbians and the Berliner homosexual scene. For instance, September 24,
1924, a Bubikopf girl is lounging on a settee; her mother says to her: How shall I put it,
my child you are now at an age, Paula, where men start to. Stop right there, Mom,
Im a pervert.... On February 20, 1928 a famous drawing by Jeanne Mammen was published: She is representative. A very masculine-looking young woman says: Dad is a
lawyer and Mom sits on the regional court. I am the only one in the family to have a
private life.
There are a few homosexual caricatures. One dated April 1, 1921, referred to Hirschfeld, under the title Hirschfeldiana. It shows the homosexual leader with his young
and very effeminate Secretary: Please, take down the following, Miss: As we rebuild our
economic life, which is completely stagnant, the imperatives of the day require the immediate abolition of 175. Another, dated September 12, 1927, is entitled Confusion of
feelings in direct reference to Stefan Zweigs books. Two prostitutes are shown, with a
sailor approaching. One says to the other: Say, Bella, do you think that sailor is a customer or the competition? On January 28, 1929 there was a caricature of a homosexual
215

ball and, in the center, a young boy dressed as an angel is the object of everyones attentions. The caption is a little poem:
Max als Amor war ein grosser Schlager
Und er bracht die bravsten Mnner in Gefahr
Ja man munkelt, dass von andern Lager
Magnus Hirschfeld selbst zugegen war
Mutter Nagel schtzte Max als Griechin
Eine treubesorgte Ballmama
Und so wagte sich an ihn kein Viech hin
Wie gesagt: auch Hirschfeld war ja da1!18
The caricatures in Simplicissimus are not actually hostile to homosexuals but rather
poke fun at them, and at many others. Hirschfelds battle is exaggerated and comic and
the flappers are absurd, but in the end they are all just symbols of the post-war period;
they have the taste of modernity. Rather than any real homophobia, the newspapers irony
reflects the publics distress at the growing visibility of homosexual.
In comparison, Fantasio19 comes across as far more hostile, and there are far more
homosexual caricatures there, too. The majority concern lesbians and were published in
the period 1922-1928. Fantasio also made homosexual allusions in its gossip columns and
its leading articles. An example from December 1, 1922, is a vengeful article published
under the title: Lhrsie sentimentale; ces messieurs dames (A Sentimental Heresy; those
Lady-Gentlemen).
A drawing from May 1, 1923, shows girls dancing together under the caption:
Belles of the ball, but the men will never know. On October 1, 1923, Abel Hermant is
sketched in academicians garb and powdering his face, under the legend: Saint-Simonette. A cartoon from March 1, 1924 shows a series of women with shorter and shorter
hair, captioned: Careful, Ladies! Go any farther with your hair and youll end up looking
like old men. September 15, 1925 had a cartoon like the ones in Simplicissimus, showing
two girls dancing together. The caption quips,
Dormez, bonnes vieilles chansons,
Qui faisiez danser, sans faons,
Les filles avec les garons!
Dans les bars chic qui les ranonnent
En des poses qui sabandonnent,
Ce ne sont plus que des garonnes!
18. Max was a great success as Cupid/ And he placed the hardiest men at risk/ They say that in
the other camp/ Magnus Hirschfeld himself was present//Max was Mama Nagels protg in the
Greek sense/ a very attentive guardian/ So that not one of those beasts dared approach him/ As it was
said: even Hirschfeld was there.
19. This light, satirical magazine was created by the cartoonist Roubille in 1906. It came out
every 15 days. In the mid-1930s it lost readership to bolder and more modern papers featuring erotic
photographs.
216

On May 1, 1926, Andr Gide was caricatured under the title, La fleur du male. The
publication of Franois Porchs book LAmour qui nose pas dire son nom (The Love That Dares
Not Speak Its Name) occasioned a vicious article and a caricature:
May we say that this protest comes right when its needed? For they have started
to go at it a little too strongly, these little friends! Free to have their fun, and to the
play around in the dooryard, and at the back door.... But they are starting to make so
much propaganda and to puff themselves up with their special morals that there is
bound to be a reaction.... Will the book we are talking about signal that the time has
come?... At a time when everyone is talking about cleaning up Paris, perhaps someone
will give a clean sweep to certain milieux.20
April 1, 1932 brought a new attack, signed Melitta and baptized Lesbos. They
were no beauties, these captives, with their eyebrows shaven so close their eyes
resembled those of young calves, their faces sallow in the yellow light of the lamps, their
thin arms sticking out of their pyjamas. In the same vein one finds in La Vie parisienne21 of
June 11, 1938 a caricature entitled The Clever One, showing a man and two women, one
of whom is a flapper dressed in a strictly-tailored suit, cigarette on her lip. The caption
says, Ill bet, Marquise, that youre planning to spend your holidays on an ancient Greek
island.
Fantasio promoted itself as the ambassador of the French spirit and, for that
reason, posed as a defender Gauloiserie. That meant that its sales relied on exploiting the
most popular current prejudices. The new visibility of the homosexual scene and the rise
of homosexual literature reinforced this basic tendency and served as a pretext for the reassertion of heterosexual love, which was supposedly under threat. Whereas Simplicissimus depicted homosexuality as a phenomenon of modernity, Fantasio took it as a sign of
decline.
Punch, like The Times, reveals the extreme prudishness of the British press. There is
hardly one homosexual caricature in the period 1919-1939; the only suggestive drawings
are those of girls with very short hair, but who are never comparable to lesbians. One
cartoon in particular shows the evolution of fashion, starting with a girl with long hair,
then with it cut in a bob, then la garonne, then an Eton crop; then the cartoon shows
where it all was headed the Dartmoor shave and the progressive return to the
shoulder-length hair.22 Another cartoon, on February 1, 1922, shows two young women in
the foreground and two very effeminate young men in the background. Hostess: What a
bother, my dear, we are short one man. Guest: Dont worry; Ive brought along two
cuties.
Lastly, in the German press one can distinguish nuances in how homosexuality is
treated by different political groups.23 Most of the German newspapers touched on
homosexuality mainly in the parliamentary context. A few homosexual scandals, like the
20. Fantasio, 1-15 August 1927, p.311-312.

21. Like Fantasio, La Vie parisienne, inaugurated in 1869, was a light satirical paper that began to
decline in the mid-30s.
22. Punch, 17 October 1928.
23. To evaluate how political allegiances influenced the approach to homosexuality in France
and in England, one would have to go through virtually all the party newspapers for the entire
period. That would not be an easy task. Unlike in Germany, there were no outstanding events upon
which to focus ones analysis in such a survey.
217

Rhm letters in 1931, started an avalanche of articles in the press. Lastly, homosexuality
was mentioned in articles ranting about the decline of morals in the post-war era.
Deutsche Zeitung,24 an organ of the DNVP, represented the interests of the Junker
and the ultraconservative business world. The DNVP was anti-Semitic and hostile to the
Weimar Republic. Its goal was to restore the monarchy. It was part of the government
since 1925. Deutsche Zeitung was, throughout this period, savagely hostile to homosexuals
and lumped them together with pacifist and androgynous youth, modern women,
abortion and sexual liberation a product of Russia and the Jews.25 It took up the fight
against pornography and smut led by Reinhard Mumm, a member of the DNVP. On
November 12, 1920, it made a reference to the pervert doctor Magnus Hirschfeld. An
article from March 25, 1921, attacks the homosexual floorshows: The danger in these men
with their unfortunate proclivities against nature is their desire to propagate their wrong
understanding of friendship. On January 7, 1922, under the title A Champion of Homosexuality, the paper denounced the propagation of indecent writings, in particular the
magazine Der Eigene. The interest in new medical theories is seen in a number of articles,
but the newspaper deliberately chose those least favorable to homosexuals. Thus, February 10, 1924, an article was published entitled Sexual life and Hereditary Flaws, which
maintained that heterosexuality is innate and that homosexuality, like masochism or
sadism, is perverse. An alarmist article was published May 10, 1928 under the rubric,
Suicide of the Race; it denounced the masculinization of women, the effeminacy of men
and the attenuation of the natural contrasts.
This extremely negative attitude may be contrasted to the position of the Berliner
Tageblatt26, a democratic daily newspaper. The Berliner Tageblatt published an advertisement on September 4, 1919 for Magnus Hirschfelds Institut fr Sexualwissenschaft as
well as the Institutes program and the topic of the main conferences given there. The
information is handled objectively.
One of the best ways to compare the reactions of the two newspapers is by
focusing on the abolition of 175 that was decided by the Commission to reform the Penal
Code on October 16, 1929. 27 Berliner Tageblatt had been publishing the Commissions
reports since October 8. On October 17, it ran an article entitled: A cultural projection:
The End of 175. The newspaper welcomed this decision and gave credit particularly to
Wilhelm Kahl, then an octogenarian, president of the commission and member of the
DVP (German Peoples Party),28 who had voted for the abolition of the paragraph against
his own party and whose influence rocked the vote: If all his friends were as young as
him, things would be much better. On the other hand, for several days Deutsche Zeitung
had been equating the decriminalization of sodomy with the deleterious actions of the
SPD (German Social Democratic Party) and the German Communist Party (KPD), saying:
A victory for the criminals of the people: impunity for infringing 175. Magnus Hir-
24. The Deutsche Zeitung was founded in 1896; it went out of business 31 December 1934 with the
claim of having the glory of having directly prepared the way for the glory of the Third Reich.
25. See for example the 20 February 1921 issue.
26. Le Berliner Tageblatt, founded in 1871, disappeared 1 January 1939. When the Nazis came to
power, the management and the editorial staff of the magazine were purged. In the Twenties, it had a
distribution in the range of 350,000; it fell to less than 35,000 in the Thirties.
27. See chapters six and seven, as well.
28. The DVP was the party for big business; it had monarchical tendencies, and was tactically
allied with the Republic in 1920.
218

schfeld and his disciples must now triumph We can only hope that the deliberation and
the final decision in connection with this article of law fall to another Reichstag than the
last, whose majority, it is increasingly apparent, decided to ruin the German people from a
moral point of view, too. They also attacked Kahl, who was more or less accused of
treason. Kahl answered those charges on October 25, 1929 in Vossische Zeitung and justified
his position, which he said was based not on tolerance for homosexuality, which he
regarded as a vice and a calamity, but on practical reasons: repression encourages
blackmail and the propagation and dissemination of homosexual propaganda in society.
So we see how the German treatment of homosexuality could vary according to political
persuasions. What for Deutsche Zeitung was another sign of the decline of Germany was, on
the contrary, interpreted by the democratic newspaper as a projection of history.
After Hitlers advent to power, such distinctions are no longer seen. Thus, the elimination of Rhm was treated identically by Deutsche Zeitung and Berliner Tageblatt, which
had been purified of its Jewish and liberal editors. Their July 1, 1934 articles simply
reproduced the official version as it was expressed by Goering at a press conference.
In conclusion, according to examples studied, the press played different roles in
different countries. In Germany, the problem was publicly discussed and the terms
homosexuality, inversion and variations thereon were acceptable usage, for they now
bore the imprimatur of science. In England, the press followed the prevailing code of
silence and did nothing to acquaint the public with homosexuality. In France, the press
was more loquacious, but remained extremely prudent. Certain scandal sheets may have
used homosexuality to bolster sales, but they ran the risk of being fined. In July 1935, the
director of Dtective, Marius Larique, was given a three-month suspended sentence and a
1,000-franc fine, the manager Charles Dupont got one month with suspended and a 500franc fine, but the reporter Marcel Carrire was let go. The newspaper had published a
photograph of the corpse of a young homosexual who was strangled under unknown circumstances. His naked body had been found on a couch. The picture was captioned,
Playing House.29
Greater Tolerance?
The publics reactions with regard to homosexuality are formed by many factors,
including the family setting, education, religion, personal prejudices, and general trends
in public opinion. In the absence of opinion polls or any other means of querying the population, it is very difficult to analyze how attitudes on this question evolved. Nonetheless,
by collecting testimony and by weighing the information sources, one can draw an overall
and modulated picture of the publics views on homosexuality.
Homosexuals would run into very different situations depending on what circles
they traveled in. Bohemian homosexuals living in a European capital would only occasionally meet with any hostility. Thus we have B., a lesbian, who lived the life of an artist
in the 1930s. It wasnt easy to live freely as a homosexual at that time, the way I did,
because I was in an artistic world where it was very common. The artists really didnt give
a damn about it and in fact considered it a sign of originality. N., a lesbian who fraternized with anarchists, was also accepted by her peers.30
29. AN, BB18 6178 44 BL 402.
219

Conversely, an anonymous subject who lived in the provinces was likely to face real
rebuffs if her peculiarity came to light: People were getting used to seeing women in
what used to be mens places, used to the cigarettes, to the sometimes crude language, to
loud laughter in public. But, outside the big cities, they found us, we the emancipated,
arrogant, vulgar and dangerous all at the same time. Bad examples for girls whose parents
thought they were still untainted.31 There were some exceptions, of course. Eleonor, a
woman farmer, says: And it was a different problem, for we were already dressing like
men. Jodhpurs, especially, because they were the only thing one work in. I wore them all
the time. I would have, anyway, of course; my lover was living with me. But I dont think
the owners of the farm thought much about it. They never mentioned it. I dont think they
cared, really.32
The reactions differed considerably according to where one was. In Berlin, as in the
other capital cities, tolerance was greater than in the provinces although it might be
more accurate to call it indifference. At the same time, other areas of Germany were
famous for their homophobia, especially Bavaria. And Hans Blher, with his theories on
homosexuality in the youth movements, was stopped from visiting the town of Mnster,
in Westphalia, for a series of conferences.33 On March 19, 1921, the Ministry of the Interior
received a letter from the president of the regional government. According to the latter, 27
letters of protest, from associations against public immorality in the districts of Westphalia, from the teachers union and the clergy, Catholic youth, the Evangelical Church
and many other associations, had arrived at police headquarters, informing them that
Blhers arrival would be prevented all means, even, if necessary, by violence. Something
like that had already happened in Munich, where the president of the pederasts, Magnus
Hirschfeld barely made it out alive.
Most people, while rejecting homosexuality, simply never spoke of it. At that time,
nobody talked about homosexuality. Not the slightest allusion. I dont think that was
apparent to me at the time; I was only eighteen, twenty years old. At that age, I probably
didnt realize the significance. I was satisfied just to be it [homosexual]. But I thought
marrying was the right thing to do, even if I had already had different experiences.34 Similarly, Quentin Crisp explains why he did not tell one of his friends that he was homosexual: She wouldnt have believed me, because in those distant days, a homosexual
was never somebody whom you actually knew and seldom somebody you had met.35
People didnt know much about homosexuality, in any case. Crisp summarizes the
stereotypes in vogue: It was thought to be of Greek origin, less widespread than
socialism but more dangerous, especially for children.36
30. Testimony from B., born in Paris in 1910, an apprentice dressmaker, and from N., recorded by
Claudie Lesselier, Aspects de lexprience lesbienne in France, 1930-1968, from a post-graduate dissertation in
sociology, University of Paris-VIII, under the direction of R. Castel, November 1987, 148 pages, p.7375.
31. Germaine, cited by Dominique Desanti, La Femme au temps des annes folles, Paris, Stock, 1984,
373 pages, p.46.
32. Eleonor, testimony recorded in Suzanne Neild and Rosalind Parson, Women Like Us, London,
The Womens Press, 1992, 171 pages, p.34.
33. GStA, I.HA, Rep.77, Tit.435, n 1, vol.1.
34. Gerald, in Between the Acts. Lives of Homosexual Men, 1885-1967, edited by K. Porter and J. Weeks,
London, Routledge, 1990, 176 pages, p.6. See also ibid., Norman, p.23, and Sam, p. 99.
35. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil-Servant [1968], London, Fontana, 1986, 217 pages, p. 24.
36. Ibid., p.25.
220

But the greater visibility of homosexuality in the 1920s did not necessarily go hand
in hand with increased acceptance. Many were indignant at this depravity, but took a
more or less fatalistic approach: Their special cafs are open to the public. Their morals
are discussed in songs and at the nightclub, in newspapers, and conversations. All the
same, that doesnt mean that this cordiality should evolve into tolerance.37
It is was at about this time that Quentin Crisp launched out on his educational
crusade in favor of homosexuality:
I realized that it didnt make any difference to be recognized as a homosexual
in the West End, where vice was the rule, or in Soho, where everyone was an outlaw
of one kind or another; but the rest of England was precisely my target area. It was
densely populated by aborigines who had never heard of homosexuality and who,
when they discovered it for the first time, were frightened and furious. I was going to
work on them.38
The reactions ran the gamut from frightened curiosity (he often drew crowds) to
more or less hostile mockery, right up to sheer aggression. Crisp noted,
The most mysterious thing in all these situations is not that strangers, without
a word being said on either side, would attack me. It is that they did not kill me.39
Such incidents were not rare; homosexuals were always at the mercy of fag
busters who attacked in groups. Klaus Mann learned about them through bitter experience in Toulon; even so, he received real help from the police.
I was immediately approached by an insistent young man, small and lacking in
charm. I went with him to the red-light district; went to a few bars, talked with a
sailor, etc. The little guy managed to lure me into a completely deserted corner. (What
incomprehensible stupidity, not to have suspected a thing!) Howls: Ill kill you!
fists; I ran like lightning, they caught up with me, continued to hit me, took everything
I had money (130 francs), my coat, my wallet, etc; streaming with blood, panting, I
went to the nearest police station; a police officer took me to the hospital, where I was
bandaged up, and back to the police station, where I gave a deposition; I missed the
last bus, and had to go back by taxi. An absolutely atrocious incident.40
Tolerance may have been making some progress, but it was not widespread. More
than educational level, the extent to which one needed social approval may explain the
differences in attitude. Broadmindedness was particularly visible at the universities, and
in the literary and artistic milieux. The upper classes had had their consciousness raised
by the circulation of works on sexology. In the working class and the lower middle class,
the stereotypes were very long lived, even if Daniel Guerin claims that homosexuality was
more accepted in workmans circles than among the middle class: I lived the in 20th
arrondissement and in the evening one would see, at the little restaurants, guys between
the ages of twenty and thirty, all single and not in the least put out if one expressed a
37. Albert Chapotin, Les Dfaitistes de lamour, Paris, Le Livre pour tous, 1927, 510 pages, p. 177.
38. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil-Servant, op. cit., p.33.
39. Ibid., p.67.
40. Klaus Mann, Journal. Les annes brunes, 1931-1936, Paris, Grasset, 1996, 452 pages, 10 May 1936,
p.345.
221

certain homosexual desire for them. To them, anything having to do with sex was natural.
They were still in the physical world and this world had not been polluted by moral
values.41 In fact, amateur homosexual prostitution, which was widespread during the
1920s, was largely of working-class origin. The middle classed, which harbored a puritan
moral ideal anchored in family values, were the most reticent with regard to homosexuals.
In the absence of precise information on the attitude of the farming community, it
would be hazardous to emit a judgment about life in the hinterland. Generalizations are
not very useful, for they obscure the complexity of the factors in question. To arrive at any
serious conclusion on this, one would have to study thoroughly the behavior of a population on the scale of a whole town and its reactions to, for example, a homosexual
scandal. Unfortunately, it is difficult by now to pull together sufficient sources for such a
study.
Sensitive Topics
The limits of tolerance are reached in some of the debates that came up during this
time. Indeed, homosexuality might be tolerated on a day-to-day basis, but would be
rejected again as soon as it became something alien. Certain topics remained sensitive
during the inter-war period and occasioned feelings of irrational hostility and panic.
Three topics recur throughout the period: the link between lesbianism and feminism, the
need to protect young people, and foreign threats.
Its the feminists fault

The lesbian question was directly linked to the feminist movement in the inter-war
period. Particularly in England and Germany, the feminist movement was seen as a Trojan
Horse used by the lesbians to recruit or seduce new followers and to pervert young
women and to lure them away from their homes and their husbands. These charges
became louder and louder, culminating in Germany in the Nazi era. Feminists were also
held responsible for the alleged increase in male homosexuality, for they were considered
to have made men disgusted with women by their demands and their independent ways.
However, the feminist movements in the inter-war period were not, in the main, open to
lesbianism, and were more likely to be frankly hostile. Far from detecting any complicity
between the movements, a researcher is struck by the absence of solidarity and the distance the feminists strove to maintain between themselves and the lesbians, which partly
explains the disorganization of the latter.
Sheila Jeffreys produced an admirable study of the English feminist movement in
The Spinster and Her Enemies. Created at the end of the 19th century by several well-to-do
and well-educated women, its leaders were morally irreproachable: Josephine Butler was
married, Emmeline Pankhurst and Millicent Fawcett were widowed, Francis Cobbe and
Christabel Pankhurst were unmarried. Their campaign was primarily political; they
demanded voting rights, the right to practice the liberal professions, and access to higher
education. They had no complaint about the family as an institution per se, but were concerned with property rights for women, and to limit the husbands legal power over his
41. Cited by Gilles Barbedette and Michel Carassou, Paris gay 1925, Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 1981, 312 pages, p.47.
222

wife. The suffragettes claimed that maternity should not be imposed, which implied birth
control; they also called for the prevention of the venereal diseases and the denunciation
of male sexual appetites. Among the solutions they proposed were complete chastity,
periods of abstinence and, sometimes, contraception. In fact, what the feminists were
asking for above all was to be able to use their bodies freely. They saw men as a threat to
this freedom and called for them to conform to the higher moral standards of women.
The slogan on the eve of the war was: The vote for women and chastity for men.
In this context, the 1920s and 1930s myth of the castrating woman who hates men
and wants to impose a matriarchal society is more easily comprehensible. The dominant
male society tended to ball together all the demands of modern woman into a threat to its
supremacy. Far from calming spirits, the war reinforced mens fears and hatreds. Some
saw the great massacre as the sacrifice of young men to save the women, who stayed
safely behind and took advantage of the situation by seeking to emancipate themselves.
The feminist movements were held responsible for this domestic rebellion. Very soon the
New Woman was attacked as a manifestation of all that was wrong, a symbol of degeneracy. The question of unmarried women led the press to call for useless women to emigrate in order to contribute to the settlement of the colonies.42 This was a total inversion
of perspective: whereas the old maid had formed part of the British traditional landscape, she sudden became a threat to society; in every unmarried woman, a lesbian might
be hiding.
Carefully meting out counsel and warnings, information on female sexuality began
to be disseminated, especially in the 1930s, a sign of the tighter morals in the wake of the
crisis. J.M. Hotep, in Love and Happiness, Intimate Problems of the Modern Woman (1938),
explains that homosexuality is a sorcerers trick that transforms the external
appearance of boys into girls, and vice versa, but that one could overcome it by fighting it
from the very start. T. Miller Neatby, in Youth and Purity (1937), notes that the experience
of the post-war period has taught us that homosexualism [sic], especially among women,
was more and more common.43 Since the war, women are brought together in broad and
dangerous intimacy, at work, at leisure and at home. The only way of rooting out homosexuality is total and immediate abstinence; parents and tutors must take care to immediately put an end to any friendships that become too intense. In Approaching Womanhood,
Healthy Sex for Girls (1939), Rennie Macandrew writes The woman who is never interested in the opposite sex, but only in her own, is retarded at the lesbian stage. This was
undoubtedly partly the cause of the suffragette movement before the war of 1914-1918.
Some of its leaders hated men.44
The most complete work is that of Laura Hutton, The Single Woman and her Emotional
Problems, going back to 1937. The author distinguishes the initiator, the true lesbian, masculine, already identifiable in childhood due to her boyish tastes, and the seduced woman
who is not homosexual but falls into the clutches of one who is, out of simple ignorance
and sexual frustration. The danger to the latter is in giving in to the excitation and no
longer being able to do without such unnatural caresses. She is then likely to become a
42. The 1851 census in England had already disclosed a surplus of 405,000 women in British
society. This surplus carried on after the war.
43. T. Miller Neatby, Youth and Purity, London, British Christian Endeavour Union, 1937,
27 pages, p.24.
44. Rennie Macandrew, Approaching Womanhood, Healthy Sex for Girls, London, The Wales
Publishing Co, 1939, 93 pages, p.29.
223

neurotic, since she will never enjoy complete pleasure and will not find her natural satisfaction in maternity. As for the true lesbian, she is likely to sink into alcohol or drugs, for
she realizes that she does not constitute a satisfactory substitute for her conquest. Nevertheless, considering the shortage of men, Laura Hutton speculates as to whether it would
not be wiser to let these women be, since there was nothing better offer them.
The most virulent attacks associating lesbians and feminists came in Germany.45 In
1925, 35.6% of the women were working, compared to 31.2% in 1907. Girls had also
achieved a place in education: in 1931-1932, 16% of students were girls. Women had also
succeeded in gaining a certain political influence: between 1919 and 1932, 112 women were
elected to the Reichstag, and they were also well represented in local institutions.
But the feminist movement was divided. There was a political feminism, which
demanded equal rights, embodied by personalities like Clara Zetkin and Helene Stcker.
The socialist feminists were often disappointed, for they received little support from their
political comrades. Radical organizations like Bund fr Mutterschutz (League for the
Protection of Mothers) were isolated in their battle for contraception, abortion, and
divorce reform; the majority of womens groups feared the masculinization of women and
praised honesty, self-abnegation, and idealism as essential female virtues.
There was an alarmist line of talk during the 1920s, accusing women of being on
strike as far as childbearing and of being responsible for the collapse of family values.
Some authors called the modern woman a castrator who deprived the man of his job.
Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (The Federation of German Womens Associations) or
BDF, which counted 500,000 members in 80 womens groups, did call for better work
conditions and better education for women, but it stick strictly to the traditional view of
womens role. Certain womens organizations were even antifeminist, like the Protestant
Federation (with nearly 2 million members), Catholic associations (approximately 1
million members), the Red Cross volunteers (750,000 members) and the Queen Louise
League, 130,000 members strong.
With come writers, antifeminism could take the form of a homophobic attack.
While no movement had taken up the cause of lesbians, feminism was accused of serving
as a cover for a great campaign of homosexual seduction. Anton Schcker, in Zur Psychopathologie der Frauenbewegung (1931), produces a systematic attack on modern women.
According to him, feminist leaders were a breed apart, that of the masculine woman, with
broad shoulders, a deep voice, and a hint of a moustache. They also had a tendency to
cross dress. He attributed the fight for emancipation to various factors: social distress, the
significant albeit temporary surplus of women, and the activation of mechanisms of psychopathic reaction and neuroses; these are homosexuals who, from the first days of the
movement, sought to pursue their own personal goals, through the mass suggestion of
normal women transformed into an army for the feminine cause. The feminist movement
not only accelerated the collapse of the family cultural circle, but encouraged it, without
thus far having come up with anything better to put in its place. It has thus contributed to
mixing up the sexual characteristics.46
45. Claudia Koonz, Les Mres-patries du IIIe Reich, Paris, Lieu Commun, 1989, 553 pages, and Renate
Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann and Marion Kaplan, When Biology Became Destiny, Women in Weimar and
Nazi Germany, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1984, 364 pages.
46. Anton Schcker, Zur Psychopathologie der Frauenbewegung, Leipzig, Verlag von Curt Kabitzsch,
1931, 51 pages.
224

E.F.W. Eberhards Die Frauenemanzipation und ihre erotischen Grundlagen (1924) was the
major work in Germany; according to Eberhard, most feminists are virile women,
belonging to the intermediate sex and exhibiting many masculine features; they are
not real women. As a consequence, feminist movements were in fact camouflaged
lesbian movements. Of course, most of the members were heterosexual, but the leaders of
the movement were homosexuals seeking to appease their fantasies of domination and to
wield their magnetism to control other women. By their influence, female homosexuality
was spreading, and had by now become more common than male homosexuality. In conclusion, Eberhard called for laws punishing lesbianism in order to arrest the moral degeneration of the country.
In France, the subject seems to have been less explosive, but that does not mean it
was missing from the public discourse. Already in 1908 Theodore Jorau was playing with
the confusion between feminism and lesbianism: Feminism, which was at first a monomania for equality, became an apology for the liberal instinct. It exudes the ambiguous
odor of lust. Didnt one of our more shameless feminists, a certain Rene Vivien, in a book
of bad verse that women recite when theyve lost their heads, call herself the modern
priestess of lesbians loves? This Sappho is always mixing feminist declarations with her
lyricism.47
Given these emotional outbursts, it is wise to look to the feminists themselves and
to compare the reality of their viewpoint with the fantasies that grew up around them. In
England before the war, feminists never mentioned the lesbian question and later it was
examined only with the greatest prudence, even if the increasing attacks against
unmarried women goaded them to react. In 1913, 63% of the members of the Womens
Social and Political Union (WSPU) were unmarried and many others were widowed.
Several of them proclaimed the need to create a new class of single people, whose political
influence should improve the female condition.48 Lucy Re-Bartlett went further, affirming
that modern woman instinctively liked other women, her sisters, and preferred them to
men. Cicely Hamilton rejected the idea that marriage was obligatory; however, although
she had some female liaisons, she never mentioned them in her autobiography. In fact,
before the war, no feminist openly acknowledged being lesbian; such an admission was
sure to compromise her politically.
Moreover, these women did not regard themselves as lesbians.49 The First World
War was a major turning point in relations between feminists and lesbians. The feminist
movement was on the wane. 50 Right after the war, the feminists were first of all
47. Cited by Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne. Histoire des fminismes in France, 1914-1940, Paris,
Fayard, 1995, 528 pages.
48. Cicely Hamilton, Marriage as a Trade (London, Chapman & Hall, 1909, 284 pages). Similarly,
Life Errant, London, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1935, 300 pages.
49. See Lilian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, New York, Morran & Cie, 1981, 496 pages;
Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880-1930, London, Pandora, 1985,
282 pages, p.102-127; and in Hidden from History (Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George
Chauncey Jr. [dir.], London, Penguin Books, 1991, 579 pages), the articles by Martha Vicinus,
Distance and Desire: English Boarding-School Friendships, 1870-1920 p.212-229 and Esther
Newton, The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman, p.281-293.
50. Emmeline and Christabel Pankhursts Women Social and Political Union (WSPU) rallied to
support the war effort from the first days of the conflict; the pacifists quit the organization and
joined other groups like the International Womens League for Peace and Liberty. The WSPU transformed into the ephemeral Womens Party before disappearing.
225

respectable women; they steered clear of violent demonstrations and the flamboyant declarations and instead formed special interest groups within the Parliament.
The torch of sexual reform had been taken by two women, Stella Browne and
Marie Stopes. These two pioneers did nothing to help the lesbian cause. Marie Stopes
authored Married Love (1918), a bestseller promoting eugenics and offering advice on sexuality. Stella Browne was a member of The British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology;
she was a socialist feminist who campaigned in favor of abortion and birth control from
1914 until the mid-1930s. The two shared a heterosexual ideal that included stigmatizing
lesbians. For Marie Stopes, sapphism was a threat because women who had experienced a
homosexual relationship would prefer that form of sex and would give up their families:
If a married woman goes through with this unnatural act, she will be increasingly disappointed with her husband and he will lose any ability to play his traditional role.... No
woman who attaches any value to the peace of her home and to the love of her husband
must give in to the maneuvers of the lesbian, whatever the temptation.51 Stella Browne,
too, believed that a woman has a physical need for a man. In a report from 1924 entitled
Studies in Feminine Inversion, which she presented before the BSSP, she declared:
The woman who has neither husband nor lover, and who is not devitalized nor sexually
defective, suffers mentally and physically often without knowing why she suffers;
nervous, irritable, feeble, always tired or upset over a trifle; if not, she has other consolations which make her alleged chastity an unhealthy imposture.52 In this memorandum,
she describes five cases of sapphism. However, some of the subjects were not in sexual
relationships and did not regard themselves as homosexual. Browne defines them as lesbians according to rather strange criteria, independent of any physical or sentimental
attraction towards women.
By thus exaggerating their number and their seductive power, feminists made lesbians a tangible threat to the family, and especially to young girls. By drawing up a rigid
separation between masculine lesbians and pseudo-homosexuals, they made sure there
would be no progressive assimilation of lesbians into society. To preserve the purity of
romantic relationships, they denied real lesbians the right to love and to be loved in
return, and definitively categorized them as deviants.
The conflict between lesbians and feminists was also visible in France. Here, it
focused in particular on the question of dress. The garonne style appealed to only a
minority of feminists, among the most radical. Even so, the arguments were above all very
practical: it was healthier to go without a corset, the length of the skirt caused accidents;
and especially, wearing masculine garb discouraged girl-watchers and other importunate
creatures, and directly called into question traditional social divisions. Cross-dressing
could even be seen as a political gesture; that is how Madeleine Pelletier presented it. The
gesture was not always well received, even in leftist circles. In Germany, Rosa Luxemburg
and Clara Zetkin wore dresses and long hair in order to avoid criticism. In France, crossdressing had picked up a few fans, notably George Sand and Rosa Bonheur, but they
remained exceptions. Rachilde occasionally dressed as a man, but that was not associated
with any lesbian tendency. In the 1920s, she even attacked flappers in her satire, Why I am
51. Marie Stopes, Enduring Passion (1928), in Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and Her Enemies, op. cit.,
p.120.
52. Stella Browne, Studies in Feminine Inversion, in Journal of Sexology and Psychoanalysis, 1923;
cited by Sheila Jeffreys, ibid., p.117.
226

not a Feminist (1928). Even at the heart of the movement, the most militant were hostile to
cross-dressing. The Olympic champion Violette Morni, who had won the Gold Bowl in
automobile racing and established the world record in the discus and shot put, was
removed from the Sporting Federation of France in 1928 for looking too mannish. She
wore her hair cut very short, with a suit and a tie. Rumor had it that she had had her
breasts reduced, to help her driving. She filed suit against the Federation, but lost. The
Federations two lawyers, Yvonne Netter and Juliette Weller, notorious feminists as they
were, decided that Violette Morni was a deplorable example for sportswomen. This is a
clear case where the presumed homosexuality of the plaintiff (even if it was never mentioned) was the real reason for rejection and it counted more than her sporting performances.53
Madeleine Pelletier (1874-1939), a Communist who participated in libertarian
groups and positioned herself as a theoretician of the virile woman, was a lightning rod
for criticism. The first woman psychiatrist in France, she claims to have special morals
and she is represented in the circles she frequents as an Amazon.54 Repudiated by the
feminists, she was reduced to silence. It seems however that her masculine appearance
was more the expression of a general distaste for sexuality than any homosexual tendency. She rarely mentions sapphism and, in her utopian novel A New Life (1932), she even
imagines a future when she could disappear. In her mind, it is clear that homosexuality
was a makeshift solution, certainly preferable to subjection to a man but far from satisfactory. Her description of homosexuals even flirts curiously with the medical prejudices
and clichs of the time. Madeleine Pelletier ended up deeply disappointed by the French
feminists, with their low necklines, too feminine for her taste: What we have is, fundamentally, a feminism that is full quasi-prostitutes.55
One finds parallels in the fate of Arria Ly (Josephine Gordons pseudonym). She
developed the idea of virginal feminism; sexual relations sully the woman, and so one
must avoid any contact with men. Her revulsion for sex originated in an extremely puritanical education. Her rejection of men did not impel her toward women, either; when a
journalist accused her of being lesbian, in 1911, she challenged him to a duel. It seems that
Madeleine Pelletier experienced a flush of attraction for her; it was quickly stifled. She
wrote back, saying: Herewith my portrait, as a man above all, do not fall in love; that
would be just the moment they would start hollering about Lesbos. The trip to Lesbos
does not appeal to me any more than the trip to Cythera.56 Madeleine Pelletier spoke of
her in the masculine and, like Gertrude Stein, she sought a new language, one that would
free her from sexual stereotypes. In various texts, she expounded her theory on masculinization: My clothes say to the man, I am your equal. And, if it is the ones who have
short hair and shirt collars that have all the freedom and all the power, then, very well I
will wear short hair and shirt collars.57 She wrote to in Arria Ly: If I had an income, I
would adopt a masculine identity and I would make my way in the sciences or in politics.
She was aware of her limitations, however, admitting that: I am short and stout, I have to
be careful, and fake my voice; in the street I have to walk fast to go unnoticed.58 On the
53. Cited by Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, op. cit.
54. According to a police report cited by Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, op. cit., p.197.
55. Cited by Charles Sowerwine and Claude Maignier, Madeleine Pelletier, une fministe dans larne
politique, Paris, ditions ouvrires, 1992, 250 pages, p.130.
56. Ibid., p.142.
57. Ibid., p.144.
227

eve of the Second World War, she was convicted on abortion charges; declared mentally
incompetent, she ended her days in a psychiatric asylum.
Meanwhile, French feminists were trying to stakeout a position between tradition
and modernity. The members of the UFSF (French Union for Womens Vote) were
republicans: their first priority was to show that they were good citizens, not to be confused with the right-leaning Catholic feminists and the Socialists. They led a puritanical
crusade for the abolition of prostitution and for respect for women. Concerned with
respectability and with maintaining the differences between the sexes, they were very
careful not to stir up antifeminist reactions through any provocation.
Lesbian society appeared vulgar in comparison. When the Club du Faubourg organized a debate on the Charles-tienne novel Notre-Dame-de-Lesbos, the feminist Marguerite
Gupet denounced them as some kind of perverted women destroyed by keeping bad
company.59
In fact, the feminists were not in the avant-garde in matters of sexuality; they only
dealt with contraception and the prevention of the venereal diseases. Radical feminists
like Madeleine Furrier and Arria Ly stuck to their defense of chastity and steered clear of
the lesbians, with whom they had no wish to be associated. Placing themselves at the
forefront of the criticism of lesbians, the feminists sought to avoid any danger that public
opinion might shift its reproaches onto women in general. By keeping lesbians out of the
feminist movement, by refusing to accept them as women at all, by accusing them of
actually being womens enemies, they ensured their own safety and their leaders were
protected from any unsavory allegations.
Protecting young people

Sex education manuals for young are good illustrations of the evolution in the institutional approach to the subject, at least as far as boys were concerned. If there were any
handbooks for girls, they were fewer in number and they seldom touched on the question
of homosexuality, no doubt because there was no wish to give girls any ideas about
lesbian relations: a girls natural instinct was chastity, and the task of sex education was
simply to maintain her in this natural chastity. Excessive moral restrictions, however,
would risk exciting curiosity and lead girls to revolt against this natural instinct.60
Given the advances in medical theories and the renewed interest in sexuality that
appeared after the war, handbooks on sex education proliferated. Most were just 20 pages
long, but some ran to 100 or 200 pages. They were written by doctors, priests, principals
of preparatory schools or public schools, and the leaders of conservative moralistic associations. The majority of these works were intended for young boys, six to fifteen years old,
and aimed to give them all the sexual baggage necessary to adapt to school life while
heading off possible homosexual fancies. Some, however, like Youth and Purity by T. Miller
Neatby, were addressed to older people, fifteen to thirty years old, which shows that the
concern for instilling morals and awareness extended to age groups which might have
been thought to be emancipated.
58. Ibid.
59. Cited by Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, op. cit., p.197.
60. Oswald Schwarz, The Psychology of Sex and Sex Education, London, New Education Fellowship,
1935, 33 pages, p.21.
228

The French, German and English handbooks were quite different from each other.
The English manuals were outstanding for their retrograde, alarmist views and they are
loaded with prejudices. The question of masturbation is omnipresent and is treated in a
most caricatured way. Teen homosexuality is clearly denounced. French works only
rarely touched on that question. The warnings were mostly about prostitutes, venereal
diseases and vice in general. The German works rather took the form of thick medical
treatises, meant to inform parents or teachers. The problem of homosexuality came up
fairly frequently, but in scientific terms. After 1933, the topic disappeared completely and
sex education was recruited to the service of the German race. There were a few
recurring topics. Most of the works, especially the British, begin with recommendations
on personal grooming, nutrition, sleep, everything that one must do to be a happy,
healthy boy. Personal hygiene and the regular practice of sports are emphasized. Such
counsels are interspliced with moral or religious precepts, intended to engrave in the
childs mind the link between purity of body and purity of mind. The German works also
devote considerable space to advice on hygiene; moral purity goes hand in hand with
physical purity: Bodily precautions imply abstinence, a hard bed, cold showers, exercise,
a diet low in albumin, white clothing.61 Moreover, they generally devote a chapter to the
description of the sexual functions; sometimes these explanations were very detailed, full
of technical terms and thus very confusing for young and uninformed children. Two
works by F.H. Shoosmith, The Torch of Life, First Steps in Sex-Knowledge (1935) and That Youth
May Know (1935), are good examples. The first comprises twenty chapters, nineteen of
which discuss flowers and animals and the final one touching very briefly on human sexuality. The second consists of four chapters; the first two are devoted to plants and animals,
the third to Puberty and Adolescence, and the fourth to a sermon!
Masturbation is closely related to the question of homosexuality. It is vilified at
length; it is difficult to determine when the term is used in a strict sense and when it is
meant in the broad sense, including homosexuality, for, in the authors minds, solitary
masturbation must lead to mutual masturbation. Onanism in itself was already strongly
condemned and the number of the defamatory terms used to indicate it would be too long
to count; it is referred to as a shameful and degrading vice, a sacrilegious mania leading
to premature decrepitude.62 On this topic, the English, German and French works are
unanimous and almost indistinguishable from each other. On the other hand, the English
books are characterized by the precision of their instructions. They all advise sleeping on
ones side, as sleeping on ones back facilitates nocturnal emissions and sleeping on ones
stomach causes friction that leads to erections;63 the hands must be kept outside the bedclothes. There are precise rules on grooming, as well: Except when washing yourself, you
should never hold your genitals.64 Every action is described in such a way as to minimize
contact; the bad habit of putting ones hands in his pockets is particularly stigmatized.65
61. Friedrich Niebergall, Sexuelle Aufklrung der Jugend: ihr Recht, ihre Wege und Grenze, Heidelberg,
Evangelischer Verlag, 1922, 25 pages.
62. Dr Jean Pou, Conseils la jeunesse sur lducation sexuelle, Paris, Maloine, 1931, 29 pages.
63. William Lee Howard, Confidential Chats with Boys, London, Rider & Co, 1928, 144 pages;
F.V. Smith, The Sex Education of Boys, London, Student Christian Movement Press, 1931, 15 pages;
A. Trewby, Healthy Boyhood, London, The Alliance of Honour, Kings & Jarcett, 1924, 63 pages.
64. A. Trewby, Healthy Boyhood, op. cit., p.19.
65. Edwin Wall, To the Early Teens or Friendly Counsels to Boys, London, The Portsmouth Printers
Press, 1931, 120 pages. Cutting out the bottom of ones trouser pockets in order to be able to masturbate without giving oneself away was a common practice in the schools.
229

In Germany, the famous liberal Hirschfeld suggested moving the pockets to the back of
the pants to avoid Onanism. The Alliance of Honour, a puritanical association, provides a
list of the harm that will befall the child who gives in to this vice: Touching your body,
or even just having dirty thoughts, sets off a nervous shock which is spread throughout
the body, brain included. This excitation is dangerous, for it causes the exhaustion and
the relaxation of the entire body. The boy becomes morose and timid, his performance at
school goes down. The nervous system becomes very fragile, his health deteriorates until
any recovery becomes impossible. The heart becomes weak, the voice becomes low, blood
has difficulty circulating, the hands are damp, the complexion loses color, the muscles are
soft, the sight dims.66 In France, Dr. Jean Pou informs readers that masturbation may
lead to tuberculosis, cause weight loss, retardation and stupidity; according to him, there
were brilliant young men of fifteen and sixteen years who had perished because of this
vice.67
However, by the 1930s, it is rare to find authors who support the notion that masturbation could cause serious illness. The Alliance of Honours new work, Personal: To Boys
by T. Miller Neatby, which came out in 1934, ten years after Healthy Boyhood, admitted that
masturbation did not produce any disease; they did, however, condemn it as a bad habit
which makes the child egocentric.
There were still plenty of religious arguments and the best way of dissuading
children was still to hold up the threat of damnation: The fact of touching certain parts
of ones body is not in itself a sin. But this act often causes a desire which, except within
marriage, is sinful, and thus it is banned as something that leads one to sin.68 Patriotic
and social arguments are also brought in that one might have thought out of place in such
a discussion. Solitary pleasure endangers social unity and the masturbator is in fact a
rebel: The egoistic, sad and solitary masturbator allows his social qualities to atrophy.69
Sex education was aimed more at fostering the development of men who would be integrated into society without threatening the prevailing values than at providing sex information: The premature exercise of ones sexual functions often makes the adolescent an
imperfect adult.70 The child masturbator thus faced a fourfold condemnation: religious,
medical, moral and social. The adolescent who experimented with homosexuality was
subject to the same judgments, only stronger.
In the English handbooks, homosexual temptations are taken for granted: Masturbation is, of course, an abnormal form of sexuality, and thus a perversion, but the next
most common perversion is homosexuality, which has increased greatly in recent years.71
Nevertheless: Not everyone who feels homosexual impulses goes as far as to practice
this unnatural vice.72
However, homosexuality is almost never mentioned clearly and a young boy could
very well finish reading the book without understanding just what it was talking about.
Boys are exhorted not to socialize with boys who are older than them, nor with vicious
67. In Conseils la jeunesse sur lducation sexuelle, op. cit.
68. Christian Marriage Association, Lglise et lducation sexuelle, Paris, Aubin, 1929, 201 pages.
69. Dr Laignel-Lavastine, Vnus et ses dangers, Paris, Ligue nationale contre le pril vnrien, 1925,
14 pages, p.10.
70. Dr. Jean Carnot, Au service de lamour, Paris, ditions Beaulieu, 1939, 256 pages, p.26.
71. Violet Firth, The Problem of Purity, Rider & Co, 1928, 127 pages, p.107.
72. Ibid., p.108.
230

boys (those who talk about or who do dirty things).73 All the authors agree in expressly
prohibiting sharing ones bed with another boy, even for reasons of convenience.74
Never sleep with another person, whether a man or a boy sleeping with another person
releases an uncomfortable heat under bedcovers, which affects the genitals; it causes the
blood to rise in them and causes a feeling of attraction inside these delicate organs. That
often ends up leading to into an emission which is not natural, due to heat and not to an
effort to empty the little overloaded sacs. Moreover, many boys will be tempted to play
with each other. The boys may be innocent and nave, at first, but in the end they find
themselves masturbating. 75
The link with masturbation is constantly evoked: Finally, with regard to
friendship, in the life of a boy there is first of all interest in himself, and the development
of masturbation has already been discussed. Then comes an interest in his own sex,
through the worship of the hero which should be a real help and an inspiration. If that
slides into sentimentalism or unhealthy emotionalism in any physical form, it runs a great
risk of evolving naturally into the heterosexual phase.76
Marie Stopes, the muse of sex education in that period, summarizes the eras
trends. After having denied the frequency of masturbation, which she compares to taking
drugs or poison,77 she creates a causal link between the two defects, saying, Those
who practice mutual masturbation are in many ways more dangerous than those who
indulge in solitary masturbation, because digital masturbation can very well lead to
greater and more abominable defects, which I do not wish to evoke in this book, but
against which a warning is not superfluous, nowadays when there is practically a cult of
homosexual practices.78
Starting in the 1930s, a medical discussion of homosexuality often took the place of
the customary warnings. Gladys M. Cox admits that she does not know whether it is a
matter of internal secretions or arrested sexual development. Leslie D. Weatherhead, in
The Mastery of Sex through Psychology and Religion (1931), distinguishes acquired homosexuality and innate homosexuality, and discusses narcissism and treatment by hypnosis.
Many authors quote Havelock Ellis or Freud, and the notion of a homosexual phase in
adolescence is raised, albeit with reservations: Adolescent homosexuality marks a stage
of development; but this stage is abnormal and only a small number of boys experience
it.79 This idea was enthusiastically adopted by English authors, for it justified the homosexuality that was prevalent in the public schools and reassured parents about their
childrens future development: When answering the question: are homosexual practices bad?, one should exclude those concerning boys between the ages of thirteen and
fifteen and girls between twelve and fourteen. At these ages, the sexual instinct is not yet
settled in the sexual organs and it would be unjust to take these practices between
children as seriously as the problem merits when it occurs in adulthood.80
74. See The Education of Boys in the Subject of Sex, Confidential Chats with Boys, Healthy Boyhood.
75. William Lee Howard, Confidential Chats with Boys, op. cit., p.94.
76. Reginald Churchill, I Commit to Your Intelligence, London, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1936,
137 pages, p.14.
77. Marie Stopes, Sex and the Young, London, The Gill Publishing Co, 1926, 190 pages, p.41-43.
78. Ibid., p.44.
79. Oswald Schwarz, The Psychology of Sex and Sex Education, op. cit., p.18.
80. Leslie D. Weatherhead, The Mastery of Sex through Psychology and Religion, London, Student
Christian Movement Press, 1931, 249 pages, p.153.
231

Havelock Elliss book on sex education81 is striking in its broad outlook: he underscores the early appearance of sexual manifestations in the child, and he pleads for uncensored readings and nudity, which he considers hygienic. On the other hand, taking after
Magnus Hirschfeld in Germany, he is less forthcoming on the treatment of masturbation
and homosexuality. The latter is not even mentioned, whereas, among the testimony of
four young people provided in the appendix, the second concerns a boy who frequently
masturbated, who had had sexual experiences (fellatio) with his peers since the age of
five, was in love with many boys during his adolescence and who now intended, at
twenty-five, to become a pastor!
Certain authors considered that homosexuality was becoming an increasingly
widespread phenomenon. Journalists, novelists, authors of light plays and, the innovation
of the period, talking movies, are denounced as agents of immorality the bugbears of
the leagues of right-thinking people. And it wasnt only the moralists who condemned
homosexuality: R.H. Innes, in his masterpiece Sex from the Standpoint of Youth (1933), which
favors free love and birth control, vigorously condemns adolescent homosexuality.
Described like monsters on the prowl, hiding behind every door and every face, homosexual adults are presented as the very epitome of abjection and human degradation:
There are things in trousers called men, so vile that they wait in hiding for innocent boys.
These things are generally elegant, polished, too polished, in fact, and pass themselves off
as gentlemen; but they are skunks and rattlesnakes. They traipse around the tourist
hotels, rental homes and townhouses where families live dont go for a walk with these
things, for all they have in mind is to teach you to masturbate or other things that are
dirtier still at the first word, at the first abnormal action, smite it, smite it so hard that it
will bear the scar for all its life. Do not be afraid, these skunks are all cowards.82
In the French works, the warnings are primarily against the reading of pornographic magazines, prostitution, divorce, and the rising flood of turpitudinous libertinage.83 Moral discipline and chastity are celebrated for a prolonged childhood is a
saved childhood.84 However, the authors never lose sight of the function of reproduction, the only reason for their study; for them, individuals are above all seed-bearers
and celibacy and marriage without children are abnormal states.85
Only two works mention homosexuality; the first is a book by Dr. Henri Drouin,
Counsels for Young People (1926). He spends two pages on the deviation of the sexual
instinct. According to him, homosexuality is less widespread than it is said to be, and
true inversion is an anomaly and not a perversion.
The second work is Dr. Ren Allendy and Hella Lobsteins Sexual Problems at School
(1938), which is more a treatise on childhood and adolescent sexuality than a sex education manual, even if the advice with which it is so replete makes it fall into the rubric of
this study. Homosexuality is granted a whole chapter (fifteen pages) in the traditional
context of school friendships. While Allendy is opposed to reactionary works (he is par81. Havelock Ellis, tudes de psychologie sexuelle, t.VII, Lducation sexuelle, Paris, Mercure de France,
1927, 220 pages.
82. William Lee Howard, Confidential Chats with Boys, op. cit., p.95.
83. Dr Jean Pou, Conseils la jeunesse sur lducation sexuelle, op. cit., p.25.
84. R.P. S.-J. de Ganay, Dr Henri Abrand and abb Jean Viollet, Les Initiations ncessaires, Paris,
ditions familiales de France, 1938, 47 pages, p.4.
85. Dr Sicard de Plauzoles, Pour le salut de la race: ducation sexuelle, Paris, ditions mdicales, 1931,
98 pages, p.37.
232

ticularly hard on the book Venus and Her Dangers) and frequently quotes Freud, even Hirschfeld and Ellis, his conclusions are far from clear. He considers adolescent
homosexuality a crucial question: After masturbation, the major sexual problem in
schools is homosexuality.86 However, he does not see it as the product of precocious sexuality but rather the result of naivety, of sexual ignorance: and how many little boys
became homosexual for candies from a good-looking man, met one day on the way home
from school?87 And, The horror attached to sexuality leads some boys to such severe
forms of timidity in front of women, and to more or less complete impotence, if not
toward homosexuality.88
Homosexuality was seen as proof of extraversion (masturbation representing
introversion), a way of being in touch with the real world, of externalizing ones feelings.
This gives rise to the surprising conclusion: Provided that the child does not get stuck at
this infantile mode of satisfaction, homosexual activity may be preferred to Onanism
which might lead the child to a state of morbid fantasies or schizoidism.89 In fact, in a
society where early heterosexual relations are not encouraged, homosexuality is granted a
social role. Relations between boys might be the least dangerous way for them to appease
their sexual instincts, without fear of contamination (at the brothel) nor of degeneracy
(by masturbation). There is a distinct air of hypocrisy in a society that denounces homosexuality but is ready to tolerate it as a means of avoiding greater dangers, and that
accepts homosexual relations of convenience while condemning heterosexual relations
and free love.
The German works can be clearly dated to the context of the post-war period: The
sexual distress of our day is great, perhaps greater than ever before.90 The buzzword was
Verwahrlosung, the depravity of a younger generation with no moral compass. Book titles
were often suggestive: Jugend in Geschlechtsnot (Youth in Sexual Distress), Die sexual Gefhrdung
unserer Jugend (Sexual Dangers Confronting Our Youth), Die Jugendverwahrlosung und ihre
Bekmpfung (The Depravity of Youth and How to Fight It). The destabilizing influence of life in
the city, family difficulties stemming from the war, the economic crisis and the feminist
movements, psychoanalysis, the proponents of sexual liberation and those who were
exploring homosexuality especially Hans Blher, who contributed to popularizing the
notion of adolescent homosexuality as a positive force were constantly under fire.
Unlike in England and France, the criticism was aimed at and the responsibility was
shared by the younger generation and the society as a whole. Periodicals easily qualified
as pornographic, novels, theater, modern dance, and modern fashion that freed the body
and revealed the form in an indecent way were roundly condemned.
Tihamer Toth, in Queen Jugendreife (A Pure Puberty, 1931), exhorts young people to
fight the dragon of modern civilization. As in England, masturbation and homosexuality
are closely linked: It is not Onanism as such, but excessive Onanism, or Onanism practiced by others and on others, which is the real problem and which must be countered by
teachers organizations.91
86. Ren Allendy and Hella Lobstein, Le Problme sexuel lcole, Paris, Aubier, 1938, 253 pages,
p.165.
87. Ibid., p.54.
88. Ibid., p.130.
89. Ibid., p.176.
90. Klaus Steigleder, Die sexualpdagogische Frage der Gegenwart, in J.P. Steffes, Sexualpdagogische Probleme, Mnster, Mnster Verlag, 1931, 231 pages, p.177.
233

Heinrich Hanselmann devotes several pages to this subject in Geschlechtliche Erziehung des Kindes (1931). He distinguishes true homosexuality from adolescent homosexuality. The latter is normal and temporary; the young boy experience vague sexual
tensions, and it need an object on which to transfer his thirst for love.92 Many specialists
claimed, moreover, that modern young men were interested less in women than the preceding generations; the danger of homosexuality was all the greater if he preferred exclusively male company, at school or in youth groups. It was especially important to protect
boys from real homosexuals who could prey upon them during this period of sexual
indecision, exerting their influence and corrupting the younger fellows: Homosexual
adults simply approach young people in an inoffensive way, at first, possibly offering little
gifts and services in order to gain their goodwill and affection. They also try to get into
organizations that offer them leadership positions over young people.93
The most virulent tomes, like Die sexuelle Gefhrdung unserer Jugend (1929) by Erich
Zacharias, explicitly attack the homosexual movements. This happened mostly in
Germany, because these groups were most visible there. Some teachers compared the
homosexual movements to organizations of propaganda and corruption, seeking to
destroy Germanys younger generation. The doctrines of the so-called inversion are
nothing less than a very dangerous and premeditated contamination of our youth, which
is particularly receptive to such influences at the age of puberty. It bears within it the
danger of homosexual poisoning, i.e. of a premeditated perversion of our youth.94
The medical vocabulary of contagion and infection is everywhere. In Schtzt unsere
Kinder vor den Sexualverbrechern! (1931), E. Dederding calls for castration for child rapists.
Liberal German sexologists, who were writing mainly on the question of sex education,
curiously neglected the topic of homosexuality. Hirschfeld left it out of his work for
young readers, Sexualerziehung (1930).
The education system became a subject of debate as proponents of a homosexual
pedagogy, copied on the Greek model, vied with advocates of traditional education.
Germany is the only country where such calls for teaching with homosexual content were
explicitly expressed. Kurt Zeidler, in Vom erziehenden Eros (1919), and Siegfried Placzek, in
Freundschaft und Sexualitt (1927), studied the role of the loving relationship in teaching.
Zeidler, who made references to Hans Blher and Stefan George, gave a scathing criticism
of German society, which he said was incapable of appreciating the educational potential
of inversion. He claimed that the prevailing moral climate imposed limitations on teachers
that hindered their ability to teach for, properly used, their powers of seduction could
bring about miracles.95 However, homosexual relations would have to be restricted to a
very spiritual level: a pat on the head, a squeeze of the hand, a hug and a smile should be
the limits as far as the teachers affection for his pupil.
91. Dr Heinrich Schulte-Hubbert, Um Sittlichkeit und Erziehung an hheren Schulen, Mnster, Verlag
der Aschendorffschen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1929, 62 pages.
92. Dr Oswald Schwarz, Sexualitt und Persnlichkeit, Vienne-Leipzig-Berne, Verlag fr Medizin,
1934, 205 pages, p.73.
93. Wilhelm Hausen, Die Gefahren sexueller Verirrungen in der Puberttszeit und ihre prophylaktische Behandlung, in J.P. Steffes (dir.), Sexualpdagogische Probleme, Mnster, Mnster Verlag,
1931, 231 pages, p.105.
94. Heinrich Tbben, Die Jugendverwahrlosung und ihre Bekmpfung, Mnster, Aschendorffschen
Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1922, 245 pages.
95. Kurt Zeidler, Vom erziehenden Eros, Lauenburg, Freideutscher Jugendverlag Adolf Saal, 1919,
39 pages, p.18.
234

Placzek summarized this view with a shocking formula: Pedagogy is the right field
for the pederast.96 He acknowledged that a homosexual teacher might spare his pupil
some sexual missteps by explaining the nature of his feelings to him. However, once the
pupil was past adolescence, he must turn to women. He also warned parents against dangerous homosexuals, the seducers, those who forget their duties towards the child and
take advantage of their position to satisfy their instincts.
Fascinated by the cultural and aesthetic aspect of the love of boys, sexually
inhibited, frustrated due to the moral condemnation of society, the advocates of homosexual education were searching for a way to validate a utopian model of platonic love
between adults and adolescents. Their prudish and at the same time exalted tone
attracted suspicion from critics and parents and led to many scandals involving teachers.
The most famous German reformer was unquestionably Gustav Wyneken (1875-1964),
founder of the experimental co-educational school of Wickersdorf97 and a writer on Eros.
Wyneken and Paul Geheeb opened the free school community of Wickersdorf on September 1, 1906. There were separate dormitories for boys and girls; after 9:00 PM, they
were kept apart. The classes were shared and decentralized, but Wyneken was the principal leader. This was an elitist school: its aim was to form a new youth, raised to respect
the body and the mind. The program included philosophy (Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche), music (Bach and Bruckner), religion, meditation and mathematics together
with physical culture, dance, bodily expression and theater. Wyneken fell victim to a
denunciation campaign in 1910: Wickersdorf supposedly exerted a deleterious religious
influence on the children. Wyneken had to retire, but he returned in 1919. After six
months, a new scandal came out he was accused of touching two young boys. He was
sentenced to one year in prison and had to give up the management of the establishment.
Wickersdorf was organized on a profoundly original basis: the pupils were
grouped in friendships, each one with a chief of friendship at its head. The latter was the
keystone of the unit, responsible for taking care of each pupil, monitoring his progress
and maintaining social bonds, creating an esprit de corps. The pupils often became very
attached to their chief, whom they respected and admired enormously. Emotional relations (Eros) were regarded as advantageous, for they personalized the school relations,
encouraged more attentive supervision of the pupils and better comprehension between
group members. The most serious and the most solid friendships which I could observe
were always between pupils and teachers.98 Wyneken very clearly distinguished homosexuality from pederasty, or Eros. For him, pederasty was the erotic bond that links a
mature man with a young boy. He was highly critical of those who considered it a medical
problem: love, he noted, cannot be reduced to a matter of secretions.
In his essay Eros (1924), Wyneken explained the erotic relations between Masters
and pupils at length as the natural evolution of a major emotional tie, a pure and noble
attraction: The love of the young boys is more austere and more powerful. Man and
woman are opposites, neither one fully understands the other. The man lives in a spiritual
96. Siegfried Placzek, Freundschaft und Sexualitt, Berlin-Cologne, A. Marcus & E. Webers Verlag,
1927, 186 pages, p.66.
97. Wyneken had worked as a teacher in Hermann Lietzs experimental school. He then became
a part of the movement for pedagogical reform that was gaining currency in Europe at the time, like
Cecile Reddie in England and Edmond Demoulins in France. In 1919, he briefly worked in the
Ministry of Culture under an SPD government.
98. Gustav Wyneken, Wickersdorf, Lauenburg, Adolf Saal Verlag, 1922, 152 pages, p.58.
235

universe identical to that of the young boy. Most of the things which a woman will never
understand, an intelligent and noble young boy will be able to formulate.99
Wyneken had watched the Wandervogel movement closely and had studied the
troubled relations between the leaders and their admirers. He was fully aware of the revolutionary implications of his education system. Even more than his homoerotic theories, it
was his idea of separating the child from his family group and his traditional influences
that led to his being persecuted by the legal and moral authorities of the time. Here is
what we call the youth culture (Jugendkultur), and such a youth culture can obviously be
carried out only by truly isolating the youth, who should be kept away from the socially
and economically conditioned influence of the family, the classes and the parties, as well
as dishonesty of conventions.100 Wyneken intended to free young from servitude, to
organize them in an autonomous, free, anarchistic community: Socialism must reach for
youth, just as youth itself is revolution and the future... A disciple of Nietzsche, he understood that youth represented power and renewal. His thinking was elitist, antibourgeois,
and anticlerical, but Wyneken was not a nationalist. He expressed anguish at the manipulation of youth for militarist ends and the abuse of special ties (homoerotic) for authoritative purposes. He was quite isolated in his position: his elitism and his homosexuality
alienated those on the left, while the right rejected his libertarian and pacifist model.
In sum, the question of adolescent homosexuality was a matter of considerable
concern in the inter-war period, particularly in England. Fantasy played a part in this;
medical information often gave way to talk that was more moral and religious in tonality,
repeating the worst superstitions and propagating a false image of sexuality. However,
even this kind of talk was not entirely unambiguous: there were some who favored samesex romances to premature sexual intercourse with women, or who accepted relations
between Masters and pupils that might, as in ancient Greece, foster the boys development.
The stranger among us

A final sign of the fear that homosexuality inspired in the public was the assimilation of the homosexual with the stranger. The homosexual was always seen as being different. Since the Eulenburg affair, homosexuality in France had been called the German
vice while the Germans called it the French malady.101 Each side defended the morality
of its own country, saying things like: Homosexuality is rare in France.102 To admit that
there were homosexuals at home would mean casting the whole population under suspicion. By contrast, accusing a neighboring country on this ground was an easy way to
strengthen national unity. Examples from abroad were used as wake-up calls to warn the
population against any such signs of decadence.
In La Dbauche mondiale, Jean Violet (1927), British homosexuality is granted
eighteen pages and vitriolic articles ran in Fantasio. The August 1, 1927 number claimed
99. Gustav Wyneken, Eros, Lauenburg, Adolf Saal Verlag, 1924, 72 pages, p.46.
100. Id., Revolution und Schule, Leipzig, Klinkhardt Verlag, 1921, 74 pages, p.13.
101. In the 16th an 17th centuries it was called the Italian vice, in the 18th, the French and
English vice, and since Frederick II the German vice; in the 19th century, it was referred to as the
Arab way.
102. Dr G. Saint-Paul, Invertis et homosexuels, thmes psychologiques [1895], preface by mile Zola,
Paris, ditions Vigon, 1930, 152 pages, p.142.
236

that fully one-quarter of Englishmen were homosexual. But the Germans were the principal target, with comments like More than here, vice is making devastating inroads in
Germany.103 An article dated November 15, 1919, published in La Presse de Paris104 and
symptomatic of this trend was entitled, Life in Berlin. It seems to refer to the film Anders
als die Andern and denounces the immorality that reigns in the defeated country: The
cinema allows itself to be used for every sort of aberration; it pleads extenuating circumstances for inverts of both sexes and for meetings on end the National Assembly discusses
these insane events which, apparently, cannot be prohibited. Fantasio noted on
November 1, 1922 that, While unfortunately there are too many dubious night clubs in
Paris where the oddest boys and girls hang out, it is nothing compared to Berlin, where
sentimental heresy prevails with cynicism.
The Haarmann case, about a German homosexual serial killer, inspired a long
article tinged with Germanophobia in Le Temps: They try to compare him to Landru. It is
absurd. What a gulf between the reasons, the method, the attitude after the crime!
Between the perfect accountant, smiling, fascinating, a really superior degenerate, and the
bloodthirsty madman, the aboriginal from the Saxon forests. As different as the Seine
and the Leine!105 Lucky France, with its high-quality assassins.
In fact, articles associating Berlin and Sodom had become too numerable to count.
Willy, in his work on The Third Sex (1927), starts by expounding on the German example:
How can we even speak about pederasty without thinking at once of Germany and its
extraordinary organization of vice, which pullulates more there than in any other country
in Europe?106 Among the other exemplary works of this type, one may cite Vertus et vices
allemands (first edition, 1904) by Oscar Mtnier, LAllemagne nu (1923) by Ambroise Got,
Gabriel Gobrons Contacts avec la jeune gnration allemande (1930), and Louis-Charles Royers
LAmour en Allemagne (1936). Posing as interested pseudo-scientific analysts, the authors
delight in tarring yesterdays enemy with charges of decadence, degeneracy and the cowardice which they associate with homosexuality.
Hitlers accession to power did nothing to improve the status quo in France. On
February 15, 1933, insolence is still the order of the day: under the headline, Charming
Adolf, Fantasio published a fake interview by Andre Ngis presenting Hitler as a raving
queen. In July 1934, shortly after Rhms assassination, La Vie parisienne ran a cartoon
showing a baker posting various notices in his window, one of which says, Furnished
room for rent, for two men only. Ladies need not apply. We must respect local values in
Hitlers Germany.107 The same year, the magazine published a piece on the homosexuals
of Berlin.108 There is an obvious disparity between the article by Guy de Tramond, who
goes on describing the Berliner subculture as it was at the height of Weimar, and the
reality that the homosexual scene had been destroyed in 1933. In September 1937, Le
Crapouillot still ran a report on the Modern Conceptions of Sexuality with photographs
of Berliner transvestites.
103. Ambroise Got, lAllemagne nu, Paris, La Pense franaise, 1923, 248 pages, p.94.
104. This was an issue put out by several Parisian newspapers working in collaboration,
including Le Temps, in response to a printers strike.
105. Le Temps, 2 October 1924.
106. Willy, Le Troisime Sexe, Paris, Paris-dition, 1927, 268 pages, p.39.
107. La Vie parisienne, 1934, p.1019.
108. Ibid., p.1733.
237

In France, the Night of the Long Knives touched off a large anti-homosexual campaign directed against Germany. While the French newspapers used the same terms as
the Germans, they amplified their criticism with personal remarks. Le Temps of July 2, 1934
vigorously denounced Rhms homosexuality and welcomed Hitlers initiative: Although
they refer to facts known to everyone, these commands are remarkable in the frankness
and the firmness of the tone. Any infringement of 175 in the Code (relating to homosexuality) will be punished most rigorously and will entail at the least expulsion from the
storm troopers and the party. Le Populaire (SFIO) was more circumspect. It viewed was
not sure what to make of the event. The idea of a Nazi Germany that was still a homosexual paradise was curiously entrenched in the minds of French journalists. It is hard to
tell whether that was due to ignorance or provocation. The desire to ridicule the Nazi
regime and the ambitious Hitlerite seems to have helped keep alive this fable which, in
hindsight, appears so out of place.
By comparison, The Times was strikingly prudent. The English daily noted that the
purpose of the operation was primarily the elimination of the second revolution, and the
rest was just a pretext. Homosexuality was not emphasized, and there are none of the
insinuations found in Le Temps as to Rhms offenses. Also in contrast to Le Temps, The Times
published several reports of raids on homosexual bars.
The homosexual might not necessarily be a foreigner in the strictest sense, but was
often seen as an intruder in society. Working under cover and in underhanded ways, he
knew how to make himself invisible while undermining the national morals. This
paranoid vision is the most dangerous: it justifies every kind of excess, and fosters a psychosis within society. It is also the most difficult to dislodge, the more so as it was sometimes corroborated by homosexual themselves.
Proust, in La Recherche, talks about the notion of foreignness in regard to the character Albertine. When the narrator discovers that she has had relations with other
women, he sees her as a different person, a person like them and speaking the same language; and by making her their compatriot, rendered her still more foreign to [him]. Her
secret, kept for so long, made her a spy, and even worse, for those mislead only as to
their nationality, whereas with Albertine it was her deepest humanity, the fact that she
did not belong to humanity in general, but to a strange race that mingled with it, hid
there and never did blend in.109
The theme of the hidden enemy had the most success in Germany; the Nazis
latched onto it with a vengeance. Hansjrg Maurers pamphlet, 175, Eine kritische Betrachtung des Problems der Homosexualitt (1921), precisely prefigures the Nazi themes of safeguarding the race and homosexualitys threat to German civilization. What they [those
who defend homosexuality] want is nothing other than to scramble, confuse and corrupt
as much as possible the moral notions and conceptions of the German race.... They want....
to sap our morality, and that means neither more nor less than destruction of the race!
Then they will be completely victorious!110 Further on, he mixes anti-Semitism and
homophobia: And there lies the terrible danger, that these Jewish professors of a foreign
race and these itinerant preachers of homosexuality have the right, with their science, to
109. Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1989,
t.IV, 1707 pages, p.107-108.
110. Hansjrg Maurer, 175, eine kritische Betrachtung des Problems der Homosexualitt, Munich, Willibald Drexler, 1921, 62 pages, p.41-42.
238

make bodies into carrion, in order to destroy and to break the hearts and the bodies of our
German compatriots.111
HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE WINDS OF FASHION

During the 1920s, homosexuality was all the rage. Writers, artists, caricaturists all
used homosexuals and lesbians (as eccentric, decadent sensualists) symbols of the
Roaring Twenties. While this phenomenon produced a reaction rejection and the
impression of increasing immorality it also contributed to greater tolerance. Having
become a standard item, even banal, the image of the homosexual became less shocking,
and the sports, nudist and youth movements all contributed to the widespread image of
the androgyne as an emblem of modernity and thus spread, not always in conscious ways,
homoerotic themes in society.
Popular Fears and Fantasies: The Homosexual and the Lesbian in Literature
The best-known aspect of the homosexual fad in the inter-war period is the way it
took over literature. While it was not in itself a new phenomenon, it took on new proportions, especially in France.
Homosexual and Lesbian Archetypes

Representations of inverts did not change much during the inter-war period. The
myth of the homosexual as a corrupter of youth, a satyr or a criminal gained new life,
however, in the wake of several sex scandals that erupted in Germany. First there was
Fritz Haarmann (1876-1924), who escaped from the asylum and perpetrated sadistic
crimes on several young teens. This was a big story and deeply shocked the international
public. Theodor Lessing retold the story in 1925 under the title Haarmann, Story of a
Werewolf (!). Between 1918 and 1924, a large number of people disappeared in Hanover
under unknown circumstances, especially boys between the ages of fourteen and
eighteen. The remains (bones, skulls) of at least twenty-two boys were found in the Leine,
the river that runs through the city. Fritz Haarmann was arrested on June 23, 1924.
Pegged as a homosexual, he already had been convicted on several occasions and had been
working since 1918 as a police informant. This scandal created a sensation in Germany as
well as abroad; 168 newspapers covered it. Le Petit Parisien, with its print run of a million
copies, sent the journalist Eugene Quinche to Hanover to cover the trial; he later wrote a
book, Haarmann, The Butcher of Hanover.112 He described the highly charged atmosphere of
the hearings, the way the journalists quizzed the witnesses and Haarmanns neighbors in
search of sensational details, and the publics fascination for the character. The book gives
a good idea just how laden public opinion was with anti-homosexual prejudices. A few
years later, a similar crime wave hit Adolf Seefeld (1871-1936), a vagrant and a religious
111. Ibid., p.43.

112. Eugne Quinche, Haarmann, le boucher de Hanovre, Paris, ditions Henry Parville, 1925,
182 pages.
239

fanatic, was found to have poisoned a dozen young boys. He was executed in 1936. It is
not hard to imagine the impact such affair s must have had on the public. This all reinforced the caricatured image of the diabolical pervert and intensified the already severe
psychosis about the dangers to young people.113
The image of the lesbian in the inter-war period did change somewhat. Three prototypes can be identified. There was the morbid lesbian, a product of decadent literature
and Symbolist painting that was still evoked by certain authors.114 The image was often
melded with that of the prostitute,115 as it was common in those days to imagine that a
woman who was selling her body to men all day and night would prefer, on her own time,
gentler and more caring caresses. The image of women living together was a staple in
depictions of the prostitution underworld. The lesbian was often depicted as a superior
lover, a Don Juan subjecting women to her pleasure. This behavior was immediately associated with the prostitute, the only woman able to assert a completely uninhibited sexuality. Sometimes, the lesbian was even shown in the role of the teacher, the one who
prepared the woman to accept male attacks and taught her how to make her husband
appreciate her. In same vein, prison inmates were also shown as lesbians. In Dans Les
Dessous des prisons de femme (The Underworld of Womens Prisons) Robert Boucard relates how
each new arrival is raped by everyone in the dormitory; each dormitory had a queen and
each queen had her favorite. In Prisons de femmes, Francis Carco devotes several pages to
sapphism. An actual lesbian rite was developed by the prisoners; couples were formed
according to the heterosexual model and sentiments were exaggerated: At Clermont, I
saw of five of them die after being separated from their friends. I can give you the names, if
you want. Think of it. Its full of couples in there. Some are men and some are women. I
was a man. I would pin together the hem of my skirt to make it into trousers. All of those
who were man did the same.116 Some even saw the prison as a refuge: Every one of us,
declared Didi-the-queen, if we werent in the lock-up, we could have been preyed on by
men.117 In Saint-Lazare, lesbianism reigned supreme, and the guards did nothing to stop
it. From the dungeons to the rooftop, they scrawled gigantic hearts with arrows, and
three letters: MFL, which meant Mine For Life, or MUD: Mine Until Death. Martha loves
Sharon, Bertha is gonna get Irma for stealing Georgette.118 Still, some discretion was
required; any concrete proof would entail severe punishment. In the central prison of
Rennes, it was three months in solitary for exchanging notes:
In the beginning these notes were going around all over the place: My dear little
wife Well, I made them cut that out right quick, they didnt dare try that anymore. If
they jump on each other in the night and do nasty things, theres nothing we can do
about it, thats nature; but to go around boasting about their affairs and creating rivalries, quarrels, fights that had to stop.119
113. Le Crapouillot dated May 1938 published a report on Crime and instinctual perversions in
which we learn that homosexuality is particularly prevalent among criminals.
114. Jean Desthieux, Figures mditerranennes: Femmes damnes, Paris-Gap, Ophrys, 1937, 135 pages.
115. Alexandre Parent-Duchtelet, in La Prostitution Paris au XIXe sicle (1836; texts presented and
annotated by Alain Corbin, Paris, ditions du Seuil, 1981, 217 pages), had a passage devoted to
tribads.
116. Francis Carco, Prisons de femmes, Paris, Les ditions de France, 1933, 244 pages, p.5-6.
117. Ibid., p.7.
118. Ibid., p.31.
119. Ibid., p.145.
240

This image was also bolstered lesbians with literary pretensions, like Liane
dePougy.120
Like the decadent lesbian, Claudine embodies a lesbian archetype that is quintessentially French. Born before the First World War, she was still quite popular in the
1920s. Played on stage by Polaire, she launched a whole new fad and many women sought
to imitate her. However, while the comic and off-hand style with which many ambiguous
situations were treated surely contributed to the increasing acceptance of lesbianism
among the general public, it also shows the limits of this type of representation. The marriage of Claudine and Renaud in Claudine in Paris shows Claudines lesbian inclinations in
their true light: Claudine is not a lesbian in the modern sense of the term, she is not even a
liberated woman: My freedom weighs upon me, my independence exhausts me; what I
had been seeking for months even longer was beyond any doubt, a master. Liberated
women are not women.121 The representation of Claudine as lesbian is only an erotic
pretext: Because of my short hair and my coldness towards them, men say themselves:
that ones for women.122
What Claudine embodies is not so much the lesbian as the idea of the lesbian in the
inter-war period, in that trendy world where it was considered stylish to appear emancipated and blas. The French elite, which would have not tolerated militant and aggressive
lesbians, was perfectly comfortable with sexual fantasies that did not exceed the bounds
of intimacy and excited their imagination, without calling into question male superiority:
It is not the same thing [as male homosexuality] You can do anything, you others. Its
sweet, it doesnt matter.123 At the same time, the relationship between Claudine and
Rzi is placed under the tender, protective wing of the husband who, as an accomplice,
encourages their get-togethers and even places an apartment at their disposal, with a
goodwill that smells of voyeurism. The very idea of a lesbian relationship existing as such,
as a viable alternative for love and sex, is tarnished by the coarse outcome when Rzi gives
herself up to Renauds embrace. Finally, what does Claudine bring to the representation
of the lesbian? Rachilde, in her review of Claudine at School in the Mercure de France (May
1900) stresses that, This is the first time that one dares to speak ... of these unnatural
idylls as some form of natural paganism.124 But the lightness of the literary treatment,
which follows Willy in seeking to spice up the narrative a little by adding some of the
slang, some of the playfulness, some of the atmosphere of lesbianism,125 keep Claudine
from being an example of the emancipated lesbian, who has no remorse over her tastes in
love.
In the same type as Claudine we have the Proustian lesbians, Albertine and her
friends, Rosemonde, Andre, the whole troop of girls in flowers, the lesbians of operettas,
puerile fantasies of naughty woman-children sharing guilty secrecies, tasting dirty pleasures, and making fun of men. These girlish games show a mixture of naivety and per-
120. Liane de Pougy, Idylle saphique [1901], Paris, Latts, 1979, 272 pages.
121. Colette, uvres compltes, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1984, t.I, 1 686 pages,
p.364.
122. Ibid., p.447.
123. Ibid., p.453. Renaud, in an earlier discussion of his sons homosexuality, wrote: These stories
give me such a horror. Claudine herself told Marcel: Those little playthings there are called
pensioners toys, but when it comes to 17-year-old boys, its practically a sickness (ibid., p.253).
124. Cited by Herbert Lottman, Colette, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1990, 496 pages, p.69.
125. Ibid., p.67.
241

versity very similar to the passions of Claudine and take place in a context of male
permissiveness that recalls Renaud. Marcel suffers over Albertines absence and her infidelity, but it is just this secret and her lack of scruples that make her so unique and dear
to him. If Albertine had not been with women, he probably would not have been interested. In his treatment of lesbians, Proust joined the decadent tradition, exploring
unknown worlds, as when the narrator surprises Miss Vinteuil and Albertine in a stereotypical scene of lesbian sadistic fantasy. In fact, whereas the waywardness of Charlus and
his ilk are analyzed with clinical precision, the lesbian world remains ethereal and insubstantial. Prousts lesbians are familiar to the public: fallen women, lost women who give
themselves up to their instincts with a naturalness that endears them to men. And once
they give in, they are eaten up by remorse, the just punishment for their pleasures. In fact,
they only hope (the ultimate male fantasy) to be saved by a man whom they could love. It
goes full circle; Albertine follows Claudine, lesbians do not exist: But Albertine suffered
dreadfully, afterward.... She hoped that you would save her, that you would marry her. In
the end, she thought that it was some kind of criminal madness, and I often wondered
whether it were not after something like that, having caused a suicide in a family, that she
had committed suicide herself.126
The third archetype is specific to the inter-war period. This is the masculine
lesbian derived from the New Woman, so clearly embodied by Radclyffe Hall and her
heroine, Stephen Gordon.127 However, the public had trouble distinguishing this model
from the flapper, the garonne, the Bubikopf. Featured in many novels, this version is presented as a congenital invert, a victim of fate at best, and at worst as a femme fatale, a
vampire, a demon who devours her victims and then rejects them without scruple. Such
novels had much to do with popularizing these archetypes.
A Raft of Novels
Novels presenting homosexuality as a modern subject seem to have been most
numerous in France.128 Many such novels hinted in their subtitles: A Modern Story, A
Novel of Contemporary Morals, etc. Some of these were written by homosexuals, but
many were written by heterosexual authors.
In fact, the interest in male homosexuality as the subject of a novel dated back to
the very beginning of the century in novels like Monsieur de Phocas, by Jean Lorrain, when it
was just one facet of the decadent enthusiasm for bizarre practices and sexual deviations.
Male homosexuality was considered in the same vein with sadism, cross-dressing, and
drug taking among men who were craving for new sensations and artificial stimulants.
England experienced this passion for homosexuality through aesthetic movements: Oscar
Wildes The Portrait of Dorian Gray is one of the best examples of this school, together with
all of Ronald Firbanks works. In the inter-war period, vestiges of an ironic and precious
treatment of male homosexuality can be found in E.F. Benson,129 but his descriptions of
aging queens and inverts from good families knitting and taking tea have more to do
126. Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, op. cit., p.180-181.
127. See chapter four.
128. The titles mentioned herein are hardly exhaustive. They were chosen on the basis of their
value as examples rather than for their literary motifs.
129. See for example in E.F. Benson, Snobs, Paris, Salvy, 1994, 217 pages, and the Mapp and Lucia
series.
242

with caricaturing and poking fun at high British society, austere and moralistic, than with
any hearkening back to the good old days when white lilies were thrown on the tombs of
gorgeous young opium addicts.
These literary effects seem artificial and pass in the 1920s. The new trend was
inaugurated in France by Lucien Daudet with Le Chemin mort: roman contemporain (1908).
The hero, Alain Malsort, followed the tragic destiny of a young invert. Protg of a
wealthy middle-class man, he was forsaken when his looks began to fade and he ended up
dying after a scene with his former friend, crushed by a tram. The homosexual social
drama was born.
One year later, Gustave Binet-Valmer wrote Lucien, a novel that became an immense
success and influenced Proust, among others.130 The story became a model for many imitators and similar tales were published throughout the period: a biography is drawn up
incorporating as many as possible of the invert traits defined by doctors, and relating his
trials and tribulations as he lives out his destiny as a homosexual who, no matter what he
does, cannot escape the inevitable condemnation of society and his own moral qualms. By
accentuating the marginality of homosexual, such novels brought society together around
common values and fostered an artificial a sense of unity. Septembernovelle, 131 Arnolt
Bronnens very pessimistic experimental novel (1923), tells the tragic tale of a married
man, father of a child, who falls in love with a young man named Franz. This love is completely liberating for him; he discovers pleasure, exaltation, he loses all sense of prudence.
Finally, the wife kills the boy, then commits suicide; Huber commits suicide in turn. Tu
seras seul (You Will Be Alone), by Alain Rox (1936), was a turning point in that it featured a
young man who was well integrated into the Parisian homosexual scene.
In another style, the homosexual cycle by Willy and Mnalkas, LErsatz damour
(Ersatz Love) (1923) and Le Naufrag (The Shipwrecked Man) (1924), cleverly shifts romantic
conventions and is striking for its knowledge of the homosexual milieu and its lack of
prejudices. Still, it is not a militant work, and is not free from contradictions. For
instance, while the introduction to the Substitute for Love tries to sound scientific (quoting
Freud, Havelock Ellis and Krafft-Ebing), the authors hasten to add that they believe that
woman is better than the Substitute and that the history which is about to follow was
inspired by the experiences of a friend. In each of his novels Willy closely follows the currents of the day and modulates his racy themes so that they are close to what, in the end,
are the rather conventional expectations of his readers. The story takes place on both
sides of the Great War with a young Frenchman, Marc Renneval, who discovers homosexuality in Germany, in 1913, with a young officer, Carl von Rudorff. When war is
declared, Carl deserts out of homosexual fidelity and his friend dies at the front. The Shipwrecked Man follows Carl in 1918. Now an active, militant homosexual, he cannot stop
thinking of his lover, who he does not know has died. He hears the news while traveling
in France, and commits suicide on his tomb at Verdun.
Generally speaking, French works were characterized by a taste for sordid descriptions with seedy bars, washed up male prostitutes, and drug addicts. Homosexuality is
just a sub-plot, titillating to the reader. The sensational theme keeps the readers interest
but the conservative moral tone leaves the reader within his comfort zone. In the work of
130. See J.E. Rivers, Proust and the Art of Love, New York, Columbia University Press, 1980,
327 pages, p.25.
131. Arnolt Bronnen, Septembernovelle [1923], Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1989, 65 pages.
243

Charles-Etienne, Les Dsexus: roman de murs (1924), the hero, Sandro, pretty as a woman
and musically gifted, had his sexual initiation during childhood in the arms of a comrade,
then was corrupted by a school official: Never would this intellectual have claimed that
the body is a holy temple which no one has the right to desecrate, that sensuality destroys
the mind and that to upset a humans equilibrium is a crime as great as murder itself.132
Sandro goes from one disaster to another as a prostitute in the unsettling world of the
sidewalk and the public urinals, becomes an opium addict, a cocaine addict. A friend
from his village arrives in Paris and she, too, descends into prostitution; she is initiated
into sapphism. Approaching the age of forty, they decide to marry, but soon fall back into
old ways; adopting a young girl could bring them redemption; but she, too, is seduced and
is given to a brothel-keeper. Sandro kills his protector and ends his days in a psychiatric
asylum; his wife dies and the girl goes on as a prostitute. On the topic of the homosexual
downfall and the difficulty of redemption through marriage, Francis de Miomandre produced Ces petits messieurs (1922) and Henry Marx Ryls: Un amour hors la loi (1923). Even more
ridiculous was Amour inverti, by Jean de Cherveix, which is nothing but a long, wild
fantasy on the idea of a man transformed into a woman. A better effort on the same topic
was La Femme qui tait en lui (1937), by Maurice Rostand.
Homosexuality was not always the novels principal theme. Many authors merely
embellished their works with a few dashes of homosexuality. Sometimes a little dose of
homosexuality was enough to raise a tale of adultery above the usual banalities. One
example would be Le Jeune Amant (1928) by Paul Reboux, in which Helene Joussin, a young
widow, meets Marcel Target, a young homosexual actor, at a Lenten ball. In another
example, youthful fancies still allow the hero, if the story goes beyond adolescence, to
revert to normal tastes without any risk. In Classe 22 (1929) by Ernst Glaeser, adolescent
homosexuality is chalked up to the war, paternal absence, and lax supervision by overwhelmed mothers. Similarly, in Joseph Breitbachs Rival et rivale133 (1935), the war is used
as the backdrop for a generalized scene of corruption. Sometimes, the title is catchy but
one may in vain seek in vain any allusion to homosexuality in the novel; Sodome et Berlin
(1929) by Jean Goll is a case in point.134 Michel George-Michels novel Dans la fte de Venise
(1923), pretending to present a tableau of wild goings-on in Venice, tosses in an obligatory passage on homosexuals. One has the impression that a homosexual character has
become essential to any novel that is in the least bit risqu, like the adulteress, the cocaine
addict and the negro dancer.
Homosexuality always does not appear so explicitly. Generally, quality literary
works show a reluctance to incite a scandal. In La Confusion des sentiments (1926), Stefan
Zweig tries to sprinkle his pages little by little with openly homosexual references that
gradually have the effect of allowing one to understand, without it being mentioned in so
many words, that his character is an invert.135 In fact, it is the love relation, more than
the homosexuality, which is at the center of the novel. Thomas Manns works are also
132. Charles-tienne, Les Dsexus, Paris, Curio, 1924, 267 pages, p.46.
133. The title of the German original is Die Wandlung der Suzanne Dusseldorf.
134. Sodom and Gomorrha were recreated in Berlin. Drug-taking was no longer hidden, mysticism and belief in the paranormal were popularized, and despite 175, homosexual and lesbian leanings were expressed in public (Jean Goll, Sodome et Berlin, Paris, mile-Paul frres, 1929, 250 pages,
p.139-140).
135. The professor had a bust of Ganymde and a Saint Sebastian; he read Shakespeares sonnets
and Whitmans poems and, in his thesis, the most scorching passages are reserved for Marlowe.
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very rich in homosexual insinuations.136 The famous Death in Venice (1912), largely autobiographical, shows an aging writer falling in love with the androgynous beauty of young
Tadzio, a hopeless quest for youth and artistic purity which leads him to his death. In
Tonio Krger (1903), inversion is only suggested through a teen friendship, but homosexuality was already being used as a metaphor to express the sense of difference and
exclusion, and to speculate on the fate of the artist. In The Magic Mountain (1924), Thomas
Mann avoids a frank treatment of homosexuality: the homosexual attractions of Hans
Castorp survive his adolescence only in a disguised fashion; the woman whom he loves
corresponds to the same physical ideal as the boy with whom he was in love at school, and
she repeats the same seductive scenario. Furthermore, one notes that there is an
abstraction in both cases that enables Castorp to go on without wondering about his
sexual identity. Thomas Mann reinstates homosexuality as a private matter. At the same
time, his eagerness to deal with the subject is a reflection of his inability to accept his own
homosexuality.
Lesbianism enjoyed a bit of a boost during inter-war period, particularly in France
and England. The lesbian, sometimes scarcely differentiated from the flapper, was an
exemplary modern subject. She was treated quite differently in literature than male
homosexuals. First of all, the subject was more eroticized. The lesbian already had a long
history.137 As a fantasy character in mens literature, she was always used to inject additional erotic overtones into light novels. Unlike male love scenes, which must, thinks one,
repulse the reader, one can vary ad infinitum the scenes of kisses and Sapphic caresses
which seem suggestive yet unthreatening.
The work of Gustave Binet-Valmer, Sur le sable couches (1929) is an excellent
example of this new genre. The insignificant plot is only used to set the scene for
somewhat naughty amorous relations. An American lesbian, Mabel Waybelet, rich, beautiful and masculine, sets to work seducing a fairly androgynous French girl, Martine. The
conclusion is a triumph for a certain idea of morals, when the perverted girl returns to her
mother, who has been reminded of her family duties, and the lesbian curiously leaves off
her morbid inclinations when a virile man takes her in hand. Suzanne de Callias, a friend
of Willy, published Erna, jeune fille de Berlin in 1932. The work attempted to be a digest of
German modernity; with slender Erna in her short hair, working as a journalist, goes
through all the milieux that are representative of decadence: Berlins Eldorado, the Paris
Club de la Faubourg, Viennas psychoanalytical circles. She meets a crowd of homosexual
of both sexes and notes of an acquaintance: The other day he declared that he was not for
men. Nowadays, you can be arrested for that.138 Unhappy Erna finishes her career by
marrying a young man on the far Right, who obliges her to stay home. In this sense the
novel seemed to presage in late 1932 the approaching collapse of the homosexual myth
and the return to the traditional moral order. Notre-Dame-de-Lesbos (1914), Charlestiennes blockbuster, inaugurated the genre of the lesbian novel with documentary over136. For a complete study of homosexuality in relation to Thomas Mann, see Gerhard Hrle,
Mnnerweiblichkeit, zur Homosexualitt bei Klaus und Thomas Mann, Frankfurt-am-Main, Athenum Verlag,
1988, 412 pages; and Karl Werner Bhm, Zwischen Selbstsucht und Verlangen, Thomas Mann und das Stigma
Homosexualitt, Wurzbourg, Knigshausen & Neumann, 1991, 409 pages. See also chapter four.
137. We could cite at random Diderots La Religieuse, Baudelaires Femmes damnes and
numerous decadent novels: Charles Montfort, Le Roman dune saphiste, Adrienne Saint-Agen, Amants
fminins
138. Mnalkas, Erna, jeune fille de Berlin, Paris, ditions des Portiques, 1932, 254 pages.
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tones. The old story of a love that can never be is the pretext for running through all the
fashionable lesbian hotspots and talking about female homosexuality. In the novel, pseudonyms are used but famous lesbians are depicted.
Sometimes the more subtle lesbian novels took the form of contemporary works
pretending to illustrate how morality was evolving. In Garonne (1922), Victor Margueritte gives a none too flattering portrait of his heroine of the moment: bisexual, constantly on the make, opium addict, heroin addict, cocaine addict, but never satisfied. The
flapper, as the term Garonne indicates, aspires to being a man, and especially when it
comes to love.139 It would be an error, however, to think that Margueritte is for womens
liberation; the garonne is heading for a fall. A proud joy buoyed her up, at the thought
of her double unfolding. Men! She smiled scornfully. Just by wanting to, she had become
physically, and morally, their equal. And however, there was no point in avoiding it, she
had to admit that somewhere, in the bitterness of her revenge, was a vague uneasiness...
Loneliness? Sterility? She couldnt feel its movement, yet, but an invisible worm was
there, in the very magnificence of the fruit.140 Here is an example of the dominant male
notion, which supposed that the woman who evaded her marital and maternal functions
was incomplete and unhappy. Moreover, the novels conclusion brings a just reward: the
garonne falls in love with a man who saves her life, and she marries him. Here again, this
novel which was such a scandalous success in the inter-war period, can be read as a metaphor of the evolving views on the womans place, in particular the homosexual womans,
during that era: the return to order, presented as the natural order, rehabilitating all the
deviants into a single and undifferentiated social body. In fact, the novel was made into
a film in 1923, and it was banned as a deplorably distorted view of the character of French
girls.141 When the play was performed at the theatre de lAlhambra in Lille, on February
26, 1927, it caused a riot; two agents were wounded and four students arrested. It took a
group of gendarmes to restore order.142
Many novels were more clearly hostile to female homosexuality, and the British
ones in particular attacked it with irony and derision. The two best-known works are
Compton Mackenzies novels Vestal Fire (1927) and Extraordinary Women (1928), set in the
homosexual and especially lesbian community that grew up in Capri (Siren, in the
novel).143 This decadent and frivolous world already seemed dated in 1927, but Mackenzie contributed to making it the symbol of homosexuality in the English style, smart
and dilettantish. Vestal Fire is mostly about male homosexual relations. The hero, Marsac,
is given to every excess; he goes after the young shepherds of the island, smokes opium,
writes verse and even a novel. All his weaknesses are excused: after all, he made his
studies at Oxford. Ten years before, while he was a student, he had been a major figure in
139. Victor Margueritte, La Garonne [1922], Paris, Flammarion, 1978, 269 pages.
140. Ibid., p.135.
141. Cited by Georges Bernier, La Garonne, in Olivier Barrot and Pascal Ory (dir.), Entre-deuxguerres, Paris, Franois Bourin, 1990, 631 pages, p.161.
142. Le Temps, 27 February 1927.
143. At the turn of the century, Capri became a favorite holiday resort for homosexuals; some of
them moved there permanently after the trial of Oscar Wilde in order to escape scandal or to feel
more free in expressing their sexuality. Among the famous visitors was the baron dAdelswaldFersen (Marsac, in the novel), Somerset Maugham, E.F. Benson, J.E. Brooks and his wife Romaine
Brooks, Natalie Barney, Scott Fitzgerald, D.H. Lawrence, and Norman Douglas. Willy described the
Isle of Capri as: a miniature capital of sodomy, the Mecca of inversion, a Geneva or a Moscow of the
future internationalism of homosexuality (Le Troisime Sexe, op. cit., p.67-68).
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the hottest decadent cliques at Oxford.144 At Siren, the ancient taste dominates.
Marsac published a well-named literary review Symposium, with a photograph of a young
boy in a bathing suit on the cover, his thick hair falling in a fringe about his face and cut in
the middle to form the shape of a heart. This is the world of before the First World War;
carefree, esthetist, it seems to have stepped straight out of a play by Oscar Wilde or an
Aubrey Beardsley engraving. In Extraordinary Women, Capri discovers the war and the
changes that came with the 1920s. The island becomes above all a haven for lesbians. The
novel is just a succession of adventures in love, festivals, quarrels and reconciliations
against a background of small jealousies; lesbian love, according to Mackenzie, is not
based in reality, it is just a distraction for fashionable young ladies or disturbed artists,
and will end with the first man they meet: All summer he said that these poor women
were running each other only because there was a shortage of men.145 The intelligence of
the women also seems questionable: Oh, you should read Andr Gide. I am mad about
Andr Gide. I dont understand a word he writes.146 However, each character is based on
a famous lesbian and the novel, beyond the caricature, is an accurate depiction of the
trends of the time. Frivolity prevails and the worship of beauty is omnipresent.147 These
lesbians sacrifice to the male fashion and give each other mens names, like Rory, who
does not go out without her bulldogs and dines in a tuxedo.
Modeled on Natalie Barney, Olimpia Leigh refuses to adopt new conventions: I
like women who are profoundly and ineluctably women. It is their femininity which I find
attractive. Really, in a certain sense, I prefer an effeminate boy to a masculine girl.148 She
severely judges the butch who denies the values of femininity: Poor Freemantle is obviously one of those women with exaggerated sexual tendencies who never had much luck
with men ... Her natural inclinations are, I am sure, absolutely normal, but discovering
that men remained like marble when she danced with them, she gave up on them.149
It is interesting to note that it is the feminine Olimpia Leigh who embodies lesbian
militancy and the rejection of men in the most radical way: She imagined a race of homosexual men and women who would exhaust the physical expression of sexuality by the
repetitive futility of the sterile act. The instinct of sublimation would then be refreshed,
and finally one would obtain a race of creative spirits which would have completely mastered the body.150
Two pure parodies can be added to the list, inspired by contemporary events in
Britain: The Girls of Radclyffe Hall by Adela Quebec151 and The Sink of Solitude (1928) by Egan
Beresford,152 a lampoon on Radclyffe Hall and her book The Well of Loneliness, accompanied
by a series of satirical drawings in decadent style, representing lesbians as satyrs. The
lampoon has no moralizing intention; on the contrary, it makes fun of all those who were
144. Compton Mackenzie, Vestal Fire [1927], London, The Hogarth Press, 1986, 420 pages, p.92.
145. Id., Extraordinary Women [1928], London, The Hogarth Press, 1986, 392 pages, p.298.
146. Ibid., p.261.
147. Ibid., p.38.
148. Ibid., p.251.
149. Ibid., p.252.
150. Ibid., p.231.
151. See chapter three.
152. Egan Beresford, The Sink of Solitude, Series of satirical drawings occasioned by some recent
events performed by Egan Beresford to which is added a preface by P.R. Stephenson, and a Lampoon
Verse composed by several hands, London, The Herness Press, 1928.
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indignant at the Radclyffe Hall book and in particular at the legal proceedings brought by
Hicks.153
There were also a few works that sought to explore the nuances of homosexuality
in a less commonplace way, and, ignoring the equivocal effects, created lesbian novels
supported by medical information. This type of work expressed a more sympathetic tone,
taking a gentler and more pitying attitude toward the lesbian, victim of an inclination she
did not choose and of a society that rejected her, as she bears her cross until death. In
Bonifas, (1925) by Jacques de Lacretelle, the heroine Marie Bonifas is ugly and masculine.
Her early loves were unhappy. At the age of twenty, she finds herself orphaned; a rich girl
in a small provincial town, her refusal to marry wins her a bad reputation. Soon, her love
for Claire gives rise to lies; when her friend dies of consumption (!), Marie goes wild: she
smokes, rides a horse, and takes to wearing typically lesbian clothing, including mens
boots and a cane.154 Threatening letters started to arrive, the windows were smashed,
outrageous graffiti appeared, and insults came from all sides. The war offered redemption:
Marie distinguishes herself by her organization and her courage; she saves the city. At the
end of the war, her legend was spread throughout France, the heroine of Vermont. But
she remains sad and lonely. Maries fate is sealed. She cannot know happiness; it is unattainable for women of her kind. Lacretelle is not optimistic; the solution which he proposes is the rational use of the lesbians social qualities. To be forgiven for her vice, she
must devote herself entirely to society and make her virile strengths (usually a handicap)
into an asset. Of course, it is clear that social acceptance on these terms requires abandoning any idea of sexual gratification and life shared with a woman.
Rosamund Lehmanns novel Dusty Answer (1927) was a big hit;155 it contrasts
romantic friendships with adult homosexuality. The heroine, Judith, who has been in love
with a boy, Roddy, since childhood, is attracted by one of her classmates at Cambridge,
Jennifer. The climate in the dormitory is poisonous, Jennifers beauty and her popularity
turn the other girls against Judith. Roddy, who is also at Cambridge, is going through the
same thing in a special friendship with his comrade, Tony. Jennifer is soon seduced by an
older woman, Geraldine, an affirmed lesbian with all the stereotypical traits: she smoked
like a man,156 and was masculine and sensual in appearance. Her broad and heavy-featured face and thick neck, tanned skin, how could Jennifer be so lacking in taste! ... Oh
no, it was not true. In spite of all that, she was beautiful; she exerted a disturbing fascination.157 Jennifer is distracted from Judith and devotes herself to what one can guess
must be a voracious sexual relationship with Geraldine. She is lost forever for her friend
153. It ends with a long poem recapitulating the affair as a parody, roughly Sing on, O worldly
muse, Radclyffe Hall/ And as she wrote a story that was bound/ to fall like a ton of bricks on those
narrow-minded souls/ Crushing James Douglas and Sir Joynson Hicks/ [] The Greek isles where
Sappho burned/ We will analyze them through the lens of Freud and Jung/ As Sappho burned with
her own special flame / God understands her; we must do the same/ Saying, of such eccentricities, /
Its true, poor thing, she was born that way (a literal translation).
154. Jacques de Lacretelle, La Bonifas [1925], Paris, Gallimard, 1979, 338 pages, p.201.
155. In La Btarde, Violette Leduc tells how deeply the book moved her: Two teenage girls as
lovers, and a woman dared to write it. [] Jennifer. I was obsessed with the name. Do you love
Jennifer? Do you prefer Jennifer over the others? Do you find her a little too fresh, Jennifer? Oh, no!
Wild? You think Jennifer is too wild? Not Jennifer (La Btarde, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, 462 pages,
p.159).
156. Rosamund Lehmann, Dusty Answer [1927], London, Collins, 1978, 355 pages, p.188.
157. Ibid., p.197.
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who does not understand this attraction and who, exiting college, quite naturally turns to
men.
In fact, while the English literature of the inter-war period was rich in lesbian characters, the noir treatment of sapphism was generally preferred. The lesbian was
depicted as a woman who was hard, authoritative, but with a disquieting charm, on the
lookout for girls or innocent wives in order to steal them from society and to submit them
to a tyrannical yoke.158 Generally, the seduced young woman is saved and the real
lesbian expiates her sin, rejected by all. In Francis Brett Youngs White Ladies (1935), Arabella, a seventeen-year-old girl, falls for the charm of her school director, Miss Cash, a
heinous and egocentric lesbian. She soon recognizes her error and leaves her friend for a
boy. Naomi Royde-Smith had two extremely depressing novels on female homosexuality.
In The Tortoiseshell Cat (1925), a young teacher (a recurring stereotype) falls in love with
one with her neighbors, a very beautiful woman with black hair, Victoria Vanderleyden,
called Victor by her friends. Victoria fools around with many women and has fun
seducing men, whom she leads to suicide. Here again, the young woman discovers the
real nature of her partner in time, and leaves her. The Island, A Love Story (1930) pushes the
storyline a bit farther. Goosey, a neglected young redhead, has hated men since one of
them rejected her. She goes after a girl her own age, Flossie (known as Almond), who is
vain, feminine, and ravishing. After Almond gets married, Goosey, who has become a
fashion designer, sets up shop on an island, Rockmouth. She refuses an invitation to
marry and her reputation suffers from her various manias. When Almond leaves her
husband and returns to Goosey, it only excites the local ill will. The two women live
together for a few years but continual arguments and jealousy bring their friendship to an
end. Almond ends up remarrying whereas Goosey ends up alone, scorned by all, an old
maid who is half mad. In Unnatural Death (1927) by Dorothy Sayers, the lesbian becomes
the quintessential criminal. Under cover of a police intrigue, the story promulgates the
worst homophobic prejudices. The old maid, Miss Climpson, who conducts the investigation with Mr. Winsey, is used as a foil to highlight the depravity of the modern woman
in contrast to the traditional English correctness, without however tarring all the
unmarried people in England with the same brush. But the message is clear: youd better
learn to tell the difference between the old maid and her demoniacal double, the
lesbian.159
The criminal lesbian and psychopath came into vogue in the inter-war period. The
most famous example is by the writer and neurologist Alfred Dblin, Die beiden Freundinnen
und ihr Giftmord (The Poisoning) (1924), which is based on a news item from the time. The
terse style, the way the intrigue is examined all contribute to fixing in the readers mind
the image of two female neurotics, not very intelligent, so dominated by their mutual
passion that they lose sight of any elementary rules. Lesbians come across as deformed
beings, bordering on crime and abnormality just through their sexuality. The two heroines, Elli Link and Margarete Bende, are in Berlin, married to husbands whom they do
not love. They seduce each other, and begin writing back and forth. To a large extent their
relationship is based on hatred of their husbands, which they use to justify themselves,
158. For another example of a lesbian school director who corrupts and exerts her influence over
the students and teachers, see Clemence Dane, Regiment of Women (1917; London, Greenwood Press,
1978, 345 pages).
159. Dorothy Sayers, Lautopsie na rien donn [Unnatural Death, 1927], Paris, London, Morgan, 1947,
253 pages.
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masking the reprehensible bizarreness of their love which they themselves consider guilty
and criminal.160 The connection finishes in the drama. Elli poisons her husband with
arsenic. With its death, the autopsy reveals the murder. She is arrested, along with her
friend. At the trial, the medical experts testify. One of them insists they are intellectually
retarded, another directly blames their homosexuality: The cause of this profound hatred
is in particular the homosexual inclination of these women who found it intolerable to
live with the demands of their husbands and who, at the same time, in their aspirations to
be together were guided, as Link said, only by one obsession: to be free.161 Elli Link was
sentenced to four years in prison, Margarete to eighteen months.
As these kinds of writings became fashionable, not to mention the considerable
number of homosexual works and stories of boarding-school romances, they had a
decisive influence. Homosexuality was treated in a tragic or heart-rending fashion to
encourage readers to be more tolerant, to have pity and understanding. However, the very
concept of fashion suggests that this was just one in the continuous series of transitory
passions and casts doubt on the notion that public attitudes had really changed much.
The Homosexual as a Symbol of Modernity

In the Twenties, homosexuality became a symbol of modernity, mainly in the
artistic and literary fields. La Vie parisienne describes the modern girl as someone who
has read Lady Chatterleys Lover. She knows how children are made and how not to make
any. Natural history is not foreign to her, nor anecdotal history, nor the various ways that
animals and people make love in their various postures. For a long time now, it has been
acceptable to say anything in front of her, and she will understand more than you say. She
has seen licentious paintings and obscene photographs, she is not unaware of reality. She
knows by science and, to a fairly large degree, by experience. She has slept and not slept
with a cherished girlfriend.162 The term modern is used to indicate a great freedom of
morals. Thus when the police in Toulon arrested a young man, Giovanni Conforti, he
retorted that he was a modern man who loves people of both sexes.163
Homosexuality had become synonymous with the rejection of conventions; it was a
means for artists to express their rejection of traditions, middle-class values, and the
world from before 1914. It was associated with revolt, vital energy, pure sex, and also with
intellectualism, vice, and a way to erase the memory of the horrors of the war in a burst of
pleasure. Many avant-garde heterosexual painters in the Twenties were pre-occupied
with representations of the homosexual scene. Rudolf Schlichter made a specialty of
fetishistic representations. Homosexual bars were featured in La Petite Chaumire by Georg
Grosz, in 1927, and Otto Dixs Eldorado. The screaming colors advertise the harsh makeup
of transvestites. Dix was interested in unusual figures from the Bohemian fringes of
society; in 1923, he produced a portrait of the homosexual jeweller Karl Krall, whom he
represented in a very ambiguous way, in costume, hands on his hips, with his waistline
drawn in and a feminine-looking chest. Sometimes irony prevails, as in Le Dieu des coiffeurs
(God of the Hairdressers), a watercolor from 1922, showing a naked, very effeminate young
160. Alfred Dblin, LEmpoisonnement [Die beiden Freundinnen und ihr Giftmord, 1924], Arles, Actes
Sud, 1988, 108 pages, p.50.
161. Ibid., p.89.
162. ryximaque, La jeune fille moderne, La Vie parisienne, 1934.
163. AN, F7 13960 (2), Toulon, 14 September 1932.
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man with very glossy hair and moustache, floating in the foreground amid the instruments of his profession.
For Grosz, the vice and criminality of Berlin were just a prolongation of the horrors
of the war. His drawings are also the reflection of his revolutionary engagement. In his
Ecce homo (1923), he denounces the erotic obsessions of the bourgeoisie, drawing a sinister
picture of a world that has been cast adrift. Christian Schad specialized in the genre
depicting mores of the times. He published illustrations, for example, for Curt Moreks
Guide du Berlin dbauch and many lithographs of homosexual bars, like Adonisdiele (1930)
and Brger-Casino (1930). In the painting that bears his name (1927), Count Saint-Genois
of Anneaucourt is arrayed between a transvestite and a woman, who seems to fear competition from the intruder. The counts latent homosexuality is revealed by the discrete
placement of the characters in the background.164
The New Woman is constantly evoked, as the very image even of modernity.
Sonja, a portrait by Christian Schad from 1928, is the prototype: the model, dressed in
black, with short hair, a cigarette-holder in hand, sits alone at a table in a restaurant.
Burbot (1927-1928) uses similar elements. The dour young woman, eyes circled in black
against a livid skin, wears short hair and a dark tuxedo over a white shirt. She too is alone
in a bar or a nightclub whose lights are reflected in a mirror in the background. Then
there is the vitriolic portrait of the journalist Sylvia von Harden, by Otto Dix (1926),
showing the powerful personality of the model but in blood-red tones. Here again we see
the cigarette, the monocle, the cocktail, underscoring the independence of the woman. Les
Deux amies (The Two Friends) by Christian Schad (1928) shows two women with immense
eyes, short hair, and a distracted air, each on masturbating, showing the slippery slope
from New Woman to lesbian.
In the literary field, Hans Henny Jahnns experimentation in Perrudja (1929), rest on
a set of bisexual themes and an exaltation of the androgynous.165 The subversive character
of the work was very quickly detected by the critics. Vlkischer Beobachter of June 9, 1923
reacted to his play Der Arzt, sein Weib, sein Sohn while talking about the Zionist mentality
and perversion: What this play is about, unfortunately, is a homage to child abduction,
pederasty, divorce, sodomy, incest, sadism and assassination.166 Reaction to Perrudja was
violent and in particular it was described as the disgusting outpourings of a sick
mind.167 The symbolic weight of homosexuality was perceived early on by Thomas Mann
who, in his book On Marriage, legitimates inversion because of its artistic and aesthetic
potential: One may justifiably qualify homosexuality as the erotic of esthetics. It is free
love, in that it implies sterility, a dead end, a lack of consequences and responsibility.
Nothing happens as a result of it, will not form the basis for anything, it is art for arts
sake, which on the aesthetic level can be a very proud and free attitude, though without
any doubt immoral.168 Homosexuality is art for arts sake; in this formula Thomas Mann
summarized the topicality of the phenomenon; homosexuality was modern, a symbol of
the gratuitous act, just like the murder of Lafcadio or the poems of Kurt Schwitters. A
164. Sergiusz Michalski, Nouvelle objectivit, Cologne, Taschen, 1994, 219 pages, p.47.
165. Hans Henny Jahnn, Perrudja [1929], Paris, Jos Corti, 1995, 802 pages, p.234.
166. Cited by Friedhelm Krey, Hans Henny Jahnn und die mannmnnliche Liebe, Berlin, Peter Lang, 1987,
458 pages, p.14.
167. Paul Fechter, Die neue Literatur, January 1931, cited ibid., p.15.
168. Thomas Mann, Sur le mariage [1925], bilingual edition, Paris, Aubier-Flammarion, 1970,
191 pages, p.55-57.
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whole generation murdered by the war was recalled in this useless, irresponsible and
sterile act.
This interpretation of homosexuality as modernity was primarily a German phenomenon. Not everyone in the avant-garde granted homosexuality such a place of honor.
The Surrealist movement expressed particularly negative opinions on the subject.
Research on sexuality conducted by the surrealist movement from January 1928 to August
1932, in twelve meetings, with a varying cast of characters participants, is edifying in this
respect.169 The worst homophobic prejudices are stated there, and rare are the voices that
defend the pederasts. Furthermore, Ren Crevel was notably absent; he undoubtedly
would have been extremely isolated in the debate. At the very first meeting, January 27,
1928, homosexuality was attacked very brutally. Raymond Queneau was the only one,
with Prvert, to express tolerance. Pierre Unik said, From the physical point of view,
pederasty disgusts me as much as excrement, and from the moral point of view I condemn
it. Breton exploded: What pederasts are proposing to human tolerance is a mental and
moral deficit that shows signs of becoming systematized and of paralyzing all the institutions that I respect. Many surrealists, like Breton, would not even hear about it: I absolutely oppose the discussion continuing on this subject. If this is turning into an
advertisement for pederasty, I am leaving. The debate could not go on, for the reactions
were too strong and irrational. Hatred for pederasts170 was expressed in the strong,
insulting language reserved for those from whom one wishes to separate oneself absolutely, those with whom one cannot have any relationship. For these people I feel only
antipathy, deep and organic. There is no common moral ground between these people and
me. (Marcel Noll).
Sapphism did not elicit the same response. Andr Breton regained his equilibrium
as soon as his integrity as a male was no longer under threat: I find lesbians very interesting. Yves Tanguy acknowledged his indifference on the subject. Albert Valentin
responded, Very favorable to relations between women. I like to help out, even with the
woman whom I love. Pederasts disgust me more than anything in the world. Here we
find the traditional male attitude; he feels attacked in his virility by any sign of pederasty,
yet finds nothing reprehensible in female relations, especially when he can look on. On the
other hand, he is adamantly against the masculine lesbians, who compete with him on his
own turf. Paul Eluard responded, The greatest hatred for masculine lesbians, the greatest
weakness for lesbians who remain women. In spite of the so-called worship of the
woman celebrated by Breton and Eluard, the sexuality of a surrealist is first and foremost
a masculine sexuality, concerned with masculine desire and pleasure.
Womens voices did not advance the debate very far. Katia Thirion was traditional:
Between two men, the idea disgusts me completely. I have no desire to visualize these
relations. Between two women, I might; but I have never done it, myself. Simone Vion
affected a great sexual freedom: That does not disgust me at all, I have had very good
friends among the pederasts and this idea would not bother me. No representation. I literally turned down several women because [I] did not [desire them], but my turn must be
coming, soon. Only Mme. Lna acknowledged a marked lesbian inclination: For men, I
169. Surrealism Archives, Recherches sur la sexualit, January 1928-August 1932, Paris, Gallimard,
1990, 212 pages.
170. Andr Breton corrected Ilya Ehrenburg and others on this point when they said that the
surrealist movement was a bunch of pederasts.
252

dont mind it at all and find the thought exciting. Two men caressing each other but
not doing each other up the ass. I would love to see it. I have no problem as far as women,
I am completely [in favor] of these relation. I have had sixteen women. The resigned
attitude of these women is surprising, they do not seek in any way to affirm their right to
an autonomous sexuality or to question the chauvinist myths proposed by their interlocutors. In the final analysis, the surrealist position on homosexuality appears traditional,
conservative, even reactionary, typically middle-class, respectful of convention and rife
with prejudices. The artistic avant-garde was not always the sexual avant-garde.
A Vague Homoeroticism: Youth and Androgyny

Homosexuality in the inter-war period cannot be dissociated from the topic of
youth: the homosexual erotic ideal was that of the young lad, ones friend at school, the
German friend with a fit and muscular body and such an insouciant air that any compunctions were easily overcome. Homosexual sexuality, in the Twenties, was often seen
as an adolescent sexuality, irresponsible, uninhibited. Sachs summarized it as follows:
Furthermore, it may be that what keeps me going in loving boys, as much and more than
the pleasure is that climate of almost childish complicity which I find more charming than
the exercise of full virile force.171
Youth movements really took off in the Twenties and Thirties.172 In these movements, there was an emphasis on contact with nature, and a preoccupation with hygiene.
Boys, sorted by age brackets, wore shorts and shirts with open collars. They learned
autonomy and a sense of responsibility, on their own. The camp was a kind of leadership
school, which imparted a paternalist ideology. At the same time youth inns were introduced in France by Marc Sangnier, 173 the founder of Sillon, following the German
example. And it was in Germany that the Jugendbewegungen, of which the Wandervogel
was the most famous example, made their greatest strides. In 1926, 4.3 million out of 9
million young people were members of a youth association.174 Of this number, the confederated movement (bndisch, emanating from the Wandervogel) had only 51,000
members, but its influence in society was particularly strong (even if Detlev J.K. Peukert
doubts its real impact in the daily life of young people). Founded in 1895 by Karl Fischer
and Ludwig Gurlitt, in the beginning Wandervogel was made up of high-school pupils
and educators who wanted certain reforms. After the war, its promotion of nationalism
was reinforced around the principle of the chief and it developed a myth of youth as the
regenerative force of the German people.175 The war had encouraged the rise of this myth,
171. Maurice Sachs, Le Sabbat [written in 1939, published in 1946], Paris, Gallimard, 1960,
298 pages, p.167.
172. In England, the number of Boy Scouts went from 152,000 in 1913 to 438,000 in 1938, and
Baden-Powell became one of the best-known names in the country. In France, scouting took root
just before the First World War, first among the Protestants. The Catholics were more reticent; they
founded scout troops in 1920 and guides in 1923. In 1933, France had more than 50,000 scouts (boys),
12,000 French claireur unionists and 6000 claireurs (scouts).
173. Sangnier founded the Ligue franaise des auberges de jeunesse (League of youth hostels) in
1929-1930. The lay Center for Youth Hostels (CLAJ) was founded in 1933, for youngsters of the left.
174. That is more than one out of every two boys and just under one out of two girls; of the total,
1.6 million youngsters belonged to sporting associations and 1.2 million to religious groups. The
young workers movement had 368,000 members (not to mention the thousand or so young communists). See Detlev J.K. Peukert, La Rpublique de Weimar, op. cit., p.98.
253

propagated in particular by the book with powerful homoerotic overtones by Walter
Flex, Der Wanderer zwischen beiden Welten, published in 1917. It went through twenty-nine
editions, with 250,000 copies printed in less than two years. Flex met Ernst Wusche in
the spring of 1915, on the Eastern front, but in August Wusche was killed, leaving Flex,
who had seen him as the future savior of Germany, in despair. He wrote his book in
homage to Wusches memory, giving an idealized image of his friend, a symbol of the
patriotic youth that gave its life for Germany. There was a striking similarity with the
myth of Rupert Brooke, which developed at the same time in England.176
Youth was set in opposition adult world, which was seen as the world of official
authoritarianism, and enacted its own rules, its own values and its own way of life. It was
often perceived as a danger and delinquency was seen as a growing problem. The purpose
of many of the political or religious organizations was to rein in young people and reintegrate them into a more structured environment. Wandervogel encouraged experience of
new lifestyles and was at the avant-garde of the sexual reform. It developed a homoerotic
ideology based on male supremacy. Under Weimar, there were no independent leisure
organizations for girls, and while they were accepted in certain youth movements they
were mostly confined to the family sphere, without having the occasion to develop relationships autonomously.
The great theorist of homoeroticism was Hans Blher177 who, in his book Der Wandervogel als erotisches Phnomen (1912), asserted that homosexuality was the bond that gave
the movement cohesion and contributed to its success. According to Blher, the youth
movements were secretly governed by erotic relations (generally sublimated) between
the adolescents and the team leaders. Much of the leadership in Jugendbewegung were
homosexuals, for (according to him) they were the only ones ready to devote themselves
to young people. Blhers book had enormous repercussions He made homosexuality a
symbol of adolescent revolt against bourgeoisie family morals, and a response to the
impossibility of living a completely free heterosexual life in a puritan society.
In 1908-1909, after the Eulenburg affair, anti-homosexual hysteria also struck the
youth movements. Several leaders, like Wilhelm Jansen (1866-1943) who was part of
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, were forced to resign and Wandervogel was divided into two
distinct groups. In November 1910, the Jung-Wandervogel was founded, apart from AltWandervogel. The new movement aimed to be more radical and asserted friendship (as it
was defined by Blher) as a founding principle, even if Otto Piper, one of the cofounders,
noted that the group had no more homosexuals in it than other movements.178
And indeed, ties between homosexuality and youth groups were not restricted to
the back-to-nature movement and the sports associations or, for that matter, movements
on the far Right. In Curt Bondys 1922 book Die proletarische Jugendbewegung, a chapter is
devoted to the question of sexual inversion in the working-class youth movements.
Although he was in opposition to Blher, he did not deny that homosexuality existed in
the proletarian movements but insisted rather that these were merely adolescent attach175. On the myth of youth, see the very complete work by Thomas Koebner, Rolf-Peter Janz and
Frank Trommler (dir.), Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit. Der Mythos Jugend, Frankfurt-am-Main, Suhrkamp,
1985, 621 pages.
176. See Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980, 307 pages.
177. See chapter six. In 1912, Blher was 24, and was himself a member of the first Wandervogel.
178. See Ulfried Geuter, Homosexualitt in der deutschen Jugendbewegung, Frankfurt-am-Main,
Suhrkamp, 1994, 373 pages.
254

ments. Moreover, he saw the homoerotization of the youth movements as a direct consequence of the pressures of middle-class values which inculcated in young men a fear and
contempt for women. Bondy concluded by noting that there was no fundamental difference between the middle-class movements and the proletarian movements, but that
the latter would have to make an effort not to encourage the development of inversion
within their own ranks.
In the youth movements, homoeroticism took the form of ardent friendships:
Hand in hand, I walked back home with Hans. Inside of us, [our hearts] sang and palpitated, and while we were in the dark entryway hanging up our things, he rested against
the wall and took my head in his hands and looked at me for a long time, and finally he
hugged me. And now, we eat! he sang, and then I brought him back to train, and I ran
back to the house to discharge my joy.179 The ideal was to keep this friendship pure; but
the struggle between physical attraction and desire for purity tore at the boys who did
not know how to face these contradictory needs: We looked for friends and we found
them; we trembled in shame before the kisses and the embraces, we dreamers and
enlightened boys; and we noticed one day that we were no longer children: puberty had
caught us in its spell! We suspected and we saw Sex everywhere, yes, even in Schopenhauer; we even found sex in a warm handshake! And sex, which we feared, seemed disgusting to us.180
Ulfried Geuter, who made a systematic study of sexuality in the youth movements,
noted that genital sex was taboo in the Wandervogel. The movements own press and the
boys journals carefully concealed any sexual intercourse, especially any relations between
boys and leaders or boys of the same age. He supposed that homosexuality was neither
less nor more widespread there than in the German schools. Like the colleges, the youth
movements developed a homoerotic mythology that favored complete homosexual relations. On the other hand the Wandervogel, even if it was not specifically homosexual,
contributed to disseminating in public the image of a younger generation of ambiguous
sexuality, undifferentiated, free in its body.
Body worship is one of the essential elements of the inter-war symbolism.181
Esthetic references to the combined topics of sun, water and nudity were common, with
the naked, muscular, young, androgynous body embodying all that was modern, healthy
and athletic. This worship of the body and of youth, which was also felt in France and
England, was especially heightened in Germany. In the Twenties, nudity was still associated with the liberals,182 with the explosion of pleasure associated with the Weimar
Republic and the apogee of Berlin. The erotic and particularly the homoerotic value of
these representations was very powerful. The painter Fidus (Hugo Hppener) made a
name for himself with illustrations in the Munich weekly magazine Jugend and his representations of naked young men worshipping the sun. More and more, photography
turned to images of nude bodies, and taken not in the studio but in the great outdoors.
The group of friends that created the Photo Alliance in France expressed the joie de vivre of
179. Excerpted from a note in an anonymous boys sketchbook, 1917, cited by Ulfried Geuter,
ibid., p.125.
180. Rudolf B. to Alfred Kurella, letter dated 1920, cited ibid., p.130.
181. See George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, Respect and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe,
New York, Howard Fertig, 1985, 232 pages.
182. Thus the socialist song: Brder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit (Brothers, toward the sun, towards
liberty).
255

the Popular Front through the liberation of the body. Cecil Beatons photographs and,
even more, those of Herbert List and Horst P. Horst illustrate the triumph of the male
body, and are charged with a powerful homoerotic force. Nazi Germany made the
perfect body the illustration of the merit of the race.
The German notion of beauty in the inter-war period was primarily androgynous.
As it was under Weimar, so it was thereafter, under the Third Reich: fair bodies, bronzed,
with long and tapered limbs, with the hair slicked back embodied a timeless and almost
asexual ideal. Already Thomas Mann noticed the new trend among youth: the lack of differentiation, the will to create a new kind of beauty that was disengaged from sexual stereotypes:
He verged on that idea of the androgyne that the romantics revere in friendship between the sexes, being equals on the human level. It is no coincidence if their
incipient capabilities coincide with the psychoanalytical discovery of the original and
natural bisexuality of human beings. And if our young people and we congratulate
them! experience a more serene and calmer attitude with respect to sexual problems than former generations were able to achieve, if this field is stripped of its most
terrifying taboos, it all has to do with, and is in harmony with, the fact that the new
generation is more detached and familiar with the homosexual phenomenon, and are
more tolerant. As Blher, our conscience, establishes a psychological link between
this element and at least one manifestation of the youth movement, the Wandervogel.
Without any doubt, homosexuality, the loving tie between men, sexual friendship,
enjoys a certain favor today due to the climate of the times and it no longer appears to
cultivated minds solely as a clinical monstrosity.183
The androgyny of bodies is fraught with strong homoerotic connotations. The evolution of representations of the body in the 1920s and 1930s shows two contradictory but
complementary trends: the masculinization of the woman, and the feminization of the
new generation of males. This fashion as most evident among apolitical youth, those who
were Americanized and eager to attain the society of leisure, and who thus emphasized a
break with the generation that had dragged the world into war. This category was visible
really only in the Twenties, just until 1928-1929, before the Crash.
The topic of the androgyne was not just a fixture in artistic representations; it was
also very seriously discussed as a basis for a new society, a response to the crisis of
humanity as a whole. Camille Spiess developed this line of thought in writings that are
now thankfully quite forgotten, but which enjoyed a certain vogue at the time. His
example reveals very clearly the philosophical, political, sexual and racial fantasies that
developed in tandem with the concept of androgyny and which, far from being neutral,
could be used to convey dangerous and reactionaries ideas. Spiess was born in Geneva in
1878; he studied medicine and specialized in zoology. He was a disciple of Gobineau and
also a follower of Mme. Frster, Nietzsches sister. Of Nietzsche he retained primarily the
theory of the superman (called genius, in his work). His references were often many and
contradictory: he quoted Plato, Stirner, Goethe, Whitman, Freud and Carpenter. He was
savagely hostile to Magnus Hirschfeld, whose theory of a third sex he vigorously disputed. On top of all that he added a jumble of esoterica including readings of the Upanishads, the Kabala, theosophic writings, the thought of Lao-tse and Leibniz, Jakob Bhme
and Jean-Paul, the poetry of Stefan George and astrology, including the advent of the Age
of Aquarius, androgyne par excellence. His political choices are rather difficult to define; he
183. Thomas Mann, Sur le mariage, op. cit., p.53-55.
256

published LInversion sexuelle at ditions de lEn-dehors which usually produced rather
anarchistic texts; he was violently opposed to Action franaise, whose nationalist choice
he disapproved: according to him, the true fatherland is not the nation but the race. In
1932, he wrote an open letter to Romain Rolland, denouncing the bloodless humanitarism of contemporary idealism. On the whole, he could be defined as an anarchist on
the right, with dubious ideas but with the logorrhea of an avenger, who tried to formulate
a personal model on the fundamental themes of the era race, sexuality, power which
he pompously dubbed psychosynthesis.
The Spiess uvre is characterized above all by its hermetic, obsessive style and
rigor. All his reflection is centered on the worship of the androgyne as the future of
mankind and the higher form of humanity: One must develop in oneself both the female
and male powers of the flesh and the Spirit, childhood and adolescence, to build our liberation which is the erotic renaissance, the indestructible childhood of the human heart,
born in the human conscience.184 According to Spiess, the original man was an androgyne
(he refers to Platonic myth), complete and perfect in form, and he aspired to become that
again. The question of androgyny together with that of the improvement of the race
encompassed the elimination of impure races. He found in androgyne the solution to
the Jewish problem, the embodiment of divine man, Dionysian or super-Christian in
contrast to Israel, the mongrel, the fallen man with his clipped sex. In the same vein, the
exaltation of the androgyne goes hand in hand with a contempt for women, considered as
the lower form of humanity; the improvement of the race could, according to Spiess, take
place only with men as the basis.
Spiess associated androgyny with adolescence (which is not, in itself, original). On
the other hand, he builds upon that a very complex theory aimed at showing that man
passes through all the genders in the course of his life: first he is a woman (body,
childhood), then a man (heart, adolescence), then both at the same time. As a result a man
may become a woman (inversion), a man (version), or a genius, i.e. an androgyne
(aversion). For Spiess, the genius is pederastic, while the invert is homosexual or is a
degenerate. The pederast has as his ideal the body of the man, but his high spiritual aspirations bar him from the sex act. The declamatory style shows that homosexuality is
severely condemned as a lower form of humanity: Regeneration, asexual bisexuality,
poetic, pederastic or parthenogenetic, the genius, unique and platonic love which is at the
foundation of the Androgyne, of the normal, complete man, whose heart is in his head, of
the man who never leaves his own milieu this is not generation, the heterosexuality of
those who are off balance, nor is it degeneracy, the homosexuality of those who are off
balance cuckolds and degenerates. In short, and to conclude, Pederasty is not homosexuality and the pederast is not a homosexual and never will be.185 To arrive at genius,
the man must be reborn from his on mind at the moment of puberty. No more sex act, no
more contact with the other. The man generates himself. All the while celebrating eroticism and Dionysian forces with lengthy sentences, Spiess in fact expresses a rejection of
the sexual as a whole. He is aiming for the formation of a race of geniuses, removed from
all impure elements (women, homosexuals, Jews), who would be self-generating and who
would dominate the world by their higher intelligence.
184. Camille Spiess, ros ou lHistoire physiologique de lhomme, Paris, ditions de lAthanor, 1932,
280 pages, p.36.
185. Id., Pdrastie et homosexualit, Paris, Daragon, 1917, 68 pages, p.36.
257

The theory of the androgyne was full of racist and totalitarian suggestions; it was
founded on a pessimistic view of society and a desire to regenerate by a system of
exclusion. It is a mystical form of eugenics, which may appear harmless since it is so unrealistic. However, such wild rantings found echoes in extremist milieux and could easily
be coupled with traditional racist theories like those of Gobineau and all the antidemocratic and antimodernist critics: The great merit of psychosynthesis is to prevent the evil
of sexual or Jewish senility of the race (whose very name shows its incurable character),
and to destroy the libidinous and heinous doctrines of Freudian pansexualism, from
which stems the insanity of our life (money, interest, general stupidity, religion), because
the selfishness of the human heart or the sexual prostitution of love is a Jewish pollution
on the scale of hatred, war and death.186 Spiess work was included and analyzed in
various collections of the time, which shows that his theories had a certain influence.
Louis Estve in particular, in the Lnigme de landrogyne, defends his doctrines: We have
only to await the day when Han Ryners Craftsmen of the future, adopting the principles
of sexual selection, will allow the application of the theories of Camille Spiess and,
through the universal androgynat, will establish on earth the reign of the genius the
dawn of Culture, Wisdom and Humanity harbingers of the end of the world.187 Estve
found political and social finality in the esoteric jumble that was quite close to the theories of Hans Blher studied above. The androgyne is the new man, called to found a
world that is perfect, masculine, combatant, victorious, and the exact opposite of the
society born after the war. The androgyne is a utopian genetic plan based on criteria for
the purification of the race, fantasies of power, and a will to eradicate the female from the
human.
This reactionary glorification of androgyny shows the ambiguity surrounding this
concept. Whereas androgyny was initially a youthful reaction against traditional values,
it was also used as a basis for the theories of the far Right. Androgyny represented at the
same time an erotic ideal that of the healthy, athletic body which was presented as
an example, and the sign of a major upheaval of sexual roles, which some perceived as a
symptom of decline. In the Thirties, this vague homoeroticism disappeared from creative
representations but it continued to be present, in a deformed way, in the esthetics of the
Mnnerbund, the groups of virile men marching in uniform, in the exaltation of sports
competitions, and all of Nazi mythology. In fact, the crisis of masculinity ran through the
entire inter-war period. Characterized at first by a retreat of the masculine to the benefit
of feminine values (themselves modified by male experiences), it then took the form of an
over-investment of virility, in an ultimate effort to rediscover the traditional guideposts.
Both attitudes illustrate the essential place of the male body in the social imagination of
the inter-war period, and its origin may be found in a certain eroticization of the war. The
ambient homoeroticism within the society explains why the figures of the homosexual
and the lesbian were casualties in the storm of the Thirties. Objects of both desire and
fear, they held up a mirror to the fantasies of the population, which was not ready to recognize its own duality.
***
186. Id. ros, op. cit., p.88.

187. Louis Estve, Lnigme de landrogyne, Les ditions du monde moderne, 1927, 161 pages, p.32.
258

A marked shift in sexual behaviors followed the First World War. The public, agitated by conflicting and antagonistic currents, had difficulty choosing between a moralistic backlash and a reformist liberation. Homophobia remained a very hot topic
throughout the period, for it was debated by the leading institutions, churches, public
authorities, and the press. As a new and fundamental fact, homosexuality became a fashionable topic which had to be discussed, analyzed, romanticized. The literary coverage
was extraordinary.
Despite all of that, tolerance remained very limited. The inter-war period constituted a turning point in which popular fears and aversions contended with scientific
advances and the claims of homosexuals themselves. However if, in the mid-Twenties,
one might have believed there had been a long-term triumph for the forces of progress, it
was clear by 1931-1933 that the embryonic shift was not supported by a real desire for
change nor by a large-scale acceptance of modern values.
259
CHAPTER SIX
HOMOSEXUALS AS POLITICAL CHIPS
Un caprice du temps, arbitre en toute chose,
Proclame lamour, et non la mort des amis.
Sous la vote dazur, le soleil des athltes,
Ils sont trois, nus: le nouvel Allemand bronz,
Lemploy communiste et moi, qui suis anglais188
A caprice of time, arbiter of all things,
Proclaims love, and not the death of friends.
Under the azure vault, the sun of athletes,
They are three, nude: the tanned New German,
The communist employee and me, an Englishman
For Guy Hocquenghem, homosexuality was political; indeed, it was revolutionary.

Homosexual relations carry within them the seeds of the destruction of the middle-class
society; they undermine its very foundations: the family, authority, masculinity. Homosexuality is a corrosive factor that strikes at its very heart. It saps the certainty of the
moral structure and creates new relationships, which can override existing hierarchies. In
the 1920s and 1930s, the politically astute recognized this potential. Whether they tolerated or detested homosexuals, they were all frightened by this anarchistic force, which
could hardly be subsumed in the program of any party. As committed activists, homosexuals support would always be welcome; but they did not pull enough weight to force
any of their claims onto the agenda. As enemies, opponents, they were the ideal target, the
perfect scapegoat, and as such attracted all sorts of insults and guaranteed candidates the
support of the public.
188. Stephen Spender, Le Temple [1929], Paris, Christian Bourgois diteur, 1989, 310 pages, p.310.
261

HOMOSEXUALS IN THE POLITICAL ARENA
Is it possible to believe that there is a link between sexual preference and party
allegiance? It would be hard to come up with any answer on that, and there is little in the
way of hard evidence from which to judge. Indeed, when political parties collected statistics about the background of their voters, they have not asked about sexual preferences. Neither have homosexual organizations sought to analyze their members political
inclinations. The German movements, which were best organized, presented themselves
as being apolitical, even if events showed that they were close to the SPD and the KPD, at
least in the leadership echelons. That however does not imply that all the members voted
on the left, even if the movement encouraged them to do so. Neither can we rely on testimony from well-known figures, primarily intellectuals, the majority of whom came from
the middle and upper classes, as a guide to the political persuasions of homosexuals in
general. However, the large majority of homosexual intellectuals did throw themselves
into the parties of the left, the Socialists and especially the Communists. Of course,
political involvement is the product of several factors, and sexuality is only one variable
among others. Nevertheless, these intellectuals particularly insisted that their homosexuality played a part in the choice of their engagement.
The Fantasy of the Working-Class Lover

The workingman fantasy is a major topic at many homosexual the period; not only
was it an essential aspect of the homosexual erotic imagination of the 1920s and 1930s,
but it also led to the political awakening of many homosexuals. This phenomenon was
particularly widespread in England, but one finds traces of it in Germany and France.
Stephen Spender poses the problem in an interview he granted some years ago.189
There was a very strange bond; and it was undoubtedly proper to England,
although it could also have existed in other countries, between homosexuals and the
working class. It took the form of a deep attraction for young workingmen.190
This remark is corroborated by all, both the intellectuals and the nameless homosexuals: Homosexuals in those days crossed the social barriers with an ease unknown in
the other sectors of society.191 It was a kind of fetishism; the working boy, or one engaged
in manual labor, was endowed with an intense erotic charge. This is striking, for example,
in Marcel Jouhandeaus Mmorial IV, Apprentis et garons, where he evokes the tensions of his
youth in the company of the butchers assistants and apprentices who worked in his
fathers shop. Similarly, Christopher Isherwood suffered from an inhibition, which was
then not uncommon among higher class homosexuals; he could not find sexual release
with a member of his own class or from his country. He needed a foreigner from the
working class.192
189. Franoise du Sorbier (dir.), Oxford 1919-1939, Paris, ditions Autrement, Mmoires series,
n 8, 1991, 287 pages.
190. Ibid., p.51.
191. George Mallory, in Between the Acts. Lives of Homosexual Men, 1885-1967, edited by K. Porter and
J. Weeks, London, Routledge, 1990, 176 pages.
192. Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind [1929-1939], London, Methuen, 1977,
252 pages, p.10.
262
Homosexuals as Political Chips

There were two distinct beliefs: first, the conviction that only the working class
could respond to the physical and love-related needs of homosexuals; second, the certainty that homosexuals, solely by virtue of their sexuality, could escape their class and to
come into contact with boys of any background. This idealization was typical of the interwar period, as if there was something special about the young workers of those days: In
those remote times, young men from the outskirts had a heart of gold.193
It is very difficult to explain the upper and middle class fascination for workingclass boys, which was mostly mythological and was full of ambiguity. Daniel Guerin, in
his Autobiographie de jeunesse (Autobiography of Youth), obligingly describes his many meetings
with young workmen: The dialogue was completed in the crude room he had, as an
apprentice; without any ill thoughts, without making me beg, he covered me with mad
caresses and gave up to me his lovely beardless body.194 Reading such passages, one has
the impression of a perfectly liberated working class, the model of the sexual revolution,
not acting out of self interest (there is no question of remuneration for services rendered),
depoliticized (the workmen sleep with boys from good families without any objection),
devoid of any prejudices and inhibitions. This idealization of the working class is a
curious phenomenon. It leads one to suppose there was a high degree of tolerance for
homosexuality amid the working class, which is difficult to prove, for little testimony was
left by homosexuals of modest background. Many writings however do the workmens
indifference to homosexuality: Homosexuality was not regarded as dishonourable if one
did it for money.195
Homosexuality always was completely accepted in the districts east of London.
In my youth, we regularly went to one of the pubs in the East End where our parents
were regulars. And they called the boys by their working names, Hello Lola, darling.
How are you, sweetie? Will you sing us a song? The East End was full of families piled
together cheek by jowl in tight little lanes; everyone was always at each others houses
and they knew all about their sons and accepted it.196
The topic of the working class as an object of pleasure was already widespread at
the end of the 19th century and fed the scandals of the Victorian Era.197 Oscar Wilde
described the pleasure of feasting with panthers while Edward Carpenter settled in
Millthorpe with his working class lover, George Merrill, and influenced Bloomsbury
deeply. However, whereas the Victorian taste was for very young boys, even for pedophilia, and practically amounted to a trade, the 1920s and 1930s developed the theme of
the workman as the ideal friend,198 the companion with whom one could perhaps live
all his life, defying conventions. This ideal of course was comparative: most homosexuals
had many casual flings with boys, even if they also had ongoing relations with two or
three regulars. Ackerley wrote that he had between two hundred and three hundred
lovers in his life and Guerin describes his unrestrained search for pleasure: I only
thought of multiplying, of piling up, of adding, of collecting, of counting the adventures
on my fingers.199
194. Ibid., p.164-165.
195. George Mallory, in Between the Acts, op. cit.
196. John, son of a worker, and kept as a lover, ibid.
197. This theme amy be compared to the heterosexual relations that men of good family might
entertain with housemaids, seamstresses, cooks, florists and others of the working class.
198. J.R. Ackerley, My Father and Myself [1968], London, Penguin, 1971, 192 pages, p.109-110 and
following.
263

Some young workers were sharply disappointed when they realized they were only
a pleasant pastime.200 Nevertheless, the myth of a stable relation with a working class
friend was seriously entertained; E.M. Forsters novel Maurice represents a Utopia where
homosexuals could live freely, independent of moral repression and social differences.
Maurice finds in Alec, the gamekeeper, the friend whom he has always wished for, and he
declares he is ready to turn his back on society to preserve this love. But if in Maurice the
two boys manage to find happiness and are never separated (although one has no idea on
what, and how, they will live from now on), real situations were harder to work out. It is
often difficult to tell the difference between sincere love and camouflaged exploitation of
young people who need money and are ready to give in to the advances of wealthy men. It
seems nevertheless that good faith prevails, with much naivety, for many homosexual
intellectuals liked to think, like Pygmalion, of educating and reorganizing the life of their
protgs, raising them by their love above their social condition. I do not rule out education but I do not wish it, I can help him myself, declared Ackerley, for example.201
Sometimes, they even envisioned a real equality which would transcend the social classes,
by the miracle of homosexuality alone: The man had not called him Sir, and the omission
flattered him. Hello, Sir, would have been the most natural greeting to a foreigner of
mature age, and what is more, the guest of a rich client. However, the vigorous voice had
shouted, Hello, beautiful day!, as if they were equals.202
It is the same belief in an equality of circumstance that inspires Guerin when he
reports his relations with young workmen: We became real pals.203 According to him,
he developed a genuine complicity with these boys. One of them took him around to meet
other ornaments of Piazza dItalia, another tipped him off as to which guy to go with
and which to avoid. While there was certainly a commonality of interests, we are still far
from a real friendship based on confidence and mutual comprehension.
We should nevertheless try to elucidate the nature of the bonds that linked homosexuals with the working class during the 1920s and 1930s. J.R. Ackerley gives his own
analysis of the phenomenon in these terms: If my research led me out of my own class,
toward the working class, i.e. toward that innocence which I was never able to find
among members of my class, it was in order to spare myself the culpability that I felt with
regard to the sexuality of my social inferiors.
This idea was widespread: homosexuals of the upper classes often had had a puritanical education that condemned pleasure in sex, and of course any deviant sexuality.
They were persuaded that only they were persecuted in their sexuality; in the working
class, they felt, sexuality must natural, without constraints and prejudices. Here again, we
can discern a mythical concept: homosexual intellectuals did not observe that working
200. Such was the case, for example, of Ivan Alderman, who met Ackerley in Richmond Park
when he was just 15. He immediately fell head over heels in love; for him, this was Prince Charming, a
rich homosexual, very handsome, cultivated, driving a sports car and who would pick him up in his
neighborhood and take him to chic parties. Sixty years later, he still looked upon him as the greatest
love of his life. He only gradually came to discover that what he saw as a lasting relationship was
nothing more than one episode in Ackerleys very long series of romantic adventures. The breakup
was very painful. See Peter Parker, A Life of J.R. Ackerley, London, Constable, 1989, 465 pages, p.94-95.
201. J.R. Ackerley, My Father and Myself, op. cit., p.109.
202. E.M. Forster, Arthur Snatchfold, in Un instant dternit et autres nouvelles, Paris, Christian
Bourgois diteur, 1988, 306 pages, p.149.
264

class men were freer sexually, they assumed it, a priori. This idealized notion was supported by their ignorance of the new environment in which they were acting:
With even more curiosity than concupiscence I precipitated toward these
strapping men that were no longer separated from me by an opaque barrier. Their way
of life was simplified to the extreme, their picturesque and masculine garb, their ripe
language, which was sometimes somewhat hermetic for me, their skin tanned by the
great outdoors, their muscular strength, their honest and natural animality that was
not slowed or dimmed as yet in those days by any factitious inhibition, any petitbourgeois prejudice (and they were, what is more, less monopolized by the girls than
today), all that took me by surprise, metamorphosed me, enchanted me.204
This sense was all the more marked since, as for Auden, Spender or Isherwood, the
exoticism of the place was added to the difference in class; Christopher Isherwood felt
a marvelous freedom in the company of [these boys]. He, who only could make veiled allusions in English, could now crudely ask for what he wanted in German. His limited
knowledge of the language obliged him to be direct and he was not embarrassed to pronounce foreign sexual terms, which had no connection with his life in England.205
Thus, for Isherwood, England represented heterosexuality and erotic inhibition
and all he could think about was being abroad. The photographer Humphrey Spender,
Stephen Spenders brother, noted that Heinz, Isherwoods young German lover, an unemployed worker, was the decisive factor in his life, the reason for all his wanderings from
country to country.206
It seems that there was a feeling of humility and perhaps of guilt in homosexuals
attitude toward the working class. Ashamed of their material wealth that enabled them
to keep the boys, they tried to get closer, to deny the barriers between them. The relationship might venture into sadomasochistic terrain. Marcel Jouhandeau liked to fantasize about being humiliated by young workmen: he would invite workers, even
criminals, to his room and only ask them to let to him cut their nails; or he might bathe
the feet of a plasterer. Relations between Auden and several of his German companions
degenerated to the point of blows. Even when the threats were only virtual, it is striking
how eager a number of British homosexuals were to go out with police officers, the very
people whom they ought to seek out the least. Virginia Woolf had earlier been astonished
by this paradoxical passion for the police force, which she found with Plomer, Walpole,
Spender, Forster, Auden and Ackerley.207
And however, the relations were more complex. The boy was not just a sexual plaything, he was a physical incarnation of the homosexual ideal. During a time that saw the
rehabilitation of the body, the fantasy of the strong and healthy workman was a staple in
the homosexual middle and upper classes that had been raised in contempt of the body
and physical values. Often of weak constitution (E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Brian
Howard), they looked for manual workers whose bodies were clearly shaped by exercise:
I found [the ideal friend] rather quickly. He was a sailor, a robust sailor, a boy from the
working class, simple, normal, no education... He was a famous light-weight boxer in the
navy; his silk skin, his muscles, a perfect body, like that of a beautiful young man from
Crete, was a delight to be contemplated.208
204. Ibid., p.167.
205. Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, op. cit., p.110.
206. Cited by Paul Fussell, Abroad, British Literary Travellers between the Wars, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1983, 246 pages.
207. Letter from Virginia Woolf to Quentin Bell, 21 December 1933.
265

The working boy often played his role gladly; proud of the admiration he attracted,
he might further cultivate the muscular look, becoming a narcissistic being only concerned about the beauty that brought him the attention of well-born young people. It was
a double fascination. While the homosexuals were worshipping the workers, the latter
became more self-conscious and sometimes lost the naturalness that was their principal
charm:
[Maurice] embodied exactly that physical type to which I was attracted. He had a
trunk of athlete, and a hard face. He excelled at swimming and water polo. He was not
elegant, for his massive body did not look good in clothes, which are a good mask for
malingerers but vain tinsel for the strong. He had the body-builders well-known narcissism. He liked to show off his muscles, his beautiful muscles, his pride and his capital, whose magic effect he was well aware of.209
These relations that were based in virility, physical superiority, the opposition
between the strong and the weak, often turned to wrestling, to a fight between boys,
measuring their strength against each other and going right up to the sex act:
Fighting that transformed into sex seemed perfectly natural to these German
boys; in fact, it excited them, too. Perhaps because it was something that one could
not do with a girl, or at least not on the level of physical equality; something they liked
as an expression of the aggression/attraction that exists between two men. Perhaps
also this moderately sadistic game was a characteristic of German sexuality; many of
them liked to be beaten, not too hard, with a belt.210
The body exerts a magical attraction and its power is without limits. In Dr. Woolacott by E.M. Forster, an invalid believes he finds strength in the arms of his lover, a farm
hand: He opened his arms to him, and Cleasant accepted the invitation. Cleasant had
often been proud of his illness, but never, never of his body; it had never occurred to him
which he could elicit desire. This sudden revelation upset him, he fell from his pedestal,
but he was not alone: there was somebody to whom he could cling, with broad shoulders,
a tanned neck, lips which half-opened in caressing him.211
The working boy seems to live a mythical world where the values are reversed,
where all that was prohibited is finally allowed, where happiness is accessible: Come to
me, and you will be as happy as I am, and as strong.212 A certain magnetization occurs
between the two classes and never achieves equilibrium, for they are separated by the
invisible barriers of wealth, social access and culture. Happiness is thus almost impossible to attain, especially since the attraction for working boys goes with a desire to have
normal, heterosexual boys. Auden describes the impossibility of reconciling the two
aspirations with a certain bitterness: There are two worlds and one cannot belong to
both at the same time. If one is part of the second of these worlds (that of the refined intellectuals), one will be always unhappy, for one will always be in love with the first world
(that of the nonintellectual athletes), although despising it at the same time. The first
world, on other hand, will not return your love, for it is in its nature to love only that
which is like itself.213

211. E.M. Forster, Dr Woolacott, in Un instant dternit, op. cit., p.136.
212. Ibid., p.134.
213. Cited by Humphrey Carpenter, W.H. Auden, a Biography, London, Allen & Unwin, 1981,
495 pages, p.260.
266

The fascination for the working class is tinged with a kind of dislike for the middle
and upper classes, as if sex could not be spontaneous and natural within a class considered to be too respectable and moralistic: I found that boys of the higher classes
were a little too untouchable and not physical enough. We were all too strait-laced and
were a little uptight in a way or another. That all needed to be loosened up.214
The worship of the body led in parallel to a depreciation of intellectual values. The
working culture was attractive at first as a new, pure and preserved world: The boys of
the working class were less reserved and less contemplative, and their friendship opened
to me with interesting fields of the life, which otherwise would have remained unknown
to me.215
But soon, this desire to extirpate oneself of ones own background grew into a militant anti-intellectualism that was quite unwelcome among professional intellectuals; for
the homosexual wishing to prove to his friend that he was now on his side, it was no
longer enough to share his concerns; now he agreed to disavow his own culture and all
signs of his past: He had a primitive class instinct, a bitterness. For him, I was never
anything but the son of a family, a bourgeois, on whom he had to take his revenge. Since
he was impecunious, he made me sell a priceless edition of Les Jeunes filles en fleurs by Marcel
Proust, abundantly corrected in the hand of the author, and I made this sacrifice, without
hesitation, delighted to give him such a proof of love, while he, inciting me to do it,
showed a wicked anti-intellectual joy.216
Forsters novel Ansell is presented in the form of a parable of this confrontation
between the classes. Edward, a young man who intends to go into a university career
withdraws to the countryside to write his dissertation. There, he finds his childhood
friend, Ansell, the gardener,217 whose strength and independence of mind he envies. In an
auto accident all his books and notes for the thesis fall into the river; only one or two are
saved. Thanks to this sign from fate, Edward understands that real life is in nature, at
Ansells side, and he gives up any intellectual pretensions. This example is particularly
emblematic of the process of identification that homosexual intellectuals were undergoing. Initially attracted sexually by the boys of the working class, they went on to envy
their lifestyle, their lack of education, their freedom. Intelligence then becomes synonymous with frustration and inhibition.
This identification soon leads to a rejection of their own class. Rupert Brooke was
the first to protest: I hate the upper classes!
Christopher Isherwood explained that his attraction for this type of boys came
from his hostility to the bourgeoisie, which led it consciously to seek not only its
opposite, but whatever would be most shocking to middle-class values.218 W.H. Auden
expressed the same feeling when he was in Germany: The German proletariat is sympathetic, but I do not like much the others, therefore I spend most of my time with
Juvenile Delinquents [sic].219
214. Christopher Isherwood, interviewed in Gay News, n 126.

217. As a child, Forster felt his first homosexual emotions for the family gardener, whose name
was Ansell.
218. Christopher Isherwood, interviewed in Gay News, n 126.
219. Cited by Humphrey Carpenter, W.H. Auden, op. cit., p.90. Capitalization as per Auden.
267

Stephen Spender went even further when he explained: My revolt against my
familys attitude also led me to rebel against morality, labor and discipline. Secretly I was
fascinated by outlaws, the despicable, the depraved, the lazy, the strays; and I wished to
offer to them all the love that was denied to them by respectable people.220
It is interesting to note that one finds exactly the same terms and the same justifications coming from Frenchman Daniel Guerin: Part of my taste for young fellows of the
people came from a sense of rebellion against the established order, against my family.221
Sometimes the two generations of homosexual intellectuals did manage to enjoy a
real empathy with the popular classes. Behind the boys who were the objects of their
desire, homosexuals learned to see a whole world which was unknown to them; and as
they loved the sons, they came to love the families, and soon all their milieu as such: The
differences of class and interest between Jimmy and me provided certainly elements of
mystery which almost corresponded to the difference between the sexes. I was in love, in
fact, with his origins, his soldiers trade, his working-class family.222
Becoming familiar with their lovers financial and family difficulties, homosexuals
from the well-off classes discovered the distress of the workers struck by the economic
crisis in England and the destitution of the German proletariat. Their political opinions
and their social ideals were transformed:
Thanks to Walter, I imagined what it was like to be unemployed. I imagined,
I suppose, that something that in my mind I started to call the Revolution would
change his fate and I felt that as a member of a wealthier social class I had contracted a
debt towards him. If he had robbed me, I would have understood that he could never
take away from me the advantages which society had given me over him: for I was a
member of a class whose money automatically enabled me to benefit from the institutions of theft, to automatically assume the guise of respectability. Then I understood
that there were two classes of robbers: the social one and the antisocial.223
The very essence of homosexuality is equality. Through the sex act, the two
partners forget their last differences, of origin, class, and race, until there is nothing but
two lovers linked in the same destiny, for in this romantic, anachronistic life, the
ambassador is the friend of the convict....224
The miracle of the confluence of the bourgeois and working-class homosexuals is
specific to the inter-war period; it was the coming together of two groups excluded from
society, misfits, scorned, looked down upon. I could speak with law-breakers because I
was one, myself, acknowledged Stephen Spender.225
Beyond the differences in class, it was the same struggle that united them. This
partly explains the alliance of homosexuals and the leftist parties, ambiguous as it was.
Homosexual as Leftist Activists

In the 1920s, homosexuality became a means of rocking respectable opinions and of
shaking up the Establishment. What better way to declare ones hostility towards the
222. Stephen Spender, World within World, op. cit., p.184.
223. Ibid., p.118.
224. Marcel Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe I, in A la recherche du temps perdu, Paris, Gallimard, coll.
Bibl. de la Pliade, 1988, t.III, 1934 pages, p.19.
268

official morals of society than to go and spend some time with the homosexuals? Homosexuality gave the same thrill as drugs nowadays and the pleasure of being certain to
outrage the older generation.226
This attitude was not limited to England, where homosexuality was repressed by
law; in France, for a boy from a good family to come out as a homosexual was a political
act and sometimes it was hard to tell whether homosexuality had led to political
engagement or the inverse: When I first got involved in the social struggle, I was both a
homosexual and a revolutionary, without being able to clearly distinguish how much this
came from the intellect (readings, reflections) and how much from feelings (physical
attraction toward the working class, rebellion, rejection of my old middle-class background).227
As a deviant form of sexuality, homosexuality justified taking a counter-current
position: By receiving [Marcel], I was up to something that was more than sentimental:
there was already a certain appetite for social transgression. I was launching a challenge
to my class.228
To be a homosexual is to be on the outside; to choose an extreme political position
is to push that exclusion to its logical end, to retaliate for societys charges that the homosexual is a potential danger. The homosexual, whether or not he knows it or wants it, is
potentially asocial and therefore virtually subversive.229
Lastly, by participating in revolutionary parties, the homosexuals hoped to
advance their cause. Enthusiasm for the working class, and the hopes raised by the formation of the Soviet Union, supported the idea of a natural communion between homosexuality and revolution; Michel de Coglay writes of the naive enthusiasms of certain
homosexual for the communist cause. In a Montmartre caf he met, for example, a young
draughtsman with a certain type of nose, who bellowed his faith in Hirschfeld and in
Moscow, which he supposed, quite imprudently, to be hallowed ground for free pederasty and free democracy.230
The myth of a working class favorable to the homosexual justified a belief in an
egalitarian proletarian revolution that would bring tolerance for all minorities:
Homophobic prejudice, hideous as it is, will not be thwarted merely by means that I
would qualify as reformist, by persuasion, by concessions to the heterosexual adversary,
but will be definitively extirpated from peoples consciousness, just like racial prejudice,
only by an anti-authoritative social revolution,231 declared Daniel Guerin. Thus it was
that in the 1920s homosexuals discovered that their sexual preferences could be a political
weapon.
226. Noel Annan, Our Age: English Intellectuals between the Wars: A Group Portrait, New York, Random
House, 1991, 479 pages, p.113.
227. Daniel Gurin, Homosexualit et rvolution, Paris, Utopie, coll. Les Cahiers du vent du chmin,
1983, 66 pages, p.11.
228. Id., Autobiographie de jeunesse, op. cit., p.167.
229. Id., Homosexualit et rvolution, op. cit., p.17.
230. Michel du Coglay, Chez les mauvais garons. Choses vues, Paris, R. Saillard, 1938, 221 pages, p.159.
231. Daniel Gurin, Homosexualit et rvolution, op. cit., p.15.
269

Pacifism
Already during the First World War, Bloomsbury had been characterized by its
pacifist stand. The second homosexual generation took up the torch in the 1930s.
The friendship of many well-bred English homosexuals for working-class boys,
especially German, was seen as a provocation. To have a German lover after the war was
to betray all those who had died in the trenches, in the name of pleasure and of perversion.
It was tantamount to announcing oneself as a criminal, to siding with the enemy.
Public hatred engenders private love. Love your enemies! My God! I love the English!232
This fraternization with the enemy was partly the consequence of the extraordinary guilt which they felt for not having fought in the war: Like most of those of my
generation, I was obsessed by a complex of terrors and desires related to the idea of war.
The war, in its purely neurotic sense, meant the Test. The Test of your courage, your
maturity, your sexual prowess. Are you really a man? Unconsciously I believe, I wanted
to be subjected to this Test, but I also feared failure. I feared Failure so much in fact, I
was so sure that I would fail that, consciously, I denied my desire to be tested. I denied
my devouring morbid interest in the idea of war. I claimed to be indifferent. The war, I
would say, was obscene, not exciting, just a bother, an irritation.233
The pacifism shown by the homosexual intellectuals in the first half of the interwar period was the product of this fascination intermixed with hatred. At the height of
our pacifist campaigns of the early 1930s, we were in fact almost in love with the horrors
which we denounced, acknowledges Philip Toynbee.234 Stephen Spender regretted
there were no great causes for which he could fight. At Oxford, like those of his generation who had not known war, he acknowledged having been jealous of the veterans of
the Great War, as if he had been robbed of the opportunity to prove that he was a man
and of the glory of victory. However, at college, like Auden and his friends, he presented
himself as an ardent pacifist, overwhelmed with hatred for the OTC (Officer Training
Corps), the obligatory military drive still in force in the public schools. The myth of the
war, the horror of the trenches, honor and disgust all intermingled for this generation that
had no past to assert and which felt solidarity only over the cruel awareness of having
missed the main event.
Homosexual life in the 1920s and 1930s thus often resembled a parody of the war,
with its passion for uniforms including those of the soldiers of the Guard, sailors, and the
police. E.M. Forster noted that any uniform at all would do, even if it was only a bus
drivers.235
The political implications of these attitudes toward the war and toward the
German working class boys were of utmost importance. Christopher Isherwood is sincere
when he acknowledges his political hesitations: It is so easy to make fun of all this
homosexual romanticism. But the leaders of the fascistic States did not laugh; they understood and used precisely these fantasies and these desires. I wonder how I would have
reacted at that time if one of the English fascistic leaders had been intelligent enough to
232. Stephen Spender, Le Temple, op. cit., p.41.

233. Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows, London, Methuen, 1985, 191 pages, p.46-47.
234. Cited by Franoise du Sorbier, Oxford 1919-1939, op. cit., p.49.
235. Cited by Valentine Cunningham, British Writers of the Thirties, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1988, 530 pages, p.55.
270

serve me his message in a form suitably disguised and pleasant? He would have converted
me, I think, in half an hour.236
From their special relationship with the German working class, English homosexual intellectuals learned to love Germany and some would never be able to fight it, like
Auden and Isherwood who left England for the United States in 1939. Auden and
Spender, however, had already overcome the pacifist option and had supported the International Brigades in Spain. But even if they militated actively against Fascism, taking in
political refugees and participating in activities for conscientious objectors, they could
never fight Germany with weapons. In Christopher and His Kind Christopher Isherwood
explains that, as long as his friend Heinz, as a homosexual, had been a target of the Nazis,
he had felt an unconditional hatred for them. But Heinz was soon constrained to don the
uniform and join the German army. Isherwoods reasoning at that point sheds light on the
role of homosexuality as a dimension of ones conscience: Let us suppose, says Christopher, that I now have a Nazi army at my mercy. I can destroy them all by pressing a
button. The men of this army are known to have tortured and assassinated civilians all
except one, Heinz. Would I press the button? No. Now let us suppose that I know that
Heinz has taken part in their crimes. Will I press the button, then? Of course not; and that
is a purely emotional reaction.... Now, lets suppose that the army attacks and suffers one
loss, Heinz himself. Will I press the button and destroy his criminal companions? No
emotional reaction this time, just a clear answer which one cannot escape: once I have
refused to press the button because of Heinz, I will never be able to do it again. Because
any man of this army could be Heinz to somebody else, and I do not have the right to play
favorites. Thus Christopher was forced to acknowledge himself a pacifist even though
it was the consequence of a line of reasoning that he found repugnant.237
Communism and the far left

Homosexuality, by putting certain intellectuals of the 1920s and 1930s in touch
with the working class, was a considerable factor in determining their political perspective. In his autobiography, Daniel Guerin establishes a relation of cause and effect
between his attraction for working class boys and his political involvement. He was from
the middle class himself, and it was through his intimate relations with working boys
that gave rise to his social conscience. He discovered misery, and barely-disguised prostitution; the money he gave the boys is a form of restitution, in recompense for the culpability which he felt over having been born in better circumstances: I did not find any
displeasure in the so-called venal love affairs... And what is more, my partners were young
workers who were overexploited or unemployed, and soldiers receiving pathetic remuneration, and with them I corrected the wrongs of society and the army.238
Guerin came up with a symbolic phrase to illustrate this situation: I came to
socialism via phallism.239 Conscious of his singularity, he reflected at length on the relationship between homosexuality and revolution. He says of his political progression, My
shift in the direction of socialism was not objective, intellectual in nature, but rather sub-
236. Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows, op. cit., p.48.

237. Id., Christopher and His Kind, op. cit., p.249-250.
271

jective, physical, and driven by the heart. It was not in books, it was in me, initially,
because of the years of sexual frustration, and because through my contact with
oppressed young people I learned to hate the established social order. Carnal pursuits led
me to cross social barriers. More than the seduction of bodies, hardened by the work, I
sought friendship. And that is what I hoped to find, a hundred-fold, in socialism.240
To choose the revolutionary path is, to some extent, to be adopted by the working
class. Guerin sounds sad when he speaks of that fraternity of the son of the people, from
which always life always excluded me.241 Guerin notes that his social origin and his
sexual preferences were always obstacles to his political integration one way or
another, he never fit in. Some to distinguish me from the authentic proletarians, would
contemptuously call me an idealist. Others when they got wind of my sexual dissidence,
would insult me.242
Homosexuality as a motivation for political engagement is, of course, suspect. It is
difficult to take seriously somebody whose behavior seems dictated by emotions, whose
least action may be attributed to his sexual rather than political inclinations. Just as for
the homosexual, whose sexuality is already, by virtue of being dissident, a political act,
so for the Communist there are all kinds of incompatibilities. Guerin was fully aware
of this: I resolved to employ my particular form of eroticism, hitherto uncontrolled,
wasted, more or less asocial, and subordinate it to the highest end: the liberation of all,
which would at the same time be mine. Those whose adhesion to socialism took different
forms would no doubt have trouble to understand mine.243
The visceral intolerance for homosexuality that was found within the revolutionary groups is symbolized by Henri Barbusses article in the magazine Les Marges
(March 15, 1926): I figure that this perversion of a natural instinct, like so many other
perversions, is a measure of the social and moral decline of a certain part of contemporary
society.... [the complacency of the decadent intellectuals] can only reinforce the contempt
that the healthy and young popular force experiences for these representatives of morbid
and artificial doctrines, and all of this will hasten, I hope, the hour of wrath and renaissance.
Guerin tried to hide his homosexuality until 1968:
What people of my kind suffered from most, in those days, was the constant fear
of losing the respect, of bringing on the contempt or even loathing, of those of our
comrades who might catch us in flagrante delicto expressing our homosexual inclinations. One had to keep quiet at all costs, to dissimulate, to lie, if necessary, to preserve
a revolutionary respectability whose value could be measured only in comparison
with the abjection into which one was likely to fall if one dropped the mask.244
Homosexual engagement could take a more radical form. The best-known example
is that of the Soviet agents Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and Donald Maclean.245 Schooled
at Eton, Burgess entered Cambridge in 1930 and soon became known for his charm and
his eccentricity. A very active homosexual, he formed a friendship with Anthony Blunt,
240. Id., Le Feu du sang: autobiographie politique et charnelle, Paris, Grasset, 1977, 286 pages, p.13-14.
241. Id., Autobiographie de jeunesse, op. cit., p.205.
242. Ibid., p.209.
243. Daniel Gurin, Le Feu du sang, op. cit., p.14.
245. See Yuri Ivanovich Modin, Mes camarades de Cambridge, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1994, 316 pages.
272

who had made his studies at Marlborough where the cult of homosexuality was strong.
At Trinity College in Cambridge, he was classified among the esthetes and he developed
several homosexual relations, but more discretely than Burgess. It was Blunt who brought
Burgess into the Apostles. Burgess then caught the attention of Maurice Dobb, an economics professor in Pembroke College and one of the first British academics to join the
Communist Party to; he introduced Kim Philby to him. Burgess, like many other homosexual intellectuals, was then attracted by boys of the working class, with whom he liked
to discuss the problems that they met in their daily life, whether economic problems or
political; he had some flings at every social level and spent time with skilled laborers,
truck-drivers, workmen, students and professors alike. From 1933 to 1934, he began a
thesis entitled The bourgeois revolution of England of the 17th century. Blunt joined the
Party under the influence of Burgess, with whom he was passionately in love. Burgess
brought along Donald Maclean by the same lure; he was, at the time, undecided as to both
his sexual and political leanings.
In 1934, the process accelerated. Philbys visit to Cambridge was decisive. Burgess
became enflamed and Philby recruited him for the Soviet secret service. Burgess then
spent the summer of 1934 in Germany perfecting his political education, then he left for
the USSR with Anthony Blunt. In 1935, he became the parliamentary assistant of a homosexual young deputy on the far Right, Jack MacNamara, a member of the Anglo-German
Fellowship, an association for Nazi sympathizers. Burgess gained the confidence of MacNamara and they organized a series of sex-tourist trips abroad, especially to Germany
where MacNamara had ties within the Hitler Youth. Burgess managed to be in touch with
a number of highly placed homosexuals like douard Pfeiffer, the chief private secretary of
douard Daladier, War Minister, an agent of the 2nd French Office and of MI6. MacNamara and Burgess were invited on several occasions to pleasure parties at Pfeiffers or
to Parisian nightclubs. It is interesting to note what role Burgesss homosexuality might
have played in his joining the Communists, and then in his espionage activities. Burgess
followed the typical trajectory of the British homosexual intellectual of the 1920s: public
school, Cambridge, attraction for working-class boys. However, he was also a product of
the 1930s; his discovery of the working class translated, on the political level, to joining
the communists, in parallel with an increasing tendency toward the red at Oxford as well.
In the field of espionage, his homosexuality would have been able a handicap. Philby
regarded inversion as a disease and never brought it up with Burgess; and Yuri Ivanovich
Modin, Burgesss Soviet contact, was rather hostile: There was an enormous unvoiced
comment between us, but I think that that facilitated our relations in a certain way.246
It seems that this tacit tolerance was based on the effectiveness of the homosexual
networks, the famous Homintern. By virtue of his homosexuality, Burgess had the most
varied doors opened to him; it enabled him to gain access to State secrets, to slip in and
out of very different political milieux. Homosexual solidarity was very important;
seductive and skilful, Burgess could manipulate his informants and his handlers, or
deceive them completely. After the war, this success on the part of the spies of Cambridge
set off another homophobic campaign based on fears of national treason and the enemy
within.
Communist involvement did not always take such extreme forms: W.H. Auden,
Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender flirted with Marxism throughout the
246. Ibid., p.86.
273

period. Stephen Spender ended up joining the Party in 1936, before leaving for Spain. His
lover Hyndman joined soon thereafter.247 Spender recalls that his friends were shocked:
We looked at that as an extraordinary act. Communism was for us an extremist cause,
almost against nature [my emphasis] and we had difficulty to believe that any of our friends
could be communists.248
Spenders commitment was mainly emotional; he was all for the German working
class and he disavowed his own people: he was haunted by a deep guilt feeling over his
social background, his culture, his privileged situation. For Spender, homosexuality and
politics were inextricably interwoven: in 1935, in his poem Vienna, he expresses his
indignation vis--vis the elimination of the Viennese Socialists by Dollfuss, and at the
same time he evokes his love for Jimmy. I wanted to show that the two experiences
were different but dependent. For both were intense, emotional and personal, although
one was public and the other private. The validity of the one depended on that of the
other: for in a world where humanity was publicly trampled, private affection was also
sapped.249
The war in Spain revealed several contradictions underlying Spenders commitment. In 1936, he not only joined the English Communist Party, but he also published
a book of political reflections, Forward from Liberalism, which was selected as Book of the
Month by the Left Book Club. And, he left Hyndman and got married. This brutal change
left him quite uncomfortable. When Hyndman joined the Party, then signed up with the
International Brigades, he felt responsible. Hyndman very quickly regretted his
engagement. Spender then accepted an offer from the Daily Worker, which wanted him to
report on a Soviet ship run by the Italians in the Mediterranean. He found Hyndman, who
begged him to get him out of the Brigades. Spender got him relieved from combat duty,
but Hyndman deserted. When he tried to plead his case, the game was up and the British
Communists let their homophobia show clearly: I think I know exactly why you do not
admit the lack of valor in this comrade in particular, they retorted to him; and the following remark sounds like a warning: You know too many boys for your good. Finally,
Hyndman was saved and repatriated to England. Spender returned to Spain in the
summer of 1937, as a deputy to the Congress of Writers which was held in Madrid. The
meeting disappointed him considerably, and he never went back to Spain. Auden, too,
was deeply marked by his sojourn among the Juvenile Delinquents, among whom he ran
into several members of the German Communist Party (KPD). Under the influence of
Gabriel Carritt and Edward Upward, his interest in Communism grew. In August 1932,
he published the poem, A Communist to Others, which starts with the apostrophe,
Comrades!, soon followed by A Handsome Profile in September 1932. In April 1933, he
had an article in the Daily Herald entitled How to Become Master of the Machine,
preaching the introduction of a socialist state. His interest in Marxism remained primarily romantic, however, and in the autumn of 1932 he wrote to Rupert Donne: No. I am
a bourgeois. I will not join the CP.250
Sympathies for Communism died out soon after it became known that homosexuality had been made a criminal act in the USSR in 1934. Gide is an instructive example.
247. See the testimony of David, an English teacher, in Between the Acts, op. cit. After spending two
years in Germany, 1929 and 1930, he rejoined the Communist Party.
249. Ibid., p.192.
250. Cited by Humphrey Carpenter, W.H. Auden, op. cit., p.133.
274

Gide had built his reputation as a writer on a work exalting pleasure and freedom. His
Nourritures terrestres (1897) was a guide for a whole generation. His denunciation of traditional morals and social conformity, his assertion of homosexual rights, also led him to
question French politics in the 1920s. In Voyage au Congo (1927) and Retour du Tchad (1928),
he denounced colonialism. In 1932, Communism began to seem like a doctrine of liberation for man, allowing him to flourish in every way, far from bourgeois hypocrisy.251
In the Nouvelle revue franaise, he declares his desire to see what a State without
religion can give, a society without cells.252 Gide believed more in morals than anything
else, and militant engagement was repugnant to him. It was Hitlers advent to power that
led him to side with the Communists. He became a fellow traveller and participated in
various militant actions. He was on the board of Commune, the review of the Association of
Revolutionary Writers and Artists; he chaired meetings and went to Berlin with Malraux
to plead the cause of Dimitrov, who was jailed after the Reichstag fire.253 In 1935, he
chaired the opening session of the International Congress of Writers for the Defense of
Culture in Paris. His enthusiasm quickly waned. His visit to the USSR in 1936 was a great
disappointment, although he was greeted with many honors. Soviet reality was very different from what he had hoped for, and man was no freer from convention than elsewhere.
The repression of homosexuality also must have played a part in his disillusionment. In
Return from the USSR, Gide touched on that subject only in a note:
Still, is this law [against abortion] justified in a certain sense? It leads to very
deplorable abuses. But what are we to think, from a Marxist point of view, of that
older one, against homosexuals, which equates them to counter-revolutionaries (for
non-conformity is pursued right up to and including sexual questions), condemns
them to deportation for five years with possible extension, if being exiled has not
cured them.254
Christopher Isherwood also relates that he tried to play down the importance of
this news, alleging to his friends that England and the United States, like most capitalist
countries, had similar laws. But the socialist myth was shaken, for the new society that
Marxism had supposedly generated could not be better than the others if it excluded
homosexuals:
For, if the Communists claimed that their system was more just than capitalism, didnt that make the their injustice towards homosexuals even less excusable and
their hypocrisy all the worse? Christopher understood that he now had to dissociate
himself from the Communists, even as a fellow traveller. He could, on certain occasions, accept them as allies, but he could never look upon them as comrades. He must
never again yield to confusion, never deny his tribe, never apologize for existence,
never think of sacrificing himself in some masochistic way on the altar of the false
totalitarian god, the sacred voice of the Majority whose priests alone could decide
what was good. 255
The homosexual identity was now clear. It had become strong enough to influence
political choices, it had become powerful enough to change class behaviors, and above all
it had become strong enough to guarantee its own survival. When Hitler came to power
251. Serge Berstein, La France des annes trente, Paris, Armand Colin, 1993, 186 pages, p.99.
252. Nicole Racine, Andr Gide, in Jacques Julliard and Michel Winock (dir.), Dictionnaire des
intellectuels franais, Paris, ditions du Seuil, 1996, 1264 pages.
253.
Serge Berstein, La France des annes trente, op. cit.
254. Andr Gide, Retour de lURSS, Paris, Gallimard, 1936, 125 pages, p.63.
255. Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, op. cit., p.248-249.
275

in 1933 and Stalinism was installed in the USSR, two profound threats faced homosexuals
and put an end to their hopes for greater international emancipation. In 1933, choices
were made and the homosexual cause took precedence from now on over other allegiances, political, social or intellectual:
As a homosexual, Christopher had hesitated between embarrassment and mistrust. He was embarrassed to assert his egoistic demands at a moment when collective
action was needed. And he was wary of using the attitude towards homosexuals as
the sole criterion by which any political government or party was to be judged. Yet his
challenge towards each one of them was: OK, you talk about freedom of expression.
Does that include us, or not?256
A Fascistic Fascination?
Not all homosexual intellectuals took up with the left. Some were fascinated by the
fascistic model, which corresponded to an aesthetic and political ideal that was in vogue
in certain homosexual circles. The attraction of fascism seldom took the concrete form of
joining the party; it was more a matter of being sympathetic, of some vague alliance. Curiously enough, it found an echo in the Parisian lesbian community. Here, too, one must be
careful in analyzing what part homosexuality played, since party affiliation was influenced even more so by other factors such as class. Nevertheless, we may ask what was the
attraction of political movements that were in principle hostile to the homosexual.
An litist and aristocratic homosexuality

One faction of German homosexual activists proclaimed a nationalist and racist
ideology. Hans Blher, the theorist of the Mnnerbund, thought that a mens state would
be the ideal political form. He was also a member of Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, Adolf
Brands homosexual movement, whose ideology was aristocratic, antifeminist and inegalitarian; it was the opposite of the WhK, which was close to the socialists. Brand and
Blher were not Nazis, but neither were they worried during the 1930s, when they were
visible representatives of the German homosexual community. The poet Stefan George
(who had founded a nationalist club with poetic and aristocratic overtones around the
cult of a teenager, Maximin, who died at sixteen years), was also courted by the Nazis but
rejected any compromise: he died in exile in Switzerland. Thus, we must be careful: the
elitist tendency of German homosexuals was founded on a romantic notion of the days of
yore, and was more similar to the vlkisch than the fascistic trend. Even if their ideals
might have brought them closer to Nazism, they did not have anything to do with the
NSDAP (National-Socialist Workers Party). It seems that it was the populist component
of Nazism, more than its attitude with regard to homosexuality, that kept them away.
Many of the aristocratic homosexuals saw the Nazi party as a bunch of rough and
uncouth thugs so it could never serve as the source for the rejuvenation of German
society.
Many of the more visible lesbians of the 1920s and 1930s also took positions close
to Fascism. The question divided the small community of lesbian intellectuals in Paris,
which split into two quite distinct camps. The liberals included Djuna Barnes, Sylvia
256. Ibid., p.248.
276

Beach, Colette, Hilda Doolittle, Janet Flanner, Adrienne Monnier and Virginia Woolf. On
the other side were Romaine Brooks, Radclyffe Hall, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Liane de
Pougy, Alice Toklas, Una Troubridge, Gertrude Stein and Natalie Barney. There were
several factors behind their paradoxical choice: most of the latter group were characterized not only by their considerable wealth but also by their vague anti-Semitism. These
women paradoxically replicated the dominant male ideology; by cozying up to the fascists, they expressed a certain misogyny, a homophobia, and they projected onto the Jew
the fear of the other.257 Instead of rising up against an ideology that would oppress
them, they identified with the reactionary forces. They tacitly aligned themselves with a
fascistic program that was hostile to them, in the belief that their economic privileges,
their social class, even their religion, would protect them.258 They imagined that the war
to come would put an end to Western civilization as they knew it and that they would
then be able to go on again with their former way of life under the aristocratic and cultural regime that Fascism, in their view, would establish.
The example of Radclyffe Hall is emblematic: as we have seen, she identified with
men and thus, in fact, with the male cause; the lesbian model she contributed to creating
is largely based on traditional values. Radclyffe Hall was no feminist: her view of the evolution of womans fate was pessimistic and unpleasant. A minority of women would
manage to secure their independence and occupy of positions of responsibility, but the
majority would always prefer to restrict themselves to their role as wife and mother. In
every field except that of sexuality, Radclyffe Hall embodied the conservative middleclass values of high English society. She was rich, and was allied with the conservatives,
defending her class interests and the Establishment. When she was on trial, she was
shocked to see that only the Labour party defended her book. At the end of the 1930s, she
settled in Florence and nourished a certain admiration for Mussolini and the fascists.
After a dispute with a tradesman who had tried to swindle her, she appealed to the local
fascists, saying: In cases like this, the Party is really a source of consolation.259
The deterioration of the international situation seemed to her a direct consequence
of the treaty of Versailles and the Jewish influence. Her anti-Semitism and anticommunism were increased by her contact with her friend Evguenia Soulina, a Russian exile:
Jews. Yes, I really begin to be afraid of them; of course not the two or three dear Jewish
friends I have in England, but Jews in general. I believe they hate us and they want to
cause a European war, then a world revolution, in order to destroy us completely.260
In the same way, Gertrude Steins affiliation with the right was only the logical
consequence of her antifeminism and anti-Semitism. The couple she formed with Alice B.
Toklas was a caricature; it rested on a strict division of roles and, while Alice was confined to feminine pursuits, only Gertrude received intellectual praise. Heterosexist
society is scarcely threatened by a relationship which is so culturally determined. Stein
wrote and slept while Toklas cooked, embroidered and typed... She was not a radical
257. For a discussion on this subject, see Shari Benstock, Paris Lesbianism and the Politics of
Reaction, 1900-1940, in Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey Jr. (dir.), Hidden
from History, London, Penguin Books, 1991, 579 pages, p.332-346.
258. Liane de Pougy was a Catholic; Radclyffe Hall and Alice Toklas converted to Catholicism.
259. Letter from Radclyffe Hall to Evguenia Soulina, 15 March 1939, cited by Michael Baker, Our
Three Selves: A Life of Radclyffe Hall, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1985, 386 pages, p.329.
260. Letter from Radclyffe Hall to Evguenia Souline, 22 March 1939, cited ibid.
277

feminist. She was Jewish and anti-Semitic, lesbian and scornful towards women, ignorant
of economics and hostile to socialism.261
Some of these people were strikingly blind. A friend of DAnnunzio, Romaine
Brooks spent the Second World War in Florence, fully confident in Mussolini. When his
arrest was announced on July 25, 1943, she wrote in her journal: With the imprisonment of Mussolini, the dream of a unified Europe collapses, that is what the fascists say
and the nightmare is reinforced by the steady advance of the Bolshevik army.
Natalie Barney also settled in Florence, recreating there a little court and living in
total obliviousness to outside events. Gertrude Stein, who remained in France, translated
documents into English for the Vichy regime. Colettes attitude was also ambiguous:
some of her writings appeared in serial in Gringoire, including Bellavista in September
1936. Ces plaisirs (These Pleasures) were to be published there in 1931; only the first parts
came out, December 4 to December 25. In one issue of Gringoire, she denounced Leon Blum
for his non-French origins, accused Salengro and reported on the annual gathering of
Nuremberg by indicating Hitler as an authentic friend of France.262 While she signed the
declaration of rightist and leftist writers for the unity of Frenchmen along with Aragon,
Malraux, Maritain, Mauriac and Montherlant, during the war she continued to publish
apolitical texts in collaborationist newspapers like Le Petit Parisien. Julie de Carneilhan
appeared in Gringoire in 1941. In November 1942, she sold an article on Burgundy to La
Gerbe; Herbert Lottman, her biographer, notes that the newspaper then presented Burgundy as an old German province, and transformed Colettes text into a piece of propaganda. It is not clear if she was tricked; but there was certainly a superficiality on the part
of the writer who never took a clear position on political questions. Her publications,
which generally remained very far removed from ideological problems and the war, attest
that she did not realize how much was at stake.
Other intellectuals simply chose tacit collaboration. In Germany, A.E. Weirauch,
the author of the lesbian best-seller Der Skorpion, continued to be published under Third
Reich. She did not join the Nazi party, but became member of the Nazi writers organization, Reichsschriftumskammer.
Obsessed by their privileges and the concern for protecting their own little world,
many lesbians closed their ears to Virginia Woolfs analysis, as affirmed in Three Guineas:
that feminism is opposed to Fascism, which rests on a patriarchal view of society. If the
lesbians taking refuge in Paris were able to express their sexuality freely, it was because of
their social and financial advantages; they were bound by these privileges to the same
institutions which oppressed them; and therefore they did not seek to oppose an ideology
which corresponded to their deepest convictions.
Erotic and aesthetic appeal

More difficult to grasp is the aesthetic and erotic attraction which Nazism exerted
on certain homosexuals. In Kangaroo, D.H. Lawrence associates the power of persuasion of
the masses with latent homosexuality. Thus Kangaroo, leader of an Australian fascist
movement, attracts disciples as much by his intense powers of seduction as by his
261. Blanche Wiesen Cook on Gertrude Stein, cited by Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank, Paris
1900-1940, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1986, 518 pages, p.19.
262. See Herbert Lottman, Colette, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1990, 496 pages.
278

political ideas. The hero, Richard Evans, albeit a socialist sympathizer, allows himself to
be swept along for a moment by an almost carnal attraction for Kangaroo. Political
combat and the workingmans fraternity combine in a kind of Mnnerbund that sees
friendship as the basis for direct action.
For other homosexuals, the fascistic fascination seems more like a quest for selfdestruction. Having internalized the prejudices of society, they endeavor to prove how
abject they are. Self-hatred, vice, betrayals, these are the stations of the cross that they see
as inevitable. Maurice Sachs is a good example. Sachs was born in 1906; his real name was
Ettinghausen. He was Jewish but refused to admit it. Even as a child, he wanted to be a
girl. He studied in a self-managed school inspired by the English model. There was a lot of
sports activity there, and the boys made special friendships. Sachs became the victim of
certain pupils, was tortured and perhaps raped.263 He had several homosexual experiences. His novel The Sabbath talks about this period of especial debauchery which ended
with the expulsion of a great number of pupils in 1920. Thereafter, Sachs spent time at
trendy clubs and met famous homosexuals: Abel Hermant, Jean Cocteau. Then he met
Albert Cuziat. In 1926, he entered the Carmelite seminary, but fell in love with a fifteenyear-old American, Tom Pinkerton. The scandal ended his religious career. From there on
out, he lived a very chaotic life. In 1936, although he had hitherto been adamantly against
Stalinism, he signed a contract for Maurice Thorez et la Victoire communiste. Just about then,
Gide returned from the USSR, and Sachs seemed to be politically off-balance. After 1940,
he was living on the fringes. He got involved in the black market, traded with war profiteers, signed up for dirty work of various kinds, but did not get involved with the
Germans. Then he suddenly left his apartment in 1942, and his trail became enigmatic: in
November 1942, he was in Hamburg; but he was Jewish, homosexual, and did not speak
German. It is possible that since 1942 he was in the Gestapo in France. In Germany, he
was a voluntary worker in a camp. He met a homosexual doctor, anti-Nazi, for whom he
translated the evening news from London Radio. Then, he met another homosexual
doctor, a Nazi, who named him a French deputy to the executive committed of the camp.
At the end of April 1943, he wanted to get out of that but still wanted to make himself
useful to Germany. He worked for the secret service of the Wehrmacht, while continuing
to pursue a very active homosexual life. November 16, 1943, he was arrested with his
friends for reason homosexuality, pursuant to 175. He was interned at the Fuhlsbttel
prison, north of Hamburg, and died there in April 1945, one day before the British arrived,
lynched by his cellmates. An absolute outsider, like Genet he made disloyalty his rule.
Nietzschean, influenced by Gide and his theory of the gratuitous act, he planned his own
descent into hell, like the necessary sanction for a sin that can never be expiated.
MISUNDERSTANDING OR BETRAYAL? THE LEFT SHIFTS BETWEEN PURITANISM AND

OPPORTUNISM
In the 1920s, many homosexuals were inclined to support the left. Since the end of
the 19th century German social democracy had expressed interest in the homosexual
263. See Henri Raczymow, Maurice Sachs ou les Travaux forcs de la frivolit, Paris, Gallimard, 1988,
503 pages. See also chapter three.
279

cause. The Russian revolution fostered the idea of a left that was favorable to sexual
minorities, determined to grant the individual the right to his own body, against hypocritical and conservative middle-class morals. However, the attitude of the left was
ambiguous and unstable, and then it became radicalized in the 1930s.
The Soviet Illusion

The establishment of the Soviet Union seemed to be an important milestone for
English and German homosexuals. In 1918, the Russia Bolshevik decriminalized homosexuality,264 which placed it at the avant-garde of the sexual reforms of the 1920s and earned
it the recognition and the admiration of European homosexuals.265 By easing the legal
penalties for homosexuality, the Bolsheviks embodied the forces of progress. They seemed
to be promoting a new system of sexual morals, based not on false respectability but on
the rehabilitation of the body and on equality of exchanges in love. However, in 1934,
homosexuality as a fascistic perversion become a crime again in the USSR.
In fact, the Marxist position with respect to homosexuality was never very clear.
The basic text on the subject is Friedrich Engels The Origin of the Family, Private Property and
the State (1884). The division of labor between men and women is not questioned and heterosexuality is presented as natural. The topic of homosexuality is touched upon only
incidentally, in connection with ancient Greece, and in the most negative manner possible: But the depreciation of women was paralleled by the degradation of men, and went
so far as to make them fall into the repugnant practice of pederasty and to dishonor themselves by dishonoring their gods by the myth of Ganymede.266
Engels was known to detest homosexuality, the abominable practice of sodomy
which he called a shocking vice and against nature, the sign of a sexual failure and a degradation of women. After Karl Marx sent him a pamphlet by Karl Ulrichs, in June 1869,
Engels responded: This is a very curious Uranist that youve sent me here. These are
really revelations against nature. The pederasts are starting to add up and discover that
they represent a force within the State. They only lacked an organization, but, according
to this text, it seems that they already have one.... How fortunate it is that we personally
are too old to fear that when this party wins any of us will have to pay a bodily tribute to
the victors.... But just wait until the new penal legislation of northern Germany adopts the
droits du cul,267 and things will change considerably. For us poor people out front, with our
puerile attraction for women, its going to become very difficult.268
Thus it is clear that the sources of Marxist thought give no hint of tolerance for
homosexuality. The charge of intellectualism reinforces the myth of an innocent working
264. In tsarist Russia, homosexuality was a crime: according to article 995 in the criminal code
of 1832, which was derived from various German penal codes, muzhelozhstvo (anal relations between
men) was interdicted and could be punished by a loss of all rights and by exile to Siberia for four to
five years. In cases of rape or seduction of minors or mentally retarded persons, article 996 recommended a sentence of ten to twenty years forced labor (Simon Karlinsky, Russias Gay Literature
and Culture: The Impact of the October Revolution, in Hidden from History, op. cit., p.347-364).
265. It remained a crime in Georgia, Azerbaidjan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
266. Friedrich Engels, LOrigine de la famille, de la proprit prive et de ltat [1884], Paris, ditions
sociales, 1971, 364 pages, p.64.
267. In French in the original.
268. Letter dated 22 June 1869, cited by Hans-Georg Stmke, Homosexuelle in Deutschland, eine politische Geschichte, Munich, Verlag C.H. Beck, 1989, 184 pages, p.20.
280

class, naturally inclined toward the good, and safe from all sexual perversions. From the
point of view of homosexuality, this prefigures the concept of fascistic perversion: a
deviant sexual behavior can be the product only of the decadent classes; a homosexual
workman obviously must have been corrupted by a bourgeois. In the same way, a lesbian
is an inactive woman, who seeks to while away her days; a good revolutionary cannot be a
lesbian, she cannot even be a feminist: I would not bet on the reliability and perseverance
in combat of any of these women whose personal love life is inextricably intermeshed
with political activity. Nor for that of those men who run after every skirt. No, no, that is
all incompatible with the revolution! 269 Youth is not spared, either: The youth
movement does not escape this disease, either the concern for being modern and allocating a disproportionate place to the question of sex .... As many have reported to me, sex
is the number one topic among youth organizations .... It can very easily lead one or
another to sexual excesses, ruining the health and strength of young persons270 .... Ultimately, sexuality and revolution do not seem compatible: [the revolution] does not tolerate orgiastic
excesses like those which are normal for the decadent heroes and heroines of DAnnunzio.
The dissolute sexual life is bourgeois, it is a manifestation of decadence.271
Certain writings did maintain the myth of a USSR that was liberal on the homosexual question. Dr. Grigorii Batkis, director of the Institute for Social Hygiene in
Moscow, wrote a pamphlet The Sexual Revolution in Russia (1923) and it was published in
Germany in 1925. He affirmed that the Soviet State did not interfere in sexual questions as
long as there was no violence and no one was injured. The article Homosexuality which
appeared in the first edition of the Soviet Encyclopedia, volume 17, in 1930, is also evocative. It cites Hirschfeld and Freud to justify the non-criminalization of homosexuality,
but says that while homosexuality is not a crime it is still, in the view of Soviet legislation,
an illness. Also, even if the change in the law encouraged homosexuals to breathe more
freely, it was no guarantee of a shift in attitudes. Admittedly, during the period when
homosexuality was legal, no one was persecuted; Soviet representatives were sent to the
congress of Magnus Hirschfelds World League for Sexual Reform in 1921, 1928, 1929 and
1930; he was even hosted for a visit to the USSR in 1926. It was also anticipated that the
fifth congress of the League would take place in Moscow, but it was finally held in Brno,
in Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, Simon Karlinsky noted that compared to the tsarist
period, which was very repressive by law, and the revolutionary era, which was only
superficially liberal, there was a greater tacit tolerance during the first Soviet period.
Homosexual Soviet writers like Mikhal Kuzmin (1875-1936) were not mentioned in the
Soviet press; they were never criticized directly for their sexual orientation, only on the
basis of their social origins. Many artists married in order to protect their careers. Sergei
Eisenstein presents a particularly striking example of the confusion in Western Europe as
to the situation of homosexuals in the USSR. In the USSR, he had tried to repress his
homosexuality; it seems that he was influenced on this subject by the Party line: If it
werent for Marx, Lenin and Freud, I would have become a new Oscar Wilde, he revealed
to the critic Sergei Tretiakov.272 Finally, during a trip to Berlin and Paris he got over his
269. Lenins response to Clara Zetkin in 1920, published in 1925, cited in Clara Zetkin, Batailles
pour les femmes, Paris, ditions sociales, 1980, 444 pages, p.192.
270. Lenin, ibid., p.188. My emphasis.
271. Ibid., p.192.
272. Cited by Simon Karlinsky, Russias Gay Literature and Culture, loc. cit., p.361.
86Ibid.
281

fears the ultimate paradox when we realize that German and French homosexuals at
that time thought of the USSR as a model. After a scandal in Mexico, under threat from
the Soviet government to reveal his private life and stop him from making any more films,
Eisenstein had to go home and agree to marry.
The hostility to homosexuality in the press and within the government never did
wane. Gorky declared in Pravda and Izvestia that the new law of 1934 ensured the triumph
of proletarian humanism and that the legalization of homosexuality had been Fascisms
principal cause.273 He penned the shock line, Wipe out homosexuality and Fascism will
disappear.274 The press launched a homophobic campaign comparing homosexuality to
a degeneration of the fascistic bourgeoisie. It was not just a crime against morality, but a
crime against the State, a social crime lumped together with banditism, counter-revolutionary activities, sabotage, espionage, etc. It became grounds for three to five years in
prison in benign cases, and from five to eight years if one of the partners were dependent
on the other (articles 154a and 121). According to Wilhelm Reich, there were cases of
homosexuality with the state security agencies. In January 1934, there were multiple
homosexual arrests in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov and Odessa, including many artists.
Homosexuality was equated with a rejection of socialism; it was said that a member of the
working class could never be homosexual.
However, while homosexuals were looked upon with severity and contempt, they
were not systematically persecuted; as long as they remained discrete, as long as they
married, they were generally left alone. The enthusiasm of many homosexual intellectuals
for the Soviet example thus rests primarily on a misunderstanding. Marxism retained a
puritanical outlook on sexual questions, quite apart from any general liberalization of
morals. Homosexuality was rejected by most theorists of Marxism and homosexuals were
barely tolerated in the USSR. Fundamental progress, in the form of the de-criminalization
of homosexuality, was only a temporary concession.
Support from the Anarchists

During the inter-war period, a certain anarchistic faction came to support the
homosexual cause. However, due to their low numbers and their lack of organization,
their influence on public opinion was negligible.275 Individualistic anarchists, in particular, were interested in the sexual question. Eugene Armand gives a definition of individualism: Any group or association which seeks to impose upon an individual or upon a
human community a unilateral concept of life, economic, intellectual, ethical or different,
is not individualistic anarchy; that is the touchstone of anarchistic individualism.276 The
273. Excerpt from an article from 1934, Lhumanisme proltarien, translated in France in 1938.
274. Indeed, the anarchist movement was quite diminished after World War I, with the exception of Spain where it played a very significant role in the civil war. Anarcho-syndicalism, especially,
had failed by the tie of the war to bring to fruition the notion of the general strike. In France, the
Union Anarchiste had some 3000 members in 1938. French anarchists were opposed to the State, to
capitalism, to state institutions such as the school and the army. On questions of sexuality and
family, they proclaimed themselves against the family and marriage and in favor of free unions
instead. See Jean Maitron, Le Mouvement anarchiste in France, t.II, De 1914 nos jours, Paris, Maspero, 1983,
435 pages.
275. Ibid., p.174.
276. Max Stirner, LUnique et sa proprit, Lausanne, LAge dhomme, 1972, 437 pages, p.283.
282

anarchistic individualists were especially inspired by the philosophy of Max Stirner and
his disciple John Henry Mackay.
Stirners individualism could be used as a basis for a defense of homosexuality.
Indeed, his philosophy, by developing the viewpoint of the individual released from the
constraints of society, allows sexual minorities to flourish and supports the assertion of
personal singularity. Stirner questions morals that result directly from the dominant
classes: Crime and disease are two nonegoistic points of view, in other words they are
judgments which do not come from me, but from another, whether the injured thing is the
law, a general concept, or the health of an individual (the patient) or of a body (society).
Crime is treated without pity, disease with a charitable gentleness, pity, etc.277
This passage can easily apply to homosexuality, which was considered as a crime
and at the same time a disease, and was judged with severity or commiseration depending
on the point of view. Stirner also shows that the general consensus dominates the moral
framework; the homosexual, like any individual, i.e. men who think for themselves and
defend their rights to be different, is only a scapegoat, a unifying force for the rest of
society: The people furiously set the police on everything that looks immoral or even just
improper, and this moralistic popular rage protects the institution better than the government could ever do.278
Stirners followers expressed a great tolerance with respect to homosexuals.
Unlike the Communists or Socialists, whose views were changeable and ambiguous, the
individualistic anarchists defended homosexuals with constancy and clarity. In France,
various works published under the direction of Eugene Armand at the ditions de lEndehors clearly express their sympathies for homosexuality: The attitude of the anarchistic individualists with regard to homosexualism is not about prejudices, or taking
sides; it reconciles the scientific point of view with an absolute respect for personal
freedom.279 This liberalism is expressed in several works dealing with homosexuality,
but also in the friendly support lent to the homosexual magazine Inversions. There is a
danger of over-generalizing, however; the tolerance displayed by the anarchist leaders
was not always shared by the base. Inversions was the subject of a quite a debate among the
readers of LEn-dehors.280
This anarchistic thought presents two arguments in favor of homosexuality: the
first is its provocative value in questioning established values, the powers that be. Homosexuality eats away the patriarchal society from within. Armand points out an aphorism
from the anarchist Isaac Goldberg: Sexual perversities are to love what anarchy is to
bourgeois conformity.281 The second, based on individualistic values, argues in favor of
277. Ibid., p.284.
278. Eugne Armand, LHomosexualit, lOnanisme et les Individualistes, Paris, ditions de lEn-dehors,
1931, 32 pages, p.19.
279. Dr Choubersky, who wrote in the 12 March 1925 issue, was indignant. To him, homosexuals
were sick and inversion was a congenital defect. The homosexual act was ignoble and would
represent the normal cotus of a drunken brute with a brood female as idyllic. Homosexuals knew nothing of
the true meaning of love, they were fated never to know anything but substitutes for normal men or
women. Other readers showed somewhat more understanding, but were shocked by the elitist tone
of the writings and the pretensions of some of the inverts who seemed to believe themselves superior
to the others. Even so, the tolerance did not go as far as approval: homosexuals were still abnormal.
280. Eugne Armand, Lmancipation sexuelle, lAmour en camaraderie et les Mouvements davant-garde,
Paris, ditions de lEn-dehors, 1934, 23 pages, p.2.
281. Eugne Armand, Lmancipation sexuelle, lAmour en camaraderie et les Mouvements davant-garde,
Paris, ditions de lEn-dehors, 1934, 23 pages, p.2.
283

minorities of all kinds; the homosexual, just like the partisan of free love, has the right to
live out and express his difference. From the standpoint of pure liberty, it is obvious that
one cannot restrict an individual from using his body as he likes. If not, and this applies as
well to homosexualism as to masturbation or prostitution, its a small step to arbitrariness and inconsistency.282
However, this tolerance must not be equated to proselytism. Armand was clearly
heterosexual, he did not wish for homosexuals to take over, he did not think that homosexuality was a higher form of love which explains why he criticized Corydon and
those who sought to establish distinctions between inverts and pederasts. Simply, he
felt that everyone had the right to do what he liked and that it was not right for others to
judge: [Lets have] freedom to practice love, each one as he likes but keep the door
closed!283
The individualist arguments inscribe the defense of homosexuality in the register
of minority rights but they are also based on a clear knowledge of the homosexual milieu
and the problems that homosexuals meet. Armand quotes Carpenter, Ulrichs, Ellis,
Krafft-Ebbing, Fr, and Moll. He researched the state of the law towards homosexuality
in France, Belgium, Holland and Italy. He was familiar with the newspapers of the
German militants, Der Eigene and Die Freundschaft. However, the conclusion of the French
anarchists, while it is liberal, is biased. Rather than defending homosexuality on the basis
of individualism and a questioning of social prejudices, they fell in line with the tradition
of educating the public by presenting homosexuals as victims and by expanding the
medical dialogue. Still, they did maintain a firm and positive position:
The cases of congenital inversion regard homosexuals themselves; those who are
really ill, if it is proven, are pathological and not disciplinary cases. [The anarchistic
individualists] recognize homosexuals right to associate, and to publish newspapers,
magazines and books to expose and defend their case, and to invite into their groups
latent uranists. [They] do not make except inverts of either sex.284
An example more representative of the influence of the individualistic anarchists in
the defense of homosexuality can be found in J.H. Mackay (1864-1933). He was a homosexual and a disciple of Stirner, and wrote a biography of the latter; he had ties to Adolf
Brands Gemeinschaft der Eigenen. Under the pseudonym of Sagitta he operated as a
homosexual activist. For Mackay, the defense of homosexuality is part of a general anarchistic fight against any oppression of the individual. However, by refusing to offer any
justification for homosexuality, he placed himself in an extremely marginalized position,
not well suited to the German society of the inter-war period. While it was eminently
creditable, his action did nothing to further the progress of homosexual liberation or the
education of the public. The individualistic philosophy carried to its logical conclusion
seems more like a romantic ideal than a political action. One realizes this in the reading of
his novel Der Puppenjunge (1926), which recalls the adventures of a fifteen-year-old boy,
Gnther, from the provinces, who goes to Berlin to find work and sinks into prostitution.
The novel is interesting for its description of the shady side of Berlin and for his original
presentation of homosexual relations, detached from any medical reference and any
attempt at justification. He denounces above all the system where money dominates, and
282. Ibid., p.4.
283. Eugne Armand, Vera Livinska and C. de St Hlne, La Camaraderie amoureuse, Paris, ditions
de lEn-dehors, 1930, 32 pages, p.31.
284. Ibid., p.20.
284

which is supported by established family men, who make a point of satisfying their
desires in anonymity and impunity.
Lastly, one may ask what was the influence of the philosophy of Nietzsche, as the
basis for a critique of morals and a rehabilitation of homosexuality. Nicolaus Sombart says
that Ludwig Klages, a homosexual known to all of Munich, who gave lectures to young
boys, expressed boundless admiration for Nietzsche; he tried to bring him back to life by
staging ecstatic dances of young boys. Indeed, there are several arguments in Nietzsches
philosophy that legitimate sexual deviance. For him, morality was only the sum of the
conditions necessary to the conservation of a poor, half- or completely-damaged
species.285 He reproaches the Church for fighting passion by castratism. For, to attack
the passions at the root is to attack life at the root: the practices of the Church are hostile
to life.... 286 And that is the morality that is against nature, that is, almost any morals
that are taught, preached and advocated even now, rise on the contrary against the
instincts of life, and they are a condemnation, sometimes secret, sometimes open and
insolent, of these instincts....287
Such assertions questioned all the bases of the traditional society and reversed the
roles. They made those who were immoral into a life-affirming force. From Nietzschean
philosophy, certain homosexuals built a theory of elitist homosexuality and deduced from
it that the homosexual is an aristocrat, a member of a higher class, above the common
laws and affirming his difference as a kind of glory. One finds traces of these ideas in Adolf
Brand, Gustav Wyneken and Hans Blher.
The Confused Line of the German Left

The German left was very closely associated with the debate on homosexuality in
Germany and therefore we can analyze developments from that perspective.288 Conversely, the French and English parties never had to draw any conclusion about the
question in a public debate and thus it would be difficult to draw any conclusions there.
The SPD and the KPD, allies of the homosexual movements

The interest of the German Socialists in homosexual rights goes back to the end of
the 19th century. While the party remained extremely noncommittal on the question,
certain individuals decided in favor of homosexuals, like Ferdinand Lassalle, Eduard Bernstein and August Bebel. Under Weimar, the German Social-Democratic Party (SPD) was
the leading German party.289 While it always seems to have been one of the principal
supporters of the homosexual struggle, it engaged in less visible ways alongside the mili285. Jean Granier, Nietzsche, Paris, PUF, coll. Que sais-je?, 1982, 127 pages.
286. Friedrich Nietzsche, Le Crpuscule des idoles, fragments, Paris, Hatier, 1983, 95 pages, p.74.
287. Ibid., p.74-75.
288. See W.U. Eissler, Arbeiterparteien und Homosexuellenfrage zur Sexualpolitik von SPD und KPD in der
Weimarer Republik, Berlin, Verlag Rosa Winkel, 1980, 142 pages; and Friedrich Koch, Sexuelle Denunziation, die Sexualitt in der politischen Auseinandersetzung, Frankfurt-am-Main, Syndikat, 1986, 223 pages.
289. It had a million members, 203 newspapers, and was related to the General Confederation of
German Workers. As part of the government, until 1923 it was part of the center-left coalition which
comprise, in addition to the SPD, Zentrum and the German Democratic Party (DDP). In the 1919 elections, SPD received 45% of the votes, but only 21% in May 1924. It regained some ground after that,
with 30% of the votes in 1928, but showed a net decline in 1932 with 20%.
285

tants. However, several eminent Socialists signed the WhK petition, like Rudolf Hilferding, who was a Minister for Finance and editor of the organ of the Independent
German Social-Democratic Party (USPD), Die Freiheit; Gustav Radbruch, who was a Minister for Justice; Friedrich Stanpfer, editor of Vorwrts, organ of the SPD; the president of
Reichstag Lbe and Hermann Mller, who was a chancellor of the Reich later on. The
SPD stood up on several occasions against the repression of homosexuality. At the congress of Kiel, for example, in 1927, it adopted a resolution asking for the abolition of laws
against divorce and homosexuality. Nevertheless, the SPD was not noteworthy in the
1920s for its militancy on the question, and it appears even on this point to have been in
retreat compared to the pre-war period.
The German Communist Party (KPD) was founded in January 1919.290 It immediately became interested in the homosexual cause. Articles on the question were published
regularly, in particular in Berlin am Morgen and Welt am Abend under Willi Mnzenberg.
Nevertheless, no names of known Communists are found on the WhK petition. The links
between the KPD and WhK were close, however, since Richard Linsert was at the same
time a member of the Party and Secretary of the WhK. At the same time, Felix Halle, the
legal expert of the KPD, had participated in drafting the legislative counter-proposal for
the WhK. Moreover, as a communist representative, he was present at the congress of the
World League for Sexual Reform that was held in Copenhagen in 1928.
The KPDs position on homosexuality is specified in the book by Halle,
Geschlechtsleben and Strafrecht (1931): The proletariat, conscious of its class, detached from
the ideology of property and liberated from the ideology of the Churches, approaches the
question of sex and the problem of homosexuality with an absence of prejudices attained
thanks to a comprehension of the social structure as a whole... In consonance with the scientific advances of modern times, the proletariat looks upon these relations as a special
form of sexual gratification and expects the same freedoms and restrictions for these
forms of sexual life as for sexual relations between the sexes, i.e. the protection of sexual
minors from attack,.... control of ones own body and, finally ... consideration for the rights
of third parties.291
Halle published several articles aimed at drawing the attention of the communist
readership to the sexual question. Thus an article appeared in Die Internationale on
November 1, 1926 entitled Reform of the Penal Code on Sexual Matters and the Proletariat, where he expounded his theories. The leading class used the Penal code to satisfy
its sadistic instincts; it is in its interest to control the sexual life of the popular classes and
thus to keep the proletariat in check. According to Halle, it was grotesque to condemn
homosexual prostitution at a time when a million young people were unemployed and
thrown out on the street. Lastly, he recalled that in the USSR, homosexuality was not
condemned by law. Here we see an original approach to defending the homosexual cause:
the proletariat must show solidarity with homosexuals, for both are victims of the ruling
class which seeks to retain control of the individuals in order to keep them docile and
290. It came out of the Spartakist movement, which was badly shaken up after the deaths of Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg on 15 January 1919. It quickly became a mass party with
350,000 members, 30 dailies and by 1932 more than 15% of the electorate. Even more than the SPD,
the KPD recruited among young people jeunesse and the peasantry. Since 1923 the KPD, having shed
the leftist elements, became a well-disciplined party that followed Moscows direction.
291. Cited by James D. Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany, New York,
Arno Press, 1975, 121 pages, p.83.
286

underpaid. Homosexuality was dependent on social conditions. Male prostitutes were
not necessarily degenerates, but were forced into it by poverty. By linking homosexuality
and the working class, Halle reprised a topic that was dear to the intellectual English
homosexuals, but which was counter to received opinion: for a long time, homosexuality
had been regarded as vice of the decadent rich and aristocrats.
The SPD and the KPD had to express their positions during the various debates on
the reform of the Penal Code. The SPD, now a part of the government, declared itself open
to compromise with the bourgeois parties.292 Gustav Radbruch, socialist Minister for
Justice from October 1921 to November 1922, decided in favor of decriminalization, but
his draft law, which abolished 175, was not retained. In 1929, the SPD voted for the depenalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults, but it sided with all the other
parties (except the KPD) on the repression of homosexual acts involving dependents,
minors and male prostitutes.
Unlike the SPD, the KPD would not hear of collaborating with the bourgeois
parties. Thus it was the party in the Reichstag most in favor of homosexuals. It asked in
particular that the law not treat homosexuality any differently from heterosexuality: no
harsher penalties for homosexual prostitution, no higher age of sexual majority, no broadening of the concept of indecent exposure. These goals matched exactly those of the
WhK. Thus the KPD succeeded it as the best defender of the homosexual cause, and its
ties with the militant movements were reinforced. In June 1924, it announced itself at the
Reichstag in favor of the abrogation of 175 and in favor of an amnesty for all those already
convicted or whose lawsuits were pending. In 1927, during discussions of the governmental draft law at a plenary session, the communist deputy Koeren asked for the removal
of the paragraph. He based his argumentation on the example of the States of the South of
Germany which, until 1871, had not condemned homosexuality. In 1929, the Communists
were the only ones to vote for the depenalization of homosexuality, whatever the conditions. On October 8, opening day of the debates of the commission on the reform of the
Penal Code, the communist deputy Alexander voted for the total suppression of section
21 of the Penal Code which concerned incest, bestiality, rape, sexual intercourse with
minors and indecent writings, in addition to homosexuality. His proposal was not
adopted. At the time of the Reichstag debates in 1932, the communist deputies expressed
their support for the homosexual cause once again.
Deputy Maslowski stressed the inconsistency of the legislation, underscoring in
particular the fact that neither lesbianism nor was Onanism condemned. However, in
spite of their efforts, neither the SPD nor the KPD turned out to be definite allies for the
homosexual cause.
Homosexuality at the heart of party politics

The SPD and the KPD adopted a two-faced approach to homosexual politics. On
the one hand, they supported the homosexual movements and called for the abolition of
175, on the other, they took advantage of the homosexual scandals to tarnish the political
bourgeoisie and their opponents, and did not hesitate to launch homophobic campaigns
themselves. In 1902, Vorwrts published an article revealing that Alfred Krupp, the
wealthy industrialist and arms manufacturer, had entertained young men at his villa in
292. Zentrum was opposed to decriminalization.
287

Capri. The scandal led Krupp to commit suicide. The Eulenburg affair was also exploited
by the SPD for political ends. In July 1924, the Haarmann case293 was the pretext for a
new campaign. Rote Fahne, a communist newspaper, described Haarmann on July 17, 1924
as a very serious criminal, a sadistic homosexual well known to the police and the courts.
The communist press now started referring to police brutality as Haarmanns methods,
and demanded that cops be purged of their sadistic, homosexual, criminal, monarchist
and fascist elements.294 These abuses led Bund fr Menschenrecht to publish a protest,
in number 24 of Bltter fr Menschenrecht of 1924, which is highly illustrative of the confusion and disappointment of the homosexual organizations.
However, the most serious scandal was that which broke open in 1931 and 1932
around the figure of Ernst Rhm. The first phase started in 1931. In fact, that year, Rhm
was at the center of a major homosexual scandal.295 A first suit was brought against him
and several of his friends; it opened on June 6, at the court of Munich. The waiter Fritz
Reif gave a deposition against Rhm. Few before Christmas 1930, he had been led by one
of his friends, the hotel employee Peter Kronninger, to a room in a building on Barerstrasse. There lay a man named Ernst, naked on a bed; a few days later, Kronninger indicated that it was Ernst Rhm. Ernst, after having stripped him, embraced him and
masturbated him. Then he turned to Kronninger, who had also been undressed, and continued. Kronninger had promised Reif money for his services; days passed without the
payment arriving and Reif sent a note, threatening to reveal everything to the police if he
did not get 25 RM at once. Via Kronninger, he accepted just 8 RM. Kronninger and Rhm
denied the whole thing. Kronninger had known Rhm for two years, there had never been
anything sexual between them. Rhm, for his part, admitted that, from a sexual point of
view, he was abnormally inclined. He admitted to having engaged in some lesser offenses
but said he had never committed any infringement of 175.296 The cases were eventually
dropped for lack of evidence.
However, on April 14, 1931, the socialist newspaper Mnchner Post published an
anonymous letter from a former Nazi, who accused Rhm of being homosexual. In June,
the newspaper published several letters which reiterated the same assertions. The June 22
bore a spectacular headline: A Hot Fraternity in the Brown House. The sexual life of the
Third Reich. On June 24, 1931, Vlkischer Beobachter, organ of the party Nazi, denied the
charges and accused the newspaper of having fabricated the documents. The affair gained
steam in 1932. March 7, 1932, in the midst of an election campaign, Mnchner Post published
letters from 1928 and 1929 addressed by Rhm to a friend, Dr. Heimsoth. Rhm was then
in Bolivia and he expressed his regrets at not finding any companions. He missed the
young Berliners. The socialist press began to describe Rhms homosexuality in the horrified and hysterical tones usually reserved for the cheapest newssheets. The June 22, 1931
Mnchner Post speaks about fornication of the kind referred to in 175, to make your hair
stand on end. The March 10, 1932, Vorwrts ran a headline about young SA in the
clutches of M. Rhm. The Communist Party, in Rote Fahne of March 11, 1932, joined in:
The Hitlerian party is a nest of informants and spies, of intrigues between the leaders and
the most horrible corruption! Welt am Abend talked of Intrigues and sexual Hypocrisy
293. See chapter five.
294. Die rote Fahne, 26 July 1924, cited by W.U. Eissler, Arbeiterparteien und Homosexuellenfrage,
op. cit., p.105.
295. BAB, R 22/5006.
296. Under 175, only acts resembling cotus were punishable.
288

around 175 in Hedemanstrasse, and Captain Rhm abuses unemployed young
workmen. The campaign sought to reveal the hypocrisy of a party that was claiming it
wanted to restore the virtue of the German people and which railed against homosexuality as a Jewish and Bolshevik plague. Leftist parties particularly hoped to upset parents
whose children were involved in Nazi movements.
The campaign had disastrous effects on public opinion for it equated homosexuality with corruption and Fascism. The WhK was extremely anxious, and sent the head
office of the SPD a long letter demanding an explanation and questioning the reality of the
partys support for the homosexual movement.297 The SPD answered positively: The
social democratic party has not modified its concept of homosexuality ... the social democratic press used the Rhm affair only because the adherents of national-socialism
support the repression of homosexuality and we would like to call attention to the
hypocrisy of a party that seeks to label homosexuals as criminals and yet leaves one of
them in a position of authority....the party does not intend to throw opprobrium on
homosexuals nor to insult them. We will discuss this matter at the appropriate time and
hour with the representatives of our party press.298
The campaign must have seemed good politics for the leadership of the SPD, but it
was completely incompatible with the commitments the party had made with regard to
homosexuals; moreover, they used the same means as those which it intended to fight.
Kurt Tucholsky, a journalist at Weltbhne and Communist fellow traveller, took violent
exception to the casual insults made by left with regard to homosexuals:
For quite a while now, the press of the radical left has been disseminating accusations, jokes, and wounding remarks about Captain Rhm, a member of the Hitlerian
movement. Rhm is, as we know, homosexual ... I regard these attacks as completely
indecent.... Above all, one should not go spying on his adversaries in their beds. The
only thing which is allowed is the following: to call attention to remarks made by the
Nazis about the vices of the East and the post-war period as if homosexuality, lesbian
love and similar things had been invented by the Russians and had been infiltrated
inside the German people, noble, pure and intact. If a Nazi says this kind of things,
and only then, it is permitted to say: you have homosexuals in your own movement
who admit their inclinations, who are even proud of it so keep quiet!.... We fight
the scandalous 175, everywhere we can, therefore we must not join the choir of those
among us who want to banish a man from society because he is homosexual.299
In fact, at the very center of the Communist Party, there were differences of opinion
concerning homosexuality. Certain remarks linked homosexuality and capitalism, and an
article published in Rote Fahne October 28, 1927 described homosexuality as non-proletarian. Starting in 1934, homosexuality was clearly labeled as a fascistic perversion.
The delicate alliance between Communism and sexuality were well illustrated in
Germany by the difficulties encountered by Wilhelm Reich. He started out as a member
of the Austrian social democrat party in 1927; he joined the KPD in 1930 and persuaded it
to link the various movements for sexual reform into one organization, the Deutscher
Reichsverband fr Proletarische Sexualpolitik (or Sexpol), which called for the abolition
of 175. For Reich, who sought to reconcile Marxist theory and psychoanalysis, the social
revolution would have to encompass a sexual revolution as well. At the end of 1932, his
297. Cited by W.U. Eissler, Arbeiterparteien und Homosexuellenfrage, op. cit., p.111.
298. Ibid., p.112.
299. Ignaz Wrobel (alias Kurt Tucholsky), Die Weltbhne, n 17, 26 April 1932.
289

relations with the Party deteriorated and he was thrown out in February 1933. The same
year, he left Germany for Denmark, before emigrating to the United States in 1939.
Thus, the relations between the German left and the homosexual movements were
thus complex. If the SPD and the KPD were the WhKs best potential allies in obtaining
the abolition of 175, they also used homosexuals as a political football. Most of the homosexual leaders, who supported the left, whether they were in the WhK, Gemeinschaft der
Eigenen or the Bund fr Menschenrecht, were bitterly disappointed by the attitude taken
by their allies. If it seems excessive to call it a betrayal, at the very least it was insincerity
and opportunism.
GENEALOGY OF A CRIME: HOMOSEXUALITY AS A FASCISTIC PERVERSION

Totalitarianism and homosexuality go together.300
After 1934, the Communist Party defined homosexuality as a fascistic perversion.

Furthermore, several authors, at various times, evoked the close linkage between Nazism
and homoeroticism.301 However, the repression that hit homosexuals in 1933 shows
clearly that Nazism was basically hostile to homosexuality. Therefore it is advisable to
clarify the Nazi position on the question.
For a long time homosexuality was a minor subject within the Party: no punitive
measures were envisaged, for example, against Nazi homosexuals. In fact, two mindsets
were in conflict: that of the Mnnerbund, defended by Hans Blher, and that of hysterical
homophobia, represented by Himmler. Hitler took a pragmatic approach for quite a
while, without clearly taking sides. If he finally went for repression, it is because this
solution was only logical in the racist and demographic political context.
The Myth of the Mnnerbund

Hans Blher (1874-1945) authored two works that had a great impact in Germany
early in the century: Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phnomen, in 1912, and Die
Rolle der Erotik in der mnnlichen Gesellschaft, published in two volumes in 1917 and 1919. Hans
Blher was close to the Irregulars and certain socialist circles, and he was a member of
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen. His first work introduced Blhers name to the general public
by affirming the homoerotic component of the youth movements. In his fundamental
treatise, Die Rolle der Erotik, Blher went further in trying to establish an overall theory of
the virile State, starting from the associative base.
Blher borrowed from Plato the term of Eros, which was also employed by Gustav
Wyneken, and by which was meant adhesion to an object (a man) independent of its
value.302 The State, according to Blher, was not the city, but the mass society of the turn
300. Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, Paris, Payot, 1980, 230 pages, p.43.
301. Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies [Mnnerphantasien, 1977], Minneapolis, The University of
Minnesota Press, 1987-1989, 2 vol., 517 pages. George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, Respect and
Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe, New York, Howard Fertig, 1985, 232 pages.
302. Hans Blher, Die Rolle der Erotik in der mnnlichen Gesellschaft, Ina, Eugen Diederichs, 1919, t.I,
248 pages, p.226.
290

of the century, authoritarian and in crisis. The historical Mnnerbnde which he cited as
examples are quite telling: the order of the Templars, Knights of Malta and cadet schools.
Each was of a strictly hierarchical nature, with military discipline. He used Sparta as a reference more than Athens. Blher borrowed from Freud the idea of bisexuality, repression
and sublimation. But he rejected the idea of homosexuality as a fixation, an inability to
change ones object of desire, for that notion was in contradiction with his intention of
making inversion the optimal form of sexuality, both necessary and desirable. In fact,
Blher falls in line with Gemeinschaft der Eigenen. St. Ch. Waldecke published an article
in Der Eigene entitled Mnnerbund und Staat,303 in which the Mnnerbund is described
as a higher form of organization, a countervailing power to the State which brought
together the elite of the nation in a never-ending fight for liberation. The goal of the Mnnerbund is not equality, the prayer of the weak, but freedom, the desire of the powerful.
Blher wanted to found an elitist, aristocratic society, a cultural State joining together
young men of valor, linked by the invisible bonds of their love: The young boy falls in love
with an older man after being detached from his mother and his first female bonds. Those
who are not destined to govern must obey; such is the function of people as redefined
according to an erotic and cultural hierarchy. The enemies of the Mnnerbund are clearly
identified: women, the family (the male State must break the principle of the family),
the school, and age groups that confined adults and adolescents to separate worlds.
The Mnnerbund male association was the fundamental structure, and the
model for others. The State must be a kind of global Mnnerbund, establishing a homoerotic society. The masculine society is the sociological means used by inverts to protect
themselves from social death. Only homosexuals (sublimated ones, for Blher is
extremely reticent when it comes to complete sexual intercourse) will be able to reach
the top levels of the State. The theory of the Mnnerbund as conceived by Blher seeks be
an alternative to both liberalism and Marxism.
What impact did Blhers thought have on Nazism? Hitler read his books; he
quoted him in his Tischgesprche. His idea of the Mnnerbund was especially applicable in
SA and the organizations derived from the Freikorps. It provided the basis of the Nazis
ideology of power they were supposed to embody the German elite, a political aristocracy called to dominate the inert masses. Alfred Rosenberg took up this idea in The
Myth of the 20th Century: The order of the Teutonic knights, the templars, freemasonry, the
Jesuit order, the rabbinical society, the English clubs, the German student corporations,
the German Irregular forces after 1918, SA, the NSDAP, etc., are all examples which prove,
irrefutably, that a political, social or religious model, as different as it may be in the forms
that it takes, almost always ends up as a society of men and their civil education.304
Blhers theory inspired a great many discussions; it was became the basis for a
whole meditation on the organization of adolescent groups and in particular it showed
that homoeroticism played a part in the power of the team leader. In fact, as Nicolaus
Sombart explained, a male, elitist, aristocratic and cultural association seemed a natural
German alternative to the Weimar Republic, which was liberal and democratic. It was
particularly well received in a number of extremist groups, which proliferated after the
303. Der Eigene, 1 October 1920.
304. Alfred Rosenberg, Le Mythe du XXe sicle [1930], Paris, ditions Avalon, 1986, 689 pages, p.465.
However Blher, who at first was in high regard, soon saw the regime banning his books; he lived in
retirement with his family until 1945. He seems to have been accused of not sufficiently vaunting his
nationalism, and of not having specified that his Mnnerbund was German and nothing but German.
291

war. These movements developed a nationalist and reactionary ideology, and rejected the
republic as a daughter of disaster, the fruit of treason.
Sombart himself was part of a youth group inspired by the example of the Irregular
forces and the myth of the Mnnerbund. He described it as a cult of virility, friendship
and fidelity ... this [was a] community bound by a pact and whose secret was male eroticism or, to express myself plainly, homosexual relations between the members of its
basic team, at the center of which was the charismatic leader, Mnnerheld, the hero of the
men.305
Nazi mythology falls into the same rubric.306 It picked up the imagery of the left
the naked body, free and sportive, and distorted it into something rigid and violent, the
imagery of combat, fighting, destruction. The seductive allure that emerges is always violently homoerotic, but it takes on a sadistic nuance that is only found in the images of
Weimar. As Klaus Mann observed, afterwards:
In those days, certainly, in that era of political innocence and erotic exaltation, we
had no idea of the dangerous potentials and aspects of our puerile mystique of sexuality...[We did not see] that our philosophy based on the significance of the body...was
sometimes used or exploited by elements that were not very sympathetic.307
The Nazi movement certainly exploited homoerotic imagery. Hitler very clearly
associated beauty and the Aryan race, and ugliness and the Jewish race. Beauty is an
infallible criterion for recognizing a healthy person; thus it must be made into a fundamental value, a goal to be attained. The artists of the regime, like Arno Breker and
Joseph Thorak, represented the German ideal, the incarnation of the superiority of the
race. Their ideal of beauty was derived from the ancient model, but was reduced to a few
clichs: muscle, monumentalism, male superiority. The mans body became a symbol of
the body of the German nation. Its virile force, its will for power announced the regeneration of the society, whereas the democracy was associated with the body in putrefaction,
such as it is represented in expositions of degenerate art. This representation was eminently narcissistic and rejected abnormality, defects, all that is unhealthy as a danger, a
disease which risked infecting the entire body. The homoerotic connotations tied to
worship of the body and to the will for power also appear very clearly in the treatises of
Hans Suren, a Nazi officer who preached physical culture as means of safeguarding the
purity of the race and exalting the size of the German people. In one of his works, Gymnastik der Deutschen, rassenbewusste Selbsterziehung (1935), physical exercises are abundantly
illustrated with photographs of the author, nude, muscular, his body oiled. The athletic
poses are also suggestive and aims to create a desire in the reader for the perfect body thus
exposed. Admiration and desire are intermixed with other feelings, aggravated by calls for
virile friendship.
The ideal of the National-Socialist hero, with powerful homoerotic connotations, is
also eminently visible in the films produced under the Third Reich. Action films like Hitlerjunge Quex, Juniors, D3 88 and Crew Dora, exploit the themes of heroism, virile beauty, and
friendship between comrades to stimulate interest.308 Leni Riefenstahls propaganda doc305. Nicolaus Sombart, Chroniques dune jeunesse berlinoise, 1933-1943, Paris, Quai Voltaire, 1992,
369 pages, p.26.
306. Ulrike Aubertin and Annick Lantenois, La grande exposition de lArt allemand et lArt
dgnr, in Art et fascisme, Bruxelles, Complexe, 1989, 260 pages, p.139-154.
307. Klaus Mann, Le Tournant [1949], Paris, Solin, 1984, 690 pages, p.162.
308. See Richard Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1971, 535 pages.
292

umentary The Gods of the Stadium also uses homoerotic esthetics to exalt the regime. Just as
it took over the liberation of the body for its own conservative purposes, Nazism built on
the notion of the younger generation as the regenerative force of the nation; it celebrated
its independence and enthusiasm. This ardent youth became the pillar on which it would
build its State: Youth is its own State, it holds up to the adult a kind of front of solidarity,
and that is quite natural.309
Nazi mythology was also based on memories of the First World War.310 Nazism
touted itself as the extension of the friendship of the trenches and it kept alive the
memory of those who fell in combat in order to fan the enthusiasm of the new generation.
Thus, in the Horst Wessel Lied, the SAs do not march alone, they are accompanied by the
invisible presence of the patriots who died at the front. During the ceremonies at
Nuremberg, a list of those who had died in service to the party was read out, and at each
name, a member of the Hitler Youths appeared.
It is undeniable that Nazism was based partly on a homoerotic esthetics, but even
so it should not be deduced that it was a pro-homosexual movement. Like other male
movements, it attracted some homosexuals, in particular in the SA and the Hitler Youth,
but that was only a marginal phenomenon and was not the aim of the leaders. There were
probably no more and no fewer homosexuals within the NSDAP than in other parties. On
the other hand, the NSDAP was characterized very early on by a virulent homophobia.
Hysterical Homophobia
Himmler expressed the principles of the Nazis fundamental hostility to homosexual very clearly in a speech addressed to the general SS on February 18, 1937. 311
Himmlers speech is typical of the discourse on homosexuality in the inter-war period; it
was not very original. Himmler presented himself in the form of a specialist on the
question: No service has accumulated as much experience in the field of homosexuality,
abortion, etc., as the Gestapo in Germany. According to him, homosexuals were, first of
all, a demographic danger. According to estimates, homosexual associations had signed
up between two and four million members, but in his view there were only one or two
million: Not all those who were part of these associations were really homosexuals. This
notion agreed with the opinion of many doctors who distinguished between inverts (or
real homosexuals) and pseudo-homosexuals, those who had been seduced and were
likely to be recuperable. However, If the situation does not change, our people will be
destroyed by this contagious disease. This idea was not new: we have seen that it was
one of the pet theories of the discourse on decadence in the inter-war period. Himmler
immediately established a link between the contagion and the body of the nation: But
this is not about their private life: sexual activity can be synonymous with the life or death
of a people, with world hegemony or a reduction of our importance to that of Switzerland. The German people must be numerous in order to conquer its vital space.
The second threat posed by homosexuality was the risk of a secret homosexual
organization at the heart of the State: If you find a man in a given position who has a
309. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf [1925], Paris, Nouvelles ditions latines, 1934, 685 pages, p.415.
310. George L. Mosse, Souvenir de la guerre et place du monumentalisme in lidentit culturelle
du Nazisme, in Guerres et cultures (1914-1918), Paris, Armand Colin, 1994, 445 pages.
311. Heinrich Himmler, Discours secrets, Paris, Gallimard, 1978, 255 pages.
293

certain penchant and if this man has decision-making power, you can be sure to meet in
his entourage another three, four, eight, or ten individuals or more who also have this predilection. Himmler believed that homosexuals looked out for each other. Thus, if ministerial adviser X was homosexual, he would select as his associate not a qualified person,
but a homosexual like him. The homosexual leader cannot operate rationally in the professional arena but would follow his instinct. Moreover, you cannot trust a homosexual:
he is sick, loose, dishonest, irresponsible, and disloyal. He is an ideal target of pressure,
with an insatiable need for confidence. This is a compendium of the most banal prejudices with regard to homosexuals, all woven together into a notion attesting to the
extreme danger of allowing homosexuals to function at the higher levels of the State.
After these various warnings, Himmler went to the heart of the matter: homosexuality in the SS. For Himmler, this was a fundamental contradiction: the SS were to be the
elite of the German nation, intended to regenerate the country, and therefore could hardly
harbor perverts and cowards. Himmler entertained the myth of an original Germany,
Nordic, pure and brutal, which would have not known homosexuality (since that was a
consequence of the mixture of the races). He found traces of it in the rural areas, which
according to him were free of this plague.
To regenerate the race, concessions would have to be made. Himmlers Puritanism
allowed for some curious compromises. He declared himself in favor of prostitution, for
one cannot want, on the one hand, to prevent all young people from falling into homosexuality, and on another hand to close off all outlets.312
He favored early marriages and tolerated illegitimate births. Young people in the
cities, corrupted by the atmosphere of depravity that characterizes large cities, would be
brought back to normality by discipline, order, sport, labor and by being restricted to
camps. To limit the risk of spreading homosexuality, Himmler was ready to modify the
operation of the State at a profound level, to ward off the ill effects of tradition and bourgeois morality. He wanted to stop the masculinization of girls, and to remove the advantages of male associations. Boys should stop being ashamed of loving girls and should stop
giving greater value to male friendships. Himmler also took a swipe at Blher for having
spread these ideas. Young German must be knights, men who are make themselves the
champions of women.
To legitimate his ideas of fraternization between the sexes and sexual freedom,
Himmler inevitably had to step away from Christian morals. In 1937, the great wave of
denunciations of Catholic priests and monks had already begun. We will prove that the
Church, at the level of its leaders as well as of its priests, is in large part an erotic association of men that has terrorized humanity for one thousand eight hundred years now,
requiring society to provide it with an enormous quantity of victims, and which in the
past has shown itself to be sadistic and perverse.313
Himmlers ideal was that of a pagan, Dionysian society cloaked under puritan and
idealistic emblems: I consider it necessary to ensure that boys of fifteen to sixteen years
should meet girls at dances, parties and other occasions. Experience shows that at the age
of fifteen or sixteen the young boy is in an unstable position. If he develops a crush on a
girl at a dance or has a little puppy love, he is saved, he moves away from the dangerous
place. In Germany, we do not need to fret about putting boys and girls together too early
312. Ibid., p.87-88.
313. Ibid., p.93. On this subject, see chapter eight.
294

and possibly encouraging them to have sex...314 In this, Himmler pulls together several
influences, one of which is a traditional contempt for homosexuality, which is expressed
among the common people as well as in the leadership circles and which is based on a
series of clichs. Another is racist, pagan, Nordic: brandishing the specter of depopulation
and of degeneration, he preached the destruction of the enemy within and the renewal of
the race through orgiastic procreation and community. The last item was unique to
Himmler: he was hysterically homophobic. His unreasoned fear and disgust made homosexuality an obsessive concern. His Puritanism almost verges on a certain voyeurism and a
pleasure in governing and controlling the sexuality of others. This conjunction of traditional, historical and personal prejudices explains the scope of his discourse. As the organizer of large-scale repressions, he would live out his fantasies of purging and
purification.315
By comparison, other Nazi leaders who expressed themselves on the question
appear defensive or redundant, whether we look at the SS lawyer Karl-August Eckardt,
author of an article entitled The Unnatural Vice Merits Death, in Das schwarze Korps of
May 22, 1935, or Alfred Rosenberg who, in Der Sumpf (The Swamp) and in The Myth of the 20th
Century, violently attacks homosexuals and lesbians as symbols of the cultural decline
and the ruin of Europe.
However, generally, Nazi theoreticians considered sapphism to be less offensive
than male homosexuality. It was thought to be less widespread, and it was thought that
pseudo-lesbians were more numerous than real ones. And especially, the Nazis considered female sexuality only as passive and dominated nothing special in that.
Pragmatism and Scapegoats

The Nazi policy with regard to homosexuality, as it was defined by Hitler, was
above all very pragmatic. Hitler was not a partisan of the Mnnerbund, even if he was
conscious of the homoerotic tendencies at work within the movement. Neither was he an
hysterical homophobe: he could, when necessary, tolerate homosexuality within his own
party. His sexual policy was guided by a single factor: need for the survival of the race.
Racism and sexuality

In Mein Kampf, Hitler developed the principal theses of his sexual theories. The links
between sexuality and race are constantly noted: The sin against blood and race is the
original sin of this world and marks the end of humanity if we indulge in it.316 The
dangers which threatened the race were primarily syphilis and the Jews, who embodied
the degeneration of the individual. For him, as for the Church, the only goal of the sex act
was procreation. This primary concern led him to reject any constraints that could weigh
on the sex act and thus Christian and bourgeois morals: marriage was not an aim in itself
adultery, and childbirth out of wedlock contribute just like the others to the supreme
goal.317 However, it was essential that sexual energy not be dispersed vainly. In the same
314. Ibid., p.94.
315. Himmler frequently repeated his discourse on the homosexual menace, notably during a
radio broadcast on the occasion of the police congress in 1937 (BAB, NS 19/4004).
316. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, op. cit., p.247.
317. Ibid., p.409.
295

way that the British pedagogues encouraged the practice of sports to moderate sexual
heat, young Germans were subjected to a military discipline which hardened them,
exhausted them sexually and constrained them to chastity. The difference is constantly
spelled out between healthy, procreative sexuality, useful for the State, and depraved sexuality, lust, and perversion. Those who are not healthy, physically and morally and
who thus have no social value are guilty, and so are those who refuse to give a child to
the community. The greatest sins are sterility, bodily infirmities, and giving primacy to
the intellect over the physique. The homosexual is registered as guilty, even if this is not
directly said.
In Nuremberg, September 8, 1934, the Fhrer defined the role of the woman in the
National-Socialist State. The emancipation of women is a formula invented by Jewish
intellectuals. If the world of man is the State, the world of the woman is smaller:
indeed, her world is her husband, her family, her children and her home, and each child
that she brings into the world is a battle won for the nation.318 In the same way, Joseph
Goebbels described women in his inaugural speech at the exposition on Woman, on
March 18, 1933, not as having lesser qualities but different qualities.319 And again,
emphasis was laid on the need to increase the birth rate.320 Under these conditions, marriage was no longer a private affair but a political responsibility. To raise children became
a national duty.321 The image of the woman was that of the angel of the home, guardian
of love and peace, and without political opinions. Consequently, it was important that
she possess a feminine allure. In his book Die Wende der Mdchenerziehung (On Education for
Girls, 1937), Frank Kade describes the physical aspect of the German girl: The ideal of
beauty in the recent past, which exalted little painted dolls with small breasts and
narrow trunks has been shaken. People are looking for powerful feminine figures, fullblossomed, exuding a natural health, a type of German woman whose proud beauty both
mental and physical embody sacred fertility and the German will for life.322
Is Hitlers sexual theory a reflection of his private life? The question has been asked
many times. Biographers have made much of Hitlers sexual frustrations, and his
misogyny. Others, on the contrary, have said that he was a great success with women.
Generally speaking, his sex life remains largely obscure and it would be risky to lend credence to the theories claiming he was a repressed sadist or homosexual. These charges,
formulated by certain newspapers and then by German migrs and the Communists,
have more to do with efforts to discredit him than with any known facts. In fact, discussions of Hitlers sexuality do not shed any light on his sexual policies. Hitler was not
318. Le Temps, 10 September 1934.
319. Cited by Claudia Schoppmann, Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik und weibliche Homosexualitt,
Berlin, Centaurus, 1991, 286 pages, p.18.
320. With the Treaty of Versailles, Germany lost more than an eighth of its territory and about
10% of its population. In fourteen years, the population of Germany went up by more than 5 million
to attain 65 million in total. The German population kept on going up but, between 1910 and 1933,
the proportion of those under the age of 20 diminished. The drop in birth rates before the war was
aggravated by the War itself. In the first three years after the war, they began to catch up again, then
the birthrate began to decline again and fed fears of an eventual loss of population.
321. In 1938, a new law permitted divorce in case of a refusal to have children or of sterility.
Divorces went up quickly, from 49,497 in 1938 to 61,789 in 1939. In 60% of the cases, the woman was
blamed. See Claudia Schoppmann, Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik, op. cit. By the same token, it was
forbidden to publicize contraceptives, and abortion and sterilization were interdicted. In 1943, abortion merited the death penalty.
322. Cited in Hidden from History, op. cit., p.74.
296

much concerned about homosexuals. He tolerated them in his entourage when they were
useful. He may have been a misogynist, and built the Nazi State in the style of the Mnnerbund, with powerful homoerotic connotations. But his politics of power and conquest
rested required an elevated birthrate: and according to that criterion, the homosexual was
antisocial.
The hostility of the NSDAP was expressed very early and very publicly. The attack
on Magnus Hirschfeld in Munich in 1921 occasioned rejoicings in the nationalist press.
Thereafter, spiteful articles multiplied, while at the Reichstag, the NSDAP maintained an
unambiguous position on the reform of the Penal Code. On September 15, 1927, Dr. Frick,
NSDAP deputy to the Reichstag, expressed his partys opinion on the abolition of 175:
We are of the contrary opinion, that these people of the 175, i.e. unnatural sex acts
between men, must be fought with all our might, because such a vice must lead the
German people to ruin. Naturally it is the Jews again, Magnus Hirschfeld and those of
his race, who act as guides and as initiators, at the moment when all of Jewish morality is
indeed devastating the German people. On May 14, 1928, in Munich, the NSDAP publicly
expressed its opinion on the question: It is not necessary that you and I live, but it is necessary that the German people live. And it cannot live unless it has the will to fight, for
one must struggle to live. And it cannot fight unless it behaves like a man....Anyone who is
considering a homosexual or lesbian love is our enemy!.... Might makes right, and the
mighty will always be against the weak. Today, we are the weakest, but we will make
sure we become the strongest again! But we will only be able to do that if we practice
virtue. We reject all vice, and especially male homosexuality, because it takes away from
us the last possibility of one day freeing our people from the slavery to which it is subjugated today.
The nationalist press indignantly attacked the reform of the Penal Code that was
under consideration with the draft law of 1929. Vlkischer Beobachter of August 3, 1930 was
particularly menacing: We congratulate Mr. Kahl and Mr. Hirschfeld for their success!
But do not believe that we Germans will leave this law in force for one day, when we come
to power. The homophobia of the Nazis was clearly marked from the beginnings of the
movement, but people were late to recognize it. The existence of homoerotic tendencies
within the party certainly misled certain homosexual groups that wanted to believe right
up until the end that it was possible to find an area of agreement with Hitler.
Several times, during the legislative elections, the German homosexual movements
(WhK, Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, Bund fr Menschenrecht) sent various parties a questionnaire to test their attitude with regard to homosexuals. Until 1932, the NSDAP did
not take the trouble to answer. When it finally did, its hostility was complete and unambiguous: To your letter of the 14th this month [October] we reply that the subject that
concerns you is, to put it bluntly, antipathetic to us in the highest degree.323
The Rhm case

The case of Rhm, discussed above, was particularly revealing in regard to Hitlers
attitude toward homosexuality. Ernst Rhm was born in Munich in 1887 to a family of
civil servants. His childhood was uneventful. At the age of nineteen, h joined the army
and, in 1914, he greeted the war with enthusiasm. He distinguished himself there for his
323. Published in Das Freundschaftsblatt, n 44, 3 November 1932.
297

talent as an organizer. In 1919, he met Hitler and took part in 1923 in the Beer Hall putsch
in Munich. Hitler admired the way he organized the SA,324 and ignored any allusions to
his homosexuality. Rhm did not recognize himself as homosexual until 1924. Then, not
being particularly concerned for his reputation, he made no mystery of his preferences
and was even a member of the Bund fr Menschenrecht. He was a regular on the homosexual scene and had close ties in the Berliner world of male prostitution. In 1925, there
was a quarrel (unrelated to homosexuality) between Hitler and Rhm, and he resigned.
Then he was implicated in a lawsuit against Hermann Siegesmund, a prostitute who was
in possession of compromising letters.325 He left Germany and accepted a job with the
Bolivian army. It was from La Paz that he wrote to the homosexual doctor and astrologer
Karl Heimsoth the letters that were revealed by the Mnchner Post. In 1930, a mutiny led by
Captain Walter Stennes nearly destroyed the Sturmabteilung (SA), or stormtroopers, and
in 1931 Hitler recalled Rhm, whom he appointed chief of the SA.326 To keep the organization in line, the idea came up of giving the SA some military role without anyone
having a clear idea what form it could take. Under the effect of the Depression, the SA
continued to grow, and had 700,000 men in 1932. Complaints about Rhms sex life continued to pour in, but Hitler remained impassive. On February 3, 1931, he even defended
him in a circular, saying: The SA is not an institution of religious education for girls from
good families, but an association of hardened combatants....The private life of the
members of the SA is condemnable only if it reveals principles contrary to the fundamental duties of the Nazi ideology.327 Until 1933, hitler needed rhm to help him come to
power and, in spite of the many scandals caused by his letters, hitler did not withdraw his
confidence in him. In December 1933, Rhm was named a member of the government.
Beyond the declarations of the moment, how can we understand the elimination of
Rhm?328 Hitler had long regarded the SA as a means of balancing the old and the new
forces within the party. But in 1934, the SA, which had absorbed the Stahlhelm, counted
1.5 million members, most of them from the proletariat. It maintained a campaign of permanent revolutionary: after the national revolution, there would have to be a nationalist-socialist revolution or second revolution. Moreover, Rhm wanted to transform
the SA into a traditional army that would replace the Reichswehr. This ran directly
counter to the political ambitions of the military, supported by Hindenburg, the president
of the Republic and supreme chief of the armies. Hitler, for his part, was opposed to any
action that might lead to a conflict or competition with the regular army, a supporter of
the regime. Moreover, Rhm had made plenty of enemies. Heinrich Himmler, who became
chief of the SS on January 6, 1929, hated Rhm, who was his superior since the SS was
subordinated to the SA. Since the mutiny of 1930, the SS had been charged with keeping
an eye on the SA. But the SS, which had been founded in 1923,329 still had only 50,000
members in 1932. The power of the SA constrained Himmlers ambitions. This latter, sup324. La Sturmabteilung (SA), or assault sections, were founded 1921. Their purpose was to fight
adversaries of the Nazi Party in the streets during political rallies. The SA was originally composed of
veterans and members of the Corps francs; later it attracted young men and workers, and many who
had been disenfranchised.
325. Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle, New York, Holt & Cie, 1986, 257 pages, p.59.
326. The homosexual lieutenant Heines, who was let go in May 1927 for lack of discipline and
insubordination, was recalled on the same date.
327. Cited by Hans Peter Bleuel, La Morale des seigneurs, Paris, Tallandier, 1974, 247 pages, p.100101.
328. On this point, see Marlis Steinert, Hitler, Paris, Fayard, 1991, 710 pages.
298

ported by Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the security service, and Hermann Goering, minister-president of Prussia and chief of the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, or secret
police), put the thought in Hitlers mind that Rhm might be planning a coup detat, and
thus aggravated the tensions within the NSDAP. Warnings against the second revolution were multiplying. On February 28, 1934, Hitler announced that the army would
remain the only legitimate military force; Rhm was quite loud in expressing his disappointment, thus lending some credibility to rumors of a plot. Hitler and Rhm had a last
interview on February 4. In the meanwhile, Himmler, Heydrich and Goering gathered
false documents intended to support the notion that there was a conspiracy afoot.
Operation Colibri was launched. On June 29, Hitler went to Munich, accompanied by his close associates and some officers of the SS. Adolf Wagner, the Bavarian
Minister of the Interior, had been charged with arming the local SS. The Reichswehr,
under the command of Colonel Werner von Fritsch, secretly provided the weapons,
ammunition and transportation. Himmler, Goering and Heydrich were responsible for
the situation in Berlin. Rhms successor had already been found: it would be Victor Luze,
an SA chief.
Rhm and his friends were vacationing at the Pension Hanselbauer on Lake
Tegern, in Wiessee, near Munich. A meeting with Hitler was scheduled for July 1. During
the night of June 29 to 30, Hitler arrived in Munich. He had several SA lieutenants
arrested, then went to the pension, riding crop in hand, to confound the traitors
there.330 SS troops raided the hotel. Lieutenant Edmund Heines was found in bed with
his driver. Some of the SA were slaughtered on the spot, the rest were taken away to Stadelheim prison. In Berlin, Himmler and Goering directed the repression, which extended
beyond the SA circles. Nearly three hundred people were killed, including the organizers
of the leftist plot, Gregor Strasser and the former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher; representatives of the conservative opposition, like Dr. Klausener, head of Catholic Action; and
collaborators of Papen, and old adversaries of Hitler, like von Kahr who had caused the
failure of the putsch of brewery in 1923.331
Rhm was not cut down immediately. On July 1, Theodor Eicke, head of the first SS
concentration camp at Dachau, showed up in his cell and handed Rhm a revolver. Rhm
refused to commit suicide, which would have been an admission of guilt; he was shot by
Eicke.
At no moment did Rhms homosexuality play any part in his elimination.
However, it was the main thing pointed out to the public to explain the massacre, with
the attempted putsch. The first to promote this version was Goering, in his official
statement to the press, which was picked up in the national and international press. He
made much of the morals of the SA and the spectacle that had been found at the pension:
In the next room [to that of Rhm] the Fhrer found Heines, Breslaus prefect of police
and chief of the Silesian attack sections, in the company of a joy boy (Lustknabe). Rhm
was presented as a sick man, trapped by his homosexuality and thus subject to influence:
Rhm, by virtue of his unfortunate disposition, allowed himself to be dragged into affairs
329. The origins of the SS go back to 1923, when Hitler founded a pretorian guard to ensure his
personal security. This guard received is definite name in 1925: the Schutzstaffel (echelon of protection), or SS. It was an lite group, apart from the party and the organization.
330. Marlis Steinert, Hitler, op. cit., p.268.
331. Serge Berstein and Pierre Milza, Histoire du XXe sicle, Paris, Hatier, 1987, t.I, 433 pages, p.327328.
299

that would prove fatal for him. No doubt impelled by his special circumstances, he surrounded himself with a staff of men who led him to feel that he was the strong man of all
Germany. Thus was forged the plan to institute a regime led by these morbid individuals.332
This fable spread rapidly. Goebbels report was even clearer:
They discredited the honor and the prestige of our assault sections [SA]. By their
unparalleled life of debauchery, by their display of luxury, and their carryings on, they
flouted the principles of our movement, the principles of austerity and personal cleanliness. They were on the point of casting onto the entire leadership of party suspicion
of a shameful and disgusting sexual anomaly....Millions of members of our party, the
SA and SS are glad of this purifying storm. The whole nation can breathe again, delivered from this nightmare. They have seen once more that the Fhrer is determined to
act without mercy when the principle of propriety, simplicity and public decency is
concerned and that the punishment is all the more severe when it has to do with people in high places.333
On July 13, Hitler himself gave a speech before the Reichstag at the old Kroll Opera,
which was broadcast to all of Germany to justify the clean-up operation. In the SA, sections started to be formed that constituted the core of a conspiracy against the normal
concept of a healthy nation and against the security of the State. We noted that people
were being promoted in the SA for the simple reason that they were part of the coterie
with certain characteristics. ... I gave the order to shoot the main perpetrators of this
treason and to cauterize these abscesses that were poisoning us334 Thereafter, Rhms
former friends were eliminated. On October 10, 1934 the Court of Munich opened a suit
against Peter Granninger335 and several other close associates of Rhm, mostly young
homosexuals, two of them still minors.336
The elimination of Rhm had taken on the mask of a crusade against immorality.
The image of the Fhrer personally rousting the traitors and degenerates was engraved in
the popular imagination, supporting the idea of a virtuous regime, a defender of family
and morals. However, Rhms homosexuality had been only a pretext and never was a real
factor.
***
Nazism never displayed a unified vision of homosexuality. The Mnnerbund types
exalted virile friendship and made them one of the bases of the State, but homosexuality
was never asserted as such by the regime. On the contrary, certain leaders, like Himmler,
developed a hysterical homophobic rhetoric which was used as a basis for repression. In
the Nazi Weltanschauung, the world was divided into communities which were not to
mix: the races were to remain separate, the sexes were not to mingle. The homosexual
crossed the boundaries and nullified the differences. He was an intruder who could not be
tolerated.
332. Le Temps, 2 July 1934.

333. Ibid., 3 July 1934.
334. Ibid., 15-16 July 1934.
335. This is probably Peter Kronninger, who was already implicated in the 1931 case. 149.BAB,
R 22/5006.
336. BAB, R 22/5006.
300

For homosexuals, the 1920s were years of political disillusionment. Many homosexual intellectuals had worked for the left, but their efforts produced very little fruit. In
Germany, the SPD and the KPD were the best defenders of homosexuals, but they too
entertained homophobic prejudices, fostering in the public opinion an image of the homosexual as sadistic, bourgeois, debauched and fascistic. For the Nazis, they were a symbol
of the corruption of Weimar and the left. Homosexuality was used by all sides as a tool
and a weapon.
301
PART THREE
A FACTITIOUS TOLERANCE: LOSING GROUND UNDER
THE REPRESSION OF THE 1930S
The Homosexual as a Criminal and a Victim
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury
Keep we must, if keep we can
These foreign laws of God and Man.
A.E. Housman, Last Poems
CHAPTER SEVEN
CRIMINALS BEFORE THE LAW
The cult of homosexuality, the bold talk of the homosexual associations, the flamboyance of the gay cities, and the fad of homosexuality in literature did not erase the
reality of anti-homosexual repression. Male homosexuality was a crime in England and
Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. This fact is essential: even if there was more tolerance in
some sectors of society, being homosexual always brought shame and social exclusion. In
France, on the other hand, homosexuality was not covered by the law. This unique characteristic French situation made a difference: it partly explains the lack of militant movements and the individualism of French homosexuals. Similarly, sapphism was not
considered a crime in the three countries concerned: lesbians were therefore not united
with male homosexuals, and did not share their concerns.337 However, the forces of
reaction were present throughout the period. They were based on the traditional institutions, the State, the Church, the press, and on the publics latent homophobia. Together
they maintained a climate of muted fear, even among the most liberated homosexuals.
REACTIONARY ENGLAND (1919-1939)

I do not know if this [homophobic] prejudice will one day be overcome by experience, knowledge or reason. It is the last bastion of pure irrationality in society. And
England is the guardian and the center of it.338
337. Here we will look at the repression of homosexuality in England during the period of 19191939; for Germany, we will analyze only the years 1919-1934 in order to maintain a valid basis for
comparison. This is a comparison of forms of police repression under democratic regimes.
338. Cited by Dennis Proctor (ed.), The Autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson, London, Duckworth,
1973, 287 pages, p.12.
305

English society in the 1920s was at a crossroads. The hedonism of the Roaring
Twenties was denounced by those who wanted to maintain standards, who protested the
new liberality and the abandonment of old rules of respectability. Homosexuality was a
crime punished by the law and it was a social sin punished by contempt and a loss of
social standing. The homosexual threat was a frequent topic for legislators and judges,
and the police took specific actions to root it out. Nevertheless, such efforts were largely
ineffective.
The Legal Situation

Legislation on homosexuality went through several stages in England. Sodomy
(buggery), a practice described as a sin against nature, was prohibited between men and
women as well as between men and animals and between men, since a law dating to 1533
under Henry VIII. Until 1861, the sentence for this abominable vice was death; then it
was replaced by sentence that could range from ten years to life in prison. This law was
directed against a precise type of sex act and not against a category of people, although it
is probable that the majority of executions related to homosexuals. Its goal was primarily
to ensure the reproduction of the species by avoiding the dispersion of male seed in acts
that could not lead to procreation.339
The situation changed in 1885, following the Labouchre Amendment to Criminal
Law Amendment Act:340 If any person of the male sex, in public or in private, perpetrates or is party to the perpetration, facilitates or tries to facilitate the perpetration by a
person of the male sex of any act of gross indecency on a person of the male sex, this constitutes a misdemeanor; upon being found guilty he is liable to a sentence of imprisonment not exceeding two years, with or without forced labor. The amendment is
remarkable for the imprecision of its formulation, which leaves it open to the most rigid
interpretations. While the new law was less repressive than the old one (since it reduced
the length of the sentence considerably),341 it now condemned any form of sex between
men. For the first time, the sodomite was no longer just a sinner, but a criminal; and
homosexuality was no longer defined as a sexual practice, but as the search for sexual
partners of the same sex. Homosexuals were regarded as a separate group from the rest of
the population and were given special treatment; meanwhile, lesbians remained outside
the purview of the law.
The condemnation of private acts encouraged blackmail. England became the only
European country to condemn simple masturbation between men. Moreover, whereas the
339. See Arthur N. Gilbert, Conception of Homosexuality and Sodomy in Western History, in
Journal of Homosexuality, vol.6, nos 1-2, fall-winter 1980-1981; Vern L. Bullough, Sin, Sickness and Sanity: A
History of Sexual Attitudes, New York, Garland, 1977, 276 pages.
340. The genesis of this amendment is complex; the Criminal Law Amendment Act concerns the
origins of juvenile prostitution and aims to protect girls from sexual abuse, by raising the age of
consent from 13 to 16. While the bill was under consideration in the House of Commons late on the
night of 6 August 1885, an amendment was proposed by Henry Labouchre, a liberal deputy, with
the initial purpose of making the bill fail by rendering it ridiculous. Several deputies were concerned
to find that this clause dealt with an entirely different category of offenses than that which the law
was intended to address, but the President of the House, Arthur Peel, having declared that no
matter what might be inserted as an amendment to the law, the amendment would be adopted just
one vote short of unanimously.
341. Homosexual acts committed with a minor, with or without consent, remained punishable
by ten years in prison and could lead to a life sentence.
306
Criminals before the Law

law of 1861 had rarely been applied, the Labouchre amendment drew attention to homosexuals, resulting in an appreciable increase in convictions. Wilde was one of its first and
most famous victims.
In 1898, the Vagrancy Act further toughened up the law by extending it to solicitation for immoral purposes; it applied only to homosexuals. In 1912, the Criminal Law
Amendment Act more clearly defined the Vagrancy Act by establishing the penalty for
soliciting at six months in prison, with whipping in the event of repetition; this type of
offense was tried in summary jurisdiction.
The Organization of Repression

How was the letter of the law applied in day-to-day reality? The simplest means to
study that question is through the judgments handed down and the police and legal practices.
Changes in sentencing for homosexuality

Sentencing related to homosexuality varied over the period; and they do indeed
seem to reveal trends of repression.342 First one should note that throughout the period,
the number of cases steadily went up. Police statistics show an increase in the number of
reported crimes. Obviously, this trend does not necessarily mean that there were more
homosexuals, but that the crack down and the methods of detection were more effective.
The number of unnatural offences (U) increased by 185% between 1919 and 1938, with
the maximum reached in 1938, with 134 cases. The total crimes recorded by the police
thus increased by 185%. The number of cases of indecency (I) increased by 155% between
1919 and 1938, the maximum figure being reached in 1936, with 352 cases. The most
important figures are found for attempts (A) to commit unnatural offenses; this rather
vague term seems to have referred to most of the cases of homosexual acts which were
apprehended by the police but which had not yet been consummated; it seems that there
was a preference for charging homosexuals for this crime rather than the two others, for it
required less evidence. There was a startling increase of 902% in the number of cases, 92
in 1919, but 822 cases in 1938! Thus we perceive, throughout the period, a constant
stepping up of repression that was particularly brutal around 1931-1932. It is clear that the
police wanted to increase the pressure, and that is translated clearly in the charts and
figures. It seems, however, that the increase in arrests was not immediately reflected in an
increase in convictions. Thus, whereas 81% of the men arrested for crimes against nature
were convicted in 1919, only 55% were in 1938. For public indecency, the figure goes from
88% in 1919 to 40% in 1936, a ridiculous figure. Finally, for attempts to commit unnatural
acts, the rate of 81% in 1919 fell to 50% in 1938; and it was only 41% in 1937. Two reasons
can explain these sharp drops. If we assume that the judges did not wish to harden the
sanctions against homosexuals, that would imply that the police were alone in wishing to
increase the repression. That seems rather improbable. It is more plausible that in their
342. Statistical tables in the Appendices indicate the principal trends. The yearly charts have
only been presented for 1919, 1933 and 1937. The statistics were published every year from 1919 to
1938; because of the war, the 1939 statistics are not detailed but are grouped with those for the period
1939-1945; I have indicated the 1940 statistics as well (Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers,
Judiciary Statistics).
307

zeal, police officers were more and more careless in bringing credible evidence upon
which to convict the suspects. Police repression rests as much on intimidation as on punishment; by increasing their raids, by disturbing trysts, by arresting many suspects, the
police maintained a climate of panic which led homosexuals to retreat into anonymity
and the private sphere. That was probably a sufficient success for the police, since the
public space was now in conformity with the prevailing morals. The counterpart was the
relative impunity of the various homosexual crimes.
It is also noted that the increase in the number of trials (+94% for crimes, +409%
for attempts and +81% for public indecency) is also not distributed evenly. The vast
majority of crimes against nature continued to be tried in circuit court [cour dassise],
whereas most attempts were now tried in correctional, unlike before. Thus, while in 1919
only 49% of the cases were treated in correctional, in 1938, 75% were. This gives the
impression that the judges were trying to speed up the processing, to generate more sentences even if it meant reducing penalties (the charges being increasingly thin). This type
of procedure was also preferred in cases of flagrante delicto. Men arrested for soliciting were
also considered in correctional court.
Statistics on this subject were not kept regularly, and we have the figures only for
the years 1919-1935. The figures are stable (45 on average) and ridiculously low: one must
therefore suppose that most cases of male prostitution were dealt with under other labels
(U, A, I) and not specifically.
A refined study, year on year, enables us to identify some broad trends. The number
of convictions rose sharply between 1919 and 1938. If we take 1919, 1933 and 1937 as
examples, we note that for crimes against nature, 78% of those tried in 1919 were convicted, but 90% in 1933 and 87.5% in 1937; for attempts, we go from 76% in 1919 to 80% in
1933 and 83% in 1937; and, for the public indecency, from 61% in 1919 to 75% in 1933 and
87% in 1937. Thus, the decline in the conviction rate due to the acceleration of police work
and the concomitant lack of evidence is counterbalanced by the increased severity of the
judges. The cases that arrive before the courts are judged mercilessly. The nature and the
duration of the sentences show that clearly: right after the war and until 1923, crimes
against nature still merited forced labor and could go up to ten years; from 1924 to 1930,
only the prison terms were given; and from 1931 onward, forced labor was again applied,
with severity. The age of those sentenced is another interesting indicator; from 1919 to
1929, those convicted were between 30 and 60 years old; in 1929 and especially 1931, they
were often between 16 and 21. That might also be a sign of an increase in amateur prostitution, which relates, as discussed above, to unemployment.343 It thus seems that the sentences were now applied with equal severity to all age groups, without any particular
consideration for youth.
Appeals, on the other hand, were very stable: there were very few, and they were
almost systematically rejected. Statistics from correctional show similar trends to the
circuit courts; the number of trials went up markedly, from 74% in 1919 to 87% in 1933
and 1937.
Finally, we can study the results by district: during the three years under review,
the sector of the Metropolitan Police (London) comes in at the top with 62 arrests in 1919,
149 in 1933, 185 in 1937. That seems normal, since the town of London is the center of
343. The dates coincide: the number of unemployed hit 1,304,971 in 1929, crossed the threshold
of 2 million in 1930 and The Times headline of 6 August 1931 shows a record of 2,713,350 out of work.
308

English homosexual life. Nevertheless, some caution is necessary: in the German statistics, Berlin is not in the lead when it comes to arrests. Repression in the British capital
was particularly strong, and case studies confirm it. The other districts that practiced a
particularly repressive regime in those years were Lancashire, Southampton and York
(West Riding). Certain areas experienced a sudden increase in arrests, which implies that
a specific policy was being carried out with regard to homosexuality.
Let us take the case of Cheshire, which saw only 10 cases in 1930, 13 in 1933 and 105
in 1937; then we have Devon, 9 in 1919, 65 in 1933, 53 in 1937; Kent: 12 in 1919, 30 in 1933, 66
in 1937; and Warwick: 2 in 1919, 20 in 1933, 83 in 1937. Certain areas were completely
spared, however, either because homosexuals were particularly discrete there, or because
the police were not interested. It is difficult to say. But in rural zones like Dorset (0 cases
in 1919, 3 in 1933, 2 in 1937), homosexuals probably lived very discretely.
In a general sense, the crimes were distributed throughout a greater number of districts since 1933. The biggest increase in such crimes took place in the large cities and the
most industrialized areas, but the number of areas affected kept going up, which leaves
one to suppose that the campaign to root out homosexual crimes was being extended
across the whole country.
One can draw several conclusions from these statistical observations. First, while
the 1920s may have been years of moral liberation, they were not years of legal permissiveness. There was a certain legal relaxation, however, until 1930-1931. The penalties
were less severe and the judiciary acted as a brake, limiting the effect of the high number
of arrests through the number of convictions. However, even a light sentence (a fine,
deferred prison term), even the threat of a lawsuit, could destroy a career and a family and
could mean social opprobrium. After 1931, the intensification of the repression is obvious.
We will see that this was not a matter of chance, but was carefully organized.
Police methods
We can hardly expect to come up with a comprehensive picture of all the methods
employed by the police, of the social positions of the men they arrested, and the charges
made against them; we do, however, have information from many archives344 that provide
detailed information on prostitution by the soldiers of the Guard, soliciting in the London
parks, the monitoring of the public urinals, the methods used by the police, the way
homosexual crimes were treated by the judges, and the policies the leading authorities
followed in dealing with homosexuality.
The attitude of the British police toward homosexuals between the wars was characterized by contempt and a certain lack of concern. The sexual criminal was not very
interesting prey and the police preferred to deal with other matters. In the 1920s, homosexuality remained a relatively minor problem, anyway, and the officers were satisfied to
apprehend on the fact the male prostitutes and their customers, and to pursue the
queens. The goal was more to frighten them, to chase them out of one neighborhood, to
operate arrests in mass: The uniformed police were not regarded as man-eaters. I did not
344. HO 45, HO 144, MEPO 2, MEPO 3, Public Record Office. Nonetheless, most of the documents are off limits for 75 years or are inaccessible. Furthermore, most of the cases seem to have
vanished.
309
Graph 1. Changes in Sex Crimes in England and Wales (1919-1938)
310

have the least idea of the rules, but they never chased us; they simply asked us to move
on.345
In the 1930s, the police activity expanded and the homosexual community as a
whole became a target. Throughout the period, the police looked on homosexuals as a
particularly cheap kind of criminal. A policeman from those days describes arresting
homosexuals in these terms: The queer [was] treated like an inanimate object with no
sensitivity. [The police officers] rubbed his face with toilet paper to provide proof of the
make-up, they joked and laughed at him as if he were not there, and always found the
same petroleum jelly packet in his pocket.346 Very often the arrests bordered on the
illegal, especially in cases of soliciting. The boy was identified on the basis of his look, his
clothing, his make-up. Prof of soliciting was pretty much beside the point: The attitude
of the law was arbitrary basically, F_ you. Boys who were arrested for soliciting were
declared guilty before they ever opened their mouths. If they managed to say anything, the
sound of their voice only resulted in increasing their sentence. I think the boys were right
in thinking that they were convicted just because they were effeminate.347
At the Hammersmith police station, there was a group that specialized in catching
homosexuals.
They hardly talked about anything else, and anytime they found someone who
would listen to their stories, they would howl with insane stupid laughter and sprinkle their anecdotes with insults those bastards! for fear that anybody might
think they found pleasure in what about they talked about so much. They would go
out in plain clothes and hide in the bushes and the urinals close to the tow path in
Putney, and once every fifteen days they would triumphantly bring back a couple of
old gentlemen whom theyd managed to surprise together; theyd spend the following
month laughing nervously with their friends, remembering the details.348
This seems to have been the prevalent attitude. The agents of the Metropolitan
Police in London were assigned strategic places for surveillance, mainly the parks and
urinals. These officers worked in pairs, for a period of two months maximum. For the
urinals of Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner (two popular sites for male pick-ups) the
district police chief called for the use of two officers in civilian clothes during the week
and pledged, We will not keep the same men on that job for long periods. 349 This
concern not to leave the same officers on the job for too long is a reflection of two concerns: the fear that they would come to be recognized by those who used the urinals, and
thus become useless, and the sense that to expose young police officers to such depravity
was likely to disturb them psychologically, or even pervert them.350
The monitoring of the urinals was an official activity of the police, and it was a
mainstay of the repression of homosexuality. The first allusion to such surveillance goes
back to 1872; until 1923, the instruction books for police officers said this:351 People frequenting the urinals for evidently improper aims must be threatened with pursuit, and if
345. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil-Servant [1968], London, Fontana, 1986, 217 pages, p.29.
346. Cited by Richard Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment, London, Fontana Press, 1990,
439 pages, p.145.
347. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil-Servant, op. cit, p.30.
348. Cited by R. Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment, op. cit., p.145.
349. Immorality in Parks and Open Spaces (MEPO 2/3231).
350. The Times of 7 December 1921 gives the outlines of an affair that casts a shadow on a
policeman; Freeman Howard Carr, 38, who had been an agent in the Metropolitan Police since the
age of 18, was sentenced to 9 months in prison for attempting to molest two boys.
351. MEPO 3/989.
311

they continue their practice and if there is evidence to justify their interpellation, they
must be apprehended and charged. In 1923 the instruction booklet was modified. 140:
People frequenting the urinals for evidently improper aims must be threatened with
pursuit. If they persist and commit an offence, they must be arrested. 141: Each time
that a man is challenged for persistently soliciting or importuning for immoral purposes
in a public place (Vagrancy Act, 1898, section 1), every effort must be made to guarantee
the independence of the corroborating evidence. The people thus solicited will have to
provide their names and addresses and to present themselves at court. If they refuse their
assistance, the details will have to be noted by the police officers in their pocket book and
will be displayed as evidence. Here is evidence of a change in police practices in a definitely repressive direction. At the same time, there seems to be a growing concern to
ensure the success of the operations. To avoid any breakdowns, it was further specified, in
August 1937, that no police officer without experience was to be placed in this delicate
situation.
In fact, it was nearly impossible to secure third-party testimony and it seems that,
in their fight against homosexuals, the police officers did not always benefit from the
support of the population. Convictions were thus very difficult to obtain. Take the case of
John Henry Lovendahl, a 67-year-old man who was tried for gross indecency in January
1938. He had been found masturbating, in clear view of passers by, in Crown Passage,
North End Road, Fulham. Two policemen in plain clothes who were making their rounds
at 12:30 entered a urinal located next to the pub The Crown. Lovendahl was in the
central stall. The first police officer called in his colleague, who confirmed the first officers
observation. Lovendahl remained in the urinal from 12:30 to 12:55. Twenty men had come
and gone from the urinals during that time and not one agreed to give his name and
address to testify. No doubt some of them did not want to contribute to Lovendahls
arrest, but even more so, most of them must have feared that it would tarnish their own
reputation. The place had become indissolubly linked to the practice; wasnt entering a
urinal, that notorious homosexual hangout, proof of homosexuality?
The question of the urinals and soliciting in public was a thorny issue for the police
services, which tried on several occasions to beef up their repressive arsenal. Several draft
amendments to the instruction booklet were considered, like this one, going back to 1937:
If one observes people frequenting the urinals for evidently improper aims and if there is
not sufficient evidence to justify an arrest, the facts must be reported without delay so
that special measures are taken to resolve the problem, if that is considered necessary.
The monitoring of homosexuals might have been a minor point compared to other crimes,
but the police took this aspect of their work mighty seriously. Following discussions on
this subject in August 1937, superintendent F. Smith of the Peel House police station
observed that at the police academy they analyzed the exact meaning of loitering and
frequently in detail so that students could define their action precisely. On the other
hand, he suggested that the warning of the suspects was seldom practiced, for it was not
very practical and was dangerous in any event. This indicates that a great deal of thought
was given to the repression of homosexuality by the English police throughout the period.
Another problem arising from the control of homosexuality was that of plainclothes policemen. The use of plainclothes policemen was controversial, for many shysters extorted money from homosexuals by passing themselves off as police officers. It
was proposed several times between 1919 and 1939 that police officers having to deal with
homosexuals should go back to wearing their uniforms; one recommendation by the
312

Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedure asked in particular that the use of
plainclothes police stop being used in arresting homosexuals, and that this measurement
be made public in order to prevent the risk of blackmail. A confidential memorandum of
June 17, 1929 from the Ministry of the Interior, also asked that the use of plainclothes
police be prohibited. Nevertheless, no measure was taken.
Several examples testify to the difficulties generated by the use of plainclothes
policemen. On September 26, 1933, an arrest was questioned:
We received complaints that a certain urinal was used by sodomites. Consequently, the men who patrolled in plain clothes focused on this spot, but they were
given no detailed instructions as to how to act; the result was that several people were
incriminated for indecent conduct. The nature of the evidence that was furnished led
the magistrate to make very forceful observations which does not surprise me. It is
obvious that, if the police act in this way, it can be suggested that, in a sense, they
caused the infraction!352
Another note dating to August 1933 reported a quite similar case. A policeman had
obtained four arrests in a urinal using a method that at least bordered on provocation: he
hung around the urinals waiting to be approached by a passer by. The arrested men had
pleaded not guilty; the magistrate condemned the process used and recommended very
light sentences: between three months and fifteen days in prison and a minimal fine (5
pounds).
It is certain that this type of technique often misfired. According to Quentin Crisp,
a notorious homosexual who was quite familiar with the male prostitute milieux,
the professionals very quickly were able to identify a police officer, even in
civilian clothes. Those who were caught were homosexuals who only occasionally
went to the urinals, and also passers by who were intrigued by the police officers
activity: These were people who had never heard of homosexuality, but whose perfectly natural curiosity was piqued by any strange manifestation of human behavior,
and so they were in danger because of police techniques. One may be certain that,
even on a good day, simply asking the agent what, in the name of heaven, he was
doing, would be enough to get you arrested; on a bad night, a simple glance in his
direction would be sufficient.353
The arrests generally took place at the exit of the urinals and in the London parks,
especially Hyde Park, which was known as a place of prostitution, female as well as male.
The counts of the indictments were seldom listed as unnatural offence, i.e. sodomy, but
indecency and indecent assault. The latter two terms covered everything form a kiss to
mutual masturbation. Professional male prostitutes and soldiers of the Guard were
arrested for soliciting.
The London police seemed to be particularly anxious about the high number of
crimes recorded in the parks. This is how the case of William Richardson and Charles
Pritchard, two young men arrested for indecent assault in Hyde Park, is described in the
police report: It is a strange case, one more example of these extraordinary, really
incredible things which are done in the park from the point of view of morals. Here is a
young man, apparently very respectable, who pulls in another young man of a social condition distinctly lower than his in Hyde Park at 11 oclock in the evening, in winter, and
suggests they go for a walk; they sit down, and at once he starts to act in an indecent way
with a complete stranger.354
352. MEPO 3/990.
353. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil-Servant, op. cit., p.81.
313

While many civilians were arrested this way, it seems that the soldiers of the
Guard remained the authorities essential concern. They did, indeed, go in for a veiled
prostitution in the citys parks as a way to enhance their incomes. A problem of jurisdiction arose, for the soldiers of the Guard were subordinate to the military authorities.
However, in the context of the fight against homosexuality, the civil and military authorities were ready to cooperate: The military authorities are eager to help the Police as
much as possible in order to [stop all these unnatural crimes], but [they] consider that
the civilians are worse than the soldiers, for they offer to them drinks, then take them
along in the park and there lead them to [commit such crimes].355 Calling civilians the
ringleaders promoting military prostitution became quite the fashion the military
authorities demanded that the military police be entitled to arrest civilians who were
caught in the company of soldiers. It was even proposed that, like any private person, an
officer could grab the citizen and lead him to the police and testify against him. These
proposals were not taken up.356
Homosexuality was a serious subject of concern for the military authorities,
because the repeated charges against the soldiers of the Guard undermined the honor of
the army and called into question its role as guardian of the nation. If the civilians were
not treated better, it is because homosexuality represented a threat to every form of
authority. It developed outside of the usual hierarchical structures, which were always
very marked in England in the inter-war period. Thus, hiding beneath the usual charges of
vice and perversity were reproaches of a more serious nature; the homosexual was
regarded as a particularly dangerous criminal, because he undermined State security and
shook the foundations of the society and of middle-class morality.
Case studies
An examination of court records will help us to better understand the circumstances and the methods employed against English homosexuals. First, we will look at the
trial of Lionel Perceval, a working class man twenty-one years old, charged with soliciting
in Hyde Park, April 1, 1925.357 The officer who arrested him testified to the audience: He
smiled and looked well-dressed men in the eye. The details of his comings and goings
were discussed. Perceval entered a urinal at Marble Arch, settled in beside an elegant man
and smiled at him. He did not use the urinal and came out quickly. Then he went over to
Hyde Park, where he entered into conversation with a man, then he took a path while
continuing to look behind him as if waiting for the man to follows. The man joined him a
little later and both moved toward a sheltered spot where the police officer lost sight of
them. He finally found the suspect some time later, at the same place as before, and acting
in the same way. At the time of his arrest the defendant said: I didnt do anything tonight.
Let me go. I wont do it anymore and I wont come back here anymore. This testimony is
representative of the procedure used in arresting men near homosexual hunting pick-up
spots. The police officer observed the individuals engaging in suspicious conduct,
deduced their activities from their movements, but did not necessarily wait to catch them
354. 18 January 1926: Prosecution of William A.J. Richardson and Charles Pritchard (MEPO 3/
297).
355. Indecency by Soldiers in the Park (MEPO 2/1485).
356. Indecency in Hyde Park: Military Police Powers (MEPO 2/1485).
357. Lionel Perceval (MEPO 3/248).
314

in flagrante delicto. In the present instance, Lionel Perceval was let go, for the testimony of
one police officer alone was not sufficient to prove his guilt.
The following example is particularly interesting, for it shows how questionable
police methods could be. Frank Champain, a former boarding school teacher aged 56,
made the headlines in 1927.358 He had been arrested for sexual harassment and soliciting
for immoral purposes; he was tried on August 10, 1927,359 at the police court in Bow
Street, by Judge Charles Biron; sentenced to three months of forced labor, he appealed on
September 21 and the sentence was overturned. His victory was directly caused by
improper police methods, as documents added to the file later tend to prove the
defendants guilt. Champain was arrested after visiting several public urinals several
times each; however, the circumstances of the arrest are controversial. Champain was
being watch by policeman Hanford.360 In eighteen months, the latter had already caught
twelve homosexuals, eight of them while he acting as witness for another colleague, four
of them on his own. But he was acting alone, when he could easily have called in one of his
colleagues who worked nearby; and he acted as a provocateur. Champain, a respectable
teacher, had his excuses lined up, and it was the policemans word against his. Hanfords
imprecise testimony worked against him. Champain maintained that he needed the pot of
skin cream that was found in his personal effects because he had skin problems, and he
produced a medical certificate attesting that a vascular disorder obliged him to use the
urinals frequently. He emphasized that to offer a cigarette to a stranger was a gesture of
simple courtesy and that see oneself followed by a man for an hour would make anyone
suspicious. The judge accepted these arguments and discharged Champain.
The press supported the defendant throughout the whole lawsuit, an extremely
rare phenomenon; the affair leaves one thinking that it was the freedom of movement of
all citizens that was at stake. Cases of this kind do not happen to big sportsmen like
Champain, one may read. Here is a man who, because he offers a cigarette to a
policeman in plain clothes, is hauled before a magistrate and is convicted, noted the Daily
Mail (September 21, 1927). A letter from a certain J. Chester, September 27, 1927 and
appended to the file reflected the publics lassitude vis--vis such arbitrary arrests (even if
testimony may be tendentious):
I pray God that a law is voted soon specifying that no arrest can be made unless a
member of the public has filed a complaint and given evidence that sexual harassment
has taken place....do not misunderstand me, I have no sympathy for the real young
degenerates who devote themselves to a kind of prostitution, far from it; but I believe
that a great number of innocent young men are in prison today for acts that they did
not commit for money ..... I think that I must do what I can until the time returns
when one can breathe easily if one happens to be out after midnight in the west of
London.
There seem to have been many problems involving police misconduct during such
arrests. The case of G.H. Buckingham, which goes back to November 1937, shows
however that no real progress was made during the period. Buckingham, aged fifty, single,
was convicted for sexual harassment involving a nine-year-old boy. Although the childs
testimony was credible and there was a witness, the methods used by the police were so
flawed that the verdict was overturned.
358. Frank Champain (MEPO 3/405).
359. News of the World, 28 August 1927. Champain was captain of a football team.
360. MEPO 3/992.
315

Medical theories sometimes influenced the way the police treated homosexuals.
Hugh A. Chapman, a sailor, was arrested in 1934. The doctor who examined Chapman at
the prison in Brixton found him nervous and very simple-minded. He decided that the
defendants sexual perversion was acquired, probably at sea. He did not find any indication of insanity or mental deficiency. Following this testimony, the charge was lowered
to common assault. He was sentenced to two months of forced labor. But he was arrested
again in March 1935, for activities around the urinals at Three Kings Yard and Providence
Court.
It turned out that he was recidivist, having already been sentenced to six months of
hard labor for harassing, in 1931. The reputation of the suspect played a major role in the
treatment he received. Chapman, as a sailor and a recidivist, and being not very intelligent, was a perfect homosexual criminal in the sense that he combined so many of the
stereotypes.
On the other hand, the example of Mitford Brice361 shows that the prejudices could
be expressed in the contrary direction. Brice was convicted in 1936 on charges of public
indecency. He had to pay a fine of 10 pounds. There is a note in his file recalling that he
was well known to the authorities and to members of the hunting dog club, and that he
was authorized by the late king to compile a book on the royal kennels. Brice was a gentleman, he devoted himself to typically British activities, and he knew the gentry. The
charges against him thus became suspect and highly unlikely. To be a homosexual in the
police reports is initially to present the standard profile of the sexual delinquent; it is not
a vice which can affect the elite.
Lastly, a case discussed in the legal chronicle of The Times illustrates the fact that
the legal machine could experience serious failures. A particularly grave case came before
the court of Worthing in 1926. Leslie Buchanan Greenyer was accused of public indecency and indecent assault on five different boys between July 1923 and August 1924.
Greenyer gave swimming lessons and organized sports matches. During the holidays, he
invited boys to his apartment, where the police found indecent photographs. Witnesses
testified to various improprieties. A police officer testified that the defendant, at the
moment of his arrest, became pale and said: But this means absolute ruin, doesnt it?
Neither Greenyer nor his two guarantors showed up for the trial. The judge declared that
this case dealt with crimes of the most revolting type, and said he did not understand how
the defendant could have been let go on bail; he asked what measures had been taken to
prevent his getting away. It is not clear how the matter ended.
The Conference on homosexual crimes of May 7, 1931

During the period 1919-1939, homosexuality became a major concern of the police
services. Many homosexuals reckon that the cult of homosexuality started to wane in the
upper classes by 1931 and definitely by 1933, and that the consequences of the economic
crisis and the international threat of fascism delivered a fatal blow to the movements for
sexual reform. The way the fight against the plague was intensified and the increasing
number of arrests corroborate these complaints.
It seems that in 1931 the question of homosexuality became so threatening that, for
the first time in England, a conference on homosexual crimes was held in London, at 1
361. MEPO 3/994.
316

Richmond Terrace.362 It was intended to officially define an action plan and to coordinate
the efforts of the various parties concerned. Present were General B.A. Montgomery
Massingberd, General Deedes (director of personnel), General Corkran, Colonel H.D.F.
Macgeagh, Norman Kendal, and Brigadier J. Whitehead of the Metropolitan Police, the
Public Prosecutor and his assistant N.S. Pence. Questions on the agenda included how to
improve the polices methods of detection, disciplinary measures in the army, the possibility of creating a homophobic train of thought within the regiments, protecting the
soldier against this kind of crimes and collaboration between the legal and military
authorities.
Several points were raised from the very start of the conference. The Public Prosecutor pointed out that his services were not concerned with this type of crimes unless
sodomy or public indecency were involved. The majority of cases implicating soldiers
concerned the Vagrancy Act and were judged summarily. He could therefore intervene
only in the event of blackmail. The press was at the heart of the discussion: many articles
had pointed to the brigade of the Guard as the center of male prostitution; the Champain
trial (evoked by name) had done much harm: since then, indeed, the police were constantly under attack; they were suspected of being over-zealous, of producing false witnesses; the policemen patrolling the usual meeting places were very unpopular. Lastly, the
legal outcome was becoming less and less reliable. The two representatives of the Metropolitan Police brought up the difficulties which they encountered in their work; the proportion of soldiers of the Guard implicated in homosexual crimes was set in its proper
context: of 127 cases of soliciting in 1930, only 7 were reported as having to do with
guards. The agents employed were absolutely trustworthy and they were used only one
month out of two. The police did not think that the homosexual criminals were organized
into gangs, even if many seemed to know each other. A young soldier could fall into the
hands of such people and be corrupted. As for the recurring question of putting Hyde
Park off limits for the soldiers, N. Kendal did not think that that would improve the situation. He also specified that he did not want to conduct a very intensive campaign, in
any case not more than what was being done at the time. The military authorities called
for a campaign to shift public opinion and some more police action in order to demonstrate clearly that this type of crimes would not be tolerated. And they came up with a
black list of suspects based on the revelations of a guard in the brigade named Evans. He
apparently admitted that other guards had initiated him to these practices and he drew
up a list of those who were involved, as well as the rates each one charged. The military
authorities gave assurances that they wanted at all costs to protect the young soldiers
from contamination by any person inside or outside the regiment. Any man who was let
go from the Guard should be examined by a special subcommittee. General Corkran
added that he hoped to develop a strong feeling of homophobia in the regiment. The
young soldiers would be informed upon their arrival of the danger of sex crimes. Colonel
Macgeagh stressed that such an intensive campaign would only be effective if it were
supported by a similar campaign in the police. The real leaders were the civilians who
paid the money. The Public Prosecutor proposed that young soldiers attend a conference
on homosexual crimes in order to be informed of the reality of these crimes. They would
be told what type of people was likely to approach them, the amount of money offered
and the disastrous consequences of such practices. Lastly, General Corkran pointed out
362. Homosexual Offences Conference (HO 45/24960).
317

that, each year, of many suspect guards were returned, and it feared that they do not
become recruiting agents.
Thus, the fight against homosexual crimes was now being coordinated at all levels:
the police, the military and the legal authorities. The liberation of morals was thus basically arrested from the very beginning of the 1930s.
The Obsession with Lesbians: The Temptation to Repress

According to English law, female homosexuality did not exist. The notion is never
mentioned: to conceive of a female form of homosexuality and the corruption of one
woman by another woman is to consider the possibility of an autonomous female sexuality, independent of the man, and thus of a woman having power. It is impossible in the
context of a legislation that was essentially established in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Besides, there were no historical antecedents in England.
The inter-war period offered a radically new view of the role of the woman. The
constitution of a class of old maids that was structural to the society raised the delicate
problem of the financial and legal independence of woman, while the obvious subjacent
sexual question was modestly overlooked. The idea of a of homosexuality that was contagious by corruption impelled the legislative authorities to take measures against lesbians, especially as the increasing numbers of independent women gave reason to believe
that the phenomenon was spreading.
The draft legislation of 1921

Concern over the supposed expansion of lesbians practices in England led to a first
attempt at repression in 1921.363 Three conservative deputies, Frederick MacQuisten, Sir
Ernest Wild and Howard Gritten, asked that a clause be added to the Criminal Law
Amendment Act extending the penalties planned for male homosexuality to cover lesbian
acts as well. This clause, entitled Acts of Indecency between Women) provided that:
Any indecent act between women is a misdemeanor and must be punished in the same
manner as any identical act committed by men according to Section 11 of Criminal Law
Amendment Act of 1885. To justify this request, MacQuisten noted that such a measure
should have been inserted into this countrys criminal code long ago and he emphasized
the propagation and the dangers of the vice of lesbianism: what member of the House of
Commons, he asked, had not been informed of this underground wave of degradation
and dreadful vice which threatened modern society? One of his friends had been seen
ruined by the tricks of one of these women, who had gone after his wife. Citing the risks
that such a depravity posed for the Empire, he recalled that, when these moral failings
become commonplace in a country, the fall of the nation is near at hand and that the
clause was intended to crush a demon that can undermine the foundations of the
greatest civilization. Sir Ernest Wild gave his support to this eradication of evil,
regretting that they had to pollute the House with the details of these abominations and
saying that it would be stupid to deny that many people in our society are guilty and
363. HO 45/12250; see also Joseph Winter, The Law that Nearly Was, Gay News, n 79; Richard
Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment, op. cit., p.151-153; Hansard, House of Commons Debates, vol.145,
col.1799-1807; Hansard, House of Lords Debates, vol.46, col.567-577.
318

not to punish vice when its existence is proven. Sapphism was called a disease and it
was said that the asylums are full of nymphomaniacs and women who were dedicated to
this vice. Wild then expressed his worries about the influence of lesbians on society,
noting first of all that they inhibit childbirth, since it is well-known that a woman who
devotes herself to this vice no longer wants to have anything to do with the other sex.
They waylay young girls and lead them to depression and madness. The lesbian threat
was denounced as a modern and urgent problem; Rear-Admiral Sir R. Hall called it a
combat between men and women. Few voices were raised to oppose the amendment.
Colonel Josiah Wedgwood, a Labour deputy, stressed that such a measure would open
the door to all blackmailers; and he feared that is adoption would only serve to propagate
practices which otherwise most people would never have known about. I do not believe
that there are many members of the Labour party who know what this clause covers, he
commented. Colonel J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon was the only other deputy to issue reservations. According to him, fear of punishment had never succeeded in getting rid of homosexuality; there were only three ways to deal with them: execute them, lock up them in
the mad house, or leave them alone entirely. The MacQuisten amendment would only
introduce obscene thoughts into the minds of innocent people.
The amendment was adopted by the House of Commons on August 4, 1921 by a
vote of 148 to 53, but the House of Lords prevailed: Count de Malmesbury declared at the
very start of the debates that the clause had not been studied carefully enough; he was
supported by the Public Prosecutor, Lord Desart, who stressed that an amendment of
such importance should have been presented by the government itself rather than by a
deputy. He found the threat of proliferating lawsuits and the risk of blackmail outweighed the charges of increasing sapphism, the true scope of which he doubted. We
know all those romantic, almost hysterical, friendships that young women experience at a
certain time in their lives. Let us suppose that under certain circumstances a young
woman who got wind of the [law] thinks: How easy it would be to file a complaint. He
pointed out that no woman of any social standing would be able to face such a charge, as
the very hint of it would ruin her. Thus, he believed, blackmail would not only be certain,
but inevitably successful. Lord Birkenhead, Minister for Justice, then made much of the
danger of letting women know that such monstrosities existed; according to him, 999
women out of 1,000 had never heard of such practices. The fatal blow was carried by the
Archbishop of Canterbury, which said he was convinced that the law was futile. The
House of Lords sided with him and the amendment was thus abandoned.
The draft legislation of 1921 was the first (and the last) attempt to make female
homosexuality illegal in England. It testifies to the emergence of the woman as an independent social actor. The obsession with lesbians reflects the dominant male classs fear
of any attack on its sexual and social prerogatives. When a woman is bad, she is bad and,
if she is bad, she will lead you to hell, quipped Sir Ernest Wild, who in one of his classic
poems described the ideal woman as, feminine, capricious and weak.364
The failure of the law was hardly a triumph for lesbians, quite the contrary. The
arguments used to criticize the law were its ineffectiveness in doing away with the vice,
the risk of blackmail, and especially the fear of spreading sapphism to an even wider
audience. Not one person stood up to defend homosexual love. Paradoxically, in aban-
364. Cited by Richard Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment, op. cit., p.152.
319

doning the law, the Parliament still accentuated its contempt for lesbians, whose practices did not even merit punishment as homosexual activity.
The trial of Radclyffe Hall

The draft law had failed, but the fight against lesbianism went on. It took simply a
different path. Radclyffe Hall now became the symbol of the dangerous lesbian and her
trial was one of the paramount examples of anti-lesbian hysteria in England in the interwar period. It highlights two essential points: the increasing influence of literature as a
means of disseminating information on homosexuality, and the disguised repression of
female homosexuality.
An icon of the congenital invert, Radclyffe Halls name was well known to the
public in 1920 thanks to the poems and novels which she had already published. Her masculine appearance, her severe garb had made her a fashionable celebrity. Scandal struck
her first in 1920, when Sir George Fox-Pitt accused her of immorality and of having
broken up the marriage of Admiral Ernest Troubridge. Indeed, Una Troubridge had left
her husband after meeting Radclyffe Hall, before asking for a divorce. Radclyffe Hall sued
Fox-Pitt for slander, and the verdict was pronounced in her favor. After the The Unlit Lamp
was published, Radclyffe Hall set out to write a book on the fate of the invert, The Well of
Loneliness. This 500-page novel was written between June 1926 and April 1928; three publishers turned it down, but Jonathan Cape agreed to publish it and a first edition of 1500
copies came out on July 27, 1928. The book was severe in format and priced rather high.
The first reviews were sober, sometimes favorable. The Times Literary Supplement applauded
the generosity of the writer, but denied the literary value of the book a recurring
reproach, for example, for the works of Leonard Woolf and Vera Brittain, both rather
favorable to homosexuals. In August, a second edition of 3,000 was printed. On August 19,
1928, the Sunday Express ran a front-page headline: A Book which Should Be Banned. The
editor, Douglas James, found The Well of Loneliness an intolerable work, the first of this
genre in the annals of English fiction, and said its distribution could only be harmful,
since people of any age could read it. I would prefer to give a boy or a girl in good health a
flask of hydrocyanic acid rather than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison
kills the soul, he concludes, and the book must thus be banned.365 The Sunday Chronicle
and People followed the example of the Sunday Express. The Daily Herald, a Labour newspaper, and the Evening Standard posed the problem of censorship and accused Douglas of
trying to increase sales by fanning the flames of scandal. Amidst all this flap, the publisher
decided to send the book to the Ministry of the Interior for a ruling on whether or not the
work was obscene. William Joynson-Hicks (Jix) ordered him to stop the publication on
August 21, and the next day Jonathan Cape withdrew the book from sale. The same day,
Cyril Connolly published his review of the work in the New Statesman; he found it long,
tedious and devoid of humor, a sermon on inverts, animal welfare and respect for nature.
In reaction to these attacks, a defense was organized; many readers had been
stunned by the vehement assault on the book and claimed that it was overkill. Vita Sackville-West, who was in Potsdam when all this exploded, underscored the difference
between relaxed Germany and puritan England: The Well of Loneliness issue causes very
365. Cited by Michael Baker, Our Three Selves: A Life of Radclyffe Hall, London, Hamish Hamilton,
1985, 386 pages, p.223.
320

violent reactions at home. Not only because of what you call my propensity, nor because I
think that it is a good book, either; but sincerely on principle (I plan to write to the Minister to suggest he bans Shakespeares sonnets).... I nearly exploded when I read the
various articles in New Statesman. Personally, it would not displease to me to abjure my
nationality, to make at least a gesture; but I do not wish to become German even if, at
the nightclub last night, I saw two ravishing young women singing verses that were
frankly Sapphic.366 Radclyffe Hall gained the support of the writer and critic Arnold
Bennett, E.M. Forster, Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Forster proposed to write an open
letter of protest to be signed by intellectuals. Initially enthusiastic, Radclyffe Hall sabotaged the plan by requiring that the letter be accompanied by an explicit homage to the
quality and the moral integrity of the work.
The book went its way in Paris, where it was published by ditions Pgase and
was distributed throughout the world, including Great Britain. Volumes were blocked at
customs, bookshops were searched by the police and copies were seized. Jonathan Cape
and Leonard Hill, ditions Pgases agent in London, were summoned to appear before
the magistrates court in Bow Street, in order to determine whether or not the books were
to be destroyed. The defense counsels tried to bring in favorable witnesses. It very quickly
became clear that few writers for the general public were prepared to defend the books
literary qualities, and even then the few authors who agreed to testify were themselves
homosexual or bisexual. John Galsworthy, president of the PEN-Club and a homosexual,
refused to defend the book, as did Hermon Ould, also homosexual and General Secretary
of the PEN-Club. Evelyn Waugh did not want to hear a word about it. Havelock Ellis
refused to testify, saying that since his book Sexual Inversion had been convicted for
obscenity he was not a valid witness but on the contrary was likely to aggravate the situation. Arnold Bennett said he was against the rehabilitation of a book that had been
legally prohibited and G.B. Shaw called himself too immoral to be a credible witness for
the defense. Finally, forty witnesses were collected, including E.M. Forster, Virginia
Woolf, Hugh Walpole, A.P. Herbert, Pr Julian Huxley, the deputy Oliver Baldwin,
Desmond MacCarthy, director of the Saturday Review, Dr. Norman Haire, a sexologist,
Lawrence Housman, of the BSSP, the actor Clifford Bax and the novelists Rose Macaulay,
Storm Jameson, Sheila Kaye-Smith and Naomi Royde-Smith. Many had been reluctant to
testify. Storm Jameson complained to Virginia Woolf that he was afraid he would be
called upon to defend The Well of Loneliness on its merits as a work of art; Virginia Woolf
assured him that that would not be necessary.367 Virginia Woolf herself was assailed by
doubts and describes the dizzying atmosphere in the lead-up to the trial: Leonard and
Nessa [Vanessa Bell] say that I should not go there, that it would cast a shadow on
Bloomsbury. All of London is agitated. Most of my friends are trying to escape giving testimony, for reasons which one can guess. But in general they just claim that their father
has heart trouble or a cousin has just had twins.368
The trial began on November 9. The judge, Sir Charles Biron, was very hostile from
the outset, and although witnesses claimed that there is nowhere an obscene word, a lascivious passage, he accepted the view of the chief inspector John Prothero, who had
366. Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, August 1928, in Louise de Salvo and Mitchell A.
Leaska (ed.), The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, London, Hutchinson, 1984, 473 pages,
p.335.
367. Michael Baker, Our Three Selves, op. cit., p.236.
368. Ibid.
321

supervised the raids on bookshops and who affirmed that the book is indecent, because
the subject is indecent. The case was lost before it began. Biron rendered his judgment on
November 16, saying that the book referred to unnatural acts, to the most horrible and
disgusting obscenity; he rejected the absurd proposition that well-written obscenities
are not obscene and concluded: I have no hesitation in saying that this is an obscene
work...I thus order that the book be destroyed. On November 22, a letter of protest
signed by 54 intellectuals, including Arnold Bennett, G.B. Shaw and T.S. Eliot, was published by the Manchester Guardian. Attorney General Thomas Inskip confirmed the
judgment in appeals, saying that he knew only two literary references alluding to such
women: one in the first chapter of the epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, the other in the
sixth book of Juvenal. According to him, this book was the most subtle, demoralizing,
corrosive, and corruptive that has ever been written.369
Thus, The Well of Loneliness was interdicted in Britain,370 but became a best seller in
the United States. It sold a million copies in Radclyffe Halls lifetime. Nevertheless, the
scandal had unquestionably been a blow to the writer, and in 1929 she decided to leave
England. Radclyffe Hall and her friend Una Troubridge then set to traveling abroad, and
spent long periods in France, where Gallimard published the book. The books fate was,
however, paradoxical. The trial marked the apex of anti-lesbian phobia in England after
the First World War. But the attacks on the book were indirectly aimed its author, whose
masculine getup and militant sapphism made her one of the most visible figures in
London. The Well of Loneliness was in fact remarkably discrete about lesbian sex acts, the
most explicit sentence in the book being: And that night, they were not separated.371
Virginia Woolf and Compton Mackenzie published Orlando and Extraordinary Women at
the same time, without any worries. The book was mainly reproached for not condemning
homosexuality.
However, the legal and moral authorities did not want the possibility of a parallel
life, independent of the existing social structures, to be evoked. To understand the
position of the legal authorities vis--vis female homosexuality, it is interesting to
compare the fate of The Well of Loneliness with that of Extraordinary Women. The latter was
not challenged in the courts, although that possibility had been raised.
Extraordinary Women
Compton Mackenzies Extraordinary Women was published in August 1928, in
exactly the same period as The Well of Loneliness.372 This novel describes the life of a circle of
lesbians living in the island of Capri during the First World War.373 The book went relatively unnoticed, but received a favorable review in the Saturday Review on September 8,
1928. The New Statesman, a leftist newspaper whose editor was homosexual, published a
very interesting article on August 25, 1928. The book was praised not for its literary qual-
369. The Times, 31 October 1928, 10 November 1928, 17 November 1928 and 15 December 1928. See
also Michael Baker, Our Three Selves, op. cit., chap.18 and 19; and Jean Raison, Publish and Banned, in
Gay News, n 148.
370. It was interdicted until 1949.
372. See in the Public Record Office: Compton Mackenzie, Extraordinary Women (HO 45/15727).
373. See chapter five.
322

ities, but because it shined a light on the plague of modern society, sapphism; in a few
lines the newspaper summarized the public opinion with regard to lesbians:
Twenty years ago, such a topic would have seemed outrageous and completely
unacceptable for a novel; but it is impossible to overlook it in this post-war world
populated by girl boys and boy girls. It used to be a problem of psychopaths and less
one spoke about it, the better. It is now a relatively widespread social phenomenon
that stems, no doubt, from Mrs. Pankhursts suffragette movement and her hatred of
the men, but also from broader causes relating to the war and its after-effects. One can
no longer expect the novelist to close his eyes to this aspect of modern life ... and
although in 1913 Extraordinary Women would have been regarded as a overblown and
scandalous work, and may have been censored like The Rainbow, we wonder today
whether Mr. Compton Mackenzie has not done the public a service.
This book is more deserving of applause than of opprobrium. It has, at least, the
courage to offer a faithful description of a modern social disease in a sense it is a
minor illness, a kind of hypochondria, a factitious passion that will pass like all fashions in our society, since to a large extent it of course is more a matter of fancy than of
facts, easily dissipated by the arrival of a man worthy of the name.
The book is tedious. But its tedium arises from intrinsic monotony of the Sapphic
life. If it does not say so outright, it at the very least suggests that women cannot fall in
love with other women while remaining healthy and decent beings.
This article reflects three of the recurring themes in the obsession with lesbianism:
first of all, an assimilation of lesbians with the feminist trend; then, presentation of lesbians as sick and perverted beings living in sorrow and bitterness; this image allows a salutary contrast with the supposed flourishing of the woman safely ensconced in a proper
home; finally, and paradoxically, the actual existence of lesbians is denied, since sapphism
is attributed to confusion and the lack of men.
In spite of these favorable reviews, the Minister of the Interior, the House of Lords
and the Public Prosecutor received several letters from private individuals who drew a
parallel between this book and that of Radclyffe Hall and asked that it be banned. This
led to an exchange of letters between Minister Hicks and Judge Biron, which are all the
more interesting since they were the two principal figures leading to the banning of The
Well of Loneliness. The main arguments raised against banning this book were of a legal and
moral order. Sir Charles Biron stressed that it was a satire and that the characters see
their life and their happiness broken. Whereas The Well of Loneliness seeks to excuse those
who give themselves up to vice, Extraordinary Women draws a most unpleasant picture of
these practices and the degrading condition to which they lead. The minister considers
the book sickening and is indignant at the moral corruption into which English society
had sunk: It is perturbing to note that these books were written independently of one
another; two books on this same subject testify to breadth of what Miss Hall knows, and
of what Mr. Mac Quenzie [sic] supposes as for the development of abnormal sexual intercourse; and these two books are not the only ones that have been brought to the attention
of the Ministry of the Interior treat of this subject which is ambiguous at the very least.
The danger of this category of books lies in the fact that women who do not have a healthy
home environment may become interested in this disgusting subject and, out of curiosity,
go as far as to put it into practice. However, in a letter addressed to Hicks, Lord Douglas
commented that the fact that the characters are disgusting did not place the book in the
category of criminality. The matter was buried.
Two elements are outstanding: the authorities showed considerable tolerance for
embarrassing books, as long as they are likely to dissuade possible homosexual sympa-
323

thizers, while another book, considerably less explicit but favorable to lesbians, was
banned; then, among the letters sent to the minister calling for the book to be banned,
two were more or less overtly in the name of homosexuals. The authors of these letters
considered Mackenzies book defamatory and damaging to the image of the homosexual
in eye of the public. They underscored in particular that, whereas The Well of Loneliness was
reserved, by its high price, for a limited and cultivated public, Extraordinary Women was
addressed to the general public. These arguments were ignored.374
WEIMAR GERMANY, PERMISSIVENESS AND REPRESSION (1919-1933)

The situation of Germany under Weimar is particularly interesting as it constitutes a synthesis of the various trends that were visible in the 1920s repressive forces
on one side, liberal forces on the other. In Germany, homosexuality was not only a private
phenomenon, but also a public engagement: there were activist organizations calling for
homosexual rights. Government institutions had to face an organized opposition that
was seeking the abolition of repressive laws.
The Legal Context

Little is known about the repression of homosexuality in the old Germanic laws.375
According to Tacitus Germania, infamous people were to be buried alive. Lex Visigothorum and Glosse zum Sachsenspiegel Buch III Article 24 threatened them with castration.
The criminalization of sodomy dates back to the Middle Ages. In Schwabia, men found
guilty of sodomy had been hanged since 1328. Article 116 of the Constitutio Criminalis
Carolina of 1532 punished sodomy with death by fire. However, the exact significance of
the word sodomy is difficult to determine: it could relate to relations between men and
women, men, men and animals, on the Sabbath with the devil, heresy, etc. In the century
of the Enlightenment (Aufklrung), cruel executions were abandoned. Jurists of the 18th
and 19th centuries sought to found a natural law that respected human nature. Sodomy
was no longer a sin, but became an unnatural act, for it was counter to reproduction.
Thus, in 1794, the Prussian penal code punished sodomy and the other unnatural sins,
which cannot be named here because of their abomination, with forced labor and a
caning.376
Following the adoption of the Napoleonic Code in France, several German states
started to revise their penal codes; in 1751, Bavaria still burned sodomites at the stake,
after decapitation; in 1813, it abolished the laws condemning homosexual acts between
consenting adults. Wurtemberg did the same in 1839, and Brunswick and Hanover in
1840. In Baden, only acts committed in public were punished, and in Saxony, Oldenburg
and Thuringe the maximum sentence was one year in prison. This shift did not go far,
374. Several pencil notes from the Minister and the Public Prosecutor suggest that the information about others could be taken from tendentious letters.
375. Such a step backwards was hardly innocuous: by 1935, Nazi jurists were working to prove
that the condemnation of masculine homosexuality was an old German tradition.
376. Part 2, title 20, 1069 and later. See Judge Oyen, Merkblatt betreffend die widernatrliche Unzucht,
1935, BA, R 22/973.
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however; after the unification of the German states, the very restrictive Prussian laws
were used as the basis for the German penal code. In the Prussian penal code dating from
April 24, 1851, 143 related to homosexual acts: it condemned unnatural sex acts between
two men, and men and animals; it was extended to Hanover (annexed in 1867), then to the
Confederation of Northern Germany in 1869 (when it became 152). Lastly, in 1872, its
provisions were incorporated into in the penal code of the Reich in 175: Unnatural sex
acts (widernatrliche Unzucht) which are perpetrated, be it between persons of the male
sex or men and animals, are grounds for imprisonment, and possibly the loss of civil
rights. The article was formulated in vague terms, and jurisprudence chose to interpret it
restrictively. The unnatural acts punishable by law were acts similar to coitus (beischlafhnliche Handlungen). The expression is quite unclear and it led to discussion;
jurists wondered whether it implied that the participants had to be naked and whether
sperm had to be exchanged. During trials, medical experts were asked to prove that a
homosexual act had taken place. Only a restricted number homosexuals were punished
under this law, but it was resented as a constant danger because it encouraged blackmail.
Institutional Waffling: Draft Laws Come and Go

The reform of the German penal code took several years to implement; with each
preliminary draft, the question of 175 was raised anew. There were many about-faces,
with preliminary drafts alternatively proposing the reinforcement or the abolition of the
law.377 This lack of continuity illustrates the contradictory forces that were at work
within German society, which was divided between a desire for tighter controls and an
aspiration to liberalism. This divide was revealed at even at the heart of the Reichstag,
where two camps clashed, one asking for the paragraph to be abolished, the other one
calling for it to be retained or strengthened.
Before the war, two drafts had already been proposed. That of 1909, in the context
of the Eulenburg affair, would have reinforced the law, in particular in cases of prostitution and relations obtained by force or influence, and it would have extended it to
female homosexuality. That of 1911 envisaged, on the contrary, removing homosexuality
from the list of punishable offenses; that was abandoned in 1913.
The 1919 plan was nearly identical to that of 1913, but the 1925 plan show a turn
toward repression. At this time, the Weimar coalition (the SPD, Zentrum, and the
German Democratic Party, DDP) were replaced by a more conservative government.378
Among the conservative ministerial functionaries who wrote the draft law was ministerial director Bumke, who had participated in the writing of the 1909 draft. The 1925
draft did not take up the question of lesbianism, but it asked that, in particularly serious
cases, a five-year prison sentence be required and that all unnatural acts fall within the
compass of the law. The draft used the same expressions as that of 1909 in denouncing
the homosexual threat: Moreover, it emanates from that that the German opinion conceives sexual intercourse between men as an aberration which has as a characteristic to
377. The text of all the draft bills on homosexuality are provided in the Appendices.
378. After the legislature elections of 1924, the government was enlarged twice, thanks to the
integration of the DNVP, forming a bourgeois government oriented toward the right, and having a
majority (two Catholic parties, Zentrum and BVP, the conservative DNVP, the two liberal parties,
DDP and DVP). In 1925, the old marshal Hindenburg, the conservative candidate, was elected president; the regime then took off in an ultraconservative direction.
325

undermine the character and to destroy moral sensitivity. If this aberration were to
spread, it would lead to the degeneration of the people and a reduction of its power.
In response to protests from the homosexual movements, which were campaigning
on the basis of the innate nature of inversion, the lawyers jurists answered that a considerable proportion of homosexuals had been seduced or contaminated: If 175 were
removed, then the danger would exist that these attempts [of seduction and propaganda]
would go on even more publicly than today and in particular that young men will be led
into temptation not only by direct seduction, but also by an influence reinforced in words
and writings. Then homosexual conduct would irrupt in circles which, thanks to current
prohibitions, have heretofore been spared.379
Something dramatic happened on October 16, 1929.380 The commission, supported
by the Socialists and the Communists, voted 15 to 13 to abolish 175. Among the fifteen
were the president of the commission, the very influential private councilor Kahl, a
member of the DVP, two democrats, nine from the SPD and three from the KPD. Voting
against were the five members of the DNVP, two from the DVP, one from the Volkspartei,
three from Zentrum and two from Wirtschaftspartei (economic party). The following
day, however, a coalition of deputies from the SPD, the democrats, Zentrum, and the
national-German party, and Kahl, succeeded in creating a new law against homosexuals,
under the title of 297, serious impudicity between men (which did not, however, cover
nonvenal relations between consenting adults). Only the three deputies of the KPD voted
against, thus showing the fragility of the movement in favor of homosexuals. 297 condemned male prostitution, acts with minors and abusive seduction obtained by authority,
influence and threat on people in positions of dependence. This new motion was never
put into force, however, as the economic crisis changed everyones priorities.
The 1933 draft law reprised much of the text from 1925. Thus, by far the majority of
drafts that were considered penalized homosexuality. Only the 1911 and 1929 drafts pondered the reduction of penalties for acts between consenting adults. The general line from
the early 1920s to the early 1930s was the penalization, and even increased penalization, of
homosexual acts.
Real Repression
By studying the evolution in sentencing, the attitude of the police, and several
homosexual trials, we will try to see what was the policy actually in practice under the
Weimar Republic.
Changes in sentencing
Changes in sentencing for homosexuality convictions entered between 1919 and
1934 did not go in a straight line. The average number of arrests was higher during this
period than at the turn of the century, which may perhaps be explained by the greater visibility of the German homosexual community in the 1920s, but which may also reflect
379. Cited by Hans-Georg Stmke, Homosexuelle in Deutschland, eine politische Geschichte, Munich,
Verlag C.H. Beck, 1989, 184 pages, p.66-67.
380. 1928 was the last year that the SPD made progress, and even became the leading party in
Germany; the KPD also gained considerably.
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stepped up police activity. Between 1902381 and 1918, the average number of arrests is 380.
Between 1919 and 1934, it is 704. In England, the average number of arrests over the same
period is only 574 (702 over the years 1919-1939).382 The German figure is thus particularly high and thus we can be sure the German institutions were not lax.
Certain years show clear evidence of a crackdown. The highest number of arrests
was recorded in 1925 and 1926, with 1226 and 1126 respectively an increase of 32.4%
between 1924 and 1925. The process had begun in 1924, when a 69% increase in arrests
was recorded compared to 1923! The political situation may have had something to do
with this abrupt increase, since it was in 1924 that the Weimar coalition fell apart.
In 1928, the number of arrests stabilized between 600 and 750, an average number
but higher than it was earlier in the period, when it hovered at around 500. In 1919, the
percentage convicted was 71%. In 1925, when the arrest rate was highest, 83% were convicted, and in 1933, 86%. This clearly indicates a lesser degree of legal tolerance during the
period. Those arrested had less and less chance of being released or exonerated at the end
of their trial. Moreover, more and more often the convicts were recidivists (20% in 1920,
40% in 1933). The majority of those convicted were given prison sentences. The most
benign cases got out on bail with a reprimand or a fine. The fine, and the loss of civic
rights, might be accompanied by a prison sentence. The loss of civic rights touches
affected only a very limited percentage of people: 2.5% on average, throughout the period.
On the other hand, fines were more widespread at the beginning of the period (before
1925): approximately 30% received fines, while in 1933, only 12% did. This does not mean
that fines were replaced by prison sentences, for in 1919 more than 97% of those convicted
received prison sentences versus 85% in 1933. It is more likely that the addition of a fine
was gradually abandoned. Moreover, the length in prison terms did not go up.
Only 9% of those who received a prison sentence got more than one year, and 5.2%
in 1933. Some 23% of the people imprisoned in 1919 got three months to a year, compared
to 29% in 1933. The majority were sentenced to less than three months in prison: 68% in
1919, 65% in 1933. The statistics from Lnder enable us to map a hierarchy of the most
repressive areas. In 1925, Prussia was far in the lead with 730 cases, followed by Bavaria
(207), Saxony (139), Wurtemberg (69), the Hamburg region(48), the land of Baden (46),
Thuringe and Hesse (28), Mecklenburg (21), Brunswick (9) and Oldenburg (8).
The conviction rate also reveals variations in legal repression. The rate was only
75% for the Hamburg region, 78% for Prussia and Wurtemberg, 80% for Mecklenburg,
but 87% for Oldenburg, 88% for Saxony, 89% for Hesse, 90% for Bavaria, 98% for Baden,
and a whopping 100% for Thuringe and Brunswick. The figures for each city are given in
1930, and they are very indicative. The number of convictions is not proportional to the
population, nor to the homosexual community present: in first place was Dresden, with
98 cases, followed by Munich (75), which reflects Munichs reputation for extreme hostility to homosexuality and the strong Nationalist-Socialist influence. Then came
Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Frankfurt-am-Main, Dsseldorf and Berlin tied, followed by
Hamburg, Bremen and Lbeck. Berlin, the international capital of homosexuality,
counted only 41 cases, and Hamburg, a harbor city notorious for male prostitution, had
381. The statistics first distinguished between homosexuality and bestiality in 1902.
382. Great Britain in those days had 45 million inhabitants; Germany, 65 million. In proportion
to the population, the repression was a bit more intense in Great Britain than in Germany.
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24! That explains the relative sense of impunity among homosexual Berliners, and the
homosexual flight from the provinces to the capital, as well.
Looking at the age distribution in 1928, one can see that the age bracket most
affected was the 18- to 21-year-olds. Most of those arrested were between 18 and 50. The
distribution by profession in 1928 is very significant. Most cases relate to workmen in
industry or the craft industries (306 out of 804), then workmen engaged in trade and
transport (146), then farm laborers (134). The working class is over-represented compared to business owners, foremen or managers, and the liberal professions. One possible
explanation would be that the popular classes more frequently resorted to pick-ups in the
street, whereas the middle and upper classes had access to more discrete means of finding
partners. It is also possible that respectability and influence protected certain people.
The legal statistics thus contradict the generally accepted view: as far as its institutions, Germany did not practice a more liberal policy with regard to homosexuality than
England. The difference in perception comes primarily from two phenomena: the continually increased police presence in England, which created a climate of tension in the
British homosexual community; and the ambiguous attitude of the German police which
practiced a tacit tolerance of the most current homosexual manifestations (balls, clubs,
bars, etc.), but which severely repressed homosexual practices: soliciting, pandering in
the urinals, sodomy, etc.
The police play disturbing games

As in England, plainclothes policemen were stationed in strategic places (urinals,
train stations, parks) and were charged with identifying suspicious individuals. Nevertheless, it was permissible to frequent homosexual meeting places, even if the police
exerted a discrete surveillance, especially when the masked balls were going on. Dancing
between two people of the same sex was tacitly accepted. While homosexual and lesbian
clubs were sometimes inspected, the purpose of such proceedings is open to question:
We saw those raids as more of a big joke than a real danger, and nothing much ever happened, anyway. The police wrote down some names, gave us a warning, and left.383 In the
same vein, Christopher Isherwood noted: The Berlin police tolerated the bars. No customer was likely to be arrested just because he was there. When the bars were raided,
which did not happen often, it was only the boys who had to show their papers. Those
who did not have any or who were wanted for a crime would dash out the back door or go
out a window when the police arrived.384
It seems that the purpose of these raids was more to round up suspects than to
arrest homosexuals. The Berliner Tageblatt of November 14, 1919 and January 23, 1920 talked
about raids in homosexual clubs (that detail was not specified by the newspaper), in particular Monbijou and Domino. At this point in time, police chief Hermann was conducting a major campaign against gaming clubs, and raids took place almost every day
(with varying degrees of success, for look-outs would keep an eye on the street and alert
customers, who scattered to nearby bars). Some 800 people were arrested November 14,
1919. Rather than homosexuals, it must have been the male prostitutes and traffickers
252 pages, p.29-30.
328
Graph 2. Changes in Sex Crimes ( 175 of the Penal Code) in Germany (1919-1934)
329

who were the targets of such operations. In fact, a tradition of tolerance had been established in Berlin between the police and the homosexual movements since the agreement
between Berlin police chief Leopold von Meerscheidt-Hllesem and Magnus Hirschfeld
at the end of the 19th century. Thereafter, police chief Hans von Treschkow also collaborated with the WhK.385 However, there were files on homosexuals (Rosa Listen) existed,
especially under von Meerscheidt-Hllesem, including the names of several prominent
figures. This was enough to enable the police to keep a lid on the homosexual community,
but would have been hard to use as the basis for a massive crackdown. And as Hirschfeld
noted, If the police wanted to handle homosexuals the way they do common criminals,
given the fact that Meerscheidt-Hulles list of pederasts includes thousands of names
they would shortly find that the current law is unenforceable.386
The lists did have tragic consequences, however, for after the Nazis came to power
they were used as a basis for identifying homosexuals.
Certain cities distinguished themselves in their treatment of homosexual infractions. The Dresden police,387 who had topped the list for the number of arrests in 1930,
imposed special sanctions: three days in jail for staying in the urinals or in proximity of
such places without any purpose, staying in these places in order to prepare or to
pursue an intimate relation with a homosexual or to act in a suspicious manner with
men, sheltering homosexuals and spending the night with such people, roaming about
here and there without any purpose or objective, and loitering in the vicinity of the old
market, the Post Platz, Wiener Platz, or the station, and exposing oneself without any
reason in the same squares and public places, and soliciting men. The Dresden police
were provided with a standard form for apprehending homosexuals and male prostitutes.
The WhK also complained in March 1930 in the Mitteilungen des WhK about the
attitude of the Munich police. While the police administration of other German cities
keeps a discrete eye on homosexual establishments, in order to control the blackmailers
and other elements, the Munich police torment the customers of these establishments
with endless raids and investigations. They describe a raid carried out on January the 910, 1930. Fifty police officers burst in, goose-stepping. Nobody move, stay where you are!
they barked. Everyone was asked to show his papers. Those who did not have any were
arrested and taken along to the station. The rest had to leave, whether or not they had
paid their tabs. Many were mistreated and one man was beaten. They were let go only the
following day at noon. Thus, the German police seem to have had a mixed attitude; in
many cities, particularly Berlin, tolerance was the rule. Other cities, either because of
regional politics or the pressures of public opinion, were far more repressive.
Case studies
A number of very complete files exist on petitions for clemency filed under
Weimar. They display all the information about the petitioner, a report of the facts, a
385. In his memoirs, Von Frsten und anderen Sterblichen (Berlin, Fontane, 1922, 240 pages)
von Treschkow manifests a certain tolerance with regard to homosexuals, albeit not without some
prejudice. He felt that 175 made no sense.
386. Magnus Hirschfeld, Les Homosexuels de Berlin (1908), Lille, Cahiers Gai-Kitsch-Camp, 1993,
103 pages, p.98.
387. Dr Hans Muser, Homosexualitt und Jugendfrsorge, Paderborn, Verlag Ferdinand Schningh,
1933, 184 pages.
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statement of the principal charges, then the reasoned opinions of the various experts
entitled to make a judgment about the legitimacy of the plea. These opinions, when they
are detailed, are an invaluable source of information and enable researchers to evaluate
how tolerant the judges were with regard to homosexual acts.
Benno Sahmel filed a clemency plea with the court in Tilsit, June 19, 1931.388 Sahmel
was born on December 9, 1905; he was a shop clerk, unmarried, without any assets. He
was already convicted, and along with him Kurt Seidler, 48, unmarried, a retired salaried
worker, and Heinrich Dumat, 20, apprentice pastry-cook. Sahmel, who is described as of a
homosexual disposition, met Seidler, who was of the same disposition, in 1928. They
entertained sexual relations until the end of 1930, one taking the member of the other in
his mouth, until ejaculation. Dumat had relations of the same order with Seidler.
Moreover, Sahmel received from Seidler considerable sums of money, which aggravated
his position. Sahmel was sentenced to three months in prison, Seidler was fined 300 RM
with an alternative sentence of two months in prison, and Dumat got a fine of 50 RM or
ten days in prison. Sahmel, who did not discharge his sentence, filed for clemency; this
was rejected without much discussion: he was an individual with a bad attitude. This
was a very simple case: sexual relation between consenting adults, without sodomy.
There was, however, an aggravating circumstance: the defendant was more or less paid for
his favors. Three months in prison already represents a fairly stiff sentence (remember
that more than 60% of those convicted were given less than three months). The other two
received considerably lighter sentences, so it is clearly the aggravating circumstance
which made the difference. Dumats minimal sentence also shows that the duration and
the number of relations entered into the calculation of the penalties.
Another example is Franz Bartel, who appealed to the regional court of Prenzlau in
1931. He, too, was turned down.389 Bartel was born on April 23, 1897 in Templin; he
installed stoves, unmarried, with no income. On June 2, 1930 he met Lindenberg in an inn.
After having had a few drinks and playing at dice, Lindenberg accompanied his comrade,
already quite intoxicated, to his apartment. Along the way, Bartel tried to grab his genitals. In the room, they took off their shirts and lay down on the bed. Lindenberg fell
asleep immediately. While he was asleep, Bartel tried to introduce his member into the
anus of Lindenberg. Bartel was convicted during a trial in Prenzlau in 1931 and was sentenced to three weeks. Lindenberg was acquitted. It seems that the state of intoxication
did not in this case justify a remission of penalty, apparently because the jury felt that a
healthy man, even in a state of intoxication, would not naturally do such a thing. The fact
that only an attempt was made probably explains the relatively light sentence.
More serious was the case of Heinrich Kiefer, who appealed to the regional court of
Dsseldorf on September 14, 1929.390 Kiefer was 26 at the time of the incident, unmarried,
unemployed, and with dubious means of support. In February 1928, Kiefer was a chef
associated with a hotel. At that time he committed indecent assault upon an apprentice
cook. The apprentice tried to push Kiefer away, without success. Kiefer also went after
the boy in his room and grabbed him again. On April 7, the apprentice lodged a complaint
with the police against Kiefer, but during a confrontation the latter rejected any responsibility. The same day, the boy threw himself under a train, leaving his mother a letter
388. GStA PK, I.HA, Rep.84a (2.5.1), n 17272.
389. GStA PK, I.HA, Rep.84a (2.5.1), n 17276.
390. GStA PK, I.HA, Rep.84a (2.5.1), n 17245.
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explaining that this man had taken his honor and that he could no longer work with him.
Kiefer was sentenced to ten months in prison. The sentence could have been even longer,
since there was repeated violence. The appeal for clemency was rejected. The public prosecutor and the counsel for the plaintiff both rose against such a request. The lawyer made
every effort to get a tough sentence against Kiefer, saying that even if the boy had not
committed suicide, he would have been corrupted and poisoned in his spiritual life by
this bestial criminal; and if he had had the strength and the will to resist the moral
attacks, the stinking breath of this criminal would have remained with him for the rest of
his days.
Leo Romanowskis petition for clemency, presented to the regional court of
Knigsberg on February 13, 1923,391 is a large file. Romanowski was a recidivist, a general
practitioner, 34, and accused of a series of indecent assaults. His edifying case is described
in exhaustive detail. He had pursued adolescent boys, offering cigarettes and pocket
money. Romanowski was sentenced to one year and nine months, a particularly heavy
sentence, due to the implication of minors and the repetitive assaults. Not only had
Romanowski continued his advances on the boys, but he had already been convicted in
April, 1922 for exhibitionism (in front of a girl). The request for mercy was well founded.
The defendant had twelve brothers and sisters, all normal. He was deeply depressed,
by nature perverse and obviously also an onanist. He had already fulfilled one year of
the sentence, and the rest of it was commuted to three years, suspended. This decision
was cancelled on April 11, 1928 because of a new trial. During the summer of 1927,
Romanowski had gone after another schoolboy. Romanowski was sentenced this time to
six months in prison. This third sentence was fairly heavy, but it is clear that extenuating
circumstances played in his favor this time: he had not seduced a minor, since Goltz had
already had homosexual relations. It is interesting to note that, according to justice, a
young man was normal by definition. The first homosexual act, whether it was consensual or not, was always regarded as a seduction and thus an act of violence. However,
if thereafter the boy goes in for homosexual acts, he himself is regarded as such. On the
petition for clemency, opinions were divided: the legal counsellor (Gerichtshilfe) argued
for a prison sentence that took into account the time already served. He recalled that the
defendant had tried to fight against his nature and that he had even tried (without
success) to have relations with women. He had even contemplated marriage. Moreover,
Romanowski had been ruined by the inflation and did not have the money to go to a
country where homosexuality was not illegal. His brothers and sisters could not help him.
Finally, the defendant also benefited from extenuating circumstances, since the victim
was a homosexual. The sentence was useless, since it would not cure the defendant. On
the other hand, it would make him lose his job. Lastly, one ought to consider that the new
penal code, when it came into effect, would no longer condemn homosexuality. The
public prosecutor and the court decided against the remission of sentence and clemency
was not granted.
Otto Gerpott, a 27-year-old single general practitioner, came before the regional
court of Torgau on April 12, 1929.392 Six young men appeared with him, they were 16 to 18
years old at the time of the incidents. In 1927, Gerpott had engaged in unnatural acts
with each one of them. He was sentenced to a year and a half in prison and two years of
391. GStA PK, I.HA, Rep.84a (2.5.1), n 17209.
392. GStA PK, I.HA, Rep.84a (2.5.1), n 17257.
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loss of civic rights. The sentence was very heavy the unusual duration and the loss of
civic rights was extremely rare. This severity may be attributed to the youth of the boys
and the number of punishable acts. Gerpott was regarded as a seducer, the very prototype of the homosexual bogeyman. The request for leniency was of course rejected, for
the defendant had shown many times over that he was a danger to youth; his good
conduct could not be considered a predictor of his future attitude. Another appeal was
filed in November. The lawyer said that the defendant had a job waiting for him in
Dresden, and he would be able to open an office again. He came from a good family, he had
studied hard, and during the war he served as an army medical officer in the navy. After
1925, his homosexuality was confirmed and he had started to drift. The lawyer thus
argued that the rest of the sentence be suspended; and it was. A new appeal was filed in
January, 1930, to restore his civic rights and to attenuate the prison sentence. But the situation had deteriorated. The lawyer acknowledged that the conduct of the defendant had
changed: he did not show any remorse and he spoke very cynically about his earlier
actions. All further appeals were rejected.
Ernst Domscheit represents another case involving a seducer. The regional court
of Knigsberg heard his appeal on June 17, 1930.393 Domscheit, 38, was married and the
father of two children. He was on State support. He had fought during the First World
War, was decorated, and preserved the character of a lieutenant. His reputation was
good. However, in July 1928, he had assaulted a thirteen-year-old schoolboy, his friends
son. He fondled him again during subsequent visits. After assaulting the child on New
Years Day, he was tried and sentenced to eight months in prison. That was a heavy sentence, but lower than Gerpotts, for only one child was involved. The appeal asked for a
suspended sentence, with a fine of 100 RM. Domscheits reputation worked in his favor,
as well as the familys financial situation. But clemency was refused. A new request was
filed. The lawyer explained that Domscheit was not a degenerate; and the trial had
already destroyed his life there was no point in adding to his misfortune. Appended to
the file was a letter from Elsa Domscheit, his wife, beseeching the Prussian Minister for
Justice to bear in mind her tragic position: the children had nothing to eat, they had no
winter clothes, and she herself could do nothing but weep day and night. A few days later
Domscheit send a petition, himself; but all in vain. A third hearing was held on January 12,
1931; this time, clemency was granted a suspension until January 31, 1934 and a fine of
100 RM.
To conclude, we will look at the appeal filed at the regional court of Wiesbaden on
June 30, 1931.394 The case is complex, for it involves foreign nationals and a notable figure.
It also illustrates the methods used by the police. The two accused are Jacob Mller, a
tailor, Austrian, born in 1903, and the Czechoslovakian consul in Frankfurt-am-Main,
Zdenek Rakusam, born in 1887. The consul general of Czechoslovakia contacted the
public prosecutor to ask that the incident be kept out of the press. Rakusam had gone
back to his country and did not show up for the hearing; he held a diplomatic passport
and there was little chance of obtaining his extradition. The public urinal located close to
the Saint-Boniface church at Wiesbaden was a favorite with homosexuals, and therefore
it was under constant police surveillance. On the afternoon of June 29, 1931, the police
observed that two men had stayed in the urinal for an abnormally long time, like homo393. GStA PK, I.HA, Rep.84a (2.5.1), n 17263.
394. GStA PK, I.HA, Rep.84a (2.5.1), n 17275.
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sexuals who are trying to establish a contact. Schietinger had been observing the scene
for five minutes, when he noted the wall which enclosed the urinal allowed a view of
the occupants feet that the two men had changed places and that other men had gone
in at that moment. A man coming out of the urinal gestured to him to indicate what was
going on in there. The two were arrested. Mller swore that he was not homosexual, and
that after being struck speechless by the other mans conduct he had tried to push him
away. The court found that story far-fetched, for if Mller had wished to refuse, he could
easily have done so, either by struggling or by calling for help. Mller was sentenced to
thirty days and a fine of 120 RM. No clemency was granted. The sentence was about
average, but on the high side for a case involving only masturbation and fellatio. The
incident took place in front of witnesses, which entailed a disturbance of law and order
and provocation of scandal.
These reports elucidate several important points. First, they are all extremely
precise: the sexual practices are described with great meticulousness. The judges did not
condemn all homosexual acts uniformly. The duration and the nature of the penalty was
always a function of the act itself: touching the sex organs through the trousers did not
merit the same sentence as mutual Onanism or sodomy. The number of times that the act
was practiced, and the age of the partner, also played a great part in the evaluation of the
misdemeanor or crime (German judges separated the two charges clearly, even if the
defendant was often accused of both a misdemeanor and a crime against morality
(Vergehen und Verbrechen gegen die Sittlichkeit).
As in England, many the cases were based on police surveillance of suspicious
places. Agents were assigned to the urinals and other strategic places frequented by
homosexuals; they were to catch the men in the act, if possible, or at least to ensure a deposition by a witness so as not to risk a possible defeat in court. Another portion of the
arrests resulted from denunciations, especially in the case of children or adolescents who
had been victims of violence by an adult. In those cases, the sanctions were much more
severe, but they depended more on the age and innocence of the victim than on the circumstances of the act. Thus the incident of the apprentice cook and Werner Broschko
was viewed as a rape, but still did not entail a sentence as heavy as that of Gerpott, which
entailed the seduction of several young people, obviously consensual, or Romanowski,
who was certainly recidivist but who limited himself to awkward attempts at masturbation and exhibitionism. And finally, it is possible that, in other cases, the arrest might
follow a denunciation on the part of third-party witnesses.
Lastly, we note that the majority of petitions for clemency did not succeed. Several
arguments were used in favor of the prisoners: some were traditional, like good conduct,
good reputation, first offense; others were more specific: the defendant is manly, he participated in the war effort or, on the contrary, is a congenital invert, one who has
tried without success to find a remedy for his condition; a prison sentence cannot cure
him. This argument was generally counter-productive, as the public prosecutor judged
the individual to be all the more dangerous since he could not control himself. Then the
financial situation and marital status might be raised: the disastrous consequences of the
crisis were often highlighted. Unique to the early 1930s was the pretext of the new draft
law showing that, before long, homosexuality would not be condemned. Most of the time,
leniency was withheld in the name of morals; the defendant was described as a vicious
person and especially dangerous to youth. The commute sentences generally consisted of
a probationary period part of the sentence was suspended or commuted to a fine
334

and the original sentence could be re-imposed if the defendant did not meet his obligations.
Censorship
A final dimension by which to measure German anti-homosexual repression is a
study of censorship. First, one ought to mention that the vast majority of the files preserved by the Prussian police pertaining to censorship of obscene illustrations, writings
and representations are unrelated to homosexuality.395
The most famous instance of homosexual censorship was the banning of Richard
Oswald and Magnus Hirschfelds film, Anders als die Andern. Several homosexual periodicals were also banned, such as Die Freundschaft in 1921396 and Bltter fr ideale Frauenfreundschaften, a lesbian publication, which appeared on police lists dealing with indecent
publications in 1924.397
We will look at two cases of censorship to see what factors came into play. In 1928,
the December issue of the homosexual periodical Die Insel was banned.398 Berliner Morgenpost reported the incident, and explained that the review was condemned for publishing an excerpt from the book by Peter Martin Lampel, Jugend in Not (1928). Lampel had
done a survey on the life of children on public assistance and in one chapter he talked
about their homosexual relations. That was the passage that Die Insel reprised. The
Attorney General explained in a letter dated February 26, 1929 that the review was registered on the pornography and smut list because the publication of the Lampel excerpt
was intended to excite the sexual instinct of the reader and to gratify sexual obsessions.
The Attorney General did not attack Lampels book, which was not censored, for he considered that the homosexual passages were there for information purposes whereas,
taken out of context, they could only be intended to satisfy the erotic impulse of the
reader especially in a homosexual periodical. Moreover, as the newspaper was
available on the newsstand, it could fall into the wrong hands, such as those of adolescents.
On August 31, 1926, the homosexual publisher Friedrich Radszuweit complained
to the Prussian Minister for Justice about actions taken against Das Freundschaftsblatt with
regard to the advertisements which appeared in the newspaper, and which he said the
police always interpreted in a negative way. He asked for a hearing in order to clarify the
position of homosexuals. The Attorney General responded to a request for information
from the Ministry for Justice by explaining that this homosexual periodical was only condemned once, for an advertisement published in Number 7: Soldier, fired because of his
homosexual inclinations..., seeks work of any kind. General Delivery, Potsdam HR24.
The newspaper was fined 100 RM on June 25, 1926 because from the majority of readers
such an advertisement could elicit only obscene thoughts, since the periodical only
covered sexual topics. As in the case of Die Insel, it is the homosexual character of the periodical that renders suspect the articles or the classified advertisements that are banned.
395. These are only a portion of the original files, of course, but they are almost entirely devoted
to issues of abortion, birth control propaganda, and Nacktkultur, especially the theater shows
featuring nude dancers and so-called art photos.
396. GStA PK, I.HA, Rep.84a, n 5339.
397. GStA PK, I.HA, Rep.84a, n 5341.
398. GStA PK, I.HA, Rep. 84a, n 17347.
335

The police were sometimes alerted by denunciations by private individuals. The
Prussian Minister for Justice received a letter from a German national living in Florence,
Martin Vogel, in 1931. He complained of finding books that he considered obscene on the
display stands of the secondhand booksellers. He quoted several titles, including certain
works by Magnus Hirschfeld. An investigation was started. The Attorney Generals
response was very clear. The work directed by Magnus Hirschfeld, Geschlecht und Verbrechen, can in no event wound the sensibilities of a normal man, because the scientific
character of the work underlined first and foremost. Such a book, with its historical
overview, is intended to enrich knowledge of the relations between sexuality and crime
and has a particular value, especially nowadays.399
In fact, censorship was neither systematic nor blind. The judge did not censor any
homosexual publication a priori, but only those which were disturbing to the law and
order. There again, just as there were nuances in the gravity of the homosexual act, there
were degrees in obscenity.
FRENCH HOMOSEXUALS OUT ON PROBATION (1919-1939)

In France, this vice is not grounds for imprisonment, thanks to the morals of Cambacrs [who drafted the civil code under Napolon Bonaparte] and the longevity of
the Napoleonic Code. But I do not accept that I am tolerated. It wounds my love of
love and freedom. 400
France is a special case in this study, since it was the only country not to condemn
homosexuality. While the French police used the same methods as the British and
German police with regard to homosexuals, French judges had to confront homosexuality
only in very special cases. However, behind this theoretical impunity, a practice of monitoring homosexuals developed that was based on a certain homophobia in the legal and
police sectors.
Was France the Land of Homosexual Tolerance?

France enjoyed an excellent reputation in the inter-war period among the homosexual community, especially the foreigners. Lesbians in particular elected Paris as their
international capital and celebrated its moral liberalism: Paris always seemed to me the
only city where one could express oneself and live life his own way. In spite of harmful
effects inflicted by foreigners, it continues to respect and even to encourage personality.401 Klaus Mann evoked Parisian life in these terms: The florists are teasing two customers. Ah, two big flirts! they exclaim joyfully, and giggle while holding out bunches of
red, yellow and blue flowers. One of them, particularly mischievous and playful, asks an
impish question: Or one big flirt and his boyfriend? and doubles over in laughter. And
even the imposing police officer who threads his way between the baskets observes goodnaturedly: Ah, we do have fun in our Paris.402
399. GStA PK, Rep.84a, n 17355.
400. Jean Cocteau, Le Livre blanc [1928], Paris, ditions de Messine, 1983, 123 pages, p.123.
401. Natalie Barney, Souvenirs indiscrets, Paris, Flammarion, 1960, 234 pages, p.21.
336

Beyond these idyllic descriptions, how real was the French tolerance?
Homosexuality Unknown to French Law

Since the revolutionary laws of 1791 and the penal code of 1810, homosexuality was
not repressed under French law.403 Under the Ancien Rgime, in fact, it was not a question
of homosexuality but of sodomy, a term indicating an act and not a category of people, but
whose elastic definition could also cover the concept of heresy, without sexual overtones.
Royal justice and the canonical law punished both these crimes with burning at the stake.
French law, grounding itself on the great revolutionary principles, only punished if there
were victims. Consequently, sexual perversions, if they were voluntarily consented to,
did not enter the scope of the law. Lastly, the principal writer of the civil code, Jean
Jacques Rgis Cambacrs, was homosexual and some have deduced that this accounts
for the particular tolerance of French law on this subject.
The judges are interested

Still, just because homosexuality is not mentioned as a crime in French law, that
does not mean that the judges had nothing to say about it.404 The legal institution started
to discuss homosexuality in the 19th century, thus going beyond its purely repressive role.
This discourse was characterized by pejorative and stigmatizing adjectives (immoral
acts, guilty excesses, shameful passions) which evaded any attempt to define a perverse act. Precise definitions were only formulated much later. Justice in those days was
quite dependent on medical theory, which had been far quicker to come up with definitions and classifications of perversions. The homosexual question could thus be tackled in
the context of public indecency and indecent assaults, in particular on minors.
The correctional court of the Seine convicted one Bnard for exciting minors to
debauchery.405 He apparently took two 18-year-olds to a hotel room, and reciprocal activities took place. He gave them money for dinner and cigarettes; the following day, he did it
again. The Paris Appellate Court annulled his conviction because the background of two
boys clearly contradicted the count of indictment. Both had been soliciting before they
met Bnard and, in fact, he could not have been an agent of corruption with respect to
them since, being inverts, they already had been earning their living for some time by
exploiting their defects; under these conditions, the charge of excitation of minors to
vice could not be upheld against Bnard.
The legal wording is, as always, important to obtaining a conviction. While the
Appellate Court rejected this version of the facts, it did not exclude the possibility of
402. Klaus Mann, La Danse pieuse [1925], Paris, Grasset, 1993, 272 pages, p.264.
403. See Jean Danet, Discours juridique and perversions sexuelles (XIXe-XXe sicle), Nantes, universit de
Nantes, 1977, 105 pages.
404. See Jean-Paul Aron and Roger Kempf, Le Pnis et la Dmoralisation de lOccident, Paris, Grasset,
1978, 306 pages. Jean Danets work, Discours juridique et perversions sexuelles, sheds light on the tribunals
attitude to homosexuality. He shows that, if the law spells out interdictions and sanctions, the tribunals were not satisfied with strictly applying the penalties. The first half of the 19th century was
spent in defining various perversions; the end of the century was a time for public debates on homosexuality and onanism; the period from 1900 to 1939 was above all preoccupied with pederasty.
405. The appeals court of Paris, 11 October 1930 GP 1930, 2e sem., p.886, cited by Jean Danet,
Discours juridique et perversions sexuelles, op. cit.
337

pressing other charges. Bnard was not found guilty only because he was not their first
customer; minors are considered guilty when they can no longer be regarded as innocent
victims of a corrupter-initiator. Here we find again the distinction made by the German
judges.
Another incident involves a minor, Joseph Gilles, 18, who was found on November
10, 1931, in Paris, wandering on the public thoroughfare, staying in a furnished room and
deriving his resources solely from prostitution.406 Gilles was arrested for vagrancy and
placed on probation in the paternal society of Mettray,407 under the guardianship of a
trusted person, Mr. Barthlemy. His seducer was sentenced to six months and a 200franc fine.
Like male homosexuality, female homosexuality was not condemned by French
law; and there is no sign of any particular desire to fight lesbianism in the inter-war
period. The question only came before the judges when minors were involved, in which
case the incidents did come under the purview of the law. In the Parrini affair, a woman
was accused of corrupting young girls. The records of the Aix Appellate Court (December
6, 1934) state that Parrini had molested several female minors, and concludes by saying
that, If article 334 (334-1) of the penal code does not, in theory, cover acts of personal and
direct seduction, the natural physiological manifestations of one sex for the other, this
text finds its application when, as in the present case, they are unnatural acts, which must
be regarded as acts of perversion, depravity and excitation to vice, acts which make of
their author an agent of corruption. La Semaine juridique408 noted that this ruling was not
in conformity with the doctrines of the Supreme Court of Appeals. The court in Aix had
sentenced Claire Parrini to three months in prison, suspended, and a 25-franc fine. But the
Supreme Court of Appeals overturned it: Whatever acts of vice they may have committed, only those who have engaged in procurement to satisfy the passions of others are
liable under article 334-1; it is only stated in the judgment under discussion that Claire
Parrini attracted young partners and engaged in indecent practices on them, without
these scenes necessarily occurring in the presence of anyone other than her partners.
These statements do not show that the accused engaged in these practices for the satisfaction of other passions than her own; it follows that the application of art. 334 al.1 is not
justified and that, consequently, the judgment lacks a legal basis. Thus, on the whole, the
judges repressive power over homosexuals was very limited. Still, it is important to note
that the finer details of the law were applied only reluctantly; and it would be a mistake
to think that the system of justice in France was completely indifferent to homosexuality.
Censorship
Even if it was not directly covered by the law, the question of homosexuality could
still be tackled via obscene and pornographic publications. The leading magazines that
were tried were Frou-Frou and Garonne, light-weight periodicals that were known for
their clever classified advertisements. Reports on these magazines do not make explicit
references to homosexuality; however, in 1925 the general council of Seine-Infrieure
called attention to the proliferation of publications that were an outrage to decency, and
406. TGI Seine, 26 February 1932 GP 1932, 1re sem., p.778, cited by Jean Danet, ibid.
407. This was the reformatory where Jean Genet was.
408. 1935, p.259-260; document provided by Claude Courouve.
338

to the propagation of doctrines that questioned the traditional organization of
society.409 What they had in mind was mainly homosexuality, the liberation of morals,
divorce and contraceptive practices. Given that concern, publications which were in no
case obscene but which might diffuse subversive ideas, could fall afoul of the censors. As a
case in point, the homosexual review Inversions. This magazine was very short-lived, for it
was immediately attacked for obscenity. However, there were no legal grounds for
banning it. This affair is therefore particularly revealing as to how homosexuality was
dealt with in France.410
In fact, it was an accumulation of complaints, both official and anonymous, that
caught the attention of the justice system.411 The first edition of Inversions appeared on
November 15, 1924, and complaints poured in immediately: on November 5, 1924 a
deputy, Mr. Prvert, gave to the president of the chamber written question no. 1359,
asking the Minister for Justice if the legislation authorized a homosexual magazine called
Inversions to announce its publication by way of advertisements in the press. He was told
that indecency charges had already been filed against the manager. Then, on November
26, 1924, the Minister of Justice received a letter from Mr. de Forge, vice-president of the
Association of War Veteran Writers, who was indignant that the review would proudly
proclaim its wretched program. De Forge stressed that he wrote as the father of a family,
and if tomorrow my son, attracted by this rag with the eye-catching title, buys it and
becomes perverted, what will be your responsibility in the matter? In Germany the police
pursue Die Freiheit [sic, he probably meant Die Freundschaft], in obscene journal of the same
kind, which is only sold under the table [in fact, it was sold very legally in the kiosks].
Inversions is sold on the boulevards, posts its address and is calling for classified advertisements.
After the second edition came out, there were more complaints. The Ministry of the
Interior forwarded to the Minister of Justice an excerpt from the Mercure de France of
December 15, 1924 with an advertisement for Inversions, which had been sent in by Louis
Coquet, a retired, disabled colonel. The very moral fiber of France was calling for the
magazine to be prohibited. This posed a problem, however. The Attorney General advised
the Minister of Justice on December 23 that a conference on homosexuality had been
announced by the Club du Faubourg and various newspapers, such as Lre nouvelle. Books
like Gides Corydon and Dr. Naziers LAnti-Corydon would be discussed.412 The prosecutors conclusion was simple and indicative: A subject that is shocking is not in itself
punishable. However, he informed the Minister of Justice of the state of the investigations. The publisher, Mr. Mazel, had been contacted: he was away while the magazine
was being printed and did not know the nature of the publication. He now offered to
break his contract. The address listed for the magazine at 1 Bougainville was only the
address of the Bougainville Hotel, where the mail was delivered; it was collected by
Gaston Lestrade, 23 years old, who occupied a modest room in this hotel which, for
reasons of economy, he shared with a tapestry maker. The prosecutors final words are
stunning. He had read Inversions himself, and considered it to be aesthetic and of quality: I
409. AN, BB 18 6173 (1925).
410. For the entire affair, AN BB 18 6174/44 BL 303.
411. This was frequently the case. Other publications were denounced by individuals as being
bad for morals, for young people, or for France (AN, BB 18 6172/44 BL 228).
412. This conference took place 20 October 1924, at 10 boulevard Barbs; 500 people participated.
339

have not seen any dirty expression or obscene terms in it. He recalled that in its March
25, 1911 judgment the Supreme Court of Appeals, interpreting the laws of 1882, 1898 and
1908 on public indecency, said that there can be no lawsuit if obscenity were not shown.
The prosecutor then completed his letter with an edifying about-face: It is necessary to
take account of the manifest change in public opinion, which shows itself to be in favor of
the repression of public indecency and the protection of youth from depravity.... This
publication, although it does not contain anything obscene, is indeed highly contrary to
morality; it is scandalous, it is dangerous. And he thus recommended condemning it for
public indecency.
Gilles Barbedette and Michel Carassou relate how the rest of the story unfolded in
their book Gay Paris 1925. The first judgment declared Beyria guilty of public indecency
and Lestrade guilty of complicity. Beyria was sentenced to ten months and 200 francs,
Lestrade to six months and 200 francs. Both appealed; the matter came before the Paris
Appellate Court on October 13, 1926. The Advocate General asked for the session to be
held behind closed doors. The Court pointed out first of all that, From the very first lines,
this publication informs its readers of the spirit in which it is conceived and the goal that
it pursues: Inversions is not a review of homosexuality, but for homosexuality.413 The
Court then developed an implacable line of argumentation, acknowledging that it is true
that the magazine in question is correct in form and that no indecent terminology is found
therein, but observing that obscenity may be present by implication and abstraction,
without any obscene expression being quoted. Then came the decisive factor, the fact that
the publication defended homosexuality: The law of August 2, 1882, sufficient to repress
abuses at the time when it was legislated, at present leaves decency and public morality
defenseless against the new forms that pornography (ever skillful at slipping through the
tiniest legal cracks) has managed to invent. Inversions was thus condemned by the law
taken in its broadest sense, that of flagrant indecency. The Court cited many extracts
from the review as examples of attacks on proper morals and concluded that almost
every page of this publication constitutes a cynical apology for pederasty, a systematic
appeal to homosexual passions and a ceaseless provocation of the unhealthiest curiosities;
that also, in spite of the studious care to avoid any improper language, such articles constitute not only an attack on morals and a propaganda liable to compromise the future of
the race through its neo-Malthusian tendencies, and also ventures into obscenity, if not
by words, at least by the indecency of some of the topics covered and by the general tenor
of the publication. Here, the social question takes the lead: the fear of a generalized perversion of the society is compounded by another, more pernicious, fear of a homosexual
plot that could destroy the foundations of the society from within. Quoting a personal
advertisement from a reader in Berlin seeking a correspondent in France, the Court
asserts that the publication, in terms that are superficially prudish but transparent
enough for those in the know was serving as a liaison between homosexuals in various
countries and consequently was an active agent of propaganda for spreading pederasty,
and was thus a licentious provocation, cunningly inciting readers to the most repugnant
of vices. The Court thus could only come to one conclusion: it upheld the judgment and
accepted as the only extenuating circumstance the fact that Beyria and Lestrade did not
413. The minutes of the Cour de cassation are cited by Gilles Barbedette and Michel Carassou,
Paris gay 1925, Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 1981, 312 pages, p.269-274.
340

take part in writing the articles, but only accepted submissions and published and sold
them. They were thus sentenced to three months imprisonment and a 100-franc fine.
Homosexuals under Surveillance

Why would the police spy on homosexuals, when they were not regarded as criminals? A preliminary answer can be found in the Ministry for Justice observation on the
preliminary draft of legislation concerning the prevention of venereal diseases: It seems
that in certain large cities, given the current concern for policing morality, the local
authorities actually order a certain number of arrests and detentions on an administrative
basis. But these are practices that the law does not cover. The legal basis and the intention
of these practices would be highly controversial.414 In other words, police monitoring of
homosexuals was not justified by law. However the government, especially at the local
level, found that unacceptable. In fact, the French law was very advanced in its attitudes;
any deficiency in this regard can probably be chalked up to the efforts of
individuals intent on carrying out a veiled attack on a political opponent.
The Homosexual as an ordinary delinquent

Very often homosexuality, which could not be regarded as a crime in itself
according to French legislation, was perceived as an aggravating factor in any criminal
event. A suspect wanted for a crime or a misdemeanor that had nothing to do with morals
would still be written up as a homosexual in the police report. douard Riguet, wanted
for drug dealing, was described as frequenting many pederasts. One may suppose that
spending time in this bad company did him no good and would be regarded as aggravating factors when he went to trial.415 In a similar way yet on a far different scale, Ferdinand, Duke de Montpensier, prince of Bourbon, sixth child of the count de Paris, was
listed between 1915 and 1931 as an inveterate bon vivant, addicted to morphine and
young homosexuals. It is not clear whether he was under police surveillance for his drug
use or his homosexual activities. Ferdinand de Bourbon uses narcotics every day;
moreover, he indulges in pederasty and his villa Bellevue in San Remo is the scene of
continual orgies.
Files were kept on the social, cultural and political elite of the country were and
information concerning their principal weaknesses was noted. The marquis de Boury,
deputy of the Eure, suffered unfortunately from vice which makes him dependent hand
and foot on a band of young men without consciences. He has taken as his so-called Secretary a professional homosexual, Messein (called Messaline), who lives with him in Paris
as well as at his chteau. This individual, who used to have his favors to himself, is now
the procurer feeding his wretched vices with little boys or young adolescents.
A close associate Messein, Huguette Despres, was addicted to cocaine and morphine. In 1916, she was signed into Sainte-Annes, where she got into scenes of unimaginable orgies between people of both sexes, pederasts and lesbians.
Homosexuals were sometimes the victims of blackmail: Miss A.S., whom I was
called to treat, found herself the easy prey of two inverts who reside at 17 Trudaine
414. AN, BB 18 6186.
415. For this case and the next, see AN, F7 14837.
341

avenue. These two individuals ran an opium den. Linking drugs and homosexuality is old
hat; people came into the polices sights because of their use of narcotics, but the discovery of homosexual activities only increased the interest of the police. An event a little
bit anterior to our period shows how homosexuality and delinquency were linked in the
mind of the police. April 19, 1916, an anonymous letter of denunciation drew the attention
of the police to a college professor, Marcel Seyrat, claiming that a certain Marcel Crat
[sic] pursues immoral acts with young men and sells cocaine to all the women of Montmartre.416 An investigation was opened. A letter from the prefect of police to the Ministry of the Interior dated August 22, 1916 reveals that Marcel Seyrat goes to Montmartre
establishments, such as the brasserie Leon, 76 boulevard de Clichy, where he meets
drug dealers and pederasts. Furthermore, he had the manners and the style of the latter,
and thus it could be that he shared their morals. However, he was not found in the
special files of drug dealers and pederasts and was described as a rather timid lad, effeminate, of good character and enjoying an excellent reputation at Pouillac. All this goes to
show that the monitoring of homosexuals was a customary procedure; their meeting
places, their practices were known; and above all, it shows that special files were kept on
homosexuals, even though it is difficult to determine whether that was done in any systematic way.417 Further reports on Marcel Seyrat detail his relations and habits, including
the fact that he was known for receiving visits from beardless young men rather often.
He was known to be a follower of pederasty and he lost a job at Serga Concert because
of the very particular customers that his presence attracted, but none of these elements
apparently led the police to do anything.
All of this applied to lesbians as well as homosexuals. One Grignette, known as
Albano, was listed in the police files as providing opium to the courtesan milienne
dAlenon. She is designated as a lesbian; little else is noted. Similarly, Mrs. Marie Lesage,
a painter and a lesbian (underlined in the police report) and a friend of Jean Guitry, is
written up as a regular at Triboulet, on Pigalle St., where she was known to use morphine,
cocaine and opium. 418 However, a report from February 22, 1917 describes her as
depraved, lesbian; she has had many [male] lovers and is always going to houses of ill
repute. This is perplexing: does the term lesbian have any real significance? The sexual
definition seems not to have been very clear; in a police report, the term lesbian seems to
have been shorthand for vice and depravity in general.
It is clear that the banker Marthe Hanaus reputation did not play in her favor
during her trial. Known for her extravagance, her masculine appearance (strictly tailored
clothes, short hair, cigarette-holder), she would show up with her partner Josphe in the
usual places le Buf sur le Toit or le Monocle. An atheist, Jew, divorced, and lesbian,
she was a perfect target for the judges when the financial scandal erupted in 1928. Convicted in 1930, she was sent to the womens prison until July 1935.
There are unfortunately few documents to round out these observations. Suffice it
to say that the homosexuality of a suspect was regularly noted in police reports, where it
416. AN, F7 14840.
417. It is quite probable that people who were written up for various misdemeanors (drugs,
theft, prostitution, etc.) were also reported as being homosexuals, if they were. In his book Chez les
mauvais garons (Paris, R. Saillard, 1938, 221 pages), Michel du Coglay asserts that, of
250,000 homosexuals in the Paris region, the police had files on 20,000 to 25,000. These figures are
no currently verifiable, as there are no relevant archives.
418. AN, F7 14840.
342

was seen as an aggravating circumstance, even if it was not the reason for the police
interest in the first place.
Homosexuality and prostitution: military surveillance

The links between homosexuality and prostitution are difficult to analyze, for
there are few traces of police surveillance. Female prostitution undoubtedly made up the
vast majority of the files because it was regulated and that allows for easier monitoring.
The boys mostly worked independently, in the street. They were thus harder to track,
especially as many of them were amateurs who only occasionally prostituted themselves.
However, there are some scattered references to male prostitution. For example, on
February 10, 1914, the Minister of the Interior sent a note to the prefects prohibiting any
person owning a residential hotel or furnished rooms, a caf, cabaret, bar or public house,
from allowing into their establishment on a regular basis, for the purpose of engaging in
prostitution, girls or women of vice or individuals of unusual morals.419
In fact, police surveillance of homosexuals was focused on certain quite precise
areas where law and order and state security could be threatened. The archives420 reveal
that very close monitoring, using methods similar to those used by the English police, was
in effect in the French ports in order to keep an eye on relations between sailors and
civilians. It should be emphasized that homosexuality was only of secondary importance
in the monitoring of maritime locales; files were kept on homosexual sailors just as they
were on communist sailors, and sometimes establishments suspected of harboring one or
the other category are listed together. Unlike in England or Germany, the search for
homosexual sailors (and civilians) was not an aim in itself: these individuals were not
reproached for a sexual preference which simply exposed them to scorn; rather, like frequenting prostitutes, homosexuality was seen as a sign of poor character. The problem, in
both cases, was the habit of frequenting seedy establishments, and soliciting in the
streets. Moreover, and this is what mattered most, homosexuals talk: wherever they meet
with a partner, in a hotel or on the street, they become chummy and might become chatty.
The military authorities were afraid of the sailors saying too much, and giving away state
secrets, as well as whatever propaganda their lovers might pass along.
Police reports are available for a period from 1927 to 1932, covering the cities of
Toulon, Brest and Lorient large naval ports and naval bases. The reports were written
by the special police station of the city concerned; some were intended to share information with other commissariats in order to coordinate the search for suspects (between
Toulon and Cannes, Toulon and Draguignan); some were notes to the naval authorities. In
addition, police reports were sent each month to the prefect, who would send them to the
Ministry of the Interior under the title, Surveillance to identify civilian and military
homosexuals. Thereafter, the Ministry of the Interior might communicate to the Ministry for the Navy the names of suspect sailors. The reports usually bore similar captions:
Homosexuals, Homosexuals in the Marines, Incidents of Pederasty. Most of the
monthly reports were made up exclusively of lists of names, distinguishing civilian and
military homosexuals, and the suspicions that were entertained in regard to each individual, the place in which he was discovered, the charges that could be levied against him.
419. AN, F7 14663.
420. AN, F7 13960 (2): pederasty in maritime circles (1927-1932).
343

In certain cases, the surveillance work is described and the police officer charged with the
report often allows himself to comment on the homosexuality of the suspect and his practices. They were generally categorized as passive or active homosexuals.
Like the soldiers of the Guard in England, the sailors, the blue collars, had the
advantage of a specific romantic allure. The glamour of the uniform, a fascination with
travel, and sexual availability combined to keep the myth alive. One police report notes
that: The sailor, whether hes a hunk or a little cutie, is particularly sought after and a
clandestine industry has developed to exploit this taste.421 Most of the homosexuals in
the military were in the navy, and they took advantage of shore leave to earn a little easy
money and various other perks. One report notes that many sailors from one vessel
earned a lot of money in Cannes and Nice, working as fags.422 Another sailor, George
Baldassi, spent his shore leaves in the company of notorious homosexuals from whom he
accepted, as the price of his shameful favors, drinks, food, cigarettes and cash.423
The sum received varied between 15 and 20 francs for fellatio or masturbation and
40 to 50 francs for a night. Soliciting might be direct, but some had pimps or received
regular customers. Sometimes the scene was just a set-up for robbery, often by pick-pocketing. 424 The prostitution was often not formal: the sailor did not ask for a specific
amount of money before leaving with his customer; the remuneration was implied and
the client would give the sailor money as a gift, not as payment for sexual favors. For this
reason, payment was not always guaranteed. Sometimes, moreover, the sailor would not
accept money and was satisfied to let his partner pay for a meal, a show and a room. The
sailor might even be paid if he refused sodomy or another favor, apparently in order to
make sure he kept his mouth shut and to avoid a change of humor, as a sailor who flew
into a rage could easily attack his partner. Indeed, none of the sailors claimed to be homosexual, and most explained that they engaged in prostitution solely to make some money.
The quartermaster of the destroyer George Leloup was surprised on May 15, 1932,
at 00:30, in Toulon in the company of a known homosexual, and vehemently denied the
assignation. The police officers saw this as obviously bad faith, just an attempt to avoid
getting his friend in trouble and thus losing his desired and shameful services.425 Indeed,
the police surveillance did make these rendezvous more complicated and the sailors
friends employed various dilatory tactics in order to protect their partners.
Some of the sailors engaged in homosexual acts only occasionally; others made a
virtual second job of it and admitted to going out with many inverts, or had one designated friend. Lastly, certain civilians got their names on the lists when they made
advances on sailors who were not interested. One German, Alfred Pockrandt, followed an
18-year-old sailor into a urinal in Toulon, and at the moment when he was urinating,
grabbed him426 Shocked, the sailor left, screaming at the importunate one; he, terrified,
called to a policeman for help! Pockrandt good-naturedly explained that he detested
women, and liked to masturbate.
421. Information report on clandestine prostitution of the States sailors in diverse establishments in the capital.
422. Report dated 14 March 1928 (Brest).
423. Report dated 14 September 1932 (Toulon).
424. Report dated 23 January 1932 (Toulon).
425. Report dated 17 June 1932 (Toulon).
426. Report dated 19 May 1932 (Toulon).
344

This shows a clear difference between England and Germany. The homosexual is
not perceived as a criminal in power and he calls on the police when he fears he will be
attacked. However, it is unlikely that this attitude was widespread, not because homosexuals were afraid of having a police record but because, if they had any social standing,
they feared that word would get out.
And the police reports named everyone who was suspect, without always having
irrefutable evidence of their homosexuality. One Eugene Boulch thus refused the advances
of two civilians, but he was fully cognizant that his own conduct was not beyond
reproach: While denying that he was an active homosexual, [he] admitted to having
acted somewhat carelessly in going to Bonavita and Lafitte. He promised to be more circumspect in the future.427 In fact, any sailor on leave in Toulon was a potential delinquent. Visiting certain places or people of dubious reputation, and showing suspicious
attitudes, were all it took to confirm the assumption that he was a homosexual.
Homosexual civilians that were reported by the police do not fall into any one category; every age group is represented, between the ages of about 17 and 50; the suspects
professions are also varied, but most were working class and lower middle-class. The
workmen hung out at the same establishments as the sailors and frequently worked at the
port, making it easy to establish casual acquaintanceships. These relations were more
likely to go unnoticed than those that took place downtown, where a discussion between
a sailor and a well-off man, generally late in the evening, would readily catch the attention
of the police.
As a case in point, a retired consul initially gave a false name when he was arrested,
then he admitted, not without a touch of humor, to being an invert, but said that above
all he had to think of his reputation.428 These men often preferred to act in a city where
they were not known. However, the police regarded certain suspects as notorious
inverts: either well-known men of the city, or men who had already been arrested a few
years or a few months before. There was in fact a whole homosexual harbor subculture
that barely bothered to hide, whose members knew each other, and many of whom took
suggestive nicknames like Zaza, Mauricette, Ramona, Georgette, or Loulou.
The January 23, 1932 police report shows photographs of several inverts and transvestites who enjoyed a vogue in Toulon analogous to that of the great courtesans. For
these men, the port (especially that of Toulon) was their hunting ground, a private
preserve for homosexual pickups. The police quote, for example, Robert Lafitte, one of
busiest passive homosexuals in Toulon: obliged to operate with more and more discretion and finding increasingly slim pickings, Lafitte fulminated against the police,
reproaching them for the destruction of what he regarded as one of the principal attractions of the city and one of the causes of the hotel industrys success.429
Some, like Andre Brissand, far from being shy, accentuated their eccentricities in a
bid for attention: he would purposely exaggerate his effeminate face and cynically glorify
in being a passive pederast.430 In the same way, according to the police report, Christian
Brard, a painter,431 George David, writer, and many young men would gather at Clos
Mayol in the company of young sailors. They were almost open in displaying their vice
428. Report dated 19 December 1931 (Toulon).
431. Brard was in Cocteaus circle, which may be what is referred to here.
345

and would walk the streets dressed in eccentric costumes. They spent the winter in Paris
and the summer on the Riviera.432 They had no trouble admitting to their homosexual
proclivities, but they refused to sign any declarations. These almost openly declared
homosexuals were not ashamed, but were deeply unhappy with the police procedures:
they resented the surveillance, and often felt their private lives were invaded, and they are
sometimes constrained to go down to the station to testify, in a humiliating procedure.
Alongside the local Toulon people there were those who were just passing through, who
chose Toulon because of its sexual advantages. Andre Chanvril was one of the latter. This
civil servant frequently comes to Toulon, with the sole aim of meeting friends there, to
satisfy his perverse instincts.433 And the port naturally attracted many foreigners, who
are well represented in the police reports.434
How did these homosexuals recognize one another? First of all, they used the vest
or jacket pocket handkerchief to signal their sexual preferences; a handkerchief that was
wide and folded over signaled a passive; if it was divided in two parts, it meant equally
passive or active; divided into three, it meant active. Then, the simplest mechanism was to
go strolling at nightfall, in certain parts of Toulon where sailors congregated, places that
were well known to the homosexuals and to the police. La Place de la Libert, la Place
dArmes and la Place Saint-Roch were favorite meeting places, but there was also Vauban
Avenue and the boulevard de Tess between 7:00 and 9:00 pm. Cruising by car, one
might try the boulevard du Nord.
Having picked up a sailor, one generally went to a bar in the city, some of which
principally served homosexual customers: at the bar Seguin, in Nice, in the vault, the
owner would pass behind the chairs in a certain way to indicate that one could go up to
the rooms. The reports emphasize that it was difficult to give a list of these bars for the
addresses and the names changed every season. In Marseilles, in the bar Chez tienne, the
owner kept a list of sailors, served as a go-between, and took a commission of 10%.
Excelsior and the Caf Suisse were also sites for homosexual assignations. In Brest, there
were the Caf des Pingouins and the Caf du Dpart. For Toulon, we have an almost
exhaustive list of bars: in 1929, there were the Marna bar, Jacky, the de la Rade a
virtual commodities exchange for naval products, the Cigale, Camille, and the Dubois
dance hall; in 1930 the Zanzi-Vermouth, Chez Madeleine, and the dance hall Finimondi
(ex-Dubois, so famous that passengers from the English steamers serving the lines to the
Far East would go there just out of curiosity); in 1931, the bar Neptunia, the snack bar at
the theater, the Regence, the Palace, and the Claridge.
Then, the two men would go to a hotel; there again, the same names keep coming
up: the Hotel Belvedere, the Terminus (on the boulevard de Tess), the hotel du Nord, the
hotel de France (on place Puget), the Hotel Giraud (rue de lHumilit), and the Hotel des
Ngociants (rue de la Rpublique). Apparently the personnel there were unusually
obliging. They were also closely watched by the police, who frequently raided the rooms.
Some ran classified advertisements, in the newspaper Frou-Frou, for example.
One could also meet sailors at dance halls like the Dancing Populaire in Toulon.
Others kept address books with lists of sailors who were sexually available, and made

434. Four Italians, three English, two Dutch, two Chilians, two Spaniards, a Bulgarian, an American and a German were identified.
346

their own contacts directly: [the matre dhtel] was an active pederast and had a book
with the names and addresses of sailors at the flight center in Frjus-Saint-Raphal.435
The police methods were based on a good knowledge of the homosexual rendezvous places and their tactics: in addition to making arrests in public places or hotels
used by prostitutes, most were caught in the urinals, the traditional meeting place. All
these individuals were identified during round ups carried out on February 24 and March
11, inside the WC at the Champ-de-Mars, where homosexuals have been meeting each
other for some time, their shameful conduct causing protests from the inhabitants of the
district.436
One might be accosted inside or outside the urinals in various ways. Yvan Philip
was surprised near a urinal in intimate conversation with a notorious invert, which
made him a suspect as well. Similarly, Joseph Barch was challenged caught in the urinal at
the Champ-de-Mars. He had gone in there at 20:15 in the company of two civilians whose
hesitant step gave the impression that they were on their way to a rendezvous. At 21:10
the inspectors entered, but found the men in proper positions; their explanations were
embarrassed, but they denied being homosexual.
Staying overlong in the urinal was certainly a tip-off for the police. For the two suspects who claimed to have gone in only to satisfy natures call, they concluded that the
visit was peculiarly late and at the very least abnormal in duration, approximately thirty
minutes; plus there was the obvious immorality of those who were assiduous in their
use of urinals. 437
Sometimes people were stopped by chance; two police officers on bicycle making
their rounds on the boulevard du Nord once stopped in front of a parked car and thus discovered two men going at it. They were arrested and sentenced to two months at the
prison of Toulon.
Alternatively, they might pick up a known homosexual and track down his
partners; thus a very close watch is kept on [the] entourage [of Guilhot Lafitte].438
Some homosexuals were also identified by denunciation: one student denounced both a
notary and a professor of Greek as pederasts.439
But the police also had an arsenal of supposed psychological data that would
enable them to easily identify inverts. The reports dwell on physical characteristics:
Based on his looks and where he hangs out, he appears to be likely to engage in homosexuality.440 Effeminate, he softens the features of his face by clever use of make-up, depilation and correction of the eyebrows by an arched line using a soft lead pencil.441 Large,
thin, effeminate face and gestures, [he] represents the typical passive homosexual.442
The police always guard against any question by taking a critical view: the acts are
shameful, unnatural. The reports affect to use scientific terminology, which lends a
certain air of legitimacy to the police surveillance. By adapting the current discourse, the

436. Report dated 26 April 1932 (Toulon).
437. Ibid.
438. Report dated 21 March 1932 (Toulon).
439. Report dated 18 March 1929 (Renseignements gnraux, Paris).
442. Report dated 26 April 1932 (Toulon); the phrase typical passive homosexual comes up
frequently.
347

police assign themselves a role in the fight against perversion. A report casts doubt on the
word of Augustin Garnier, who denies having slept with a sailor, because he is a homosexual fundamentally inverted [!] for which the blue collar is a derivative of his morbid
lasciviousness.443 Very often homosexual themselves used medical terms: I am a homosexual since birth and there is nothing I can do against this vice which is incurable for me,
as it is for so many other individuals. 444 [The suspect] says he is impotent, and is
therefore inclined to take his pleasure with men.445 The reports show a very close
interest in suspects sexual practices; they always emphasize whether they are passive
or active homosexuals; they distinguish the type of act requested, but they are also
aware of couples, of lasting relationships.446
The French police thus spoke very differently than the British: it goes beyond a discussion of criminal investigation to become a tool in the regulation of social life. The
report from the chief of police of Toulon and the Seyne to the Director of General
Security447 is presented in the form of a virtual summary of all that was known (and of all
the prejudices) in those days about homosexuality. It distinguishes the native invert
from perversion acquired by contact or frequentation, and notes that the obscure
though real causes lie in the morbid degeneracy of a considerable number of individuals.
The author also claims that, the actual invert, who generally comes from the well-to-do
classes, has a medical problem and acts out of instinct, out of physiological need rather
than vice. He is not dangerous, but effeminate and soft. They tend to have a circle of
males around them whose perversion is acquired, former convicts, soldiers, real public
dangers, and various lowlifes. In support of this assertion, an article dated March 1929 in
Number 3 of the Annals of Forensic Medicine is cited, and the testimony of an army
medical officer on the question of tattooing.448
In addition to what one could call ordinary police reports, more serious affairs were
discussed that more clearly reveal the links between the national navy and prostitution
and that expose the circuit that existed between Paris and the French ports. In Brest, a
survey was conducted among sailors who were engaging in prostitution in the capital.
One sailor had gone to Paris several times on leave; he lived there with his lover, who fed
him and gave him pocket money. He was also offered good money (200 francs) for his services by one of his lovers friends. That was the extent of his activities: I also went to rue
de Lappe, but I did not do anything there.449
Two of his friends were polled, too. They went to the Bousquet dance hall in Paris
(on rue de Lappe); they were often approached by homosexuals who took them to a hotel
where they engaged in pederasty. Often networks were formed, starting with one sailor
who became the friend of a Parisian. He would then recruit other sailors and bring them
to Paris; walking into various bars, they quickly discovered the advantages conferred by
443. Ibid.
444. Report dated 7 August 1930 (Toulon).
447. Report dated 23 January 1932 (Toulon).
448. Some of them indicated homosexual practices in various ways: a tattoo of a boot on the
foreskin, for homosexuals of the lowest classes, a tattoo of a star with five or eight points marked (or
not) with one to three blue dots, sometimes with the word Love, inscribed in the deltoid region,
right or left; and different signs inscribed on body parts that are normally hidden, such as blue dots
on the eyelid or blue spots on the hands where the thumbs meet the index fingers.
449. Report dated 23 April 1929 (Brest).
348

their uniforms. The sailor Roger Adrot went to Paris on leave and visited a popular dance
hall; he met a man there and understood immediately that he was being flirted with. He
accepted his advances, expecting to get some money from him.450 A more serious
incident featured some apprentices from the training ship Armorique. In Paris, a pimp
engaged minor sailors during their holidays for prostitution. The boys solicited at the
Tho restaurant, 86 rue de Bondy, and at the Noaygues dance hall, rue de Lappe. They
then took their customers to hotels. Several of the young sailors recruited new comrades.
The reports says that they thus propagate among the crews a vice that is already unfortunately far too widespread.451 This all tainted the reputation of the navy and the army,
and therefore the honor of France, and the public was upset.
The senator of the English Channel region submitted an article452 under the
heading, Must we go on tolerating the scandals of Toulon? He reported that several prefects had simultaneously warned the sailors in their areas about the frequent incidents of
indecency and suggested that the public prosecutors office would be taking up the
matter. It is difficult to believe this was all just a coincidence; these actions must have
been instigated by the Ministry of the Interior. The article ends by asking: Is M. Tardieu
aware of the repulsive excesses that dishonor Marseilles, Toulon, Nice and our other
ports? La Croix published an article on September 13, 1929, Lets watch out for our
sailors moral well-being, warning that in Toulon several night clubs, especially popular
with foreigners, are the scene of orgies like those that the friends of the Kaiser were
known for in Corfu, a few years before the war and that infamous touts, stationed at the
unloading docks, pick up young sailors on leave and bring them there. The author of the
article, Commander G. Mabille Duchesne, stressed the lack of police control and the
inability of the maritime authorities to intervene in matters involving civilians, and asked
for better cooperation between the various authorities.
These articles reflect a new awareness among the public of the problem of male
prostitution related to military personnel. One might wonder whether these concerns led
to the increased surveillance, or whether it was the new measures that were being taken
in the maritime regions that brought the problem to light.
There is insufficient documentary evidence to say for sure what caused the police
surveillance, but for our purposes, it is enough to know that the special monitoring of
homosexuals who went with sailors began in Toulon around 1925. Several reports refer to
instructions from the prefect of Toulon dating from February 2, 1925. The citys chief of
police, Mr. Fabre, in a report dated June 24, 1927 addressed to the prefect of Toulon,
recalls that, since he had arrived on the job, he had noticed the rather large number of
homosexuals existing in that city. He had therefore written a report on December 16, 1924
inviting counter measures. One may thus suppose that the prefectural directives of 1925
were direct consequences of this report. The police chief furthermore remarked that in
agreement with you he had since then mounted a very tight monitoring of establishments frequented by homosexuals and provided, progressively as they were discovered,
lists of the names of civilians and military men with their complete description. These
details suggest that no particular monitoring had been conducted before then, and that it
450. Report dated 14 March 1928 (Brest).

451. Report dated 11 December 1929 (Paris).
452. Regrettably, there is no traceable attribution or reference (report from 3 January 1930,
Toulon).
349

had not been customary to keep tabs on homosexuals, at least not in Toulon. Several
homosexuals arrested by the police also complained about this new atmosphere, protesting against what they considered to be arbitrary and unprecedented persecution.
In his December 1, 1931 report, Mr. Fabre explained in detail how he understood his
mission: It is up to the public powers to limit the danger which threatens our young
people and to stop it from spreading. Allowing it to run free would bring major and irreparable harm to every sector of society in our country. Our role is to monitor, pursue, and
indict homosexuals who show up in Toulon and Seyne. It seems that the new police chief
was behind this change in tone and that the subject of homosexuality was a particular
concern to him, personally. He noted for example that: [his] attention had not been
diverted from this situation for one minute. That is a surprising assertion since this wide
scale police action was not supported by any legal basis: Notwithstanding the absence of
applicable regulations, I exerted a semi-official pressure, which was fairly effective, on the
tenants of those houses where homosexuals were known to reside: seven out of eight
were found to be involved453 (my emphasis). The police chief obviously regretted that he
could not pursue the legal consequences of the discoveries made during these unauthorized searches in the homosexual circles of Toulon. He further remarked that no action
could be taken against the very many civilian inverts and that the sailors could only be
brought to the attention of the military authorities for disciplinary measures.
The question of homosexual bars came up on several occasions; for instance, the
prefect of the Var wrote to the Minister of the Interior, saying: I do not see how I can
legally close the establishments on the list that has been provided to me.454 The civil
authorities settled for pressuring the tenants in some semi-official way so that they would
do whatever they had to, to get rid of the homosexuals themselves. The military authorities on the other hand could assign soldiers and sailors to keep an eye on establishments
known to be homosexual rendezvous points. The vice-admiral maritime prefect of Toulon
also mentioned the regrettable legislation which made any efforts to crack down inoperative. Except in very rare instances, cases against French civilians resulted in dismissals and acquittals. It would be highly desirable that the texts in force be modified in
order to allow an effective repression of homosexuality.455 The available documents
show that the only times civilians were convicted was in the context of public indecency
and inciting minors to vice. The December 1, 1931 report gives a list of inverts that have
been identified, then enumerates the convictions for public indecency: in 1929, there were
24 French civilian inverts, 12 foreigners, 35 sailors or quarter-masters, and one candidate
in the marine reserves, for a total of 72 men. In 1930, 37 French civilian inverts were listed,
with 3 foreigners, 19 sailors or quartermasters, a sergeant, and a soldier from the 8th regiment of Senegalese riflemen, or 61 total. From January to October, 1931, 28 French civilian
inverts, 5 foreigners and 8 sailors were listed, a total of 41.
The sentences varied according to the circumstances. A first conviction for public
indecency might merit two months in prison and a fine of 25 francs, with four months in
prison and a 50-franc fine for a second offense. Sentences clearly went up for repeated
offenses. First sentences might be four months in prison, suspended, or two months in
prison, firm. The harshest sentence (six months in imprison) was given for molesting a
454. Report dated 30 June 1927 (Draguignan).
455. Note dated 6 May 1927.
350

ten-year-old child. Most sentences varied between two and six months with or without
suspension, sometimes accompanied by fines. Various factors could enter into the calculation, including, for sailors, a record of insubordination in the service. One sailor was
stripped of his rank twice, the second time for propositions of a certain type that are
unnatural and immoral. When he continued to entertain relations with a sixteen-yearold sailor, he was sentenced to three months in prison and discharged from the navy.456 In
Lorient, a lieutenant commander who became the object of too much gossip ended up
admitting the facts and requested permission to retire. In fact, it was the military who
were most affected by the surveillance. Civilians could not be convicted directly for their
homosexuality. But when the police stopped anyone they could identify individuals and,
if they were later incriminated in crimes or misdemeanors, they could be sure the judges
would not be lenient.
Two conclusions can be drawn from these various reports. There was no concerted
repression of homosexuality by the civil, military and police authorities. Nevertheless, it
seems that in the harbor towns, special instructions were given by the security services to
the prefects of the maritime departments to monitor homosexual activities.457 These
orders testify above all to an ongoing confusion between homosexuality and subversion.
This means that, among those listed as inverts, foreigners were subjected to special
measures and decrees of expulsion would be delivered as soon as possible. Spaniards,
Italians and others were among those caught. The consequences of such surveillance
could be very serious. One Italian workman who was about to receive naturalized citizenship was expelled. It seems that the case of a foreign homosexual who had already
been granted naturalization also came up, and the prefect of the Var deplored that,
according to the laws then on the books, it was not possible to strip him of his new
nationality. Once again we see that the civil authorities compensated, when they could,
for the lack of legislation on homosexuality by eliminating wholesale those homosexuals
who were most vulnerable.
The foreign homosexual was considered most dangerous, as he might be a spy: I
will most particularly endeavor to discover foreigners, especially those of German nationality,
who strike up relationships with navy personnel.458 In the same vein, reports from the
Ministry of the Interior frequently expressed concern about communist and antimilitarist propaganda, communist and homosexual propaganda in the military ports, and
public establishments that are popular with sailors who are communists or homosexuals. In 1927, the Navy Ministry forwarded to the Ministry of the Interior lists of
bars, and communist and homosexual places of assignation. This continual association
implies that the French authorities considered these two activities to be closely linked
and liable to undermine discipline in the army and the navy. An excellent example is that
of Joseph Dubois, who ran the Dubois dance hall in Toulon. The police report of
December 12, 1928 described the dance hall as a rendezvous point for all kinds of dubious
individuals, homosexuals and fugitives from justice. The owner was an anarchist, an
active protester who overtly preached antimilitarism. He would buy LHumanit and leave
it on the tables for customers to read.
456. Report dated 24 April 1929 (Toulon).

457. De la pdrastie en la marine (7 December 1929, Paris).
458. Report dated 11 February 1929 (Nice). My emphasis.
351

Homosexuality was used for political ends by all sides. Never mind the deleterious
effects this may have particularly on the morals of young men, and especially Navy
recruits the blue collar apparently being a stimulus we have to consider that it gives
a boost to the Communists who use it for propaganda purposes.459 In fact, on January 15
and 23, 1930, the socialist newspaper Le Rappel du Morbihan decried a homosexual scandal
which incriminated a naval officer among others. The newspaper insinuated that
attempts had been made to quash the story: A scandal, certainly, but an even worse
scandal if this affair were kept quiet for the sole reason that the accused is in a position of
influence.460 If today we break the rule of silence which we have observed up to now, it
is because of the efforts that have been made to keep a lid on this scandal.461
Homosexuality, in the communist as well as the socialist press, was regarded as a
vice of the privileged classes, one means among many of exploiting the lower classes.
However, as we have seen, it was mainly sailors who prostituted themselves, for obvious
pecuniary reasons. But homosexuality within the navy was not limited to the lower ranks,
as the Barn affair shows. An article in the November 28, 1928 LHumanit reveals a scandal
on board the aircraft carrier Barn; a sailor lodged a complaint against the officers for
special morals. It seems that he was attacked by sixteen opium smokers. According to
the newspaper, after eight days of maneuvers in the waters off Bizerte, the crew was ready
for a break. The officers, aiming to provide some entertainment, decided to create a jazz,
which the crew dubbed a pedo-jazz. After a wild evening, a sailor was forced. The
victim was arrested and locked up. The newspaper concluded: Here is a cynical display
of the morals of the degenerate bourgeois men who command our navy comrades..... Such
acts are representative of the fascistic and reactionary bourgeoisie in action.
The few elements from the investigators report place the event in context. The
victim was a notorious Communist, and the police report described him as an effeminate homosexual who wore cologne and was very concerned about his personal
appearance. To the police, he was a damaged and dangerous individual and furthermore
he had been sentenced in 1927 to one year in prison for desertion during peace times. In
addition, it seems that this sailor had a relationship with a naval officer, who had already
been tagged as a homosexual in 1924 and 1925. This officer, moreover, was a drug user. As
far as the police were concerned, this report was highly dangerous from the national point
of view; intimacy between an officer and a simple sailor was in itself damaging to the hierarchy and to internal discipline, and tarnished the honor of the navy. Moreover, relations
between an officer who was a drug addict and therefore not very reliable, who was in fact
perhaps too talkative, and a communist sailor would seem to be the very incarnation of
the civil and military authorities worst fears with regard to homosexual relations. The
police report cite the presence on board this ship of a veritable nest of homosexual
sailors ... who mutually appeased their disgusting passions in truly scandalous scenes.462
From all this it is easy to imagine that the jazz evening got out of hand; whether the
sailor was a victim or not is more difficult to determine. For the police the issue was clear:
the sailor was in contact with lHumanit which represented him as a victim of the maritime authorities. This made it into a matter of antimilitarist propaganda under cover of

460. Le Rappel du Morbihan, 15 January 1930.
461. Ibid.
462. Report dated 1 December 1928.
352

pederasty. Homosexuals and Communists were working together, the latter using the
former to disseminate their propaganda. On the other hand, for the Communists, the
denunciation of homosexual abuses was an opportunity to cast aspersions on the officer
ranks, who were only servicing their vices and exploiting their crew for sexual ends.
Homosexuality is only a pretext under which to stigmatize an adversary.
What conclusions can we draw from these documents? The police reports give a
concrete idea of the homosexual subculture in the port cities, which appears to have been
quite organized. They also reveal various practices of surveillance that bordered on illegality. Beyond the ports, it is difficult to draw any conclusions as to police activities, since
there is little documentary evidence covering the remainder of France.
***
Thus, the 1920s may have been years of relative liberation for homosexuals, but
they were not free from concern. A close look at the efforts that were made to control
homosexuality eliminates any notion of laxity on the part of the authorities. In England,
the controls were tightened and became more systematic in 1931. However, the British
police, zealous as they were, could only prevail in the most obvious cases: those which
occurred on the public thoroughfare and which violated morals, generally involving male
prostitutes, soldiers of the Guard or unrepentant johns. There was little they could do
about acts committed in private, between consenting adults, unless someone made a
denunciation.
In Germany, under the Weimar Republic and contrary to the generally accepted
view, the repression was indeed real. There was hardly a dip in the number of convictions,
and the draft legislation attests to the weak current of sympathy for homosexuality. Even
if the leftist parties were partly won over to the homosexual cause, homosexual lobbying
efforts for the most part failed. Germanys reputation for tolerance in the 1920s can only
be chalked up to specific cases like Berlin, where the police were benevolent, as the statistics attest, and where homosexual manifestations were tolerated. Once more, except in
the case of denunciation, acts made between consenting adults and in private had little
risk of leading to the courthouse.
Lastly, while France rightly enjoyed a reputation of tolerance in the absence of
criminal laws, there were still some concerns. This impunity irritated many who sought
other means of getting rid of homosexuals altogether, targeting those who were most vulnerable or who called attention to themselves by other deviant practices such as drug
use. Homosexual propaganda remained severely restricted by the censor, while the close
watch on maritime and communist areas legitimized a meticulous surveillance of homosexuals in the port cities.
These larger trends tend to be overlooked: homosexuals want to believe the
Roaring Twenties were characterized by a great liberation of morals, and tolerance on
the part of the masses. The Depression of the 1930s exposed the tensions that still lurked
at the heart of society. Homosexuals saw their position brutally shaken. This came as a
horrific shock for all those who believed in the infinite progress of human reason. The
superficial tolerance, fragile and illusory, was of very limited duration. The backlash was
all the more terrible.
353
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE END OF A DREAM: THE GERMAN MODEL BLOWS UP
In the 1920s, Germanys militant activism and its flamboyant homosexual scene
had seemed like a model for European homosexuals. However, the tolerance was partial
and never extended beyond certain large cities like Berlin. Thus, the Nazi policy with
regard to homosexuals was not a complete break with what had gone before.
In this area as in others, Nazism exploited preexisting trends in the population.
However, it considerably increased the repression, issuing hysterical rhetoric on homosexuality and giving concrete examples to reinforce a great number of the homophobic
fantasies that may have been suggested in the previous years. We cannot present here an
exhaustive assessment of homosexuality under the Nazi regime, many details of which
remain obscure.463 Nevertheless, a study of the years 1933-1939 will enable us to get at one
particularly painful question: how could the country that symbolized homosexual liberation also be the site of such intense persecution, a reversal that took place in just a few
years time? Here, we will try to analyze the destruction of that model (rather than
describing anti-homosexual repression under Third Reich as a whole, which extended
beyond 1939), while showing how it affected neighboring countries.464
463. After the war, 175 was still in force. Most homosexuals had gone back in the closet during
the war and were reluctant to drop their anonymity afterwards, given the unfavorable climate. Those
homosexuals who had been deported were shy to complain, both because of the pain such recollections brought up and because they were considered the least glorious victims. Some of them kept
the real reason for their internment secret even from their families and close friends.
464. For the period after 1939, see especially Rdiger Lautmann, Seminar: Gesellschaft und Homosexualitt (Frankfurt-am-Main, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 1977, 570 pages), Heinz-Dieter Schilling,
Schwule und Faschismus (Berlin, Elefanten Press, 1983, 174 pages), Burckardt Jellonek, Homosexuelle unter
dem Hakenkreuz (Paderborn, Schningh, 1990, 354 pages), Claudia Schoppmann, Nationalsocialistische
Sexualpolitik und weibliche Homosexualitt (Berlin, Centaurus, 1991, 286 pages), and the collection of
archives edited by Gnther Grau, Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany, 1933-1945
(1993; London, Cassell & Cie, 1995, 308 pages).
355

1933-1935: DESTRUCTION OF THE GERMAN MODEL
The Nazis came to power on January 30, 1933 and in the first few years the German
model was wiped out: the homosexual scene was destroyed, the organizations and the
newspapers disappeared, and homosexuals slipped back into the shadows. The
repression increased day by day, without following any predetermined plan. It was only
after The Night of the Long Knives and the vast homophobic public opinion campaign
following it that the legislation was updated to reflect the new attitude.
Youre Fired
Hitlers advent to power was immediately followed by an anti-homosexual
repression campaign.465 The Prussian Minister of the Interior, Hermann Goering, enacted
three decrees to fight public indecency. The first related to prostitution and venereal diseases, the second one closed bars that were used for indecent purposes. This definition
included bars frequented only or mainly by people who practice unnatural sex acts.466
The third decree prohibited kiosks, bookshops, and libraries from selling or lending
books or any publications which, either because they comprise illustrations of nudes, or
by virtue of their title or their contents, are likely to produce erotic effects on those who
vie them.467 They risked a fine, or loss of their license or loan authorization. Obviously,
the homosexual periodicals fell under this rubric.
These decrees were enough to dissolve the homosexual subculture, and quickly. In
the first months following Hitlers arrival, most of the homosexual bars and clubs were
closed in all the major towns of Germany. Goerings second decree, dated February 23,
1933, made the repression official.468 It ordered the closing of brothels and other establishments of that genre as well as bars frequented by homosexuals: Such establishments
cannot be tolerated anymore. The revival of Germany depends, in the final analysis, on the
moral revival of the German people.469 Consequently, suspicious bars were watched
closely; if any infraction were confirmed, their licenses were withdrawn.
The consequences were immediate. On March 3, 1933, Berliner Tageblatt published
an article announcing the closing of the best-known homosexual and lesbian bars and
clubs in Berlin.470 However, the bars did not all disappear at once, and the police used
some of them to continue their surveillance. Working class taverns, where homosexual
465. The Reichstag fire (27 February 1933) served as a pretext for the elimination of the regimes
main opponents. The event came to be seen as providential. It has long been suspected that the
national-socialists, and especially Goering, were behind it. Nonetheless, there is no proof. Goebbels
seems to corroborate in his journal the hypothesis that the culprit was just a simple pyromaniac from
Holland, a communist sympathizer named Marinus van der Lubbe. It is possible that he was used by
the Nazis to give Hitler a pretext for eliminating his communist adversaries. The Nazi leaders
accused the communists of having set fire to the Reichstag and arrested 4,000 KPD militants. The
communist press was banned and the social-democrat press was shut down for 15 days. The fire also
provided a pretext for the signing of a presidential decree on 28 February abrogating the constitutional guaranties of personal liberty. See Marlis Steinert, Hitler, Paris, Fayard, 1991, 710 pages.
466. Cited in Hidden Holocaust?, op. cit., p.26.
467. Ibid.
468. Already in 1932, the chief of political police from the Berlin prefecture, Rudolf Diels (who,
after 1933, became the first head of the Gestapo), had banned homosexual dance parties and gatherings.
356
The End of a Dream: The German Model Blows Up

prostitution had been frequent in the 1920s, either closed or changed their style. Christopher Isherwood testified to the evolution of his favorite bar, Cozy Corner, in 1933:
For the last few years, politics had more and more divided the boys in the bars. They
joined one or another of the street gangs which were encouraged (although not officially
recognized) by the Nazis, Communists or nationalists. From now on the non-Nazis were
in danger but many of them changed camp and were integrated ... gay bars of all kinds
were subject to raids henceforth and many were closed.471
Homosexuals had to turn to the urinals once again as the only place to meet. This
recourse was, of course, fraught with danger because of the police surveillance.472
A new wave of raids in the bars took place after June 1934, in conjunction with
Rhms putsch, as The Times said on December 11, 1934. On December 10, busloads of SS
men armed with machine-guns raided three small bars in the western part of the city. The
customers, some of whom wore SA uniforms, were arrested as were all the personnel and
were taken along to police headquarters. According to the newspaper, these bars had a
specific reputation and the raid was intended to complete the clean-up of June 30.
On December 19, The Times announced that raids had been going on all over
Germany for a week, and that several hundred people had been arrested. This operation
was touched off by a trivial accident: about fifteen days before, a private party was being
held in an apartment in Berlin. The hostess was the only woman present. In the wee hours
of the morning, two of the guests accidentally knocked a flowerpot from the balcony into
the street. The object struck a passer by and attracted the attention of the police, who
went up to the apartment and found many prominent Berliners, including several
members of the NSDAP and Russian migrs. The search of the apartment unearthed
political documents concerning the events of June 30. This discovery impelled the authorities to re-start the clean-up of the milieux associated with the Brownshirts.
Goerings third decree, dated February 24, 1933, targeted obscene publications.
Kiosks, newsstands, exhibits, libraries, or bookshops that held licentious books and periodicals were to be placed under surveillance. The owners had to certify to the police that
they would not offer such publications to their clientele, on penalty of a fine, and the right
to sell or lend publications could be withdrawn. The sixth point of the decree stressed
that the police were in cooperation with the religious authorities in the fight against
obscene publications. This was a continuation of the policy carried out by certain parties,
like the DNVP, under Weimar, in the context of the campaign against pornography and
smut. This decree was welcomed in traditional circles, as an article in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (April 6, 1933) testifies: The Vatican is pleased to see Germanys national
fight against obscene material.473
Following the decree, all homosexual magazines were put out of business. A report
from August 26, 1933, concerning the manufacture, distribution and use of Marxist and
470. Luisen Kasino, Zauberflote, Dorian-Gray, Kleist-Kasino, Nurnberger Diele, Internationale

Diele, Monokel-Bar, Geisha, Mali und Igel, Boral (also called Moses), Kaffee Hohenzollern, Silhouette, Mikado, Hollandais.
252 pages, p.98.
472. To see how the Nazis arrival affected homosexuals in small towns, see Cornelia Limpricht,
Jrgen Mller and Nina Oxenius, Verfhrte Mnner, das Leben der Klner Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich,
Cologne, Volksblatt Verlag, 1991, 146 pages.
357

erotic literature,474 attests that as of that date all the homosexual periodicals ceased to
exist. Significantly, they were lumped together with Marxist and affiliated literature and
periodicals (concerning the youth movements, the trade unions, sports, fashion), heterosexual pornography and erotic literature, the so-called scientific literature on sexuality,
literature on abortion and contraception, and everything that was presented as art, especially the naturist publications.
To complete the destruction of the homosexual scene, the homosexual movements
had to be broken up. The decree on the protection of the people and the State of February 28, 1933 suspended freedoms and allowed the elimination of opposition movements.
Most of the homosexual movements disbanded. On May 6, 1933, Magnus Hirschfelds
Institut fr Sexualwissenschaft was broken into and ransacked by the Nazis; documents
and books from the library were publicly burned on May 10, as well as the works of
Havelock Ellis, Freud and other sexologists. Magnus Hirschfeld was fortunate to be traveling abroad at the time.
Christopher Isherwood, who was present, reported emotionally on this display of
brutality and savagery that marked the end of the great German homosexual movement:
On May 6, the Institute was plundered by a group of a hundred students. They
arrived by truck, early in the morning, with a brass band. Hearing the music Erwin
[Hansen, a communist employee of the Institute] looked out the window and hoping to prevent the damage that obviously was imminent politely asked them to wait
one moment while he went down to open the doors. But the students preferred to
enter as warriors; they broke down the doors and swarmed into the building. They
spent the morning pouring ink on the carpets and the manuscripts and loading the
trucks with books from the Institutes library, including those which had nothing to
do with sex, history books, art journals, etc. In the afternoon a bunch of storm troopers arrived and did a more meticulous search, for they obviously knew what they were
looking for. (It has been suggested, since then, that certain famous members of the
Nazi party had been seen by Hirschfeld and that they were afraid records of their disease, revealing their homosexuality, could be used against them. But, if that were the
case, they surely would have examined the Institutes files more discreetly.)
Christopher was later told that all the really important papers and books had been
carried abroad by friends and envoys of Hirschfeld, not long before. A few days later, the
books and papers that had been seized were burned, as well as a bust of Hirschfeld, on the
square opposite the Opera. Isherwood was among the crowd of onlookers; he managed to
utter the word shame, but not very loud.475
The report of the Nazi newspaper Der Angriff is more concise: A team of German
students yesterday occupied the Institut fr Sexualwissenschaft run by the Jew Magnus
Hirschfeld. This institute which has operated under the cover of scientific purposes and
was protected for fourteen years by the Marxists was simply, as the search revealed
clearly, a den of filth and smut.476 The WhK dissolved in June 1933.477 Hitlers advent
also put an end to Gemeinschaft der Eigenen. Nazi troops ransacked Adolf Brands
house478 and seized all his material, photographs, books, and articles. His publisher, who
produced Der Eigene, had to close.479 The Bund fr Menschenrecht was also a victim and
seems to have gone out of existence in March 1933.480
474. GStA, I.HA, Rep.84a, n 5343.
476. Cited in Livre brun sur lincendie du Reichstag et la terreur hitlrienne [1933], Paris, Tristan Mage
ditions, 1992, 2 vol.
358

The homosexuals all had to find strategies to survive. Some emigrated, others
married. Bruno Balz, who wrote for several homosexual newspapers, married in 1936 after
having served a prison sentence. Gnther Maeder, a former associate of WhK, married in
1940. Certain artists managed to survive, more or less protected by the regime, like the
directors Rolf Hansen and Hans Deppe. Certain homosexual artistic circles survived for a
time, like that of Richard Schultz and that of the producer of the UFA films, Nikolaus
Kaufmann. Traces of the homosexual scene could still be found. In Kassel, a circle of
friends made up of former members of Bund fr Menschenrecht still managed to function
in 1938. In Wurzburg, a homosexual bookshop was found in the address book of an
arrested clergyman; homosexual newspapers were also found in the possession of another
clergyman. However, such discoveries were rare. In less than six months, the German
homosexual scene had been reduced to zilch.
First Victims: Corrupters of Youth and Male Prostitutes

Before the adoption of the new 175, the fight against homosexuality concentrated
on certain particularly visible categories. On February 10, 1934, a decree of the Ministry of
the Interior ordered the regular monitoring of professional criminals and habitual sex
criminals. These measures affected homosexual pedophiles and male prostitutes, among
others. The police were authorized to impose restrictions481 on these criminals, and they
could use preventive custody in the event of not-cooperation.482 The regional police
were to file regular reports on these people to the regional office of the criminal police.
Files on these individuals, with their photographs and their fingerprints, were to be kept
up to date.
Following these measures, a meeting was held in Hamburg on October 5, 1934, to
discuss cooperation between the Office of Youth and the Hitler Youth to address the
problem of Hamburgs main rail station, which was a center of homosexual prostitution.
At this meeting there were clearly two ways of looking at homosexuality. The two Hitler
477. After trying to re-establish the Institute in Paris, Magnus Hirschfeld took refuge in Nice,
where he died 14 May 1935. His intimate friend Karl Giesen committed suicide in 1938. Richard
Linsert died suddenly in early February 1933. Kurt Hiller had fled in March to Frankfurt-am-Main
and was arrested 23 March 1933, but was released five days later. He went back to Berlin and was
arrested again on 2 April, then was released until he was sent to the Oranienburg concentration
camp on 14 July. He got out nine months later; he left Germany and took refuge in Prague, then in
London. He died in 1972. Helene Stcker emigrated in 1933 and was a refugee in the United States,
after passing through Switzerland and Sweden.
478. There were five perquisitions between 3 May and 24 November 1933.
479. His assistant Karl Meier managed to save a small amount of the material. Brand himself was
not worried: unlike Magnus Hirschfeld and Kurt Hiller, he was neither a Jew nor a leftist. Besides, he
had friends within the NSDAP. And finally, he was married. Brand died in 1945, at home, during an
American bombing raid.
480. Its main newspapers, Bltter fr Menschenrecht, Die Freundin, Das Freundschaftsblatt, went out of
print at that time. The publishing house of Friedrich Radszuweit in Potsdam was ransacked. His
adopted son was sent to the Orianenburg concentration camp, where he was assassinated. The
magazine Die Freundschaft also disappeared at that time.
481. In particular, the following were forbidden: change of residence without police authorization, going out at certain hours (11:00 pm to 5:00 am in summer, 11:00 to 6:00 in winter), driving or
using cars or motorcycles, entering certain public places, walking in the parks and woods. See Hidden
Holocaust?, op. cit., p.38-39.
482. In the case of sexual criminals, these limitations applied only to those who had been
convicted twice.
359

Youth representatives drew an alarmist picture and called for energetic measures to be
taken; the Hamburg police took a more traditional view, in which the fight against homosexuals was not a priority, did not require large-scale operations and need not be the
subject of hysteria. The report provided a list of hotels, youth hostels, and pensions that
young suspects used as refuges, a list of the principal gathering places and a list of people
who had homosexual activities in October 1934.483
Soon these measures were widened. The excitement that followed the elimination
of Rhm served as a pretext for the creation of a special office charged with handling
homosexual matters (Sonderdezernat Homosexualitt) under the Gestapo.484 At the end
of the year, all the regional offices of the criminal police were required to provide a list of
the people who were known to be homosexuals, especially those who were members of
any Nazi organization. These lists were to arrive at the Gestapo offices before December 1,
1934.485 According to a report made for Reichsfhrer SS Himmler, of the 1170 men in preventive custody in June 1935, 413 were homosexuals, 325 of them interned in the Lichtenburg concentration camp.486
By this date, anti-homosexual repression already entailed inhuman conditions and
preventive custody was a pretext for serious abuse, as testified by an anonymous letter
from a German homosexual, addressed to Ludwig Mller, bishop of the Reich, in June
1935.487 According to the letter, raids organized by the Gestapo and carried out by young
SS soldiers, for the most part from southern Germany, were being conducted in Berlin and
all over the country. Prisoners were brought to the Gestapo buildings where they were
kept waiting, standing against the wall, for twelve hours or more without anything to
drink or eat. They were not allowed to go to the toilet for six hours. The SS, members of
the Adolf-Hitler regiment, beat and insulted them.488 The operation was supervised by
Obersturmfhrer Josef Meisinger. 489 Then, they either were let go or were sent to
Kolumbia-Haus, in Berlin-Tempelhof, a center detention especially for homosexuals. The
prisoners were under constant torture there, physical as well as mental.
The next stage was the concentration camp of Lichtenburg. There too, the prisoners were tortured. They had to do sports in the morning until they dropped from
exhaustion. The punishment was public, and some were sent to the Bunker. The author of
the letter insisted that the prisoners had not been tried. A few hundred had already gotten
out of Lichtenburg, but many in a very alarming state. The author protested against these
actions and called for the Church to intervene. He was persuaded that these abuses were
unauthorized and that the Fhrer would condemn them if he were informed of what was
going on. He asked for an investigation at Kolumbia-Haus and Lichtenburg, saying that
the culprits should be brought to justice.

484. Sonderdezernat II 1 S.
485. Hidden Holocaust?, op. cit., p.46.
486. Ibid., p.60-61.
487. Ibid., p.55-58.
488. This testimony is corroborated by a report from a member of the Adolf-Hitler regiment who
described the raids, ibid., p.51-53.
489. Head of Division II 1 H1, in the Gestapo. From 1936 to 1940, he was the Reichs Bureau Chief
for the repression of homosexuality and abortion. It was he who organized the actions against homosexuals, especially the political scandals (Rhm, von Fritsch). Meisinger was a brutal man who was
feared even within the SS.
360

Beefing Up the Legislation
Legislative reforms marked a new stage in the Nazis fight against homosexuality.
Until September 1935, only isolated and badly coordinated measures were taken. The
Nazi State first wiped out all organized forms of homosexual life, striving to eliminate any
sign of homosexual activity and community. The essential structures having been
destroyed, the next step was to do away with individual homosexual activity. The object
of the Nazi ire should be well defined: it was not the homosexual himself, but the homosexual act, and homosexual desire. Homosexuals did not represent a separate category of
individuals and could, at least it was hoped, be reinstated in the community. The homosexual was not targeted by the regime unless he engaged in homosexual activity (sex acts,
seduction, propaganda, meeting) and his culpability varied according to a scale of definite
criteria. However, he was a victim in any case, since he could survive only by disavowing
his essential nature.
In October 1933, on Hitlers orders, the Reich Minister of Justice Grtner had
created a Commission on Criminal Law (Strafrechtskommission) to draft a new penal
code. Count Wenzeslaus von Gleispach, a specialist in criminal law, from Vienna, was in
charge of the section on Sex crimes. In June 1935, the sixth amendment to the penal code
was adopted; it considerably reinforced the repression of male homosexuality. On the
other hand, it left out lesbianism entirely.
The new 175

The Nazis did not advance any new arguments for making stronger laws against
homosexuality. They mostly relied on medical theories that described homosexuality as a
form of degeneracy. There was a need to prevent the contamination of innocent people,
especially young people, who could fall under the influence of homosexuals.
Judge Oyen490 considered that homosexuality might be an innate predisposition,
but that the fact that there were cases of seduction justified making it a criminal act. The
mere fact that homosexuals felt no attraction whatsoever for the female sex was not a sufficient reason to spare them. Oyen ridiculed the proposition: would one acquit a man
guilty of rape on the pretext that no woman would have him? Added to that were the
arguments of public morality and political pragmatism: Moreover, there is no question
that the healthy moral sense of the vast majority of the population would find it completely incomprehensible that the current government recognized, so to speak, the legitimacy of homosexual conduct by abolishing the threat of punishment.
The deliberations of the Commission on Criminal Law were also unambiguous.
Grtner, the Minister for Justice, noted: The question of removing homosexuality from
the rubric of criminal law is not on the table. Pr. Gleispach, who reported on the Commissions work, noted that the idea of de-criminalizing it was popular among certain sex
pathologists who were mostly not of Aryan stock. He asked that criminality not be
490. To see where the 1935 law came from, we may consult the instructions of Judge Oyen, who
published a complete history of anti-homosexual measures. He also expounded his own point of
view and called for reinforced legislation. We can also consult the deliberations of the Commission
for Penal Rights (Strafrechtskommission) which touched on the reform of 175, during its 45th session,
on 18 September 1934. BAB, R 22/973. This document is not dated, but is anterior to the reform of the
Criminal Code, which took place in June 1935, and is posterior to 1933.
361

limited to acts resembling coitus, because for the most part, sexual relations between
homosexuals do not take the form of acts resembling coitus. Dr. Lorenz, director of the
County Court and co-rapporteur, summarized the dangers of male homosexuality: It is a
danger to the State, for it damages mens character and their civic life in the most serious
way, disrupts healthy family life and corrupts young males. Finally the Justice Minister
of Saxony, Thierack, elaborated on the varieties of the homosexual threat. He distinguished three categories: young men, male prostitutes and, most dangerous of all,
descendants of degenerate families or older men who no longer enjoy normal relations.
The last group seduces young people, often by offering them money. These various considerations led to the adoption of a considerably reinforced 175.
The new 175 came into effect on September 1, 1935, in accordance with the
amendment to the German criminal code, article 6, adopted on June 28, 1935.491 It presented several innovations. First the term unnatural sex acts (widernatrliche
Unzucht) was replaced by sex acts (Unzucht), which widened considerably the scope
of application of the law. As of 1935, any act inspired by sexual desire with regard to
another man fell under the jurisdiction of the law: that included masturbation and any
contact with a sexual intent, for example caresses or naked wrestling. Ejaculation was
not necessary to prove that a crime had taken place. There was a very clear intent to cover
every possible form of homosexuality.
Since the end of the 19th century, doctors and lawyers had struggled to define
homosexuality as precisely as possible. The new law was the result of this obsession. The
Nazi legislation carries to an extreme the judiciarys desire to exercise control. For that
power to be total, the homosexual act has to become vague, and thus largely a fantasy.
175a, in comparison, was not very original. It repeated the innovations that had
been tried out in several of the 1920s legislative drafts. Aggravated homosexual acts
(prostitution, use of the force or authority) had been targeted with specific penalties in all
the drafts since 1909. In fact, the principal innovation of the June 28, 1935 amendment was
the great freedom it allowed judges in sentencing. They were invited to take into account
not only the law but also the guiding principles of criminal law, general healthy sense
and the unwritten sources of the law. That meant that the principle, no penalty where
there is no law, was abrogated and that the judge was free to condemn an act if he considered it immoral.
Lesbians
Lesbians found themselves in a very special situation.492 The Nazi ideology
accorded Aryan women a very limited place, and confined them to the roles of mother and
guardian of the hearth. When the Nazis came to power they immediately excluded
women from any influential positions they may have occupied.493 Moreover, the feminist
movements were called upon to dissolve or be incorporated into National-Socialist organizations (Gleichschaltung).494 The Order in Council for the protection of the people
and the State of February 28, 1933 eliminated all opponents, and especially feminist asso491. See the text in the Appendices.
492. See Claudia Schoppmann, Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik, op. cit.
493. As of 7 April 1933, women could no longer work as bureaucrats; as of May 1934, they were
no longer allowed to practice medicine, or dentistry after February 1935. From that point on, women
who worked could only fill unskilled positions.
362

ciations that were politically active, like the International League of Women for Peace
and Freedom (Internationale Frauenliga fr Frieden und Freiheit) led by Helene Stcker.
On May 10, 1933, Robert Ley, Nazi leader of the Labor Front, announced the creation of a
Womens Front and asked Lydia Gottschewsky to integrate the 230 female civic and religious organizations into it.
As of November 1933, no new womens groups were to be formed.495 The Deutsches Frauenwerk (DFW) was founded on October 1, 1933 as a rallying point of all Aryan
women; Gertrud Scholtz-Klink became its leader in February 1934. She was also leader of
NS-Freundschaft (NSF), an elite organization. In 1941, the two organizations had 6
million members, a third of them in the NSF. As a whole, the Nazi womens organizations
had 12 million members.496
The question of lesbianism never became a priority. However, during the debate on
the reform of 175, some people did speak out in favor of applying criminal penalties,497
using the old arguments that normal women were in danger of being seduced by lesbians, and the risk of depopulation. The president of the Reichsrat, Klee, intervened on
this point during the 45th session of the Commission on Criminal Law, in September
1934. However, most specialists agreed that sapphism was not very dangerous, as seduced
women could always be led back to the correct path. Thierack, who became a Minister for
Justice in 1942 noted, Unlike men, women are always ready for sex.498 Moreover,
women being excluded from power, it was superfluous to condemn lesbians. The criminologist E. Mezger noticed that the repression of lesbianism did not arise naturally from
the condemnation of male homosexuality, but that it was a question of weighing two different evils.499 It was to be also feared that such a law would not lead to judgments in
chain, in particular with regard to prostitutes and abusive denunciations against innocent
women. Again, here are the same arguments that prevented the condemnation of lesbianism in England in the early 1920s.
This position never was completely accepted by certain lawmakers. Rudolf Klare
became an ardent partisan in the fight against lesbianism. In his book Homosexualitt und
494. Gleichschaltung was the name given to the national-socialist revolution: the term could be
translated as uniformization, coordination or mise au pas. The plan was to make the Reich
conform to one standard, according to the motto Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fhrer (One people, one
empire, one leader) and to install totalitarianism.
495. Numerous conservative associations, like the Knigin-Luise Bund (Queen Louise League) and
the Frauenbund der DNVP (DNVP Womens League), were accepted on the basis of certain conditions,
such as the exclusion of Jews and adherence to the principles of Nazism. The BDF (Bund Deutscher
Frauenvereine, Federation of German Womens Associations), which brought together sixty organizations and had 500,000 members, was dissolved, as was the General Association of German Teachers.
The Association of German Catholic teachers and the Association of German protestant Teachers
refused to disband. Many women from educated families considered that their social position put
them above the police terror.
496. In order to understand why so many women were willing to follow a party whose ideology
was clearly misogynist, see Claudia Koonz, Les Mres-patries du Troisime Reich, Paris, Lieu Commun,
1989, 553 pages.
497. The question is particularly sharp in comparison with Austria where, since 1852, homosexual acts between men and between women had been punishable by five years in prison. After the
Anschluss, this situation created insolubles problems. It was never definitively decided whether an
Austrian committing a homosexual act in Germany should be sentenced according to the Austrian
law or let go, according to the law of the Reich.
498. BAB, R 22/973.
499. Ibid.
363

Strafrecht (1937),500 he expresses approval of the 1935 law, but wishes that more could be
done to eradicate lesbianism; according to him, female homosexuality was just as
alarming a phenomenon as male homosexuality, and it ought to be repressed to the same
degree.501 Jurist Ernst Jenne published an article in Deutsches Recht in 1936 entitled: Soll
175 auf Frauen ausgedehnt werden? (Should 175 be broadened to include women?).
In his view, women like men must have a healthy sexual life. The fact that evidence is difficult to gather or that false charges may be brought was true for men as well as for
women, and that was not a valid argument against extending 175.
It is impossible to calculate how much lesbians were affected by retaliatory measures. Like the men, they saw their bars closed and their newspapers banned. However,
most lesbians managed to survive under Nazism by adopting various strategies. Some
conformed to the system, like Gertrud Bamer; others chose to make an unconsummated
marriage with a homosexual; others, like Charlotte Wolff, emigrated. Many lesbians let
their hair grow and wore feminine clothing to avoid calling attention to themselves.
Some sought to dissimulate their recent activities. Elsbeth Killmer, formerly a
writer for Die Freundin, Selma Engler, editor of BIF, and Ruth Margarete Rllig, author of
the book Les Lesbiennes de Berlin, managed to camouflage their homosexuality and continued their careers as writers or artists.502 The Jewish painter Gertrude Sandmann faked
a suicide in order to escape the Gestapo, was hidden in an apartment for years by her
friends and managed to survive. The risk of denunciation was grave. Two dancers accused
the ballet mistress Sabine R., from the Theater am Nollendorfplatz in Berlin,503 of
indecent activities with certain ballerinas. They sent a letter to the Ministry for Propaganda in February 1934. Their charges were made in retaliation for a non-renewed contract. The director of the theater supported the defendant, however, and she was not
prosecuted. The two dancers were convicted of calumny.
Certain lesbians were, however, prosecuted, most of the time for reasons other
than their sexuality. Burbot Hahm, the president of the lesbian club Violetta, was arrested
for seduction of a minor. She was thrown in prison, then sent to a concentration camp.
She came out of there half paralyzed. Hilde Radusch was condemned as a Communist.
Others were arrested for being asocial, or prostitutes. In the category of political prisoners, the name list for the convoy to Ravensbrck on November 30, 1940, shows the
name of Elli S. 26 years, lesbian.504
Legal sources almost never mentioned lesbians. Still, it was possible to convict
women in certain quite specific cases, under the terms of 174 which carried a sentence of
more than six months in prison and up to five years of forced labor. This applied to
teachers who commit indecent acts with their pupils, adoptive parents or nursemaids
with their children, churchmen, professors, teachers with their minor students and
pupils.
Lesbians were sometimes pursued by the police, but it is not clear for what aim and
with what consequences. Thus a report from the secret service for the Office on Racial
Policy of the NSDAP noted on June 20, 1938: Sufficient material is now available on the
500. In 1937, in Deutsches Recht, he ran an article in which he recalled that ancient German laws
had imposed the death penalty for homosexuality.
501. See also Zum Problem der weiblichen Homosexualitt, Deutsches Recht, December 1938.
502. See Claudia Schoppmann, Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik, op. cit.
503. BAB, R 55/151.
504. Cited by Claudia Schoppmann, in Hidden Holocaust?, op. cit., p.13.
364

extent and the distribution of homosexuality. In order to fight female homosexuality (lesbianism) also, we urgently ask for information on the observations made by our colleagues themselves or external reports given to our colleagues. To this end, the addresses
of people known as lesbians must be provided to us as soon as possible. The reports must
be sent to the Office of Racial Policy (Rassenpolitisches Amt) Reichsleitung
Rechtsstelle Berlin W8, Wilhelmstr. 63.505
A report from the security services of Frankfurt-am-Main, addressed to the offices
of the State police on January 9, 1936, mentions the case of the blonde Heidi and Mrs.
K: Mrs. K has a homosexual (lesbian) dependent relationship with the blonde Heidi.
Mrs. K was the former wife of an SS officer, whom she divorced. She works in an office,
but it could not be established where she lived. Heidi was a young woman of 22 or 23
years, very elegant, from Langen, in Hesse. Her father was a hotelier, but before that he
was an influential member of the SPD and police chief in Krefeld. In 1933, he spent a year
in a concentration camp. Heidi received many people in her two-room flat in Frankfurt,
all of suspicious appearance: Bolsheviks, artists and intellectuals. It was said that sexual
orgies were held there. Heidi went to the Caf Bettina, in Bettinastrasse, and Bauernschnke, which was also a homosexual locale.506
Generally speaking, however, it is fair to say that lesbians were not subjected to
persecutions comparable to those of homosexuals. If they agreed to abdicate their personality and conform to the prevailing standards, they had little reason to be worried.
1935-1939: THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ANTI-HOMOSEXUAL TERROR

The new legislation was used as a basis for beefing up the fight against homosexuality. Under the impetus of the Reichsfhrer SS and police chief Himmler,507 the campaign against homosexuality was centralized. Great political battles were waged against
the Catholic clergy and General Werner von Fritsch, and the party redoubled its vigilance
with regard to homosexuality in the SS and Hitlerjugend.
One question remained: what to do with the homosexual who were arrested?
There were two thoughts on that: eradication and rehabilitation. Both approaches
dehumanized homosexuals, and set them up to be treated like numbers or, at best, guinea
pigs.
Stronger Repression
The period from 1935 to 1939 saw an abrupt acceleration of the repression. What
was unique in the Nazi treatment of homosexuality, compared to that of Weimar or
England at the same time, was its totalitarian impulse: all homosexual acts must be listed,
recorded, and repressed. Nothing must escape the control of the State.
505. Hidden Holocaust?, op. cit., p.81. BAB, NSD 17/12.

506. Hidden Holocaust?, op. cit., p.80-81.
507. Himmler became chief of police in 1936.
365

Centralization and rationalization of the campaign against homosexuality
There was a pause in the pressure against homosexuals in 1936. On the occasion of
the Olympic Games in Berlin, Himmler gave the following order (on July 20, 1936): In the
coming weeks, I prohibit any measures being taken against foreigners in the name of 175,
including interrogations or summonses to appear, without my personal authorization.508 And the repression began again as soon as autumn fell.
From that point on, the fight against homosexuality was highly organized and systematic.509 A secret directive from Himmler on October 10, 1936 regarding the fight
against homosexuality and abortion was used its basis.510 A special office was created
within the Office of Criminal Police of the Reich (Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, RKPA).511
The activities of the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and
Abortion (Reichszentrale zur Bekmpfung der Homosexualitt und der Abtreibung)
were first to record, file and classify every case of homosexual that was reported to it. In
1940, the files of the Central Office counted 41,000 names of convicted or suspected
homosexuals.512 Special files were kept on male prostitutes and pedophiles (174 and
176). The files were used to provide various institutions, especially the German Institute
for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy led by Pr. Matthias Heinrich Goering,
with selected individuals on whom research on homosexuality could be conducted. The
creation of the Central Office did not mean the disappearance of the special Gestapo
office in charge of these matters.513 Both were headed by the same person, Obersturmfhrer Josef Meisinger.514
At a conference given April 5 and 6, 1937 for experts and doctors in his service,
Meisinger explained the goals and the tasks of the campaign against abortion and homosexuality.515 In his words, homosexuals were not to be merely punished, they were also to
be rehabilitated. This task accorded with the assimilation of abortion and homosexuality.
Both inhibited reproduction, and therefore lessened German power. Homosexuals not
only had to be prevented from attracting any followers, but redirected toward normal,
i.e. procreative, sexuality.
508. Heinz-Dieter Schilling, Schwule und Faschismus, op. cit., p.28.

509. Himmler had just reorganized the criminal police (Kripo) on 17 June 1936.
510. Hidden Holocaust?, op. cit., p.88-91. The secret directive dated 10 October 1936 was then
covered up. On 9 February 1937, it was specified that it would be preferable to use special agents to
fight homosexuality. This comment seems to indicate that the policemen responsible for dealing
with homosexuals needed to have special training. That seems likely, since Himmler himself
expressed that view several times to a police audience.
511. The RKPA was founded on 20 September 1936. In 1939, it was merged with the RSHA
(Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Central Security Service for the Reich). The various departments of the
Reich then came under Bureau V for fighting crime (the former RKPA), and the Reich Bureau for
combatting homosexuality and abortion became Group B, division 3: Immorality.
512. For example, in 1938, statistics show 28,882 registered homosexuals of which 7,472 were
corrupters of youth and 587 were prostitutes. See Hidden Holocaust?, op. cit., p.116.
513. In October 1934, the Sonderdezernat Homosexualitt became the Sonderreferat II S1. In May 1935,
it took the designation II 1 H 3, under the direction of Commissar Kanthack, who was replaced in
1939 by Commissar Schiele.
514. In 1940, Meisinger was replaced as head of the Central by Erich Jakob, who had been
heading up the police anti-abortion service in Berlin since 1935. In June 1943, Dr. Carl-Heinz Rodenberg, a proponent of castration for homosexuals, was named scientific director.
366

The work of the Central Office rested above all on cooperation with the local
police. They were to report any incidents and even cases that were merely suspicious, for
violations related to 174 (sex crimes with dependents), 176 (children forced to commit
sex crimes), 253 (blackmail related to homosexuality), 175 (sex crimes between men),
175a (aggravated cases of 175). In the latter two instances, a report was necessary only if
the person concerned was a member of the NSDAP or of one of its organizations,
occupied a position of command, belonged to the armed forces, was member of a religious
order, a civil servant, a Jew, or occupied an important post before the change of regime.516
These details illustrate a desire to be selective. They seem to indicate that the average
homosexual was not the chief concern of the Central Office, and that they would let the
local police handle them. The homosexuals who were regarded as dangerous were the
pedophiles, the corrupters of youth and people who took advantage of a position of
power or a position within the party. This selection reflected Himmlers phobias, as he
was particularly worried about homosexuals harmful influence at their work places, and
their capacity to form coteries.
In fact, there were always differences in how homosexuals were treated. Some, like
repeat offenders, received very stiff sentences; others were arbitrarily sheltered. Special
measures were taken in favor of actors and artists.517 Himmler gave a decree on October
29, 1937, addressed to the Gestapo,518 the local offices of the State police, the Office of the
Criminal Police of the Reich and the local offices of the criminal police, stipulating that
any detention of an actor or an artist for unnatural acts requires prior approval, unless he
is caught in the act. A memorandum from the criminal police in Dresden, dated September 8, 1938, relating to an arrest that had taken place, proves that this decree was
effective:519 But the arrest cannot be sustained without the approval of the Reichsfhrer
SS because it concerns actors. Conversely, in a directive from December 14, 1937, the
Minister of the Interior toughened up the terms of detention for other categories of homosexuals.520 Preventive custody in reform camps or labor camps was now applied to
recidivists and male prostitutes. Such detention was to last as long as necessary. The
need for this detention was to be reviewed after not more than two years, but not sooner
than twelve months.
Tighter sentencing (1935-1939)

When 175 was modified in 1935 and repression was increase, it led to a significant
rise in convictions. If one compares the statistics of the period 1935-1939 with those of the
period 1919-1934,521 one notes that 1935-1939 saw the greatest repression of homsexuality
in Germany between the two wars.
In 1934, the number of people tried for homosexuality was 872. In 1935, it was 2,121,
and in 1936, 5,556. In other words, between 1934 and 1935 there was an increase of 143%,
516. This also applied to prostitutes. Cases involving people under the age of 25 were to be
specially marked. See Hidden Holocaust?, op. cit., p.87.
517. The most famous case was that of the actor Gustaf Grndgens, a notorious homosexual,
whom Goering named to as director of the State Theater. In 1936, Klaus Mann did a portrait of him in
Mphisto.
519. Ibid., p.137.
520. Ibid., p.138-144.
367

and between 1935 and 1936 an increase of 162%! The number of convictions also increased:
1901 in 1935, 5,097 in 1936. For 1937 we have only the number convicted (including for bestiality), 8,271 people; that is an increase of 62%. In 1938, 9,479 people were tried (bestiality included) and 8,562 convicted. Finally, in 1939, 8,274 people were tried (bestiality
included) and 7,614 were convicted. The shift in 1939 can, in my view, be attributed to the
war, for the following years also mark a very significant decline: 3,773 convictions in 1940,
3,739 in 1941, and 2,678 in 1942.522 Going to war and a drop-off in convictions, no doubt
because the fight against homosexuality could no longer be a priority and the forces of the
country were mobilized around other goals. Moreover, a number of homosexuals could
have enrolled in the army as a form of cover.
The apogee of repression then was the year 1938, with 9,479 people tried and 8,562
convicted. The average number of trials between 1919 and 1934 was 704; but between 1935
and 1939 it was above 6,000. The number of convictions also increased. In 1933, 86% of
those tried were convicted. In 1935, the proportion convicted was 89%; in 1936, 91%; 1938,
90%, and 1939, 92%.
We have detailed statistics only for the years 1935 and 1936. In 1935, 1,901 were convicted, 12 to forced labor, 1,703 to a prison sentence, 129 to a fine, 108 to the loss of civic
rights. In 1936, 5,097 were convicted: 192 to forced labor, 4,617 to prison, 183 to a fine, 291
the loss of civic rights. The fine and the loss of civic rights could be tacked onto another
sentence. In 1935, more than 90% of those convicted had to do prison time or forced labor.
In 1936, 94% did. In 1933, only 85% of those convicted received a prison sentence but in
1919, it was 97%. That means that this was a return to very severe repression, a return to
the rates that prevailed at the beginning of the period.
The sentences also reflected a harsher repression, since more and more of the sentences were for more than three years of forced labor. In 1936, 12 sentences of forced labor
were given for misdemeanors against 175, of which five were for more than three years.
There were 180 sentences for crimes against 175a, including 46 that were higher than
three years. Fines accounted for only 6.7% of the sentences in 1935, and 3.6% in 1936,
showing clearly that the judges wanted to punish homosexuality in other ways. By comparison, fines accounted for 30% before 1925 and still 12% in 1931. The loss of civic rights
also increased, from an average of 2.5% of convictions to approximately 5.6%.
These statistics confirm the intensification of homophobic policies, which were
already quite visible in any event. But they were still far below the figures recorded by the
Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion and the special
office of the Gestapo, which would amass nearly 90,000 homosexual files between 1937
and 1940.523 This discrepancy reflects very different situations. The monitoring of homosexuals was extreme and meticulous; the files covered every suspect and not only cases
that were tried or proven. Even so, probably not every case appears in the legal statistics.
Indeed, it has been seen that recidivists, corrupters of youth, and male prostitutes were
subjected to special treatment.524 They could be sent to labor camp before being tried,
521. In order to be able to make valid comparisons, I have used as my source the Statistik des Deutschen Reichs, vol.577, published in 1942, which offers the avantage of being both reliable and detailed.
It distinguishes between homosexuality crimes under 175 and those related to bestiality. This is an
important distinction as the numbers are considerable. In 1933, 778 persons were tried for homosexuality and 213 for bestiality. Unfortunately, after 1937, the statistics no longer distinguish between
the two. See tables in the Appendices.
522. After 1943, there are gaps in the statistics.
368

and perhaps without ever being tried. Some prisoners could be let go if their conduct was
considered to be satisfactory, i.e. if they testified to an attraction for women; but they also
could die as a result of the torture, malnutrition or medical experiments homosexuals
being particularly in demand in this field. For these reasons, it is hard to say how many
homosexuals were actually victims of Nazi repression.
Practices of the police and the judiciary

To determine whether National Socialism made any significant changes to the traditional way of handling homosexuality and to find out about the police practices, the
directives issued by local police headquarters are helpful. The criminal police in Kassel, on
May 11, 1937,525 call homosexuals enemies of the State, saying that: they are constantly
seducing and contaminating young people. Male prostitutes are described as particularly
dangerous but not all homosexual. Therefore it is decided to keep a constant watch on the
roads, the stations, parks, urinals, labor exchanges, and bars to eradicate male prostitutes completely. Hotel doormen, porters, taxi drivers, medical employees, hairdressers
and bath attendants are to be questioned about their customers. Schools, youth movements, military institutions and monasteries will be subject to investigation. Pupils and
members of these organizations will be questioned about their leaders and their comrades. All the known homosexuals must be on file, with their photograph and their fingerprints. If one cannot prove the crime, the suspect must not be let go. A search must be
conducted in order to find letters from friends or other homosexuals. If the search does
not turn up any material, the suspects must receive a detailed warning, be kept under surveillance and monitored more and more closely. The interrogations must be carried out
with tact, in particular in the case of minors and victims of blackmailers: Somebody who
is being made to talk must lose his inhibitions when he testifies to the police. He must be
convinced that without his cooperation, he will never get rid of his tormentor, and that
the police will treat his declarations with understanding and the greatest discretion.
These directives are very instructive. They illustrate first of all the means used and
the importance attached to the fight against homosexuality. The city was divided up in a
rational way, and all the places where homosexuals were likely to be were placed under
surveillance. The surveillance was not left to the police alone; the population was mobilized in order to watch or identify suspects. Certain traditionally homophile organizations were favorite targets, like schools and youth movements, or the monasteries which
were at the center of the homophobic campaign of 1937. Psychological methods were
popular. The homosexual is not a normal criminal. To apprehend him, one must use tact
523. Hidden Holocaust?, op. cit., p.131. The military psychiatrist Otto Wuth, who published a memorandum on homosexuality in the Wehrmacht in 1943, noted that cases recorded throughout all the
police organizations of the Reich reached 32,360 (including 308 in the military) en 1937, 28882
(including 102 in the military) in 1938 and, for the first half of 1939, 16,748 (including 327 in the military). The statistics after that are incomplete. During the first half of 1942, 4,697 homosexuals were
registered (including 332 in the military).
524. As of 1940, homosexuals who had seduced more than one partner were also sent directly to
the concentration camps. Otto Wuth counted 7,452 corrupters of youth and 800 prostitutes for 1937;
in 1938, 7472 corrupters and 587 prostitutes; and for the first half of 1939, 4,162 corrupters and
300 prostitutes; for the first half of 1942, 1257 corrupters and 114 prostitutes. All these numbers refer
to people who were charged, not convicted, which makes it difficult to do any calculations.
369
Graph 3. Changes in Sex Crimes ( 175 of the Penal Code) in Germany (1919-1939)
370

and, if possible, gain his confidence, so that he gives you information. If the defendant
shows any desire for redemption, his rehabilitation should be facilitated. This attitude
reflects the particular status of the homosexual and the nuances of treatment. The corrupter of youth is a danger, a monster for whom one may have no pity, for he spreads evil
and undermines the morals of the German people. Seen as incurable, he is beyond any
rehabilitated. On the other hand, the male prostitute is not necessarily homosexual and
can be reintegrated into society, just like the young man who was seduced. Homosexuality is not in itself a criterion for social rejection: it is the practice of homosexuality, and
its repeated practice, that makes the homosexual an enemy of the State.
These nuances required unusual psychological talents on the part of the policemen
and it seems that the complexity of the orders sometimes led to mistakes. Summoned to
stamp out homosexuality, while integrating the psychology of the criminal, certain police
officers missed the point of their mission. A major scandal erupted in Frankfurt-am-Main
in September 1937 when the president of the County Court (Oberlandesgericht) of
Frankfurt wrote to Grtner, Justice Minister of the Reich, to let him know that abuses
had been committed in certain events concerned with 175. These errors were a consequence of the Reichsfhrer SS Himmlers trip to Frankfurt, where he gave a particularly
vibrant speech against homosexuality before an audience of policemen, enjoining them to
fight homosexuality with all their strength. Some of them seem to have badly misinterpreted the message.
Grtner passed the files on to Himmler on January 24, 1938. All of them concerned
cases of entrapment by the police.526 Officer Wildhirt used a seventeen-year-old boy to
trap a homosexual on April 7, 1937; a sergeant allowed a certain fellow to give him fellatio
in order to establish proof of his culpability (June 25, 1937). The Minister for Justice concluded: Although I do not deny that a merciless campaign against homosexuality is
urgently required to maintain the strength of the German people, I find it intolerable for
the reputation of the police that officers be permitted to offer their own body in order to
trap homosexuals. Leaving aside the question of whether senior police officers are
allowed to encourage others to make themselves accessory to illegal acts committed by
homosexuals, one cannot in any event justify the use of young people, who are easily influenced and who face a particularly grave danger of corruption, in order to trap criminals in
the way described in the first case. Himmler responded that he, too, deplored the use of
such measures to trap homosexuals and that [he] had had the officers in question
informed that their behavior is unacceptable, and that in the future such methods of
trapping homosexuals are not to employed any more. This dossier illustrates the confusion that the anti-homosexual campaign could cause in certain minds. It also shows
that the police methods were not so different from those used in England at the same
time.
Specific of Germany Nazi, on the other hand, were the sweeps carried out by
special mobile units of the Gestapo in certain cities. They might go after one particular
site, like a school, and might be based on a denunciation. In Hamburg, on August 28, 1936,
a clean up of the bars was launched in. Several hundred men were arrested. On December
23, 1937, an operation was launched at Halle, in Saxony.527
526. BAB, R 22/1460.

371

The Nazi system encouraged denunciations. By abundantly distributing antihomosexual propaganda in the newspapers, the population was incited to take part in the
fight; the State encouraged the baser instincts and transformed the average citizen into a
dispenser of vigilante justice. In 1934, the carpenter Josef Holl denounced the Benedictine
father Wilhelm Dutli (Pater Nokter II) to the Bavarian police.528 Holl, who was working
on the joinery of the monastery of Schftlarn since 1933, accused the father of a crime
against 175 and of subversive political activities. The father was Swiss and he subscribed
to foreign newspapers, which according to Holl contained anti-national articles. Furthermore, Holl had a 21-year-old colleague, Ludwig Weigelsberger. Since July 11, 1934,
relations between Weigelsberger and Pater Nokter became very intimate. Dutli
regretted his acts deeply and promised not to do it again. Appended to the file, a police
report from November 28, 1934 notes that a search was conducted but that no seditious
newspapers were found. There does not appear to have been any follow-up with regard to
father Dutli: since he was of Swiss nationality, he could not be sentenced anyway.
Foreign nationality was not always a safeguard, however. People from the territories annexed by Germany were not shielded like the Swiss. After Czechoslovakia was
dismembered on March 15, 1939 and the Sudetenland was annexed by the Reich, inhabitant of the Sudetenland could be sentenced according to the laws of the Reich. Worse
yet, the laws were retroactive!
As a most dramatic example we may consider Anton Purkl, who was imprisoned in
Dresden in 1939 for unnatural crimes. Purkl was born in 1887; he was married and father
of a child. In 1913, he was kicked out of the Wandervogel. During the war, he was taken
prisoner in Russia. In 1923, he joined the youth movement led by the architect Heins
Rutha, who professed the theories of Blher. He had never been convicted before. He was
charged with engaging in indecent contacts with one of his minor pupils (174), and a
variety of other indecent acts involving men (175a) and boys. The counts of indictment
read like a virtual sexual biography of the defendant. In this enumeration the will of the
Nazi regime is clear: it was not enough to condemn Purkl for the charges against him.
Purkl was both a corrupter of youth and a recidivist. On December 22, 1939, Purkl and
several others were sentenced to three years in prison and six months deprivation of civil
rights.529 It is specified that the fact that these acts occurred in the Sudetenland prior to
February 28, 1939 does not in any way prevent the execution of the sentence. Purkl filed
many appeals, but all were rejected.
Some Specific Cases

While the Reich police were in charge of routine cases, the Gestapo was used for
specific cases. The Reichsfhrer SS and chief of the police Himmler was worried from the
start about what role homosexuality might play within the party. The SS was of particular concern. Himmler feared that homosexuality could take root there, corrupting
young recruits and encouraging the formation of cliques, which he had specifically
528. BAB, NS 19/889.
529. He was sentenced to one year and four months in prison and one year and one month in
prison for the two incidents involving the schoolboy; one year in prison for the case with Oswald, six
months for Weinmann, four months for Hetz and three months for the unnamed person. As one can
see, acts with minors were punished far more severely. This was not an exception under the Nazis;
even under Weimar, the judges could not find strong enough words against pedophiles.
372

denounced in the SA. And the Hitler Youth, like all the youth groups, had a tendency to
attract homosexuals. Himmler also tried to purify the Wehrmacht, without much
success. Lastly, two big homophobic campaigns with a political subtext were launched
between 1935 and 1938. Both were failures, but they contributed to fanning the publics
fears of homosexual contamination in every level of society.
Homosexuality in the Hitlerjugend and the SS

Homosexuality within the NSDAP or the organizations subordinate to it was a
subject of concern to the Nazi leadership very early on.530 Rhms elimination served as a
pretext for purging the party.531 Hitler himself announced that every mother could send
her son to the SA, the Party and the Hitler Youth without any fear that he would be
corrupted there in mores and morals. On July 30, 1934, a letter was addressed to the
Dresden police, asking them to provide the names of people convicted under the terms of
175 or suspected of homosexual activities, who were members of the NSDAP or who,
without belonging to the party, might be members of the youth organization.532 In
August 1934, a report from the leadership of the NSDAP of Saxony required the various
gendarmeries of the district of Chemnitz to list the people in the party, with their names
and their ranks, whose way of life contravened 175 of the penal code.
In 1936, the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality gathered
information on homosexuals. It asked regional police offices to forward the files concerned with 175 and 175a but, as mentioned above, a report was necessary only for significant cases, especially the members of the NSDAP or one of its organizations.
Himmler was particularly worried about homosexual activities within the SS. In
his speech at Bad Tlz on February 18, 1937, addressing the generals of the SS, he raised
the problem. He became particularly vehement when discussing exemplary measures:
Every month a case of homosexuality in the SS is presented. We have eight to ten cases
per annum. I have thus decided the following: in every case, these individuals will be officially demoted, removed from the SS and taken before a court. Having served the sentence
set by the court, they will be sent on my order to a concentration camp and will be executed during an attempt to escape. In each case, the corps from which this individual
came will be informed of the matter by my order. I thus hope to extirpate these people
from the SS, to the last one: I want to preserve the noble blood that we receive in our organization and the work of racial cleansing which we continue in Germany.533
530. For testimony as to homosexuality in the party organizations, see Joachim S. Hohmann
(ed.), Keine Zeit fr gute Freunde, Homosexuelle in Deutschland, 1933-1969, Berlin, Foerster Verlag, 1982,
208 pages; in particular, Konstantin Orloffs testimony: in 1930, he was 17. A member of the Hitler
Youth, he made love with his group leader. He left in 1931 and joined Otto Strassers Schwarze Front.
According to him, most of his members were homosexuals. In 1932, he met Rhm, who propositioned
him and wanted to take him to the hotel.
531. The Gauleiter of Silesia, Helmut Brckner, was destitute after the putsch; Dr. Achim
Gercke, a bisexual, party member since 1925, was an expert in racial research for the Minister of the
Reich for moving Jews out of the country. In 1935 he was under Gestapo surveillance for a homosexual adventure that went on for a year; he managed to evade the suspicions, but had to quit his job.
Ernst vom Rath, a homosexual, party member since 1932, was able to carry on his career at in Foreign
Affairs; in 1938, he was secretary of the legation to the German embassy in Paris.
533. Ibid., p.87.
373

The measures were certainly radical. The eradication of homosexuality in the SS
was a clearly expressed intention. A pretense of legality was preserved the trial, the
official sentence but, in fact, the homosexual SS was condemned to death.534 The
charge of homosexuality thus became one of most serious that could be levied against
anyone.
Thus the lawyer Ludwig Lechner, SS-Obersturmfhrer and a friend of Himmler,
was accused in 1938 of touching a girl of sixteen and a half years; he was pardoned at
Himmlers own request. A little later he was convicted of a crime against 175 on the
person of a fourteen-year-old boy. He was sentenced to one year and three months of
forced labor and three years loss of civic rights.535
The case of the SS-Gruppenfhrer (a general, a very high position within the Nazi
hierarchy) Wittje stands out.536 Wittje was thrown out of the SS for alcoholism in 1938.
The affair was quite complicated and Himmler played an important role. In his report of
June 17, 1938, Himmler established a chronology of the events and, what is extremely rare,
explained how he came to have the inward conviction that SS-Gruppenfhrer Wittje was
guilty. In June 1934, after the elimination of Rhm, Hitler telephoned to inform him that
General von Blomberg, then Minister for War, had said to him that within the SS there
was a man who had been turned out of the Reichswehr for homosexuality: Wittje.
Himmler declared himself to be very surprised and was astonished that, under these conditions, Wittje was still authorized to wear the uniform and moreover to receive a
pension from the army. Himmler asked to meet General von Blomberg and his chief of
staff von Reichenau. Wittje had entered the SS in 1930 at a low level (einfacher SS-Mann),
but had distinguished himself and rose quickly. However, twice while he was in the
Reichswehr, Wittje had, in a state of intoxication, put his arm around, hugged and kissed
a warrant officer. The following day, he did not recall the incident. Himmler called Wittje
in and questioned him; Wittje immediately tendered his resignation. Himmler refused it,
for he had never done anything wrong in the SS. On the other hand, he did ask him to stop
drinking henceforth, and warned him against homosexuality. For a year, nothing else happened. In 1935, SS-Gruppenfhrer Lorenz, who had replaced Wittje in Hamburg,
announced that he had had to discharge two men from Wittjes former staff for homosexuality. In 1934-1935 also, Wittje went back to drinking. Rumors began to spread about
misconduct. In 1937, Wittjes former driver confirmed the rumors of homosexuality but
when he had to reiterate his charges before the court, he retracted. He was convicted of
calumny, discharged from the SS and sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen.
Himmler heard further echoes of Wittjes behavior in Hamburg in 1937 and 1938. He was
drinking again and always organizing evenings of camaraderie. Himmler charged the
Gestapo in Hamburg with clearing up these rumors but, according to him, they did not
handle the matter well. Two new cases came up. Himmler concluded his report by noting
that his experience showed that it was very possible for a man to be wrongfully accused
of homosexuality. It was also possible that an intoxicated man might accidentally
embrace another man. It was also possible that on one or two occasions, a man might be
wrongfully accused by others seeking reprisals, because they knew that homosexuality is
534. This decision was formalized by the confidential decree dated 15 November 1941 for
cleaning up [Reinhaltung] the SS and the police (BAB, R 58/261). See postface.
535. BAB, NS 19/1087. It is not known what became of him afterwards.
536. BAB, NS 19/3940.
374

punished by the law. But it was not possible that witnesses of different backgrounds, far
apart and upset by their own suspicions, could deliver identical testimonies and describe
systematically that the man put his arms around, hugged and kissed his companion. Must
one then conclude that the charges of homosexuality levied against Wittje were well
founded? He was inclined to say yes. Could Wittje fill the position of Gruppenfhrer in
the SS? No. It seems however that the business was even further complicated, probably
because of the defendants rank. Witnesses for the prosecution and for the defense were
heard; Himmler accused the court of showing too much indulgence. The transcript of the
trial is not available, which makes any interpretation difficult. Nevertheless, in a letter of
June 17, 1938 Himmler noted that the suit against Gruppenfhrer Wittje must be used as
an example. Wittje was demoted and discharged from the SS. The charge of alcoholism,
although well founded, seems to have been a pretext for getting rid of an individual who
had become too much of a liability, legitimating at the highest level the rumors of homosexuality, which Himmler wanted to avoid at all costs.
Another of the partys concerns was the fate of the younger generation. Since 1936,
the Hitler Youth had fought vigorously against the older youth groups, which had been
prohibited. Many lawsuits were launched, accusing the leaders of crimes relating to
175.537 The most famous was the one that started in Dsseldorf September 18 and 19, 1936
against the old Nerother Bund or Rheinische Jugendburg Bund. Its leader, Robert Oelbermann, was sentenced to twenty-one months of forced labor. After eighteen months, he
was sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen and he died in Dachau on March
28, 1941.
However, at the very heart of the Hitler Youth, homosexuality was spreading and
the leadership of the Reich Youth, with Baldur von Schirach at its head, was keen to put
an end to these practices. Since they came to power, strict measures of control had been
instituted and, since 1936, it was obligatory to denounce homosexual acts.538 At the first
hint of suspicion, the boy in question lost any leadership function; if the suspicions were
confirmed, the prosecutor was informed. The sentences were recorded by the Reich
Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality.
The Hitler Youth also kept files. In 1938, it was decided that every year when boys
were promoted to higher ranks, the leaders of each troop or company would receive
instruction on questions concerning 174 and 176.539 On the other hand, it was up to the
parents to inform young people about sexual matters.
There are several files pointing a finger at members of the Hitler Youth.540 In 1934,
one Friedrich Schorn, Unterbannfhrer of the Hitler Youth, was reported for sex crimes
under 174.1. He was an instructor of apprentices in a mechanical weaving company in
Halbau. He gave a complete confession. Schorn was then placed in preventive custody in
the prison of Sagan. On November 3, 1934, the Attorney General sent in a list of charges.
He had been abusing minors since 1929 but was never convicted. Until 1923, he was an
officer in the army; he had to leave because he had made advances to an orderly. He had
engaged in indecent acts with several boys between 1930 and 1933. Schorn was sentenced
537. It is hard to say whether some of these trials were fabricated. These movements had a reputation that made this type of accusation plausible and they could be used to discredit them in the eye
of the public.
538. These measures were made considerably tougher during the war. See postface.
539. BAB, R 22/1176.
540. GStA, HI, Rep.84a, n 17298.
375

to five years in prison, as the acts he was charged with had been committed before he
became a member of the Hitler Youth.541
On November 7, 1934 the chief of the Reich Youth (Reichjugendfhrer) sent the
Minister of the Interior a list of the members of Hitler Youth and Jungvolk who had been
convicted for misdemeanors under 175 and expelled.542 In five months, at least eleven
leaders in the Hitler Youth and Jungvolk had been convicted and expelled. The fight
against homosexuality within the party organizations was apparently conducted vigorously; but given the lack of statistics, it is difficult to assess whether it was a success.
Homosexuality in the Wehrmacht

Until the beginning of the war, the Wehrmacht took its own approach to homosexuality. Those cases that came up might relate to either 175 or 175a, just like for
civilians. However, one might suppose that the authorities were especially concerned lest
the Wehrmacht become a center of homosexual propagation.543 Wehrmacht kept a
special file on homosexuals, which in 1940 counted 5,000 names. A questionnaire was to
be filled out for each homosexual and sent to the Reich Central Office, and the Reich
Central Office sent the army recruitment center a list of corrupters of youth and male
prostitutes.
The cooperation between the army and the Reich Central Office did not always go
smoothly. On September 5, 1938, the High-Command returned the list of pedophiles and
male prostitutes, saying that there was no point in forwarding them to the recruitment
offices, either because they were not kept up to date or because the men had not been
tried yet, and they were young and likely to be hounded all their lives for a youthful
indiscretion often caused by seduction, without ever being convicted for it in a court of
law. Lastly, Even if the lists were to be kept up to date, recording them would in itself
mean an additional burden for the recruitment offices, and the recruitment offices have
more important matters to attend to; the result would by no means justify the amount of
work required.544
In fact, homosexuality cases did not reach a peak in the Wehrmacht before the war.
In 1940 the number of indictments increased, probably because of the many homosexuals
who signed up.545 In cases judged to be based on an incorrigible predisposition, the sen541. The same file contained the accusation filed against another member of the Hitler Youth.
Hans Mller, a salesman from Cologne, was a team leader (Fhnleinfhrer) in the Jungvolk. In April
1933, he and his group took part in an educational trip to Kttingen. During the trip, as during a trip
at Easter in 1934 and at Pentecost in the same year, he fondled several of the boys he was chaperoning. On 22 September 1934, he was placed in preventive detention in prison in Cologne. That is all
that is known about this case.
542. Otto Rosenberg, Horst Gehrke, Gerhard Schewinski, Kurt Zipprik, al from Bartenstein,
were kicked out of the Hitler Youth on 25 November 1934. Fhnleinfhrer Hans-Jrgen Puzig from
Flatow was kicked out on 23 April 1934. Scharffhrer Dwel of Cologne was kicked out on 25 August
1934. The former Oberbannfhrer Ernst Erdelt of Liegnitz was kicked out on 25 July 1934, former Fhnleinfhrer Kppenbender on 25 October 1934, and Schorn and Hans Mller as well. Lckenbach, the
former Fhnleinfhrer of Jungvolk was kicked out on 25 November 1934.
543. Obligatory military service was reintroduced in 1935 for all men aged 18 to 45, and up to 60
for officers. In 1936, the army already had 500,000 men; in August 1939, it had 2.6 million soldiers.
545. This explanation was offered as early as 1943 by the military psychiatrist Otto Wuth, who
penned a report on homosexuality in the army. In total, from 1 September 1939 to 30 June 1944,
7000 were convicted; that is a small number, given the size of the armed forces.
376

tence was prison and, in serious cases, forced labor and detention in a camp. If it were a
matter of homosexuality of circumstance, or seduction, the defendants could be reinstated in the army after having served their sentences. This was construed as a favor, to
enable them to prove their virility before the enemy. Nevertheless, crimes concerned with
175 were regarded as incompatible with the exercise of command.
Homosexuality as a way of eliminating opponents

The Nazi regime was pragmatic in the elimination of its opponents. To identify its
enemies for prosecution and punishment it used a few overarching themes, and homosexuality was one of the best options, as the Rhm incident proved. In 1937, a new
homophobic campaign was launched, this one aimed at the Catholics and in particular
the religious orders. A hundred monks and nuns were charged with various misdeeds
before the German courts, mostly relating to homosexuality. Many members of the
Catholic clergy had already been prosecuted for trafficking in currencies or communist
conspiracies, without much success. The purpose of these persecutions was to discredit
the religious orders and the Catholic Church and to justify canceling their rights as educational establishments. Hitler hoped by this means to put pressure on the Vatican and
the German episcopate and to get them to end their protests. The Gestapo had conducted
investigations and held the information in reserve to be used at the right moment. The last
straw was the papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety) of March 14,
1937, which warned against the ideological bases of Nazism.
The first target of the Gestapo was a small community of lay brothers in Waldbreitbach, a village close to Trier, in the Palatinate. They were supervised rather loosely by
the Franciscans and took care of the handicapped in local hospitals. They had not been
particularly selected nor trained, and the Church authorities admitted to some negligence. Even so, the court case was a failure. The Gestapo brought as a witness one of the
mentally-retarded patients. The prosecutor asked him whether he could point out to the
court any person who had tried to seduce him and lure him into committing indecent
acts. The witness pointed to the president of the court. The case was dismissed.546
In the Rhenish lands, nearly a thousand judicial inquests had been launched
against the lay brothers. Nearly 300 were dead ends, for 150 of them were forewarned and
got away, and 150 had some immunity. On May 22, 1937, 300 suits were filed and others
were in preparation against the Franciscans of Waldbreitbach, the Alexians of Neuss and
Cologne-Lindenthal, the brothers of Mercy of Montabour, and the Capuchin and Benedictine lay orders.547
A Gestapo memorandum dated April 8, 1937548 shows how the smear campaign
developed under Josef Meisinger, Regierungsrat Haselbacher and SS-Sturmbannfhrer
546. Cited by Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle, New York, Holt & Cie, 1986, 257 pages, p.133.
Other examples suggest that most of the accusations were trivial. The court in Paderborn acquitted a
Catholic priest, Abbot Sommer, cur of Siddessen, who was charged with indecency. The witnesses
retracted their statements while on the stand. The prosecutor had asked for nine months in prison.
In Mnster, Westphalia, Abbot Deitmaring, cur of Hoetmear, charged with indecency, was also
acquitted due to lack of evidence. In his case, the prosecutor had asked for between three and five
years in prison (Le Temps, 16 May 1937).
547. Le Temps, 22 May 1937.
377

Hartl. Concrete details on each suit were shared with the public in order to stir up
popular outrage, and propaganda articles based on scientific assertions were published.
Altogether, 100,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled You Must Recognize Them and Their Acts
were distributed. An anticlerical work by Burghard Assmuss, entitled Klosterleben, Enthllungen ber die Sittenverderbnis in den Klstern (Life in the Monasteries and Revelations on the
Depravity of Morals in the Monasteries), was published in 1937; it was full of slander on
the sex life of monks. The climax of the campaign was Goebbels speech at Berlins Deutschlandhalle in front of 25,000 people on May 30, 1937, answering the charges of the cardinal archbishop of Chicago. According to him, the lawsuits reflected a frightening and
revolting phenomenon of moral decadence whose equivalent could not be found in all of
the history of humanity. The criminal aberrations of the Catholic clergy threaten the
physical and moral health of our young people. I declare before the German people that
this plague will be radically extirpated and, if the Church is too weak, the State will to
it.549 The speech skillfully exploited the popular instincts, presenting the members of
the clergy not only as homosexuals but as corrupters of youth and abusers of the handicapped. Goebbels and the Nazi leaders posed by contrast as paragons of family virtues.
The speech was interrupted several times by the crowd, shouting: Hang them! ... Massacre them! ...
The anti-Catholic campaign continued until 1941. By 1936, all the Catholic youth
organizations had been closed down. The monks had been expelled from more than 35
monasteries. In 1941, Goebbels banned all Catholic magazines and newspapers. Between
1937 and 1945, more than 4,000 clerics died in the concentration camps from torture,
disease or starvation.550
Still, while the homophobic campaign cast a pall on the Catholic clergy, it was on
balance a failure. Of approximately 20,000 German priests, only 57 were convicted; of
4,000 members of the regular clergy, only 7 were convicted. Lastly, of 3,000 lay brothers,
170 were convicted, mostly Franciscans.551 Between 1933 and 1943, less than 0.5% of the
22.4 million German Catholics left the Church.
Another campaign was launched in 1937 with the aim of destabilizing the army.
General von Blomberg and General von Fritsch had warned Hitler against attacking
Czechoslovakia, fearing it would bring France and Great Britain into the war. The crisis
between the generals and Hitler came to a head in 1938.552 Circumstances facilitated the
elimination of von Blomberg, who had recently remarried to a young woman whose
mother had run a massage parlor. Goering discovered that the young woman had posed
for pornographic photographs and that she had been registered as a prostitute. Goering
showed the photographs to von Blomberg, who offered his resignation.
He should have been replaced by General Werner von Fritsch, the very model of
the Prussian officer, a confirmed bachelor, a shy, religious man who lived only for the
army. He was admired by his officers and his troops, and was beyond any criticism. But
his independence, his mistrust of the Nazi leaders with whom he did not associate
549. Le Temps, 30 May 1937.
550. Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle, op. cit., p.136.
551. On this subject, see Hans Gnther Hockerts, Die Sittlichkeitsprozesse gegen katholische Ordensangehrige und Priester, 1936-1937, Mayence, Mathias Grnewald Verlag, 1971, 224 pages.
552. Several works present the elimination of the generals as a coup arranged by Hitler in order
to place himself at the head of the armed forces. Marlis Steinert suggests, rather, that the events were
unexpected and Hitler used them to his own advantage.
378

had earned him some enemies, in particular among the Himmler-Heydrich-Goering triumvirate. While Hitler recognized von Fritschs professional qualities, he hardly liked
him. Then Goering intervened: he dug up a sordid affair dating to 1936. One Otto Schmidt,
a thief and blackmailer, had accused von Fritsch of homosexuality. The case had been
taken up by section II H in the Gestapo. In an interrogation conducted by Josef Meisinger,
Schmidt gave a deposition swearing to have seen General von Fritsch go to the toilets
with one of his acquaintances, the homosexual Josef Weinberger, at the Potsdamer Platz
subway station in Berlin on November 22, 1933. According to him, they engaged in
indecent acts, and then the general gave Weinberger some money. Otto Schmidt then
popped up, presented himself as a member of the SA, and extorted 500 RM in order to
keep quiet. (It is not clear whether, at this point, Meisinger knew that this whole story
related to Captain Achim von Frisch, not General Werner von Fritsch.) Meisinger
reported to Himmler, but Hitler ordered them to burn the file. The outside pressures were
great enough, in 1936, and there was no need to start a homosexual scandal at the top of
the military hierarchy. Nevertheless, Heydrich took Himmlers advice and kept a copy of
the most important documents.553 In 1937, Otto Schmidt was in prison again; he was
released on condition that he become a state witness on sexual deviants. Hitler was
alerted; he showed more interest than in 1936. He called in Hossbach, a colonel in the
Wehrmacht, who gave little credit to the charges. Hossbach informed Fritsch, who was
stunned. Otto Schmidt swore he recognized him; and von Fritsch was suspended from his
functions. At the first hearing, the defense lawyer pointed out contradictions in Schmidts
testimony. The old captain, who had been beaten in prison, admitted to everything and
Otto Schmidt admitted having given a false deposition. Von Fritsch was released, but was
unable to regain his post office at the head of the army. He died in combat, in Poland, in
September 1939, at the head of an obscure regiment. Schmidt was sent to Sachsenhausen
concentration camp for four years; he was liquidated there on orders from Goering.554
Hitler then took command of the Wehrmacht. The path was clear for the
Anschluss. Once again, the charge of homosexuality, even completely unfounded, had
done its job.
Rehabilitation or Eradication?
The Nazi regime was energetic in conducting its campaign against homosexuality.
However, not all homosexuals were considered in the same way, and there was never any
question of exterminating homosexuals as a whole.
Only the incorrigible homosexuals were to be eliminated, particularly those who
presented a danger to youth. As these were unofficial measures, it is impossible to gauge
the exact number of those who were sent to the camps, how much time they spent there
on average, or how many died there. For those whose homosexuality was regarded as
acquired, through vice or seduction, rehabilitation was considered. Internment in the
concentration camps was based on the idea that homosexuals could be rehabilitated by
labor. Now, it was a question of curing them. Several means were considered, from psychoanalysis to castration. These efforts did not produce the anticipated results and, just
553. In Friedrich Koch, Sexuelle Denunziation, die Sexualitt in der politischen Auseinandersetzung, Frankfurt-am-Main, Syndikat, 1986, 223 pages.
554. Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle, op. cit., p.140-143.
379

before the war, Himmler (who had been an ardent fan of the notion of rehabilitation)
was less and less inclined to waste time and money on the abnormal. Camp became the
customary treatment, and now it was extended to all homosexuals who had seduced
more than one partner.
Elimination by Labor
The fate of homosexuals in the concentration camps is described in studies by
Rdiger Lautmann and Richard Plant.555 Lautmann and a team of researchers studied
thirteen or fourteen institutions that held imprisoned homosexuals; Richard Plant
studied the situation of the homosexual in Buchenwald. In both cases, only to partial conclusions can be drawn. Indeed, many of the files are incomplete: some documents were
destroyed when the camps were evacuated; others were not kept up to date. Certain files
are still missing because they were dispersed in the former socialist countries. Among the
officials, only Rudolf Hoess left his Memoirs. Lautmann and Plant succeeded in collecting
very few interviews from old pink triangles. Thus the analysis offered below is compartmental. It is focused on the years 1933-1939, since that is the period currently under discussion.
Shortly after the Nazis took over, homosexuals started being sent to concentration
camps. Kurt Hiller, an activist from the WhK, was sent to Orianenburg. Himmlers order
of December 14, 1937 and his decree of July 12, 1940 specifically designated corrupters of
youth and male prostitutes; and as of 1940, recidivists too were to be placed in preventive custody.556 Not all homosexuals were sent to the camps after serving out their
sentences, but arbitrary internments did take place. The first camp opened was that of
Dachau, on March 30, 1933. In June 1933, Himmler named Theodor Eicke to run the camp,
which became the model for Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Mauthausen. Homosexuals
were interned in each of these camps, but their exact number is not known. It seems,
however, that they were the smallest minority in the camps, with migrs, profaners of
the race and transfers from the armed forces. Lautmann lists 150 homosexuals at Dachau
between March and September 1938. According to him, an estimated 5,00015,000 homosexuals were sent to concentration camps between 1933 and 1945, but these statistics
cannot be refined further.
Like other prisoners, those who wore the pink triangle faced inhuman conditions
of detention. It seems that they suffered particularly. One of Richard Plants witnesses
reports that on arrival in the camp of Buchenwald, homosexuals and Jews were beaten.
Eugen Kogon reports that homosexuals at Flssenburg, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and
Mauthausen were sent to work in the quarries in greater number than other groups. In
Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen, they were sent to the camp brothel in order to be rehabilitated.557
555. Rdiger Lautmann, Terror und Hoffnung in Deutschland, 1933-1945, Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1980, 570
pages; Seminar: Gesellschaft und Homosexualitt, Frankfurt-am-Main, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 1977,
570 pages; Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle, op. cit.
556. On 12 May 1944, a secret decree from the chief of the security police ordered that homosexuals thrown out of the Wehrmacht, that is, those who showed a predisposition or an acquired and
clearly incorrigible urge, should be sent to concentration camps. They were to go to camp, either
immediately upon being kicked out, or after serving their time.
380

Homosexuals suffered special isolation. A letter from the Reich Justice Minister
addressed to the Reichsfhrer SS on December 15, 1939558 requested that homosexuals be
separated from other prisoners, and not intermingled with them, in order to avoid any
homosexual contact. In the Austrian camps (Ostmark), the prisoners were isolated at
night. A special block contained individual cells, in particular in Rodgau. In the Ems and
Rodgau camps, where such isolation could not be maintained, the principle of dilution
was applied: The principle consists in distributing homosexuals so that everywhere they
go, they have to face a great majority of non-perverts who keep them under control,
because of a healthy horror of homosexuality which is also very widespread among the
[rest of the] prisoners. The system was reinforced by the way the blocks were managed:
homosexuals were assigned to places where it was very easy to keep an eye on them and,
where there were bunk beds, in the upper bunks. Homosexuals were not to have any possibility of communicating individually during work: they were not assigned to the
kitchens or the storehouses. In Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess sequestered them in a hut.
Their special status deprived homosexuals of any external aid. Their friends did not
dare to write to them, for fear of being regarded as homosexual themselves; and their families often abandoned them. The other groups of prisoners avoided them, and for the most
part shared the prejudices against them. Everywhere, the SS like the prisoners themselves
seemed to be convinced that homosexuals were obsessed with sex and that they had to be
monitored closely.
Aggravating the situation was the fact that some of the SS guards were homosexual
themselves and they took their favorites captive, especially Poles and Russians, as dolly
boys (Pielpel). The SS competed with the Kapos for the Pielpels and that went over
very badly with the rest of the prisoners.
Political leaders had nothing to gain by supporting decent treatment for the homosexuals; they were seen as unreliable and likely to divide the antifascist coalition. The
favors granted to selected young men did not mean better treatment for homosexuals
overall and the pink triangles as a group did not benefit from the special treatment. In
fact, solidarity among homosexuals was very limited. They did not occupy decisionmaking positions in the prisoner hierarchy and they almost never became Kapos. In the
hierarchy of the camp, the pink triangles were at the lowest level, right before the Jews.
Buchenwald has been studied in detail. The camp opened in 1937; in 1938, it held 28
prisoners bearing the pink triangle. There were 46 in 1939 and 51 in 1940. After Himmlers
decree on recidivists, the number rose to 74 in 1942, 169 in 1943, and 189 in 1944. On the
whole, homosexuals were a negligible presence, less than 1% of the total camp population.
Until the autumn 1938, homosexuals were assigned to the political blocks.559 In October
1938, they were sent in the disciplinary company to work under inhuman conditions, subjected to the arbitrary violence of the SS. They were then the lowest group in the camp.
Proportionally to their number, they were also sent most frequently to the death camps of
Nordhausen, Natzweiler and Gross-Rosen. The labor shortage brought some respite: by
the summer of 1942, they were put to work with the other prisoners in the war industry.
Then in January 1944, they were sent to Dora to produce V2 rockets. The working condi-
557. Eugen Kogon, Ltat SS [1947], Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points histoire, 1993,
445 pages, p.290-291.
559. Ibid., p.266-270. Report from the spring of 1945.
381

tions, housing and sanitation were terrible: 96 homosexual prisoners died between February 8 and 13, 1945, more than half of those who had been interned at Buchenwald as of
that date.
According to prisoners reports, most of the homosexuals at Buchenwald were castrated. Others were used for medical experiments on typhoid fever. Heinz Hegers testimony560 is the best known of the rare direct records left by homosexuals who were sent
to concentration camps, but it is probably not very representative of the general fate. In
1939 Heger, an Austrian, was twenty-two years old. He came from a bourgeois Catholic
family, and his father was a high civil servant working in an embassy in Vienna.561 In
March 1939, Heger was sentenced to six months reclusion in a disciplinary house, then
was sent to Sachsenhausen. His lover, the son of a Nazi dignitary, was not convicted, for
he was regarded as mentally disturbed.562 Inside the camp, homosexuals were the most
despised prisoners. He was placed in a block with other pink triangles. At night, he had to
sleep in just a shirt, keeping his hands showing on top of the cover, for you fags, you
would still manage to take your pleasure.563 He was not allowed to speak with other
triangles, in order not to seduce them. Most of the homosexuals were put to work in the
clay pits under inhuman conditions. Heger managed to survive by becoming the dolly boy
of a Kapo.
When the latter was sent to Flossenburg, the homosexual block was broken up.
Heger had the good fortune to be chosen by the senior of the block. According to Heger,
homosexual relations among the prisoners were accepted as a substitute for regular sex,
but that was not tolerated between homosexuals themselves. The purpose of such a distinction was to preserve the myth of a normal and virile sexuality and transferred onto
the homosexual the burden of the flaw and the charge of femininity.
Until 1940, the death penalty was applied for homosexual relations. It seems that
thereafter, morals loosened up. Public torture was common and Heger saw that as a sign
of suppressed homosexuality in certain of the SS, who appeased their impulses through
voyeurism and sadism. Thanks to his supporters Heger managed to become Kapo; this
appears to have been a very rare exception.
The case of Karl Willy A. appears, unfortunately, more standard. Born in 1914 in
Rehau, in Bavaria, he was working as a mason near Leipzig. On May 17, 1943, he was sentenced to preventive custody as a recidivist. Between 1934 and 1940, he had been convicted four times for unnatural acts and, the two last times, had been sentenced to forced
labor, for corruption of minors. At the end of his sentence, he was brought back to the
Leipzig prison. As the last case occurred shortly after his marriage, one can hardly count
on his being cured. Willy A. was therefore sent to Buchenwald, where he arrived on June
10, 1943. He died on November 24, 1943 of purulent pleurisy. By order of the camp
doctor, the body [could] not be viewed, for reasons of hygiene. He was incinerated and
his wife was notified; she refused to accept the urn.564
560. Heinz Heger, Les Hommes au triangle rose. Journal dun dport homosexuel, 1939-1945, Paris,
ditions Persona, 1981, 160 pages.
561. His father committed suicide in 1942, unable to face his sons infamous arrest and the
sarcastic comments of the neighbors.
562. Heger thinks that he was sent to concentration camp so that Freds homosexuality would
not come to light. That is plausible, but cannot be proved since there is no documentation. In fact,
Heger was not in any of the categories of homosexuals that were liable to be sent to camp.
563. Heinz Heger, Les Hommes au triangle rose, op. cit., p.48.
382

It is very difficult to estimate the number of lesbians who were sent to concentration camps. Lesbianism was not punished by law and the lesbians who were arrested
were often caught on some other pretext. Neither is it known whether lesbians wore a
specific insignia. Isa Vermehren says that lesbians wore a pink triangle with LL (Lesbische Liebe) inside. She seems to have seen this insignia on a panel displaying the various
emblems at Ravensbrck. Other witnesses said the pink triangle designated Jehovahs
Witnesses, not lesbians. In addition, it seems that some lesbians were recorded as asocial
(black triangle) or criminals (green triangle).
All the known cases of lesbians interned in camps were later than the years 19331939. Claudia Schoppmann565 reports the case of Else, a waitress from Potsdam, who
lived with a friend and who was sent to Ravensbrck, then to Flossenburg, as an asocial.
Erich, who also testified, was interned in Flossenburg and met Else in the brothel there in
1943. She had probably been forced to prostitute herself at Ravensbrck, where women
were promised their freedom if they agreed to serve in the brothel for a certain period.
Lesbians were sent there in particular, to put them on the right path. Else disappeared
thereafter and it is not clear what became of her.
The desire to humiliate lesbians is also apparent in another example, from a later
period but unconfirmed. The testimony is provided by a friend of Helene G., who was an
assistant in the Luftwaffe in Oslo between 1943 and 1945. She was a Telex operator and
handled secret messages and espionage. She lived in the Luftwaffe quarters with another
assistant who, unfortunately, caught the eye of a lieutenant. She repelled his advances.
The two women were arrested by the military secret police and were separated. Helene G.
was convicted by the court martial for potential subversion of the military, was discharged from the Wehrmacht and sent to the concentration camp of Btzow, in Mecklenburg. She was placed in a special block with six other lesbians. They were separated
from the other women and were guarded by men. When the Kapos led them near the SS
guards, they would tell the prisoners of war: These represent a lower form of life. You
wouldnt even want to kiss them with the leg of a chair. If you doem right, youll each get
a bottle of schnapps, and they brought forward the Russian and French prisoners first.
Thereafter, the lesbians were kept apart from the other women and were set to labor. Two
died of hunger. Helene G. survived one year beyond the end of the war, then died of tuberculosis. If this information is true, it certainly shows the contempt and the hatred for lesbians, and the hostility engendered by the very thought of such a thing as independent
female sexuality. Moreover, it shows that the lesbian lost her rights as an Aryan woman,
since she was handed over to the foreign prisoners.566
There are only scattered traces showing the presence of lesbians in the camps.
There were two among the victims of Doctor Friedrich Mennecke in Ravensbrck: Jenny
Sarah S., Jewish, single, a saleswoman in Frankfurt-am-Main and an instinctive lesbian,

565. Ibid., p.14.
566. Cited in ibid., p.83. This is one of the best-known testimonies and it has been cited by
numerous authors. Ilse Kokula produced it for the first time. Still, Claudia Schoppmann has pointed
out some inconsistencies in it: Btzow was in a camp for prisoners of war that was not supposed to
house women. And then, the POW camps were under the command of the Wehrmacht and not
the SS. She concludes that in the absence of any documents on Btzow it is impossible to explain
these contradictions, but thinks that it is plausible that they may be a result of the disorganization
that was spreading in the final months of the war.
383

who only goes to such places; and Erna Sara P., Jewish, from Hamburg, married, was a
very active lesbian. She sought out the lesbian cafs that still were functioning and
exchanged affections at the cafs.567
Female homosexual friendships were formed in the camps just as male ones were.
Fania Fenelon, who gives her story in Das Mdchenorchester in Auschwitz, 1982, talks about
the Kapo Hilde, a black triangle, who shamelessly flaunted her relationship with her
friend Inge. Fania was part of the Auschwitz orchestra that was invited in the summer of
1944 to play for a ball one night in the asocial block. This was the block where, for the
most part, former prostitutes were collected, and according to Fania Fenelon 90% of them
had become lesbians.568 Krystina Zywulska, in Wo frher Birken waren (1980), says much
the same. Margarete Buber-Neumann, a political prisoner at Ravensbrck, testifies in
Milena, Kafkas Freundin (1977): Passionate friendships were as widespread among the
politicals as the asocials or the criminals. The only difference was that the political prisoners friendships remained platonic, whereas the others very often were lesbian.569
Such relations were severely punished if they were discovered: the punishment
could be the deprivation of food for one or more days, beating with a rod (25 to 100
strokes), restriction to the bunker or being sent to a disciplinary battalion, or even death.
The punishments varied according to the camp and the year. The Communist Dory Maase
reports that in Ravensbrck, before 1941, lesbian relations were punished by death.
Rudolf Hoess also reported the existence of homosexual practices: Even the harshest
punishments, even assignment to a disciplinary battalion, cannot put an end to it.570
Curing and castrating

Himmler, ardent partisan of the fight against homosexuality that he was, still
retained a sense that rehabilitation should be attempted. He was persuaded that only
2% of the cases of homosexuality were innate and that the rest must be the result of giving
in to vice or seduction. The goal was to reinstate such people into the community at the
end a period of punishment and rehabilitation.
Himmler himself was quite interested in medical research on the subject and
encouraged it. Psychoanalysis was seen as the first likely form of rehabilitation.571 In 1935,
psychoanalysis had been Aryanized. All the Jewish members had had to resign from the
German Society of Psychoanalysis (DPG, Deutsche Psychoanalystiche Gesellschaft). Carl
Mller-Braunschweig and Felix Boehm reorganized the leadership. In 1936, the German
Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy (Deutsches Institut fr psychologische Forschung und Psychotherapie) was created under the direction of Matthias Heinrich Goering, a cousin of Hermann Goerings. The DPG was integrated into the Institute
in November 1938.
567. Cited by Claudia Schoppmann, Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik, op. cit., p.235.

568. Ibid., p.237.
569. Ibid., p.238.
570. Ibid., p.247.
571. See Thierry Fral, Nazisme et psychanalyse, Paris, La Pense universelle, 1987, 92 pages. The
Nazis considered psychoanalysis to be on outgrowth of the Jewish mind, that would corrupt the
German people. Freuds writings were burned on 10 May 1933 and many psychoanalysts were forced
to go into exile. Some, like K. Landauer and J. Mittmeister, were assassinated.
384

The Institute favored the treatment of homosexuals and claimed a success rate of
70%. Thus out of 510 homosexual patients, it said it had cured 341 of them. Several
members of the Institute published articles on the treatment of homosexuality.572 The
Institute also set up a program to collaborate with the Luftwaffe. Matthias Goering tried
to extend the influence of psychiatry in the field of combating homosexuality, in particular in the context of the campaigns carried out in the Wehrmacht and the Hitler
Youth. A manuscript by Felix Boehm, Secretary of the Institute, dated February 28,
1938,573 recommends that a post of confidential doctor be created in all the party organizations, and particularly in the youth organizations, so that people would have someone
to go to in the event anything risky came up. On December 6, 1939, Boehm sent around a
circular for the members of Institute,574 asking them to send him a report on the treatments carried out against homosexuality, so that he could evaluate them. Himmler
himself charged several doctors with working on homosexuality. A December 5, 1936
letter from SS-Hauptsturmfhrer Werner Jansen was sent in the name of Himmler to the
Science Ministry, the Instruction and the Education of the People 575 to ask whether
research on left-handed persons and homosexuals had been conducted. SS-Hauptsturmfhrer Ulmann answered on December 8 in the affirmative: Dr. Creutzfeldt was soon to
present the results of his research. The conclusions of this study are not known.
June 14, 1937, Pr. Karl Astel, president of the regional office for refining the race
(Landesamt fr Rassenwesen) in Thuringe wrote to ask Himmler for the names and
addresses of at least 100 homosexuals in Thuringe so that he could conduct some research
on the nature of homosexuality.576 In its response of June 22, Himmler showed himself to
be quite interested and promised to have the Gestapo get him the required names. What
happened after that is not known; but doctors had to be very careful in drafting their conclusions, for the Reichsfhrer SS had quite set ideas on the subject and did not tolerate
experiments that cast any doubt on his certainty.577
In addition to psychoanalysis, more radical means were planned to rehabilitate
homosexuals. A law was adopted on July 14, 1933 to prevent descendants afflicted with
hereditary diseases (Gesetz zur Verhtung erbkranken Nachwuchses).578 It went into
effect on January 1, 1934. Between 1934 and 1945, 200,000 men and 200,000 women were
officially sterilized. Thousands of them died in the aftermath of the operation. It is not
clear how many more were victims of attempted sterilization in the concentration camps.
The law against dangerous recidivists and measures for security and
improvement (Gesetz gegen gefhrliche Gewohnheitsverbrecher und ber Massregeln
der Sicherung und Besserung) of November 24, 1933 authorized castration in certain
572. Notably: Johannes Heinrich Schultz, director of the polyclinic of the Institute, Felix Boehm,
Maria Kalau vom Hofe, Fritz Mohr, Werner Kamper. See Claudia Schoppmann, Nationalsozialistische
Sexualpolitik, op. cit.
574. Ibid., p.130.
575. BAB, NS 19/073.
576. BAB, NS 19/1838.
577. For example, his relationship with the Berlin doctor Martin Brustmann was abruptly
broken off. Brustmann was a member of the NSDAP, a colleague of Matthias Goering, personal
doctor to Heydrich and Himmlers family, as well as medical consultant for national security (SD). In
1943, when the war effort was in highest gear, he was accused of being too lax. The rehabilitation of
homosexuals was by then considered a waste of time.
578. This had to do mostly with cases of congenital weakness, manic-depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy, St. Vitus Dance, and hereditary deafness, congenital deformities and alcoholism.
385

cases,579 in addition to punitive measures. This could be applied only in the event of rape,
blasphemy, pedophilic acts, sex acts with constraint, sex acts in public, murder and
assassination with a sexual motive. Homosexuals fell into these categories only if they
had had sexual intercourse with boys of less than fourteen years or were convicted of
exhibitionism. The majority of homosexual convicted under the terms of 175 and 175a
were not affected.
The option of voluntary castration was made possible by an amendment to the
law to prevent descendants afflicted with hereditary diseases of June 26, 1935. Clause 2
of 14580 authorized castration in the case of homosexual crimes, but only with the
consent of the person. A doctor also had to give his consent. A directive dated January 23,
1936 explicitly stated that one could not force, even indirectly, a criminal to give his assent
to castration; but on May 20, 1939, Reichsfhrer SS Himmler cancelled this directive. No
doubt in the previous years some of the homosexuals placed in camps had agreed to the
operation anyway, in the hope of some liberation.581 The number of homosexuals who
underwent castration between 1935 and 1945 is unknown.582
Nevertheless, castration for the treatment of homosexuality was still under discussion as a viable option. A complete report on the causes of homosexuality and the castration of homosexuals shows that the question was studied very thoroughly.583
It becomes quite clear that the medical theories on homosexuality were radicalized
after 1933. Whereas, during the previous period, homosexuality was presented as an
innate abnormality or a natural occurrence, here was a return to the old theories of degeneracy (Wolf, Deussen, Lang, Jensch), to biological explanations stressing hormonal dysfunctions (Lemke, Habel), and even to the simplistic assertion that homosexuality is an
acquired vice (Schrder). The links between homosexuality and degeneration of the race
are particularly clear in Lothar Gottlieb Tirala, in Rasse, Geist und Seele (Race, spirit and
heart), published in 1935: Here were created, following the mixture of the Nordic and
Near-Eastern races, Nordic and Oriental races, and Nordic and Western races, a category
of male and female sexual intermediaries which one may constantly run into in the large
cities.584 The report goes on to study the position of each doctor on penal repression,
then it considers the idea of castration. On this point the opinions are very divided. The
doctors who think that homosexuality is innate oppose it. Others think that the likelihood of success is slim. Nevertheless, certain doctors had already conducted experiments and maintained that their attempts had been successful. The Swiss Dr. Wolf, the
Dane Dr. Sand and the German Dr. Rodenberg each provided statistics.585 Wolf castrated
22 homosexuals; he acknowledged one failure. Sand castrated 72, with one failure.
579. The first sentence of castration was pronounced on 10 December 1933 in Berlin, by the court
of Duisbourg, against a 33-year-old man who was sentenced to 20 months in prison and to castration
for having raped a schoolboy.
581. A decree from 23 September 1940, from the Reich Bureau of Criminal Police, established
that preventive detention should no longer apply to recidivist homosexuals if the criminal had been
castrated and if, according to the medical experts, there was no reason to fear a relapse.
582. Psychiatrist Nikolaus Jenschs study, Untersuchungen an entmannten Sittlichkeitsverbrechern
(Research on castrated sex criminals), published in 1944, established that of the 693 castrated men
in the study, 285 were homosexuals.
583. BAB, R 22/950, p.39 sq. no date or author given (1942?).
584. Lothar Gottlieb Tirala, Rasse, Geist und Seele, Munich, J.F. Lehmann Verlag, 1935, 256 pages,
p.72-73.
386

Rodenberg conducted 88 operations, of which 6 had failed. The report thus notes that,
out of 182 cases, there were only 8 failures, that is to say a success rate of 96%. Similarly,
Boeters586 maintained that castration almost always resulted in sexual death. Lang, on
the other hand, emphasizes the lack of perspective on these experiments; since they had
only been tried in the last few years, it was impossible to know their long-term consequences. The report concludes on a moderate note. It emphasizes the short duration of
the trial period and the limited number of experiments. It also speculates about the conditions of this castration: should it be voluntary or obligatory?
In fact, many reports had cast doubt on castration as a remedy for homosexuality.
Arthur Kronfeld, in Sexualpathologie, had been completely frank on the subject: The
treatment of homosexuality, in the sense of a promising medical therapy, almost does not
exist. The transplantation of the gonads, carried out by Lichtenstern and Mhsam, with
or without preliminary castration, does not seem to have produced lasting results.... Even
in my own experiments, I have never observed more than a temporary success. Insofar as
psychological treatment intended to transform the homosexual impulse into a normal
impulse, that also generally ends in failure. Gnther Grau conveys the conclusions of Dr.
Friedemann Pffflin, who studied 600 cases of castration, including 120 volunteers
going back to 19341945, in Hidden Holocaust?587 He distinguishes three kinds. The first
group used castration as an alternative to execution. (A seventy-year-old man who was
convicted twelve times for begging and six times under 176-3 was castrated on August
14, 1934; the man hanged himself immediately afterwards.) The second group consisted of
cases where castration was presented as a lesser evil than custody. The beneficial and
therapeutic effect of castration were emphasized. The third group chose castration with a
therapeutic aim, after having weighed the chances of success, and after comparison with
other measures.
By the end of 1937, these operations were being carried out in 73 research centers of
forensic biology attached to prisons or concentration camps.588 It was even projected to
create a central organization for research on castration, but the war came first.589 In fact,
it was mostly after 1939 that castration came to be considered in a systematic way as a
treatment for homosexuality. It was also during the war that Dr. Carl Vaernets experiments were carried out, which intended to cure homosexuals by hormonal
treatment.590
From 1933 to 1939, rehabilitation and eradication were both in vogue, but after
the war began, rehabilitation fell out of favor. It was essential to get rid of the asocials
585. Die Kastration bei homosexuellen Perversionen und Sittlichkeitsverbrechen des Mannes (Cited BAB,
R 22/950); Die gesetzliche Kastration; das dnische Sterilisationsgesetz vom 1.6.1929 und seine
Resultate, Mon. Krim. Biol., 1935, p.5-49 (ibid.); Zur Frage des kriminaltherapeutischen Erfolges der
Entmannung homosexueller Sittlichkeitsverbrecher, DJ, 1942, p.581 sq. (ibid.).
586. Gedanken zum Problem der Homosexualitt, Mon. Krim. Biol., 1938, p.333 sq.; 1939, p.430 sq.;
1941, p.32 sq. and 248 sq.
587. This refers to files that were found in Hamburg amid a lot of 1137 and which correspond to
the general files of forensic biology from the Hamburg prison.
589. A directive from the Reichs Central Security Service dated 2 January 1942 (cited ibid.,
p.256) placed castrated men under the supervision of the police. They were required to give notice of
any change of address. In cases where, despite being castrated, the individual by his conduct still
represented a danger to the community, and in particular youth, the criminal police could send him
directly to a concentration camp without any new trial.
590. See Appendices.
387

who were undermining the health and the morality of the nation. More and more homosexuals were sent to concentration camps. There, the charade of rehabilitation continued: homosexuals were set to labor or were sent to a brothel in order to be cured.
When the war became total and the shortage of manpower started to be felt, castration
seemed an effective way to return homosexuals, now cured, to the army.
THE LATE 1930S: FRENCH AND ENGLISH HOMOSEXUALS IN A TURMOIL

The late 1930s also meant a retreat for English and French homosexuals, although
the situation was certainly not comparable with that of Germany. England stepped up the
repression very clearly, but France was still relatively mild and now became the homosexual center of Europe. In both countries, there was an increase in reactionary rhetoric,
which called homosexuality a proof of the decline of civilization.
Homosexuality Goes Out of Fashion

The Crash of 1929 was a major turning point in the publics perception of homosexuality. From now on, political and economic problems dominated the public discourse,
and conformity became an important value again; minorities were singled out and
accused of destroying national cohesion through their efforts to satisfy their separate
interests. This was not a new phenomenon: there had been plenty of reactionary talk in
the 1920s, but now, with the financial crisis, their cries fell on more receptive ears as the
hunt for scapegoats got under way.
Depopulation
In the 1930s, governments became concerned with depopulation. In the United
Kingdom, there was a sharp drop in the birth rate: it fell to 16.3 per thousand in 1930.591
The situation was also alarming in France, where the birth rate fell from 21.4 per thousand
in 1920 to 18 per thousand in 1930 and 14.6 per thousand in 1938. Since 1935, deaths outnumbered births. France was under-populated, and took in many foreign workers.592
Nevertheless, France did not actually practice any pro-birth policy, although some
measures were taken. The Parliament had already approved laws against contraceptive
propaganda on July 31, 1920, prohibiting the sale of contraceptive material and stiffening
the penalties for abortion.593 On March 11, 1932, it required the creation of compensation
funds in each profession. By the end of the 1930s, public opinion was increasingly sensitive to the pro-birth propaganda, which presented population figures as a major asset in
international competition. The surplus of deaths was shocking. The medical and moral
rhetoric lit into the immorality of youth and women who worked, and demanded that
591. Keynes, in an article in Eugenics Review from 1937, talks about the suicide of the race. At that
time, Hitler, in his expos to the upper echelons of the State and the army, asserted that England was
in the process of an irreversible decline (Hossbach protocol).
592. Foreigners made up 3.7 % of the population in 1919 and 7.1 % in 1931.
593. Abortion has been a crime in France since 1791. It is prohibited by the 1808 criminal code.
The law of 23 March 1923 made the stipulations even stronger.
388

they reestablish family values. February 8, 1938 marked the opening of a conference in the
Senate on the crisis of the falling birth rate.594 Le Temps launched a major investigation
(July 4-22, 1938) entitled The Distressing Problem of Depopulation. The Orders in
Council of 1938 extended family benefits to new categories of workers, and the Family
Code of July 29, 1939 marked a new stage in French demographic policy: it revisited and
brought into alignment all the various measures regarding inheritance, taxes and family
allowances. The laws against abortion were again reinforced.
Decadence and decline

In the satirical literature of the 1930s, homosexuality is presented as a growing
threat. The National body and the human body were associated with each other in a disconcerting way and inversion was called a national cancer. In the face of economic difficulties, social upheavals, and the misery of everyday life, homosexuals (like other minority
groups Jews, foreigners, women who worked) were singled out for public abuse and
were held responsible for all the evils of a society in decline. Some people already accused
homosexuals in the 1920s of being directly responsible for the national bankruptcy;
others only used them as a pretext for denouncing the democracy, parliamentarism, and
liberalism that allowed such excesses.595 George-Anquetils book, Satan conduit le bal
(Satan leads the ball, 1925), which is set during the first government headed by Poincar
(1921-1922), is an excellent example of this genre.596 It denounces a century of neurosis
that led the world and humanity astray, a century of hysteria, vice and lust, treacherously
masked as virtue.597 Orgies, bacchanalias and lubricious spectacles of every sort are seen
as the daily fare of a democracy that has a nervous problem.598 All the talk about homosexuality was just one of many ways of sapping the foundations the democratic, liberal
and parliamentary society that was responsible for the decline in morals, the economic
crisis and the loss of influence on the international scene. The first sign of the acuity of
the crisis that has struck France ... is without question the physiological disorder, it is the
expanding perversion and immorality. In every period of decline, as at the later days of the
Roman Empire, an absolute madness rips through all the world and, as always, prevails
most furiously among the leading and idle classes.599
Criticism of the regime didnt balk at calumny and insult. George-Anquetil associated the names of eminent figures with scenes of debauchery, endorsing the notion that
France was being led to ruin by the very men who governed it. He slammed every political
party and attacked politicians, bankers and the press with equal vigor, from lHumanit
(socialist) to lAction franaise (royalist/nationalist). He attacked the whoremonger
George Clemenceau, who brought us victory [in the War] and prostitution, Antonin
Dubost, president of the Senate who was found dead in the most notorious brothel of
594. Le Temps, 10 and 17 February 1938.
595. On this subject, see also Marc Simard, Intellectuels, fascisme and antimodernit in la
France des annes trente, XXe sicle, April-June 1988, p.35-75.
596. Georges-Anquetil, Satan conduit le bal (a philosophical and opinionated novel of manners)
[1925], Paris, Agence parisienne de distribution, 1948, 536 pages, p.226. Anquetil was a journalist
who covered scandals, and used his periodical Le Grand Guignol to launch attacks against various
public figures.
597. Ibid., p.5.
598. Ibid., p.27.
599. Ibid., p.22.
389

Paris, poisoned by the police, they say, but in any case parading around at the age of
seventy in the company of two young pederasts.600 The corrupt elite was counter-balanced by a myth of Frances deep roots, protected from all the bad new influences: The
pure air of our countryside protects our peasants from these miasmas, and the healthy
fatigue of the workmen protects them from such temptations (if tempted they would
be).601 Homosexuality becomes thus a perversion limited to the higher reaches of society:
This is a vice of luxury, it is not our humble citizens who practice it.602
In the 1930s, talk about a decline became commonplace. The disintegration of the
political system, the fall in the birth rate, the penetration of society by foreign and Jewish
influences were denounced as well as the liberalization of morals and homosexuality.
Reactionary thought, especially from the far right, used homosexuality as a political foil.
Roy Campbell wrote of the Spanish republicans in Oswald Mosleys journal British Quarterly Union, in January-April 1937: The sodomites are on your side/ the cowards and the
sickos.
For essayists of the decline, the (purely fantastic) rise in homosexuality was
ascribed to contagion, for the sole objective of the homosexual was reproduction,
which he could not achieve through normal means. In the same style, homosexuality was
equated with modernity, this time interpreted in a pejorative sense. Philosophers of the
decline entertained the myth of an ideal society resting on a moral consensus and guaranteeing the unity and the power of the nation.
Be they French, British or German, victorious or vanquished, all wished to regain
the conditions of life of the pre-war period: economic stability, social conformity, and
international domination. Rather than search out the principal causes of the crisis of the
inter-war period, they preferred to designate scapegoats and blame them for everything.
This homosexual prurience... is only a result of certain modern concepts, whose representatives ignore the tragic consequences of their own positions.603 Industrialization
and the increasing urbanization of society were among the causes of the propagation of
evil, whereas triumphant individualism had led to the churchs fall from influence and the
rise of immorality.604
The goal of most of those denouncing the decline was to excite the general public
so that it would react vigorously to the dangers menacing the fatherland. Dr. Albert
Chapotin began his book Les Dfaitistes de lamour (1927) with the exhortation: We hope
that we will be able to increase the number of good citizens willing to found a family as
soon as possible, instead of taking their time in unwarranted explorations. We will thus
help to hold at bay the depopulation which is likely to lead our country to decline.605 His
chapter on homosexuality is entitled Descent to hell: the monsters.
In a work entitled For The Safety of The Race: Sex Education (1931), Dr. Sicard de Plauzoles maintained that the availability of robust conscripts in good health was going
down. On the other hand, the number of abnormal and degenerated men was going up,
600. Ibid., p.224.
601. Ibid., p.229.
602. Ibid.
603. F.W. Foerster, Morale sexuelle et pdagogie sexuelle, Paris, Librairie Bloud & Gay, 1929,
270 pages, p.163-165.
604. See for example H.E. Timerding, Sexualethik, Leipzig, B.G. Teubner, 1919, 120 pages, and Max
von Gruber, Hygiene of Sex, trans. from German, London, Tindall & Cox, 1926, 169 pages.
605. Dr. Albert Chapotin, Les Dfaitistes de lamour, Paris, Le Livre pour tous, 1927, 510 pages, p.9.
390

due to civilization, i.e. alcohol, poverty, syphilis, tuberculosis, the loss of sexual standards. Likewise, Dr. Jean Pou, in Conseils la jeunesse sur lducation sexuelle (Advice to
young people on sex education, 1931), explains that many young people whose energies
depopulated France so urgently needs could be stopped on the slippery slope of perverse
practices. There was only one solution: the admirable act of procreation.
The same theme is taken up by T. Bowen Partington in Sex and Modern Youth (1931),
which also blames the pernicious influence of bad books, plays and, especially, bad films
purveying immorality.606
An increasing denunciation of female homosexuality is also heard. Charles-Nol
Renard, in the introduction to his book Les Androphobes (1930), a fantastical novel, violently attacks lesbians. France, he says, is already under the spell of the homosexual
mindset and any trace of virility and masculine courage has disappeared: Our civilization
is entirely, in its finest details, the result of a biological interpretation particular to
eunuchs, doddering old men and unisexuals [lesbians].607 For Renard, the war was a
useless sacrifice which left men the losers, while women took power and set out to
destroy civilization. In his novel, he uses a group of girls in a train to illustrate all the permutations of female perfidy: I had understood long ago what type of girls keep apart from
men; I knew from their gestures, from their general demeanor, what cult these belonged
to.608 As they are described, the girls seem appalling hysterical, lubricious, sadistic and
vicious. They all are, except one, intellectuals: one is a professor, another a pharmacist,
two are government workers. Renard further observes: In every prude lurks a lesbian, as
in every emancipated woman.609 Their professions enable them to spread their poison
and to secretly take up the reins of society: The Administration belongs to us ... Everything belongs to us ... And soon, the world...610 A gigantic international lesbian plot is
underway. The man-haters recruit their victims as little girls: It is not just for my own
pleasure: I distract them from men before they have any right to think about it; I take
them, I educate them, I make them into tigresses.... and then I release them into the arena
Let the men try to pet that one! Ha!611
Renard wants to warn people, but wavers between two methods. On the one hand,
he delivers a systematic attack against women, who are supposedly stupid and reducible
to their sexuality alone: The woman is a phonogenic and an unstoppable genital apparatus,612 but he also enjoys giving vent to long discourses on the unhappy fate of the male
genre. This turns into a striking inversion of the concept of the double standard: We
forgive a man everything, EXCEPT THE USE OF HIS SEXUALITY; we forgive a woman
everything BECAUSE OF HER SEXUALITY. One always finds extenuating circumstances for an assassination; never for a rape ... the husband who would dare to excuse
himself for tapping his wife on the head for her faults would be covered with mud in court
and tarred and feathered by any civilized crowd, while the woman assassin would only
606. See also Waldo Franck, Sex Censorship and Democracy, and Samuel D.Schmalhausen,
The Sexual Revolution, in V.F.Calverton and S.D.Schmalhausen (dir.), Sex in Civilization, London,
Allen & Unwin, 1929, 719 pages.
607. Charles-Nol Renard, Les Androphobes, Saint-tienne, Imprimerie spciale ddition, 1930,
324 pages, p.59.
608. Ibid., p.118.
609. Ibid., p.224.
610. Ibid., p.126.
611. Ibid., p.142.
612. Ibid., p.204.
391

have to accuse the man she killed of unisexuality and she would be acquitted, and even
congratulated.... But if she justified her action on the basis of fanatical tribadism, her
triumph would be all the greater.613
This paranoiac delusion would be laughable if it did not reflect the state of mind of
some part of the male population, in France as well as in England and Germany. Such
flights of fancy resonated deeply among all the disappointed men in the post-war period,
unemployed or losing ground, all those who might see womens entry into the workforce
as an injustice, not to mention the success of even a small number of them. Charles-Nol
Renards final appeal sounds sinister in retrospect, like a premonition of the disaster to
come: The SAVIOR will be the one who will destroy the work of Woman. / Let us clear
the way for him, forge him weapons, prepare the greatest revolution, the biggest war that
ever drenched the Earth in blood.614
The anguish of a decline tied to homosexuality is summarized by Drieu La
Rochelle. Drieu has a complex personal relationship with inversion. He doubts his virility,
and has trouble with women.615 Anything that casts doubt on his virility sends him into a
panic. He is disgusted by inverts, although in his school days he had had several homosexual friendships; after suffering a bout of impotence at a brothel, he tries unsuccessfully
to sleep with a man.616 Like many men, he was both fascinated and repelled by the
thought of female homosexuality.617 Drieu identifies strength and virility, femininity and
homosexuality. Obsessed by the idea of decadence and decline, he tends to confound
sexual metaphors and political interpretation. Jean-Louis Saint-Ygnan, who analyzes the
concept of decadence in Drieu, notes that for him Western civilization had been in
decline since the Middle Ages. Symbolically, Drieu represents the Frenchman as an
invert.618 Sexual decadence, identified with sterility, is thus identified with the national
decline and depopulation. The themes of homosexuality, the feminine body are equated to
the disintegration of the social body, the symbol of a nation that has become effeminate
and infected by foreign elements.
Turning Inward
The 1930s rang the death knell for hedonism. In December 1931, the October Club
was founded at Oxford and the university became an outpost of the Reds, the communist and pacifist students who supported the workingmen on strike and went to Spain
as volunteers in the war. That year, the repression of homosexuals was intensified in
England, apparently due to the influence of the new chief of the London police, Sir Philip
Game. Pub owners were informed that they were not to serve homosexual clients any
more. The situation quickly became intolerable. A surveillance system was organized;
overly apparent homosexuals were requested to leave, the same as drunks.
613. Ibid., p.60-61.

614. Ibid., p.63.
615. Cited in Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Journal 1939-1945, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Tmoins, 1992,
519 pages, p.29.
616. This was probably the case in the army. The affair with Aragon remains unverified.
617. Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Journal 1939-1945, op. cit., p.31.
618. La Suite dans les ides, Cited by Jean-Louis Saint-Ygnan, Drieu la Rochelle ou lObsession de la dcadence, Paris, Nouvelles ditions latines, 1984, 260 pages, p.147.
392

Quentin Crisp took the full brunt of this reaction: The ostracism was complete:
because of increased police vigilance, the owners of even the most scandalous cafs would
not let me in.619 Police raids were more and more frequent; the pubs of the West End
were off limits and homosexuals retreated to Pimlico and Bloomsbury, where the artistic
and literary atmosphere still maintained a certain tolerance for some time.620 The public
toilets were also subject to regular raids:
The police methods became increasingly sinister. The system of using agents
provocateurs became a routine. The principal theatre of operations for this particular
strategy was the dimly lit public toilets on the less traveled streets of London ... the
police thought of homosexuals like the Indians of North America thought of bisons.
They sought a means of exterminating them by the herd [sic. Crisp was not an American historian.]. Tipped off to the venue where great costume balls were being held,
they would turn their focus there.... In one raid, a hundred or more boys, howling,
bursting with laughter, punching and kicking in their plumed and bejeweled evening
gowns with embroidered trains could be picked up and shoved or thrown into vans by
a relatively small squad of police officers ... When these balls stopped being organized
because they became more dangerous than fun, the police turned their wrathful eye to
the homos clubs.621
In France the repression was less visible, but the heyday of the homosexual clubs
was over. The promenades were no fun anymore, since the prefect of Chiappe ordered
brighter lights be put into the passageways. Nevertheless, it seems that, compared to the
destruction of the German scene and the lifelessness of the English scene, France again
became the homosexual magnetic North.
Hitlers arrival sounded the departure bell for the English homosexuals, whether
intellectuals like Auden, Spender and Isherwood or anonymous homosexuals of other
classes.622 When Ren Crevel arrived in Munich in August 1933, he was struck by the
change: In Munich the atmosphere was suffocating, and the abundance of prostitution
did nothing to relieve the sinister aspect of the Nazis faces (tight lips and creased
brows).623 The shock was terrible; two visions of Germany collided head-on.
More unsettling must have been the discovery that the values that had symbolized
the Weimar Republic were being retrieved and recycled to embody the fascist man.
Stephen Spender confronted his vision of a radiant Germany with the new reality:
Christopher and I ... used to use Germany as a palliative for our personal problems; [we] became increasingly conscious that the carefree private lives of our friends
were a faade covering an immense chaos. We had more and more the impression that
this life was going to be swept away. While we spent our holidays on the island of
Rgen, where naked bathers were stretched by the hundreds on the beach, under a
brutal sun, sometimes we could hear the bark of orders, and even shots coming from
the forest along the shore, where storm troops were training as executioners, waiting
for the martyrdom of those who were naked and unarmed.624
Some began to ask themselves questions:
619. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil-Servant [1968], London, Fontana, 1986, 217 pages, p.86.
620. See Gifford Skinners testimony in Gay News, n 135.
621. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil-Servant, op. cit., p.82-83.
622. See Norman, in Between the Acts. Lives of Homosexual Men, 1885-1967, edited by K. Porter and
J. Weeks, London, Routledge, 1991, 176 pages.
623. Letter to Marcel Jouhandeau, cited by Franois Buot, Ren Crevel, a these presented at the
university Paris-X Nanterre, under the direction of Ren Rmond, 1987, 395 pages.
393

When I came to Germany for the first time, I came in a completely irresponsible way, for the thrill. I was the malicious boy who had got his foot in the apartment of
Waldemar this afternoon and now wanted even more. However, once I had explored
the Berlin nightlife entirely and I started to tire of it, I became puritanical. I severely
criticized the debauched foreigners who came to Berlin looking for pleasure. They
exploited the famished German working class and transformed them into prostitutes.
My indignation was perfectly sincere, and was even justified; the Berlin nightlife,
when it was seen from outside, was rather pathetic. But had I really changed? Wasnt
I being just as irresponsible as before, running away from the consequences? Wasnt
this a form of betrayal?625
Irresponsibility often gave way to love for a country which had brought them
pleasure and freedom. The course chosen by the esthete Brian Howard is exemplary on
this point. He was friendly in 1931 with Klaus and Erika Mann, who kept him current as
to the political situation in Germany and the danger represented by the Nazis. Howard,
hitherto relatively indifferent, became an ardent militant on the left and took a greater
and greater interest in German politics. He contributed to the New Statesman, and was
active in the Left Book Club. In 1934 he was in Bavaria with the Mann family and wrote
several articles on the concentration camps. In Amsterdam, he found Christopher Isherwood and Klaus Mann, who was publishing the anti-Nazi magazine Die Sammlung at
that time. He became Guy Burgesss friend in 1937 and joined the Independent Labour
Party in 1938, when it had taken a position against the war. When the war broke out
anyway, he was in France and his German companion was interned in a camp in Toulon.
Thus, beyond the defense of personal interests those of the homosexual, he took
part in a larger fight for the defense of freedoms in general and a certain idea of humanity.
Some homosexual intellectuals sought to become engaged by helping German
migrs. Ren Crevel was one of these who did; in July 1934, he joined an anti-Nazi group
in Amsterdam and gathered support for intellectual migrs, at the request of Klaus
Mann.
For many English intellectuals the only solution was to go into the exile; deprived
of a country that they had learned to love, and unable to see hope for any welcome in an
England that was in full reaction, they chose to leave, mostly for the United States. Christopher Isherwood left London on March 26, 1934 to join his friend Heinz in Amsterdam.
Thus, he symbolically rejected the England of Kathleen [his mother]. That was only the
beginning of a long peregrination. Heinz was finally arrested and sentenced to six months
in prison and a year of forced labor, plus two years in the army. Isherwood was charged
with having engaged in indecent activities with the prisoner in fourteen foreign countries and the Reich.626
The flight of homosexual pacifists was taken extremely badly in England. Auden
and Isherwood were attacked for a long time: Is my honourable friend conscious of the
indignation caused by young men who leave the country, saying that they do not wish to
fight? If they are not registered as conscientious objectors, are they mindful that they may
be stripped of their nationality? asked deputy Sir Jocelyn Lucas in the House of
Commons on June 13, 1940.
Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, who lived in the United States from 1939 to 1942,
also had to face overt hostility; a letter from one their friends, Ralph Hawkes, who had
625. Christopher Isherwood, Down There on a Visit, London, Methuen, 1962, 271 pages, p.56.
626. Id., Christopher and His Kind, op. cit., p.213.
394

returned to London in September 1940, noted that there was no doubt that they would
have difficulties in playing [his] works, while caustic remarks are still being made in
comment on [his] departure. Marjorie Fass wrote: Bill [Ethel Bridge] tells me that there
are many articles in various newspapers on Benji [Benjamin Britten] & Auden & Co.; it is
quite possible that they will never be able to return to England.627 In 1941, a controversy
over Britten arose in Musical Times, when a letter from second lieutenant aviator E.R.
Leavis entitled An English composer leaves for the west ignited a firestorm that went on
from August through October.
Paradoxically, in the 1930s homosexuality became an increasingly public, increasingly political topic, while homosexuals themselves had to retreat to the private arena
private faces in public places, W.H. Auden would write. Homophobia took over even in
the most liberal circles, like those of the German migrs.
German Exiles
According to Jean-Michel Palmier, an estimated 59,000 and 65,000 Germans emigrated after Hitler came to power.628 They had many reasons for going into exile: some
feared for their lives, others left Germany out of distaste or out of conviction, or in solidarity with others. Many political opponents and Jews were among the first to leave.
Some German homosexuals also chose to go into exile. Among the more famous was the
opera star and choreographer of the UFA, Jens Keith, who left Germany in 1937 after
receiving a citation from the police, following a denunciation. He stayed in Paris until the
Occupation; then he returned to Berlin and worked for the Metropol-Theater. Willi
Tesch, cinema producer Nikolaus Kaufmanns friend, left Germany at the same time as he
did; he joined the French Resistance. Among the politically active homosexuals, the
writers Ludwig Renn and Hans Siemsen emigrated, in addition to Klaus Mann.
Initially, the homosexual migrs went to Austria or Hungary, or to Switzerland
especially Basel and Zurich, which had a homosexual subculture; but most went to Paris.
Ferdinand Bruckner left Germany in 1933, for Vienna, then Paris; he went to the United
States in 1936. The photographer Herbert List was also in Paris at that time.
Many lesbians also left Germany. Charlotte Wolff, a Jewish doctor, left Berlin in
April 1933 for Paris, then for London. Christa Winsloe, the author of Girls in Uniform, left
Germany in 1938 and took refuge in the south of France. She was assassinated with her
friend in June 1944. Erika Mann, Therese Giese, and Annemarie Schwarzenbach followed
more complex courses, wandering throughout Europe, the United States and even the
Orient. The actress Salka Viertel described life in Paris in this period: The hot nights of
summer attracted great masses of strollers on the boulevards: young couples and not so
young people of every color and from every possible country. After eleven years spent in
the United States, the freedom of the love life in Paris impressed me, the bi- and homosexual mixture which had become unthinkable in Germany since the laws of
Nuremberg.629
627. Cited in Donald Mitchell and Philip Reed (ed.), Letters from a Life, Selected Letters and Diaries of
Benjamin Britten, vol.2, 1939-1945, London, Faber & Faber, 1991, 1 403 pages, p.870.
628. See Jean-Michel Palmier, Weimar en exil, Paris, Payot, 1988, t.I and II, 533 and 486 pages.
629. 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung, Berlin, Schwules Museum, 1997, 384 pages, p.171.
395

Klaus Manns view of this forced exile was more bitter: Spent a moment with
Eddy, Bobby and two English aunts of good society. (Those aunties with whom one
speaks only because that is what they are: just as, now, one often finds oneself obliged to
speak to Jews or to migrs, simply because they are Jews or migrs).630
For much, exile was a time for making assessments, reflecting on oneself and on
politics. The magazine Die Sammlung tried to group together all the exiled writers who
were against Nazism and wanted to defend real German literature. It was sponsored by
Heinrich Mann, Aldous Huxley, and Andr Gide; it published articles by Thomas Mann,
Ren Schickel, Alfred Dblin, Hermann Hesse and Stefan Zweig. It was banned in
Germany, and the writers who contributed to it were boycotted by German booksellers
Thomas Mann, Alfred Dblin and Ren Schickel soon had to drop out.
Exile brought a new political and homosexual maturity to Klaus Mann. His novel
Volcano (1939) is an allegory of migr life, particularly their disastrous love affairs and
their self-destructive tendencies. He protested the reigning homophobia. Reading on an
article on homosexuality and Fascism in Zeitschrift fr Sexualknomie on December 2,
1934, he decided to write about it himself. He noted that they were not far from identifying homosexuality with Fascism and criticized the new Soviet laws as well as the way
the Rhm affair was being exploited by the socialist and communist newspapers. He
questioned the attitude of the Nazis who were variously trying to form homosexuals
cliques, to lock up them, castrate them or slaughter them. Ren Crevel says this article
reveals the impasse facing homosexuals; between Fascism and Communism, there was no
more room for any demands about sex: From the sexual point of view, it seems that the
liberties that had been allowed and tolerated were now going to be denied by both
sides.631
In fact, the German exiles were ambiguous on homosexuality. While homosexuals
were stigmatized by the regime, opponents to Nazism could use homosexuality as a
weapon in anti-Hitler propaganda. The Communist Partys new line was at the origin of
this tendentious assimilation. In 1933, the International Committee to Assist Victims of
Hitlerian Fascism published the Brown Book on the burning of the Reichstag and the Hitlerian terror. Van der Lubbe, the incendiary young Dutchman, is presented as a homosexual who betrayed the communist cause because of his sexual preferences: Van der
Lubbe is first of all a homosexual. He has an effeminate style; his reserve and timidity in
the presence of women is testified by many witnesses; his taste for male company is notorious. These tendencies put him in contact with the Nazi leadership, in particular Dr.
Bell, Rhms pimp. Van der Lubbes material dependence made him flexible and compliant.632 After The Night of the Long Knives, Pravda denounced both the Hitlerian plot
and the morals of Rhm, which were represented as being typical of the whole regime.
The proclamation signed by the SPD committee in exile in Amsterdam (clandestinely distributed in various German cities) is similar: [Hitler] identified his honor with that of the
assassins, torturers and debauchees. By accusing them today and by holding them up to
the publics scorn, he convicts himself; for it was on these men, their crimes, and their
shame, that all his system rested. 633
630. Klaus Mann, Journal. Les annes brunes, 1931-1936, Paris, Grasset, 1996, 452 pages, 30 November
1936, p.377.
631. Cited by Franois Buot, Ren Crevel, op. cit., p.346.
632. Livre brun sur lincendie du Reichstag, op. cit.
633. Le Temps, 3 July 1934.
396

Several works published by German writers in exile fed the myth that there was
collusion between homosexuals and Nazis. One of the best-known texts is Bertolt
Brechts Ballade vom 30. Juni, which presents The Night of the Long Knives and suggests a
homosexual relationship between Rhm and Hitler. One may also cite Hitlers Youth, by
Hans Siemsen, published in London in 1940; or Vor grossen Wandlungen (1937), by Ludwig
Renn, in which the Nazis and a suicidal aristocrat are homosexual, while the resistance
were virile heterosexuals. There are also hints of homophobia in Vicky Baums Shanghai
Hotel, published in 1939, a novel featuring several clients of a hotel in Shanghai which is
blown up. Among the clients are Dr. Emmanuel Hain, a half-Jew, whose son Roland was
a child of the war, and has sensitive nerves. He was sent to an experimental school, conducted in the open air. But one of the professors was enamored of the young boy: too sensitive to Rolands strange charms, he committed suicide with his revolver. At the age of
twenty, Roland entered the NSDAP, not knowing that he was partly Jewish, and slept
with one of the leaders. His childhood friend, Kurt, a heterosexual and anti-Nazi,
observes his evolution with sadness and distress: He was, like him, part of that postwar
generation that was not shocked by love between members of the same sex. Perhaps it
was a holdover from wartimes when the men on their own together? or a distaste for procreating in an over-populated country? Some found it comic, some tragic, others interesting. Many tried it just out of snobbery, following a fashion.634 Rolands life ends
tragically. His comrades discover that he is Jewish, and he is assassinated.
***
For ten years, English and French homosexuals had been going to enjoy the liberty
of Germany. Now the roles were reversed and it was the German homosexuals who went
abroad to seek freedom and tolerance. And it was not just the police repression; there had
been a remarkable change in public opinion: homosexuals were consigned to the dark
corners or, worse, pointed out. And ironically, at the very moment when homosexuals
were suffering the worst persecutions in Germany, they were compared to their tormentors, as though they were all in one enemy camp.
It is very difficult to say how many homosexuals were victims of Nazism. Official
statistics of the Reich, the remaining Nazi statistics and the notes of Dr. Wuth, suggest
that 100,000 would be a rough estimate of the number of homosexuals recorded by the
Reich Central Command for the Combat of Homosexuality. Of them, approximately
50,000 were convicted. Between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexuals were sent to concentration camps.635 The German homosexual population is estimated to have been between
1.5 and 2 million at that time, so it appears that the great majority of homosexual must
have succeeded in surviving under Nazism. That does not diminish the fact that they were
constantly targeted by the regime and that they lived in anguish and infamy during this
period.
634. Vicky Baum, Shanghai Hotel [1939], Paris, Phbus, 1997, 669 pages, p.67 and 95.
635. Certain authors estimate the number of victims at several hundred thousand, even up to a
million, including Jean Boisson (Le Triangle rose. La dportation des homosexuels [1933-1945], Paris, Robert
Laffont, 1988, 247 pages). Such figures are have no serious basis. The desire to rehabilitate homosexual victims cannot be based on a historical aberration. To speak of a final solution or a
homocaust for homosexuals is an absurdity that denigrates the homosexual cause
397

Was Nazism unique in its treatment of homosexuals? The Nazis were unusual in
the use of police terror, the dehumanization of victims, sentences disproportionate to
acts, and the broad use of force. However, the methods had already been tested in England
and under Weimar. Neither did Nazism invent the homophobic political campaign: it was
the Socialists and the Communists who tried that, first. Medical abuses were made possible by the psychiatric will to control perverts, and castration was adopted on the basis
of foreign (Danish and Swiss) research.
Wilhelm Reich saw Fascism as a consequence of the repression of natural sexual
needs.636 If this explanation, partial at best, is true, then it may be that the treatment of
homosexuality under Nazism was merely an extension of traditional homophobia.
Nazism and homosexual repression in Europe were part of one continuum, as Guy Hocquenghem noted. He saw this similarity as the reason for the silence that surrounded
homosexual repression. The Nazis had only gone a little further. But the elimination or,
in any case, the restriction of homosexuals there was not one allied country that did not
do it, too. All things considered, the massacre of homosexuals had to be kept secret especially since it would reveal a similarity between Nazism and those who claimed to be its
judges and its mortal enemies.637
636. Wilhelm Reich, La Psychologie de masse du fascisme [1933], Paris, Payot, coll. Petite bibl. Payot,
1972, 341 pages, p.92.
637. Guy Hocquenghem, preface to the book by Heinz Heger, Les Hommes au triangle rose, op. cit.,
p.11-12.
398
POSTFACE
TOWARD HOMOSEXUAL LIBERATION
But do not imagine we do not know,
Nor that what you hide with such care wont show
At a glance:
Nothing is done, nothing is said.
But dont make the mistake of believing us dead;
I shouldnt dance [if I were you].638
The Second World War was just as much a shock in homosexual history as the
First War. In Germany, it coincided with the apogee of Nazi repression. It was characterized by an extension of terror; more individuals were sent to concentration camps and
more were castrated in the interests of re-education.
In 1940, homosexuals who had seduced more than one partner were also sent
directly to the concentration camp. Hitler ordered stronger efforts to fight against homosexuality within the party and the Wehrmacht on August 18, 1941. On November 15, 1941
a confidential decree was published for the cleansing (Reinhaltung) of the SS and the
police.639 The death penalty was instituted for any member of the SS or the police found
guilty of homosexual acts. In less serious cases, the sentence could be commuted to a sentence of hard labor or prison, not less than six months. If the defendant was younger than
twenty-one, the court could, in less serious cases, withhold sentencing.
Homosexuals found within the Hitler Youth were also at greater risk. A 1940
directive from the RSHA authorized sending minors to detention camps for young people,
run by the police. This treatment was reserved for boys who were guilty of criminal or
antisocial behavior, and it is possible that homosexuals were sent there.
Lastly, a confidential study was launched at the Reich Ministry of Justice, the
Gestapo, the Office of Criminal Police and the Army Medical Inspectorate in order to
determine what measures should be taken in the case of homosexuality in the Wehrmacht. The Ministry of Justice opposed giving any amnesty or rehabilitation. The
638. W.H. Auden, The Witnesses (1932).
639. BAB, R 58/261.
399

Gestapo and the criminal police supported maintaining the old distinction between
homosexuals by inclination and those who had been seduced. The military psychiatrist
Otto Wuth, in February 1943, wrote a memorandum on the extent of the infection in the
army. Finally, two series of measures were adopted: on May 19, 1943, the chief of the
OKW, General Keitel, presented Guidelines for Treating Criminal Cases of Unnatural
Acts, and on June 7, 1944, the medical chief of the Luftwaffe, Schrder, presented a 14page directive entitled: Instructions for Doctors and How to Evaluate Cases of Homosexuality.
Other solutions were also proposed. On September 14, 1943, the legal branch of the
SS proposed that people convicted for crimes under 175 be assigned to special units.
Reichsfhrer SS Himmler had already decided that minor cases could be assigned to
special units of the Waffen-SS. The most serious cases were to be sent to concentration
camps. The proposal for intermediate cases suggested integrating them into the special
unit of Waffen-SS Dirlewanger. On May 12, 1944, a secret decree from the chief the
security police ordered that homosexuals turned out of the Wehrmacht (i.e. those who
exhibited a predisposition or an acquired and clearly incorrigible impulse) were to be
sent to a concentration camp.
Lastly, castration was debated in many forums. There was draft legislation in 1943
dealing with the treatment of outsiders to the community (Gemeinschaftsfremden).
This group, described as a burden on society, included specifically vagrants, beggars and
homosexuals. The all-out war prevented its being put into operation; it would have meant
obligatory castration for homosexuals. In addition, a secret order of November 14, 1942,
from the economic and administrative service of the SS gave the green light to camp commanders to order castration in special cases that were not covered by the law. This decree
legalized the castration of homosexual in the camps. After the war, homosexual survivors of the concentration camps had trouble getting their testimony heard.
After the war, 175 remained in force and homosexual deportees were often treated
with contempt. Finally, on June 25, 1969, West Germany (FRG) decided that homosexual
acts between consenting men over the age of 21 no longer came under the jurisdiction of
the law. East Germany (DRG) had reformed 175 in 1968, legislating that homosexual acts
between consenting men over the age of 18 were no longer punished. By the early 1970s,
homosexual rights movements were created, often on the American model. On June 7,
1973, the Bundestag of West Germany lowered the age of consent to eighteen years. (For
heterosexuals, the age of sexual majority was fourteen). On December 14, 1988, the East
German Volkskammer abolished 151, which punished homosexuality between adults
and adolescents aged sixteen to eighteen years. After the reunification of Germany, on
June 11, 1994, 175 was definitively abolished.
In England, it seems that the war years saw a certain relaxation of police surveillance and a resuscitation of the homosexual scene. The plug would be pulled on this
resuscitation in the early 1950s, which were marked by conformity, and homophobia was
encouraged by the fears of the cold war. In England, the Cambridge spy scandal (Guy
Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt) revived the myth of the homosexual traitor.
In the 1950s, the number of convictions for homosexuality reached a new zenith: on
average 2,000 people per year; and scandals accusing public personalities of homosexual
were rife.
The subject was discussed in the House of Lords and, in 1954, the Minister of the
Interior charged Sir John Wolfenden with studying the question. In 1957, his committee
400
Toward Homosexual Liberation

recommended the depenalization of homosexuality (except in the navy and the army);
this was finally voted into law only ten years later. The age of consent for male relations
remained set at twenty-one years; it was lowered to eighteen in 1994. In November 1970,
the Gay Liberation Front was created, on the model of the American movement.
Meanwhile, even if Paris attracted homosexuals, the repression in France was also
reinforced. The law of August 6, 1942, article 1st, subparagraph 1 of article 334 of the modified penal code encompassed impudic or unnatural homosexual and lesbian acts committed with minors less than twenty-one years of age. The 1950s and 1960s were also
marked by mixed signals. Writers like Roger Peyrefitte and Jean Genet published openly
homosexual novels, and a homosexual review, Arcadie, was created by Andr Baudry, but
at the same time the Mirguet amendment, in July 1960, defined homosexuality as a social
plague. In March 1971, the FHAR (Front for Homosexual Revolutionary Action) was
created; but the law of August 6, 1942 remained in force and was repealed only in 1982.640
640. See Frdric Martel, Le Rose et le Noir. Les homosexuels in France depuis 1968, Paris, ditions du
Seuil, 1996, 456 pages.
401
CONCLUSION
PROGRESS OR INCREASED REPRESSION?
The inter-war period was crucial in homosexual history, far more than just a transitional phase between the profusion of medical opinions of the turn of the century and the
protest movements of the 1960s. These years sum up the entire battle over homosexuality,
the conflicting tendencies that shaped public opinion and the ideological implications of
deviance.
NATIONAL INTERACTIONS, CONVERGENCES AND DISTINCTIONS

Many phenomena were common in the three countries studied, both in terms of
homosexual behavior and in terms of the publics attitudes. There was an overall liberalization of morals in the 1920s, which went hand in hand with increased tolerance. That
was characterized by the rapid formation of the homosexual scene and also by the constitution of a homosexual culture that went beyond common references in the field of literature or theater. There were two opposing models around which the sense of identity
formed: that of exclusion, articulated by Adolf Brand and Andr Gide, and that of integration, asserted by Magnus Hirschfeld and Bloomsbury. Homosexual tourism was a
novel expression of this new identity, inaugurated at the end of the 19th century by the
fad for traveling in Italy and in Capri. Berlin was affirmed as the new capital of the homosexual microcosm in the 1920s. But for those who were part of it, this process of establishing an identity, of carving out an identity for oneself as a homosexual and for
homosexuals collectively was only in the preliminary phase. It would be misleading to
make too much of it; there was no real solidarity among homosexuals as such.
In all three countries studied, tolerance did increase; maybe not in every milieu, but
it became widespread in the upper classes, intellectual circles and in the large cities.
Homosexuality also related directly to the working class, but more by means of prostitution. The theme of the working-class lover was symbolic of the inter-war period and
403

contributed to bridging the gap between upper-crust homosexuals and the workers. It
was the middle class, the petite bourgeoisie, and small-town families that seemed most
mired in traditional prejudices and morality. There was a major shift in the 1930s, but
perhaps the change was not as dramatic as has sometimes been thought. Indeed, it should
not be forgotten that the reactionary forces were already in evidence in the 1920s, even if
they found fewer opportunities for expression. The economic crash, political turmoil and
international tensions would create an opening for all the old criticisms to come back,
showing that the wave of tolerance had been largely superficial. In ten years, it had not
had time to take root in the public mindset, anyway.
In spite of these similarities, fine observation of the behaviors and attitudes allows
us to define three specific national and interactive models. Germany was the standard of
reference for homosexuality in the inter-war period. Two things made it special: first, it
was the locus of the communal model for homosexuals, characterized by the creation of
homosexual movements. The homosexual identity was reflected there as a wake-up call,
an assertion of rights, a political position. Lesbians, neither coerced by repression nor
encouraged by any real mobilization, mostly stayed out of these struggles. The German
model was open to outsiders: the homosexual movements were in constant dialogue with
the political, legal and religious authorities, and also with the public. But German homosexuality was also open to foreigners: the German model was exported and was imitated
in England and France. There were frequent and beneficial interactions: English and
French homosexuals visited Germany and took back ideas for founding movements, a
new sexual freedom and a feeling of membership in one community.
The other characteristic that is specific to Germany was negative. Germany, having
been the center of homosexual freedom in the 1920s, became that of repression in 1933. It
was the only country to actually toughen up its anti-homosexual laws. The persecution
was organized by the Nazi regime, which clearly designated homosexuals as one of the
groups to be eliminated from the society. This policy ended up signifying that they would
be sent to concentration camps, where thousands of them died. Here again, the interactions with other countries are obvious: the beginning of German repression coincided
with the retreat of English homosexuals, the gradual disappearance of the homosexual
subculture in England and the aggravation of police practices in that country. The end of
the blissful interlude in Germany was marked by the exile of many German intellectuals,
including some homosexuals, who perpetuated in their memoirs the remembrance of
Berlin in the Roaring Twenties.
The French model seems quite different. France was outstanding in the inter-war
period in that it did not condemn homosexuality under the law. In contrast to Germany,
there as no clear break between the 1920s and the 1930s: the laws were not changed and
the stepped up police activity remained relatively moderate. France was above all a
symbol for the lesbians who chose Paris rather than Berlin as their capital. Sapphism also
made headway in literature, where the theme of the New Woman was gradually being
elaborated: liberated, adventurous, often lesbian. Interactions with England were visible:
many English lesbians would visit with their English-speaking friends. That was true for
Vita Sackville-West, Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge, among others. Violet Trefusis
even chose to settle in France after her relationship with Vita Sackville-West ended.
However, France was not much affected by the homoerotization of society (defined
as the worship of the male body) that was detectable during the same period in Germany
and England. Moreover, the French model of homosexuality was adamantly individual-
404
Progress or Increased Repression?

istic. The homosexual scene was just a place to meet and have a good time; it was not part
of an emerging community structure and did not stimulate an awakening identity. The
heralds of homosexuality were mostly intellectuals, like Marcel Proust and Andr Gide,
who were most interested in their own personal expression. In fact, the French model
turned out not to be very exportable. They were not militant, and looked only for limited
improvements in the situation. However, the lack of ambition explains why French
homosexuals suffered less than the others from the moral crisis of the 1930s.
To conclude, the English model seems particularly innovative; in England homosexuality took a new direction, building on the example of its neighbors but maintaining
its own characteristics. As in Germany, homosexuality in England remained a misdemeanor; homosexuals were still under threat, and that encouraged the development of a
homosexual identity. As in France, however, the homosexual community remained concentrated around an intellectual and artistic elite. The homosexual identity was therefore
not exerted through militant organizations (except for the timid BSSP), but neither did it
take the form of an individual struggle. In fact, the English model of homosexuality was
neither communal nor individualistic, rather, it was cultural and social. Certain institutions like the public schools, the universities, the secret service and the literary circles
turned out to be particularly open to homosexuals. One can even speak of a homosexualization of the leading classes, explained by the prevalence of single-gender structures
(homosociality) and the emphasis on the value of relationships among men.
That also explains why the lesbians were the target of conservative groups in
England more than in other countries. Castrating bitches, vampires, opium addicts,
degenerate and louche, lesbians came to incarnate the very worst fantasies about feminism.
The English difference did not mean there was greater tolerance. There was a
dichotomy between thought and action, between practice and morals, more than elsewhere. The English model was thus both interactive and distinctly national: the British
homosexuals took the French and German examples as a starting point from which to
build their identity; at the same time, they had a common culture that was specific to
Britain, nonexportable.
The 1930s saw the militants back off after just getting started in the 1920s
and the retreat of institutional homosexuality. The figure of the homosexual faded into
the shadows and gradually, retroactively, was blended into the Wildean myth. However,
unlike in Germany, most homosexuals did not feel the direct impact of the repression but
were able to blend back into the rest of society.
Questions: The Nature and Style of Homosexuality in the Inter-war Period

The topic of homosexuality in the inter-war period is rich in meaning. Through it,
we can explore many aspects of popular attitudes having to do with the most intimate
fears and fantasies of the societies. The First World War called into question the patriarchal, puritanical and authoritarian society based on the superiority of the father in the
family structure and on male domination at the institutional level. The war confirmed the
failure of the masculine principle as the principle around which society was organized,
showing the limits violence, arrogance, and physical force. They had led humanity to
disaster. Man was humiliated, crushed, reduced. The period following the First World
War built on opposite values, feminine values: peace, pleasure, harmony. That did not
405

mean the victory of women, not at all: despite real victories, like winning voting rights in
England and Germany and better access to the world of employment, womens emancipation remains largely illusory. Nevertheless, men felt affronted by this new freedom in
women, and many perceived it as a loss and a defeat for men, and an attack on their
virility.
Homoerotization was a way of reacting to the situation: young people rejected the
parental model as a symbol of the war and chose androgyny. Young men accentuated their
femininity, like Englands Bright Young People; they celebrated estheticism, beauty and
the knack like the new fashion values. Women flaunted their emancipation by adopting
more practical haircuts and clothing, which played down the traditional symbols of femininity and testified to their lack of concern about appealing to men. Artistic representations faithfully echoed these tendencies and the youthful body flexible, slender,
muscular, bronzed, and androgynous became the social ideal. This homoerotic image
was laden with heavy fantasies: it replicated the image of the sacrificed generation, all the
youth mowed down on the battlefields whose beauty had stirred such a troubling homosexual attraction. The new generation sought both to deny death and at the same time
affirm the triumph of life, embodied in the perfect man/woman who was sufficient in and
of itself and could serve as a basis for a new society. Homosexuality became an attribute of
youth, a sign of permanent adolescence, a society that did not want to grow up any more,
which did not want to face the world as an adult. In the inter-war period, behaviors were
modeled on those of teenagers: forgetfulness, pleasure and irresponsibility became the
mainstays of social organization.
The worship of homosexuality associated with a myth of adolescence was used by
the forces of progress as well as by the forces of reaction: the Aryan version was only one
variation among others on the notion of the androgynous body. Whereas the Weimar
Republic had stressed the feminine values conveyed by homosexuality (androgyny,
softness, conciliation), Nazism focused on its virile qualities (misogyny, Mnnerbund,
cult of the man). In fact, while the left supported homosexuals out of opportunism and a
commonality of interests, it was quick to turn against them as soon as the political situation required it. Homosexuality was then denounced as a fascistic perversion. Equally
equivocal, while fascists and Nazis condemned homosexuals in the most insulting terms
and then set out to persecute them in an organized way, they also built their movements
around a homoerotic mythology and esthetics. Homosexuals could only come out losers,
wither way. With no real support, left behind by a homoerotic fad that did not really
relate to them, they became the prey of various parties and were among the first victims of
the crisis of the 1930s.
One must add to these sets of themes the visceral antifeminism of the period, which
explains why lesbians always seem to have kept themselves apart from events. The homoerotization of the society may have included the revival of feminine values, but it did not
mean a feminization of society. On the contrary the period was marked by the revival of
male social structures (public schools, university, youth movements, the Mnnerbund).
In fact, lesbians were victims twice over: as women, they were part of a social minority
that had only a negligible and recently acquired influence; as homosexuals, they were seen
as attacking the bases of society and as a threat to family unity (the last refuge of
morality). To affirm their own identity, they had to fight on two fronts: the campaign for
rights, as women, and the campaign to affirm their sexual rights, as lesbian. Meanwhile,
the feminists refused to consider the special needs of lesbians and the homosexual move-
406
Progress or Increased Repression?

ments disregarded the female cause. The repression of lesbianism is explained, finally, by
the patriarchal States will to regain control of society: and for that, first of all, it had to
tackle problem of the family, center of authority and a small-scale model of the society as a
whole. But belief was so strong in male superiority, and it was so apparent that female
sexuality could be contained, that no specific laws should be needed; social pressure alone
would be enough to drive women back to their proper places.
From these various observations, it seems reasonable to conclude that homosexuality in the inter-war period affected the whole of society and not merely a small fraction
of the population. That hypothesis will give rise to controversy and debate. One of the
greatest revelations of this study is, finally, the extraordinary abundance of research
material: homosexuality, far from being a taboo subject, was everywhere. It was analyzed,
and romanticized, throughout the period. It was praised and insulted, celebrated and
decried it, but it certainly was talked about. But as they gained public attention, homosexuals lost their last hope of autonomy. The fight for homosexuals failed because it
rested on the laurels of its first victories. Lulled by the successes of the immediate postwar period, conscious that attitudes were shifting in their favor, homosexuals believed
that their acceptance and their final integration were only a question of time. They took
advantage of their new freedom, the opportunities presented by the homosexual scene
and the relaxation or absence of repression, rather than focusing on the political and
legal battles that still had to be fought. They overlooked the alarms sounded by the homosexual organizations, which recalled that in Germany and England homosexuality was
still a crime punished by the law and that calls for a crackdown, far from disappearing,
were increasing.
For those who were promoting the theory of decadence, the lead up to the war
needed to include the elimination of the weak, the degenerate, the parasites. Homosexuals were first in line. Things had gone full circle; from one war to the next, man
regained his lost virility. The younger generations which had not been able to prove their
virility as combatants in the First World War now had to take up the torch again and
give up the ideals and the models of the 1920s. There was no more place for the androgynous and solar homosexual myth. Conformity and the black of night were back, for at
least thirty years.
407
408
Appendix I. Statistics
APPENDIX I. STATISTICS
ENGLAND: CHANGES IN HOMOSEXUAL CRIMES BETWEEN 1919 AND 1940
1. Police statistics
Crimes
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
47
71
43
59
68
70
67
91
67
1928
58
92
192
187
221
221
265
345
354
345
336
138
156
168
170
201
185
166
155
197
141
Total
277
419
398
450
480
520
578
600
609
535
1928
2. Number of persons tried

Crimes
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
38
34
30
35
35
33
23
44
38
20
81
164
134
137
157
159
159
202
256
234
112
126
129
124
156
133
113
81
109
105
Total
231
324
293
296
348
305
295
327
403
359
3. Number of persons tried in circuit court (court of appeals)

Crimes
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
37
33
29
34
33
33
22
43
32
20
41
83
58
66
63
56
54
75
88
72
106
124
127
119
147
123
104
78
107
98
Total
184
240
214
219
243
212
180
196
227
190
1928
4. Number of persons tried in criminal court

Crimes
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
40
89
76
71
94
103
105
127
168
162
10
Total
47
92
79
77
105
113
115
131
173
169
409
A History of Homosexuality in Europe Vol. II
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
102
47
73
46
82
64
78
125
102
134
1940
97
364
398
391
487
554
581
535
690
703
822
808
191
203
178
258
210
192
227
352
316
320
251
657
548
642
791
846
837
840
1167
1121
1276
1156
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1940
46
31
43
26
44
39
36
62
60
74
51
227
226
221
243
260
287
261
317
290
413
349
108
125
99
129
112
133
114
139
194
203
111
381
382
363
398
416
459
411
518
544
690
511
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1940
45
28
39
25
39
33
32
55
48
67
44
65
59
80
63
62
59
64
74
65
104
88
108
116
92
119
104
116
101
119
175
178
96
218
203
211
207
205
208
197
248
288
349
228
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1940
12
162
167
141
180
198
228
197
243
225
309
261
10
17
13
20
19
25
15
163
179
152
191
211
251
214
270
256
341
283
U : Unnatural Offences.
A : Attempt to Commit Unnatural Offences
I : Indecency with Males.
Source: Parliamentary Papers, Judiciary Statistics.
410
5. Police statistics by district (U + A + I)
Districts
1919
1933
Bedfordshire
1937
3
Berkshire
14
Buckinghamshire
34
Cambridgeshire
Cheshire
10
13
105
Cornwall
12
Cumberland
Derbyshire
12
Devon
65
53
Dorset
Durham
Essex
15
47
Gloucestershire
21
13
Hereford
Hertfordshire
Huntington
Kent
12
30
66
Lancashire
51
140
114
Leicestershire
Lincoln
18
22
Metropolitan Police
62
149
185
London City
Normouth
11
11
Norfolk
30
Northamptonshire
Northumberland
10
Nottingham
14
15
Oxfordshire
18
Rutland
Salop
17
Somerset
34
Southampton
19
56
98
Staffordshire
25
Suffolk
25
Surrey
'9
35
Sussex
38
63
Warwick
20
83
Westmorland
Wiltshire
Worcester
10
23
York (East Riding)
York (North Riding)
York (West Riding)
16
111
88
411
England, 1919
1. Cases and outcomes, Crown (circuit) courts
2. Length of sentences, Crown (circuit)
Crimes
Total
37
33
106
Crimes
Men
37
33
106
Case dropped
Mentally ill
Acquitted
13
40
Total prison sentences

14 days or less
1-3 months
3-6 months
6-9 months
9 months - 1 year
1 year - 18 months
18 months - 2 years
Total hard labor
3 years
4 years
5 years
5-7 years
7-10 years
16
0
0
1
1
2
5
7
17
6
5
4
2
0
32
0
3
6
3
10
4
6
7
3
1
3
0
0
63
1
9
27
10
13
2
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
10+ years
Guilty but mentally ill
Total convicted
29
25
65
Hard labor
11
Prison
20
54
Reformatory
Warning + probation
Warning
20
Others
Crimes
Total
24
32
65
Men
24
32
65
Crimes
Ages 14-16
Total
Ages 16-21
Charges withdrawn
25
Ages 21-30
Guilty
172
Ages 30-40
10
17
Acquitted
Ages 40-50
10
Warning
11
Ages 50-60
18
Warning + probation
28
Age 60 +
Asylum
Total prison
98
14 days - 1 month
10
3. Gender and age of convicts
4. Cases and outcomes, criminal court
England, 1933
412
A
197
1-2 months
12
2-3 months
37
3-6 months
39
Fines
28
1. Cases and outcomes, Crown (Circuit) Courts
Crimes
Total
Men
Not prosecuted
Mentally ill
Acquitted
Guilty but mentally ill
Total convicted
Hard labor
Prison
Reformatory
Warning + probation
Warning
Others
Preventive detention
Recidivist
Prison
Other sentences
Crimes
U
39
39
0
0
4
0
35
6
21
3
2
1
2
0
10
7
0
3.Total
Gender and age of convicts
35
A
42
42
0
0
8
0
34
3
25
0
4
2
0
0
27
17
0
I
104
104
0
1
25
0
78
2
47
0
9
18
2
0
29
22
0
48
78
2. Length of sentences Crown (circuit) courts

Crimes
Total hard labor
11
3 years
4 years
5 years
5-7 years
7-10 years
10+ years
Total prison
20
54
14 days or less
14 days - 1 month
1-3 months
10
3-6 months
6-9 months
19
9 months - 1 year
11
1 year- 18 months
18 months - 2 years
Men
35
47
78
Less than 14 years
Crimes
Ages 14-16
Total arrested
38
Ages 16-21
12
25
Charges withdrawn
Ages 21-30
10
19
Case dropped
Ages 30-40
11
14
10
Warning
Ages 40-50
11
11
Warning + probation
Ages 50-60
10
Asylum
Ages 60+
Total convicted
28
Prison
22
Reformatory
Fines
413
England, 1937
1. Cases and outcomes, Crown (circuit) courts
2. Length of sentences, Crown
(circuit) courts
Crimes
U
A
I
Total
Not prosecuted
Acquitted
Convicted
Hard labor
Prison
Reformatory
Warning + probation
Warning
Other
48
2
5
42
17
16
2
4
2
1
54
0
8
45
7
32
1
4
1
0
175
0
23
152
1
63
1
24
56
2
Crimes
Total prison sentences
21
25
47
14 days or less
14 days - 1 month
1-3 months
4
19
3-6 months
6-9 months
9 months - 1 year
13
1 year - 18 months
18 months - 2 years
Total hard labor
3 years
4 years
5 years
5-7 years
7-10 years
10+ years
3. Gender and age of convicts

Crimes
Crimes
Total
42
51
152
Charges withdrawn
26
Under 17
Prosecuted
172
Total arrested
198
Ages 17-21
17
Warning
Ages 21-30
39
Warning + probation
11
Ages 30-40
10
12
38
Reformatory
23
Ages 40-50
15
28
Preventive detention
Ages 50-60
10
13
Asylum
Over 60
13
Total convicted
123
Prison
96
Less than 14 days
14 days - 1 month
1-2 months
2-3 months
27
3-6 months
Reformatory
Whipping
Fines
16
Others
414
GERMANY: CHANGES IN HOMOSEXUAL CRIMES BETWEEN 1919 AND 1939
Convictions under 175
1. Homosexuality convictions, adult

ADULTS
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
Indicted
110
237
485
588
503
850
1226
Convicted
80
169
357
493
416
689
1019
Acquitted
26
65
126
94
87
160
203
Non-lieu
Foreigners
10
10
Recidivists
27
39
65
100
93
174
272
Prison
78
162
346
336
308
528
803
Less than 3 months
53
118
260
21
178
375
529
3 months - 1 year
18
34
76
102
113
128
246
more than 1 year
10
10
13
17
25
28
14
20
16
?
Source: Statistik des Deutschen Reichs.
151
102
150
202
1925
Loss of civic rights

Fines
2. Homosexuality convictions, minors (ages 12 to 18)

MINORS
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
Indicted
33
51
103
105
90
126
128
Convicted
24
10
63
83
64
102
104
Acquitted
40
22
26
24
24
415
of the Criminal Code (1919 - 1934)
nes
5
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1126
911
731
786
732
618
721
778
872
927
761
636
653
625
508
625
674
771
196
141
92
131
105
102
94
96
99
15
259
263
225
730
583
Prusse
A800
n
A
401
195
163
1 9352
19
7
14
30
1 91772
6
1672
161
6
17
81
Bavi
270
re480
C 326 A
490
140
132
340C
Saxe
332
485
A341
W u r239
Pays
269
temberg
de
Bade
392
464
575
C 270 C 340 A
C
A
378
100
181
5 14 2
1 14 1
0710 87 10 39
239
9
4 131 1 1491
1 151 1
95
70
30
10
1
210
110
12
5
100
111
13 5
6
140 7
9
8
4
8
167
7
290
635
290
252
30
4
175
86
7
93
40
110
Thu
H a m -1929
MecklemO1932
ld1926
1927H
1928
1930
1931
1933 Bru 1934
i
bourg
enburg
ringe 124 esse 104 bourg 98
nsw
89
92
69
93
82 ck
99
100
84
82
71
81
57
79
74
A
C A C
A
C
A
C
A
C
A C ?
8
2 24 2 2 20 2
416
318
2 11
17 12
8 14 7
9 9 ?
8
8
8
5 8
6
1
2
8
6
7
7
1
1
2 1
6
5
3 8
3
1
3
8 7
7
2
416
3. Statistics by Lnder (1925-1926)

Prussia
Bavaria
Saxe
Wurtemberg
Baden
Years
1925
1926
730
617
572
481
207
195
187
170
139
130
123
110
69
91
54
78
46
74
45
70
Thuringia
Hesse
Hamburg
Mecklenburg
Oldenburg
Brunswick
28
13
28
11
28
23
25
18
48
67
36
57
21
32
17
28
8
8
7
6
9
7
9
7
A = Arrested
C = Convicted
4. Statistics by age (1928)

Adults &
minors
under 16
16-18
18-21
21-25
25-30
30-40
40-50
50-60
60-70
over 70
804
39
80
153
103
104
123
106
61
33
5. Statistics by socio-professional category (1928)

Agriculture
workers,
hunters,
fishermen
Total
Industrial
workers,
craftsman
Civil servants,
liberal
professions,
health care
workers
Household
help
Salaried
workers
No career,
unemployed
183
54
54
30
Trade,
transport
18
134
15
306
37
146
152
321
P = Proprietors, supervisors
W = Workers, employees
6. Statistics by city (1930)

I
C
I
C
1930
Berlin
Dsseldorf
Frankfurt/M
Cologne
Konigsberg
Munich
732
625
41
30
41
39
45
32
43
39
31
29
75
65
Dresden
Stuttgart
Karlsruhe
Hamburg
Bremen
Lbeck
98
84
59
47
66
64
24
23
33
33
0
0
I = Indicted
C = Convicted
417
Germany: Homosexuality crimes (1935-1939), 175 of the Criminal Code

1. Homosexuality convictions (1935-1936)
1935
1936
Indicted
2121
5556
Convicted
Youths
Acquitted
Hard labor
Prison
Prison - more than one year
Prison - between 3 months and 1 year
Prison - less than 3 months
Fines
Loss of civic rights
1901
236
220
12
1703
419
825
459
129
108
5097
466
459
192
4622
1388
2389
845
183
291
Source : Statistik des Deutschen Reichs, vol. 577.
2. Homosexuality convictions (1937-1939)

1937
1938
1939
Indicted ( 175 : homosexuality and bestiality)
9479
8274
Condvicted ( 175 : homosexuality and bestiality)
8271
8562
7614
Youths
973
974
689
Source : Notes of Dr Wuth, in Hidden Holocaust ?, G. Grau (ed.), London, Cassell & Cie, 1995
3. Specific sentences
1937
Coprrupting young people
7452
Prostitutes
800
1938
1939
7472
587
4162
114
Source : Aide-memoire du Dr Wuth, in Hidden Holocaust ?, op. cit.
4. Homosexuals on file with the Gestapo and the Kripo, and those convicted for
homosexuality
418
Gestapo
(national secret
police)
Kripo
(criminal police )
1937
32,360
12,760
8,271
1938
28,882
10,638
8,562
Convicted
(for homosexuality or bestiality)
1939
33,496
10,456
7,614
Total
94,738
33,854
24,447
Source: H.-G. Stmke, Homosexuelle in Deutschland, eine politische Geschichte, Munich, Verlag, C. H. Beck, 1989.
419
APPENDIX II. SONGS
THE LILA LIED, GERMANYS LESBIAN ANTHEM1

Was will man nur
Ist das Kultur
Dass jener Mensch so verspnt ist,
Der klug und gut,
Jedoch mit Mut
Und eigner Art durchstrmt ist
Das grade die
Kategorie
Vor dem Gesetz verbannt ist
Und dennoch sind die Meisten stolz
Dass Sie von anderem Holz.
Refrain
Wir sind nur einmals anders als die andern,
Die nur im Gleichschritt der Moral geliebt,
Neugierig erst durch tausend Wunder wandern
Und fr dies nur noch das Banal gibt
Wir aber wissen nicht wie das Gefhl ist,
Denn wir sind alle anderer Weltur Kind:
Wir lieben nur die Lila Nacht, die schwl ist,
Weil wir ja anders als die Andern sind!
Wozu die Qual,
Uns die Moral
Der Andern aufzudrngen?
Wir, hrt geschwind,
Sind wie wir sind,
Selbst wollte man uns hngen.
Wer aber denkt
Dass man uns hngt
Den sollte man beweinen,
Dem bald, gebt Acht,
Wir ber Nacht
Auch unsere Sonne scheinen.
Dann haben wir das gleiche Recht erstritten!
Wir leiden nicht mehr, sondern sind gechitten!
Refrain
1. Published in a bilingual edition in Cahiers Gai-Kitsch-Camp, n 16, 1992, 140 pages.
420
Appendix II. Songs

FRANCES LAVENDER SONG, LA CHANSON MAUVE
Peut-on bien conclure
Que cest a la culture,
Si chaque tre est rprouv,
Qui possde sagesse
Bont, hardiesse
Et singularit,
Si ces mmes gens
Prcisment
Sont dans lillgalit
La plupart sont fiers pourtant
Dtre diffrents.
Refrain
Cest comme a: des autres nous sommes diffrents,
Ils marchent au pas de, au pas de la morale
A travers mille premiers merveillements,
Puis pour eux tout devient si banal, si banal
Ils ne sont pas tellement trangers, ces sentiments
Car de tout autre monde nous sommes les enfants:
Nous aimons la nuit en mauve au parfum suffocant
Cest comme a: des autres nous sommes diffrents!
Cest un mal que la morale
Des autres sur nos ttes,
Car nous sommes
Ce que nous sommes
Mme si on nous arrte.
La corde au cou
Ce nest pas nous,
On en conviendra
Car bientt
Trs bientt
Notre heure viendra
Alors nous serons sans souffrance!
gaux! Finie lintolrance!
Refrain
421
APPENDIX III. GERMAN LEGISLATION ON HOMOSEXUALITY

175 OF THE CRIMINAL LAW CODE
Unnatural sexual intercourse [Unzucht widernatrliche] whether perpetrated
between persons of the male sex or between men and animals, is punishable by prison; it
may also entail a loss of civic rights.

250: Unnatural sexual intercourse committed with a person of the same sex is
punishable by prison. If the act was perpetrated by taking advantage of a relationship of
dependence by an abuse of power or authority, or something similar, then a sentence of
hard labor, of up to five years or, in case of extenuating circumstances, a prison sentence
of not less than six months, is incurred. The same penalty applies to anyone who conducts
commerce in unnatural acts on a professional basis. The sentence mentioned in paragraph
1 also applies to unnatural acts with animals.
255: Envisioned for those cases falling under 250 al.3, where 42 (reformatory)
and 53 (limitation of sejour) apply.
ALTERNATIVE DRAFT LEGISLATION OF 1911

245: A person of the male sex who commits unnatural acts with a minor of the
same sex, or with an adult of the same sex, by taking advantage of a relationship of dependence by an abuse of power or authority or similar, or by luring him with an offer of pecuniary benefits, is punishable by a sentence of up to five years' hard labor.
DRAFT LEGISLATION OF THE COMMISSION OF 1913

322: Sexual intercourse between men.
Commission of acts similar to coitus between persons of the male sex is punishable
by a prison sentence.
Anyone who commits such an act by taking advantage of a relationship of dependence by an abuse of power or authority, or who as an adult corrupts an adolescent, is
punishable by a sentence of up to five years' hard labor or, in case of extenuating circumstances, a prison sentence of not less than six months.
The same sentence (al.2) applies to those who commit the act on a professional
basis.
422
Appendix III. German Legislation on Homosexuality

Offering oneself on a professional basis or declaring oneself ready to do so shall be
incur a sentence of up to two years in prison.
In cases falling under al.3 and 4, the defendant may also be banned from the city/
region, independently of the jail sentence.
323: Any man committing acts similar to coitus with an animal shall be sentenced
to prison.

Men who together commit an act similar to coitus shall be sentenced to prison.
A man who has reached majority who commits the act by corrupting an adolescent
shall be sentenced to up to five years' hard labor.
The same sentence applies to any man who commits the act by exploiting a relationship of dependence based on an abuse of power or authority.
The same sentence (al.2) applies to anyone who commits the act on a professional
basis.
Any man who offers himself for such an act or declares himself ready to do so in an
effort to make a profession of the commerce in unnatural acts shall be sentenced to up to
two years in prison.
In cases falling under al.2 to 4, local banishment may be pronounced independently
of the jail sentence.
326: Sexual intercourse with animals.
Any man committing an act similar to coitus with an animal shall be sentenced to
prison.
DRAFT LEGISLATION OF 1925 (THE REICHSRAT VERSION)

Any man committing an act similar to coitus with another man shall be sentenced
to prison.
An adult man who seduces a male adolescent in order to commit a sexual act shall
be sentenced to prison for not less than six months. Any man committing sexual intercourse with another man on a professional basis or by exploiting his dependence due to a
work relationship or other position of authority shall be sentenced likewise. In particularly serious cases the sentence may be as high as five years of hard labor.
GOVERNMENT BILL OF 1927 (REICHSTAG VERSION)

295 Sexual intercourse with animals.
423

Any man committing unnatural sexual acts with an animal shall be sentenced to
prison.
296 sexual intercourse between men.
to prison.
297 Grave instances of sexual intercourse between men.
The following shall be sentenced to not less than six months imprisonment:
1 A man who obliges another man, by force or by imminent threat to life or limb,
to commit a sexual act with him or to allow himself to be used for that purpose.
2 A man who obliges another man, by exploiting his dependence due to a work
relationship or other position of authority, to commit a sexual act with him or to allow
himself to be used by him for that purpose.
3 Any man committing a sexual act with another man on a professional basis.
4 A man of more than 18 years of age who corrupts a male adolescent in order to
commit a sexual act with him or in order that he allows himself to be used by him for that
purpose.
In the first case, even the attempt is punishable. In particularly serious cases, the
sentence may go up to ten years of hard labor.

295 Sexual intercourse with animals.
Any man committing an act similar to coitus with an animal shall be sentenced to
prison.
296 sexual intercourse between men.
to prison.
297 Grave sexual acts between men.
The following shall incur a sentence of not less than six months:
1 A man who obliges another man, by exploiting his dependence due to a work
relationship or other position of authority, to allow himself to be used for a sexual act.
2 An adult man who seduces a male minor so that he allows himself to be used for
a sexual act.
3 Any man committing a sexual act with another man on a professional basis or
who offers himself for that purpose.
In particularly serious cases, the sentence may go up to ten years of hard labor.
424
Appendix III. German Legislation on Homosexuality

LAW OF 1935
175: Any man who commits a sexual act with another man or who allows himself
to be used by him for that purpose shall be sentenced to prison.
In the case of defendants who, at the time of the act, had not yet attained the age of
21 years, in the least severe cases the court may waive the sentence.
175 a: The following shall incur a sentence of up to ten years of hard labor; in case
of extenuating circumstances, a prison sentence of not less than three months:
1 Any man who obliges another man, by force or by imminent threat to life or limb,
to commit a sexual act with him or to allow himself to be used for that purpose.
2 Any man who convinces another man, by exploiting his dependence due to a
work relationship or other position of authority or subordination, to commit a sexual act
with him or to allow himself to be used by him for that purpose.
3 Any man of more than 21 years of age who seduces a minor male of less than 21
years, so that he commits a sexual act with him or allows himself to be used by him for
that purpose.
4 Any man committing a sexual act with men on a professional basis or who
allows himself to be used by men for the purpose of such an act or who offers himself for
that purpose.
175 B: An unnatural sexual act that is committed by men with animals shall incur a
prison sentence; civic rights may also be withheld.
425
APPENDIX IV. DR. CARL VAERNETS EXPERIMENTS AT

BUCHENWALD (1944)
The experiments conducted by Dr. Carl Vaernet at Buchenwald were posterior to
the period studied in this work. Nevertheless, the author has judged it useful to present
them in an appendix as they represent the results of two policies in particular: that of the
physicians who were anxious to obtain absolute control over the homosexuals and to
prove that they had an illness that was curable'; and that of the Nazi leaders, who
sought to re-integrate the homosexuals into the national community (that is to say, into
the army as a crucial element in the total war) by rehabilitating them. These cases are
particularly well documented.2
These experiments, intended to cure homosexuals, were conducted at
Buchenwald. They were spearheaded by the Danish physician Carl Peter Jensen, alias
Carl Vaernet, who abandoned the office he had kept in Copenhagen since 1934 and
arrived in Germany in 1942. In Denmark, he was in contact with the head of the Danish
Nazi party Fried Clausen. It was the physician of the Reich, Dr. S.S. Grawitz, informed
Himmler of Vaernet's research on hormones. Himmler was very interested in his
recovery program for homosexuals and asked that he be treated with the utmost generosity, and he gave him a chance to conduct his research in Prague.3
In July 1944, he began his human experiments. With Schiedlausky, the garrison
physician of the Waffen-SS in Weimar-Buchenwald, he chose six convicts from
Buchenwald, and then ten more.4
The first six detainees (operated on, September 13):
N 33463/3 (homos.) Sonntag, Johann, born 24.2.1912 in Lugau
N 43160/3 (SV5) castrated. Kapelski, Philipp, born 1.9.1908 in Duisburg-Hamborn
(selected, but in the end not retained)
N 21686/4 (homos.) Steinhof, Bernhard, born 6.8.1889 in Oelde
N 22584/4 (homos.) Schleicher, Gerhard, born 13.3.1921 in Berlin
N 21912/4 (homos.) Sachs, Karl, born 21.9.1912 in Falkenau
N 7590/4 (homos. castrated), Lindenberg, Ernst, born 10.3.1895 in Heinde
The other ten convicts (operated on, December 8):
Six were castrated (it is not clear whtether they were homosexual):
N 9576/4, Ledetzsky
N 21526/4 Reinhold
N 31462/4 Schmidt
N 20998/56 Henzes
2. BAB, NS 4/50, NS 3/21.
3. Gnther Grau, Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany, 1933-1945
[1993], London, Cassell & Cie, 1995, 308 pages, p.282-283: Himmlers order to the Reich
Physician Dr. SS Grawitz, 3 December 1943. Himmler also asked for a 3- or 4-page
monthly report, as he was very interested in these things.
5. SV: Sittlichkeitsverbrecher (sex criminal).
426
Appendix IV. Dr. Carl Vaernets Experiments at Buchenwald (1944)

N 29941/56 Boecks
N 21957/56 Ksters
Four were homosexual:
N 779/4 Vosses, Wilhelm
N 6169/4 Parths, Franz
N 6186/47 Kerentzes, Friedrich
N 41936/3 Mielsches, Fritz
Of the sixteen men, Vaernet operated on twelve: he made an incision in the groin
and implanted a hormonal preparation, contained in a capsule. Blood tests and urine tests
were used to follow the results of the experiment. On October 30, 1944, Vaernet sent a
report to Dr. Grawitz. On September 13, 1944, five homosexuals were operated on: two
were castrated, one was sterilized, two were not operated on. The goal was to determine
whether the implantation of an artificial male sexual gland could normalize homosexuals sexual orientation, to establish the necessary dose, and to test the standardization of the gland -- which was implanted with different levels of hormone (1a, 2a, 3a).
According to the preliminary results, dose 3a transformed homosexuality into a normal
sexual impulse; dose 2a awakened a normal sexual impulse in a person who was castrated
seven years before. Dose 1a revived the erectile function in a castrated person, but not his
sexual impulse. Furthermore, all three doses transformed severe depression and tension
into optimism, calm and self-confidence. They all produced a sense of physical and psychological well-being. On October 28, 1944, the temporary results were as follows: in all
three patients the homosexual impulse has been converted into a heterosexual impulse.
The patients are more optimistic. Their physical strength is better and they are less
subject to fatigue. Their sleep has improved. They seem to be in better shape. The other
convicts have noticed this, as well. Patient n5 asked to be operated on so he could do as
well as the others. Vaernet qualified the operation as a big success. However, if the
patients answered his questions in a satisfactory manner, we may suppose that they did
so at least in part so that they could be declared cured, and be released. The fate of the
men who underwent these experiments is not known. On December 21, 1944, convict
Henze died of cardiac problems associated with infectious enteritis and a general physical
decline.
Vaernet presents a brief biography of one of the homosexuals operated on, n 21686,
Bernhard Steinhof. Born in 1889, a theologian and a member of a religious order, he was
always sickly, very uncommunicative, but good natured and helpful. Pubescent at 18
years. Between 1911 and 1912 made attempts to get close to a girl, but failed to arrive at the
sex act because of his anxiety. At school, he was initially a mediocre pupil because of
unstable living conditions, then became a good pupil. From 1924 to 1928, sexual intercourse with young men, intracrural sexual intercourse, no anxiety. From 1932 to 1935,
again with men, then normal sexual intercourse with a girl. Same satisfaction. Last pollution in February 1944. 8 years of hard labor; nothing to report on that.
On 16.9.1944, implantation of an artificial male sexual gland (dose 3a).
After the operation:
16.9.44: pain no neurological sensation
427

17.9.44: no pain
18.9.44: erection
19.9.44: stronger erection in the morning
20.9.44: stronger erection several times
21.9.44: another erection
22.9.44: erection, but weaker no pain
23.9.44: erection in the evening and in the morning
24.9.44: idem
26.10.44: the wound from the operation is healing without any [adverse] reaction.
No reaction to the artificial gland implanted. Feeling better and dreams about women.
Outlook has improved considerably. Seems younger; his features are softer. Today, he
came for testing laughing and without inhibition the first time he was tested, he was
taciturn and answered only direct questions, but today, he spoke freely and in detail
about his past life and the changes that have occurred since the implantation.
The patient reported:
Sleep improved shortly after the operation. Before, he felt tired and had no interest
in anything; he was depressed and he thought only about life in the camp.
The depression disappeared: he is looking forward to the moment of his recovery;
he is making some plans for the future; now he handles everything better, even psychologically, and feels free in every respect.
Other convicts have told him that he has changed and that he seems younger and
more fit.
His erotic imagination has also changed completely. Before, all his thoughts and
erotic fantasies related to young males, but now they feature women. He doesnt like life
in the camp: he thinks about the women in the whorehouse, but he cannot go there for
religious reasons.
Rate of cholesterol in the blood 12.10.44: 190%.
Rate of cholesterol in the blood 24.10.44: 210%.
What became of these victims is not known. These experiments were not
explicitly mentioned during the Nuremberg trials, and Vaernet escaped to South America.
428
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
This bibliography, detailed as it is, can hardly pretend to be exhaustive.
Naturally, Ive given preference to sources relating specifically to homosexuality,
those that are little known, and I have settled for giving fellow researchers a basic
bibliographic orientation as to more general works that allow one to establish the
political economoic and social context of the era.
PRIMARY SOURCES
A.
Archives
1 France
National Archives
F7 13960 (2): Pederasty, especially in the navy (1927-1932).
F 7 14663: Morality police.
F 7 14836: Narcotics trade.
F 7 14837: Narcotics usage.
F 7 14840: Narcotics usage.
F 7 14854: Women.
BB 18 6172: 44 BL 228.
BB 18 6173.
BB 18 6174: 44 BL 303.
BB 18 6175: 44 BL 340.
BB 18 6175: 44 BL 386.
BB 18 6178: 44 BL 402.
BB 18 6178: 44 BL 403.
BB 18 6186.
429

2 England
The Public Record Office
HO 45/12250: Criminal Law Amendment Bill (1921).
HO 45/24867: Sexual Offences Committee Action (1926).
HO 45/24955: Sexual Offenders Treatment.
HO 45/25033: Norman Haire (1937).
MEPO 2/2470: Criminal Law Amendment Bill
MEPO 3/946: Nudism.
MEPO 3/982: Hugh A. Chapman (1934-1935).
MEPO 3/989: Urinals.
MEPO 3/990: Plain-Clothes Officers.
MEPO 3/994: Mitford Brice.
MEPO 3/995: G.H. Buckingham.
MEPO 3/997: John Henry Lovendahl.
3 Germany
a) The Bundesarchiv, Berlin
Reichsministerium des Innern:
R 18/5308.
Reichsjustizministerium:
R 22/850 /854 /943 /950 /970 /973 /1175 /1176 /1197 /1460 /3062 /5006.
R 22/FB 21764 (5774 /5775 /5776 /5777).
Reichsministerium fr Volksaufklrung und Propaganda:
R 55/151 /1219.
Reichssicherheitshauptamt:
R 58/239 /261 /473 /483 /1085 /1127.
Rasse-und Siedlungshauptamt:
NS 2/41 fol.1.
Konzentrationslager:
NS 3/21.
NS 4/21 /50.
Persnlicher Stab-Reichsfhrer SS:
NS 19/889 /897 /1087 /1270 /1838 /1916 /2075 /2376 /2673 /2957 /3030 /3392 /3579 /
3940 /4004.
Nachlsse Reinhard Mumm:
90 MU 3 506 /507 /508 /509 /510 /511 /512 /513 /514 /515 /526 /527 /528 /529 /530 /531
/532.
b) The Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin
Reichsjustizministerium:
I. HA, Rep.84a, n 5339 /5340 /5341 /5342 /5343 /8100 /8101 /8104 /17209 /17214 /
17224 /17245 /17257 /17263 /17272 /17275 /17276 /17298 /17355 /17347.
Ministerium des Innern:
I.HA, Rep.77, Tit.435, n 1, vol.1, vol.2.
430
Annotated Bibliography
c) Collections of archives
Gnther GRAU (ed.), Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany, 19331945, London, Cassell & Cie, 1995, 308 p.; trans. from German., Homosexualitt in der NSZeit: Dokumente einer Diskriminierung und Verfolgung, Frankfurt-am-Main, Fischer
Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993.
B.
Print Sources
1 Periodicals
a) Dailies
Berliner Tageblatt, 1919-1921, 1931, 1934.
Deutsche Zeitung, 1919-1929.
Das schwarze Korps, various articles.
Le Temps, 1919-1939.
The Times, 1919-1939.
Vlkischer Beobachter, various articles.
b) Light or satirical reviews
Fantasio, 1919-1937.
Punch, 1919-1939.
Simplicissimus, 1919-1939.
La Vie parisienne, 1920, 1924, 1934, 1938.
2 Homosexual periodicals
Only bits and pieces of the homosexual press of the Twenties and Thirties remain.
It is unusual to come across a complete series. Most of the German magazines have been
preserved in Berlin, at the Schwules Museum and at Spinnboden.
LAmiti.
Das dritte Geschlecht.
Der Eigene, 1919-1933.
Eros, 1928.
Frauenliebe und Leben, 1928.
Die Freundin, 1924-1933.
Die Freundschaft, 1928.
Das Freundschaftsblatt, 1926, 1932.
Der Hellasbote, 1923.
Die Insel, 1930.
Inversions.
Jahrbuch fr sexuelle Zwischenstufen, 1919-1923.
Mitteilungen des WhK, 1926-1933.
Die Tante, 1925.
Zeitschrift fr Sexualwissenschaft, 1919-1931.
3 Legal stastistics
These allow analysis of how sentencing for homosexuality shifted over time in
England and in Germany.
431
Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers, annes 1919, 1922-1939.

Judicial Statistics, England and Wales, 1920 (1921), BS 18/4.
Statistik des Deutschen Reichs, Kriminalstatistik, vol.301, 311, 320, 328, 335, 346,
354, 370, 384, 398, 429, 433, 448, 478, 507, 577.
4 Medical works
Sexology played an important role in defining homosexuality. Here are the principal works on the question.
Alfred ADLER, Das Problem der Homosexualitt, Leipzig, S. Hirzel, 1930, 110 p.
Henri ALLAIX, De linversion sexuelle la dtermination des sexes, Le Chesnay,
Imprimerie moderne de Versailles, 1930, 10 p.
W.M. BECHTEREV, ber die Perversion und die Abweichungen des Geschlechtstriebe vom reflexologischen Standpunkt aus, Stuttgart, Verlag von Ferdinand Enke,
1928, 20 p.
Andr B INET , La Vie sexuelle chez la femme, Paris, LExpansion scientifique
franaise, 1932, 240 p.
Dr J.R. BOURDON, Traitement de la froideur chez la femme, Paris, Librairie Astra,
1931, 221 p.
Edward CARPENTER, Selected Writings, vol.1, Sex, reprinted., London, Gay Men
Press, 1984, 318 p.
Dr CAUFEYNON (pseud. Jean FAUCONNEY), La Perversion sexuelle, Paris, Bibliothque populaire des connaissances mdicales, 1932, 108 p.
Jean Martin CHARCOT and Victor MAGNAN, Inversion du sens gnital et autres
perversions sexuelles, in Archives de neurologie, nos 7 and 12, 1882.
Havelock ELLIS and J.A. SYMONDS, Sexual Inversion [1897], New York, Arno Press,
1975, 299 p.
Otto EMSMANN, Zum Problem der Homosexualitt, Berlin, Verlag der vaterlndischen Verlags- und Kunstanstalt, 1921, 100 p.
Sigmund FREUD, Nvrose, psychose et perversion [1894-1924], Paris, PUF, coll.
Bibl. de psychanalyse, 1992, 303 p.
,Trois Essais sur la thorie de la sexualit [1905], Paris, Gallimard, 1987, 211 p.
,La Vie sexuelle [1907-1931], Paris, PUF, coll. Bibl. de psychanalyse, 1992, 159 p.
Alfred F UCHS , Die kontrre Sexualempfindung und andere Anomalien des
Sexuallebens, Stuttgart, Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, 1926, 129 p.
Max von GRUBER, Hygiene of Sex, trans. from German, London, Tindall & Cox, 1926,
169 p.
Ren GUYON, Sex Life and Sex Ethics, London, John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd, 1933,
386 p.
Angelo HESNARD, LIndividu et le Sexe. Psychologie du narcissisme, Paris, Stock,
1927, 227 p.
,Psychologie homosexuelle, Paris, Stock, 1929, 208 p.
,Trait de sexologie normale et pathologique, Paris, Payot, 1933, 718 p.
Magnus HIRSCHFELD, Die Homosexualitt des Mannes und des Weibes [1914], Berlin,
Walter de Gruyter, 1984, 1067 p.
432
,Perversions sexuelles, traduit et adapt par le Dr P. Vachet, Paris, Les ditions internationales, 1931, 333 p.
,Le Sexe inconnu, Paris, ditions Montaigne, 1936, 224 p.
Magnus HIRSCHFELD (dir.), Zur Reform des Sexualstrafrechts, vol.IV, Sexus, Monographien aus dem Institut fr Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin, Berlin, Verlag Ernest Birchner,
1926, 186 p.
Pierre HUMBERT, Homosexuality et psychopathies, tude clinique, Paris, G. Doin et Cie
ditions, 1935, 139 p.
Josef K IRCHHOFF, Die sexuellen Anomalien, Frankfurt-am-Main, Verlag Oswald
Quass, 1921, 132 p.
Sacha NACHT, Psychanalyse des psychonvroses et des troubles de la sexualit,
Paris, Librairie Alcan, 1935, 324 p.
, Pathologie de la vie amoureuse: essai psychanalytique, Paris, Denol, 1937, 198 p.
Bertram POLLENS, The Sex criminal, London, Putnam, 1939, 211 p.
Dr RIOLAN, Pdrastie et homosexuality, Paris, F. Pierre, 1909, 108 p.
Dr Georges SAINT-PAUL, Invertis et homosexuels, thmes psychologiques [1896], preface by
mile Zola, Paris, ditions Vigon, 1930, 152 p.
Ren de S AUSSURE , Les Fixations homosexuelles chez les femmes nvroses, Paris,
Imprimerie de la Cour dappel, 1929, 44 p.
Richard SCHAUER, Dsordres sexuels, Paris, ditions Montaigne, 1934, 254 p.
,Sexualpathologie, Wesen und Formen der abnormen Geschlechtlichkeit, Vienna-LeipzigBerne, Verlag fr Medizin, Weidmann & Co, 1935, 272 p.
Oswald S CHWARZ , ber Homosexualitt: ein Beitrag zu einer medizinische
Anthropologie, Berlin, Georg Thieme Verlag, 1931, 122 p.
,Sexualitt und Persnlichkeit, Vienna-Leipzig-Berne, Verlag fr Medizin, 1934, 205 p.
Max SENF, Homosexualisierung, Bonn, A. Marcus und E. Webers Verlag, 1924, 74 p.
Ambroise TARDIEU, La Pdrastie [1857], Paris, Le Sycomore, 1981, 247 p.
Kenneth WALKER and E.B. STRAUSS, Sexual Disorders in the Male, London, Hamish
Hamilton Medical Books, 1939, 248 p.
Dr A. WEIL (dir.), Sexualreform und Sexualwissenschaft, Vortrge gehalten auf der
ersten internationalen Tagung fr Sexualreform auf sexualwissenschaftlicher Grundlage
in Berlin, Berlin, Julius Pttmann, 1922, 286 p.
World League for Sexual Reform, Sexual Reform Congress, Copenhagen, 1-5 July
1928, Copenhagen, Levin & Munksgaard, 1929, 307 p.
,Sexual Reform Congress, London, 8-14 september1929, London, Kegan Paul,
1930, 670 p.
,Sexual Reform Congress, Vienna, 16-23 september1930, Vienna, Elbemhl, 1931,
693 p.
5 Sex education manuals
Of all the works on sex education, those listed below refer more or less directly to
homosexuality.
Ren ALLENDY and Hella LOBSTEIN, Le Problme sexuel lcole, Paris, Aubier, 1938,
253 p.
Rudolf ALLERS, Sexualpdagogik, Salzburg-Leipzig, Verlag Anton Postet, 1934, 270 p.
433

Anonyme, The Education of Boys in the Subject of Sex, London, Student Christian
Movement, 1927, 115 p.
Eugne ARMAND, Lmancipation sexuelle, lAmour en camaraderie et les Mouvements davant-garde, Paris, ditions de lEn-dehors, 1934, 23 p.
Association du mariage chrtien, Lglise et lducation sexuelle, Paris, Aubin, 1929,
201 p.
Mary Everest BOOLE, What One Might Say to a Schoolboy, London, C.W. Daniel, 1921,
24 p.
T. BOWEN PARTINGTON, Sex and Modern Youth, London, Athletic Publication Ltd,
1931, 136 p.
Dorothy BROMLEY and Florence BRITTEN, Youth and Sex. A Study of 1300 College Students, New York and London, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1938, 303 p.
Adolf BUSEMANN, Das Geschlechtsleben der Jugend und seine Erziehung, Berlin, Union
Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1929, 57 p.
V.F. CALVERTON and S.D. SCHMALHAUSEN (dir.), Sex in Civilization, London, Allen
& Unwin, 1929, 719 p.
Dr Jean CARNOT, Au service de lamour, Paris, ditions Beaulieu, 1939, 256 p.
Reginald CHURCHILL, I Commit to Your Intelligence, London, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd,
1936, 137 p.
Gladys M. COX, Youth, Sex and Life, London, Arthur Pearson, 1935, 229 p.
E. DEDERDING, Schtzt unsere Kinder vor den Sexualverbrechern!, Berlin, Deutscher
Volksverlag, 1931, 47 p.
Henri DROUIN, Conseils aux jeunes gens, Paris, Librairie Garnier frres, 1926, 185 p.
Havelock E LLIS, tudes de psychologie sexuelle, t.VII, Lducation sexuelle, Paris,
Mercure de France, 1927, 220 p.
Violet FIRTH, The Problem of Purity, London, Rider & Co, 1928, 127 p.
F.W. FOERSTER, Morale sexuelle et pdagogie sexuelle, Paris, Librairie Bloud & Gay,
1929, 270 p.
Sigmund FREUD, Les explications sexuelles donnes aux enfants [1907], in La Vie
sexuelle, Paris, PUF, 1992, 159 p.
R.P.S.J. de GANAY, Dr Henri ABRAND and abb Jean VIOLLET, Les Initiations ncessaires, Paris, ditions familiales de France, 1938, 47 p.
Brian GREEN (Rev.), Problems of Human Friendship, London, The Pathfinder Papers,
1931, 37 p.
Heinrich HANSELMANN, Geschlechtliche Erziehung des Kindes, Zurich-Leipzig, Rotapfel
Verlag, 1931, 69 p.
Magnus HIRSCHFELD and Ewald BOHM, ducation sexuelle, Paris, ditions Montaigne, 1934, 271 p.
William Lee HOWARD, Confidential Chats with Boys, London, Rider & Co, 1928, 144 p.
Kenneth INGRAM, An Outline of Sexual Morality, London, Cape, 1922, 94 p.
R.H. INNES, Sex from the Standpoint of Youth, London, The New World Publishing Cie,
1933, 16 p.
N.M. IOWETZ-TERESHENKO, Friendship-Love in Adolescence, London, Allen & Unwin
Ltd, 1936, 369 p.
Dr LAIGNEL-LAVASTINE, Vnus et ses dangers, Paris, Ligue nationale franaise contre le
pril vnrien, 1925, 14 p.
434
Jean LONARD, Le Lever de rideau ou lInitiation au bonheur sexuel, Paris, Jean Fort
diteur, 1933, 219 p.
Rennie MACANDREW, Approaching Manhood, Healthy Sex for Boys, London, The Wales
Publishing Co, 1939, 95 p.
,Approaching Womanhood, Healthy Sex for Girls, London, The Wales Publishing Co,
1939, 93 p.
R. MACDONALD LADELL, The Sex Education of Children, Birmingham, Cornish Brothers
Ltd, 1934, 24 p.
T. MILLER NEATBY, Personal: To Boys, London, The Alliance of Honour, 1934, 27 p.
,Youth and Purity, London, British Christian Endeavour Union, 1937, 27 p.
Friedrich NIEBERGALL, Sexuelle Aufklrung der Jugend: ihr Recht, ihre Wege und Grenzen,
Heidelberg, Evangelischer Verlag, 1922, 25 p.
Dr Jean POU, Conseils la jeunesse sur lducation sexuelle, Paris, Maloine, 1931,
29 p.
Preussisches Ministerium fr Wissenschaft, Kunst und Vorbildung (dir.), Sittlichkeitsvergehen an hheren Schulen und ihre disziplinre Behandlung, Leipzig, Verlag von Quelle
& Mener, 1928, 141 p.
C. Stanford READ, The Struggles of Male Adolescence, London, Allen & Unwin, 1928,
247 p.
George RILEY SCOTT, Sex Problems and Dangers in War-Time. A Book of Practical
Advice for Men and Women on the Fighting and Home-Fronts, London, T. Werner
Laurie Ltd, 1940, 85 p.
Gerhard Reinhard RITTER, Die geschlechtliche Frage in der Deutsche Volkserziehung,
Berlin-Cologne, A. Marcus und E. Webers Verlag, 1936, 397 p.
Robert RITTER, Das geschlechtliche Problem in der Erziehung, Munich, Verlag von Ernst
Reinhardt, 1928, 88 p.
Pre S.V.D. SCHMITZ, A la source pure de la vie, Mulhouse, ditions Salvator, 1937,
48 p.
Dr Heinrich SCHULTE -HUBBERT , Um Sittlichkeit und Erziehung an hheren Schulen,
Mnster, Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1929, 62 p.
Oswald SCHWARZ, The Psychology of Sex and Sex Education, London, New Education
Fellowship, 1935, 33 p.
J.S.N. SEWELL, The Straight Left, Being Nine Talks to Boys Who Are about to Leave
their Public-School, London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1928, 64 p.
Eddy SHERWOOD, Sex and Youth, London, Student Christian Movement, The Garden
City Press, 1928, 150 p.
F.H. SHOOSMITH, That Youth May Know. Sex Knowledge for Adolescents, London, Harrap
& Co, 1935, 117 p.
,The Torch of Life. First Steps in Sex Knowledge, London, Harrap & Co, 1935,
150 p.
Dr SICARD DE PLAUZOLES, Pour le salut de la race: ducation sexuelle, Paris, ditions
mdicales, 1931, 98 p.
F.V. SMITH, The Sex Education of Boys, London, Student Christian Movement Press,
1931, 15 p.
J.P. STEFFES (dir.), Sexualpdagogische Probleme, Mnster, Mnster Verlag, 1931, 231 p.
Erich STERN (dir.), Die Erziehung und die sexuelle Frage, Berlin, Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1927, 381 p.
435

Marie STOPES, Sex and the Young, London, The Gill Publishing Co, 1926, 190 p.
Heinrich TBBEN, Die Jugendverwahrlosung und ihre Bekmpfung, Mnster, Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1922, 245 p.
Tihamer TOTH, Reine Jugendreife, Freibourg, Herder & Co, 1931, 140 p.
A. TREWBY, Healthy Boyhood, London, The Alliance of Honour, Kings & Jarcett,
1924, 63 p.
Theodore F. TUCKER and Muriel POUT, Sex Education in Schools, London, Gerald
Howe Ltd, 1933, 144 p.
Edwin WALL, To the Early Teens or Friendly Counsels to Boys, London, The Portsmouth
Printers Press, 1931, 120 p.
W.J. WATSON, Ce que tout jeune homme doit savoir lge de la pubert, Paris,
ditions Prima, 1932, 94 p.
Leslie D. WEATHERHEAD, The Mastery of Sex through Psychology and Religion, London,
Student Christian Movement Press, 1931, 249 p.
Erich ZACHARIAS, Die sexuelle Gefhrdung unserer Jugend, Berlin, Buchdruckerei des
Waisenhauses, 1929, 38 p.
Alfred ZEPLIN, Sexualpdagogik als Grundlage des Familienglcks und des Volkswohls, Rostock, Carl Hinstorff Verlag, 1938, 117 p.
6 Other works on homosexuality
a) Surveys, journalistic debates, news reports
Ren ALLENDY, Le crime et les perversions instinctives, in Le Crapouillot, May 1938
,Les conceptions modernes de la sexualit, in Le Crapouillot, september1937.
Maurice BAUMONT, LAffaire Eulenburg et les Origines de la Premire Guerre mondiale, Paris, Payot, 1933, 281 p.
Robert BOUCARD, Les Dessous des prisons de femmes, Paris, Les ditions de France, 1930,
236 p.
Francis CARCO, Prisons de femmes, Paris, Les ditions de France, 1933, 244 p.
Maryse CHOISY, Un mois chez les filles, Paris, ditions Montaigne, 1928, 254 p.
Maryse CHOISY and Marcel VERTS, Dames seules, Lille, Cahiers Gai-Kitsch-Camp,
n 23, reprinted. 1993, 53 p.
Michel du COGLAY, Chez les mauvais garons. Choses vues, Paris, R. Saillard, 1938,
221 p.
Anne de COLNEY, LAmour aux colonies, Paris, Librairie Astra, 1932, 214 p.
Alexis DANAN, Mauvaise graine, Paris, ditions des Portiques, 1931, 249 p.
Gabriel GOBRON, Contacts avec la jeune gnration allemande, Toulouse, ditions la Lanterne du Midi, 1930, 284 p.
Ambroise GOT, LAllemagne nu, Paris, La Pense franaise, 1923, 248 p.
John GRAND-CARTERET, Derrire lui: lhomosexuality en Allemagne [1907], Lille, Cahiers
Gai-Kitsch-Camp, 1992, 231 p.
Lhomosexuality en littrature, Les Marges, 15 March 1926, n 141, t.35.
Joseph KESSEL, Bas-fonds de Berlin, Paris, Les ditions de France, 1934, 224 p.
Peter Martin LAMPEL, Jungen in Not, Berlin, G. Kiepenheuer, 1928, 240 p.
Theodor LESSING, Haarmann. The Story of a Werewolf [1925], in Monsters of Weimar,
London, Nemesis Books, 1993, 306 p.
Oscar METENIER, Vertus et vices allemands, Paris, Albin Michel, 1904, 281 p.
Hilary PACQ, Le Procs dOscar Wilde, Paris, Gallimard, 1933, 263 p.
436
Eugne QUINCHE, Haarmann, le boucher de Hanovre, Paris, ditions Henry Parville,
1925, 182 p.
Marcel REJA, La rvolte des hannetons, in Mercure de France, 1 March 1928, p.324340.
Louis-Charles ROYER, LAmour en Allemagne, Paris, ditions de France, 1936, 225 p.
b) Homosexual movements; judical reforms
Albrecht BHME, Soziale Medizin und Hygiene: die neuen Gesetze ber Kastration und Homosexualitt, in Mnchener medizinische Wochenschrift (MMW), 16 August
1935, n 33, p.1330-1331.
Adolf BRAND (dir.), Die Bedeutung der Freundsliebe fr Fhrer und Vlker, Berlin, Adolf
Brand, 1923, 32 p.
Fritz DEHNOW, Sittlichkeitsdelikte und Strafrechtsreform, Berlin, Julius Pttmann, 1922,
22 p.
Documents of the Homosexual Rights Movement in Germany, 1836-1927, New
York, Arno Press, reprinted. 1975, no page numbers.
Isaac GOLDBERG, Havelock Ellis. A Biographical and Critical Survey, London, Constable, 1926, 359 p.
Kurt HILLER, 175: die Schmach des Jahrhunderts!, Berlin, Paul Steegeman Verlag, 1922,
132 p.
,Die homosexuelle Frage, in Die neue Generation, cahiers 7/8, July-August 1927,
p.223.
,Das neue Sexualstrafrecht und die schwarze Gefahr, in Die Weltbhne, 5 August
1930, n 32, p.191-196; 12 August 1930, n 33, p.224-229; 19 August 1930, n 34, p.266-270.
Magnus HIRSCHFELD, Les Homosexuels de Berlin [1908], Paris, Cahiers Gai-KitschCamp, 1993, 103 p.
,Von einst bis jetzt [1923], Berlin, Verlag Rosa Winkel, 1986, 213 p.
,Der neue 175, ein Gesetz fr Erpresser, in Die Weltbhne, 20 January 1925, n 3,
p.91-95.
Magnus H IRSCHFELD (dir.), Sittengeschichte des ersten Weltkriegs, Berlin, Mller
& Kiepenheuer, 1929, 607 p.
Hans HYAN, 175, in Die Weltbhne, 22 June 1926, n 25, p.969-973.
Joseph ISHILL (dir.), Havelock Ellis in Appreciation, Berkeley Heights, Oriole Press,
1929, 299 p.
Kartell fr Reform des Sexualstrafrechts (dir.), Gegenentwurf zu den Strafbestimmungen des Amtlichen Entwurfs eines allgemeinen deutschen Strafgesetzbuchs ber
geschlechtliche und mit dem Geschlechtsleben in Zusammenhang stehende Handlungen,
Berlin, Verlag der neuen Gesellschaft, 1927, 99 p.
Botho LASERSTEIN, 175, in Die Weltbhne, 20 July 1926, n 29, p.91.
H. LENZ, Verbrechen und Vergehen wider die Sittlichkeit, ein kritischer Beitrag
zur Strafrechtsreform, Trier, Paulinus-Druckerei, 1928, 72 p.
Richard LINSERT, 297, Unzucht zwischen Mnnern, Berlin, Neuer Deutscher Verlag,
1929, 130 p.
Hansjrg MAURER, 175, eine kritische Betrachtung des Problems der Homosexualitt, Munich, Willibald Drexler, 1921, 62 p.
Neueste Entscheidungen von grundstzlicher Bedeutung, in Deutsche Juristen
Zeitung, 1 september1935, 40, volume 17, p.1047-1048.
437

175 StGB, in Juristische Wochenschrift, 28 september1935, p.2732-2734.
Houston PETERSON, Havelock Ellis, Philosopher of Love, United States, Houghton
Miffin Inc., 1928, 432 p.
P FORR , Die widernatrliche Unzucht, in Preussische Polizeibeamtenzeitung,
4 October 1924, n 40, p.408-410.
Reichsgericht. 175 StGB, in Juristische Wochenschrift, 22 January 1938, p.167.
Botho SCHLEICH, Die Bekmpfung der Homosexualitt und die Rechtssprechung,
in Deutsches Recht, 1937, vol. 13/14, p.299-300.
SIEGFRIED (pseudonym for Viktor CATHREIN), Im Zeichen der Zeit! 175, Berlin, Verlag
der vaterlndischen Verlags- und Kunstanstalt, 1920, 14 p.
St Ch. WALDECKE (pseud. Ewald TSCHECK), Das WhK: warum ist es zu bekmpfen und
sein Wirken schdlich fr das deutsche Volk?, Berlin, Adolf Brand, Gemeinschaft der Eigenen,
1925, 18 p.
Johannes WERTHAUER, 175, in Die Weltbhne, 5 October 1926, n 40, p.525-526.
Wissenschaftlich-humanitres Komitee, in Die Weltbhne, 14 fvrier 1933, n 7,
p.253.
c) Party literature
Eugne ARMAND, LHomosexualit, lOnanisme et les Individualistes, Paris, ditions de
lEn-dehors, 1931, 32 p.
Eugne ARMAND, Grard de LACAZE-DUTHIERS and Abel LGER, Des prjugs en
matire sexuelle, Paris, ditions de lEn-dehors, 1931, 32 p.
Eugne ARMAND, Vera LIVINSKA and C. de ST HLNE, La Camaraderie amoureuse,
Paris, ditions de lEn-dehors, 1930, 32 p.
Burghard ASSMUS, Klosterleben, Enthllungen ber die Sittenverderbnis in den
Klstern, Berlin, A. Bock Verlag, 1937, 102 p.
Curt BONDY, Die Proletarische Jugendbewegung in Deutschland, Lauenburg, Adolf Saal
Verlag, 1922, 152 p.
Carl Christian BRY, Verkappte Religionen, Kritik des kollektiven Wahns [1924], Munich,
Ehrenwirth Verlag, 1979, 253 p.
Karl August E CKHARDT , Widernatrliche Unzucht ist todeswrdig, in Das
schwarze Korps, 22 June 1935, p.13.
Friedrich ENGELS, LOrigine de la famille, de la proprit prive et de ltat [1884], Paris,
ditions sociales, 1971, 364 p.
Felix HALLE, Die Reform des Sexualstrafrechts und das Proletariat, in Die Internationale, 1 November 1926, p.666-668.
Institut zum Studium der Judenfrage (dir.), Die Juden in Deutschland, Munich, Verlag
Franz Eher Nachf., 1936, 416 p.
Rudolf KLARE, Homosexualitt und Strafrecht, Hamburg, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt,
1937, 172 p.
,Die Bekmpfung der Homosexualitt in der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte in
Deutsches Recht, 15 July 1937, cahiers 13/14, p.281-285.
Alexandra KOLLONTAI, Marxisme et rvolution sexuelle, Paris, Maspero, 1973, 286 p.
Livre brun sur lincendie du Reichstag et la terreur hitlrienne [1933], Paris, Tristan
Mage ditions, 1992, 2 vol.
Klaus MANN, Homosexualitt und Faschismus [1934-1935], in Heute und morgen.
Schriften zur Zeit, Munich, Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1969, 364 p.
438
Wilhelm REICH, La Lutte sexuelle des jeunes [1932], Paris, Maspero, 1972, 148 p.
,La Psychologie de masse du fascisme [1933], Paris, Payot, coll. Petite bibl. Payot, 1972,
341 p.
,La Rvolution sexuelle [1936], Paris, Christian Bourgois diteur, 1982, 340 p.
Alfred ROSENBERG, Le Mythe du xxe sicle [1930], Paris, ditions Avalon, 1986, 689 p.
,Der Sumpf, Querschnitte durch das Geistes- Leben der November-Demokratie,
Munich, Verlag Franz Eher Nachf., 1930, 237 p.
Lothar Gottlieb TIRALA, Rasse, Geist und Seele, Munich, J.F. Lehmann Verlag, 1935,
256 p.
Ignaz W ROBEL (pseudonym of Kurt T UCHOLSKY ), Rhm, in Die Weltbhne,
26 April 1932, n 17, p.798-799.
d) Public schools, youth movements
Hans B LHER , Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phnomen [1914],
Frankfurt-am-Main, Verlag Frankfurt am Main, 1976, 190 p.
,Die Rolle der Erotik in der mnnlichen Gesellschaft, Iena, Eugen Diederichs, 1919, 2 vol.,
248 and 224 p.
,Der Charakter der Jugendbewegung, Lauenburg, Adolf Saal Verlag, 1921, 56 p.
Richard COMYNS CARR (ed.), Red Rags, Essays of Hate from Oxford, London, Chapman
& Hall, 1933, 291 p.
P.H. CRAWFURTH SMITH, Oxford in the Melting-Pot, London, The White Owl Press,
1932, 24 p.
Terence GREENIDGE, Degenerate Oxford?, London, Chapman & Hall, 1930, 245 p.
T.E. HARRISSON, Letter to Oxford, Reynold Bray, The Hate Press, 1933, 98 p.
Lucien MIALARE, La Criminalit juvnile, Paris, Les Presses modernes, 1926, 254 p.
Hans M USER , Homosexualitt und Jugendfrsorge, Paderborn, Verlag Ferdinand
Schningh, 1933, 184 p.
Siegfried STURM, Das Wesen der Jugend und ihre Stellung zu Blher und Plenge zu
Sexualtheorie und Psychoanalyse, Wurzbourg, Hannes Wadenklee, 1921, 20 p.
Edward THOMAS, Oxford, London, Black A. & C. Black, 1932, 265 p.
Alec WAUGH, Public-School Life. Boys, Parents, Masters, London, Collins Sons & Co,
1922, 271 p.
Gustav WYNEKEN, Die neue Jugend, ihr Kampf um Freiheit und Wahrheit in
Schule und Elternhaus, in Religion und Erotik, Munich, Steinicke Verlag, 1914, 60 p.
,Revolution und Schule, Leipzig, Klinkhardt Verlag, 1921, 74 p.
,Wickersdorf, Lauenburg, Adolf Saal Verlag, 1922, 152 p.
,Eros, Lauenburg, Adolf Saal Verlag, 1924, 72 p.
Kurt ZEIDLER, Vom erziehenden Eros, Lauenburg, Freideutscher Jugendverlag Adolf
Saal, 1919, 39 p.
e) Essays, pamphlets, manifestos
Egan BERESFORD, The Sink of Solitude, London, The Herness Press, 1928, no page
numbers.
Paul BUREAU, LIndiscipline des murs, Paris, Librairie Bloud & Gay, 1920, 608 p.
GEORGES-ANQUETIL, Satan conduit le bal [1925], Paris, Agence parisienne de distribution, 1948, 536 p.
Andr GIDE, Corydon [1924], Paris, Gallimard, 1991, 149 p.
439

,Retour de lURSS, Paris, Gallimard, 1936, 125 p.
Pierre LIVRE, Andr Gide, in Le Divan, July-August 1927.
Thomas MANN, Sur le mariage [1925], bilingual edition, Paris, Aubier-Flammarion,
1970, 191 p.
Franois NAZIER, LAnti-Corydon, essai sur linversion sexuelle, Paris, ditions du Sicle,
1924, 126 p.
Ernst Erich NOTH, La Tragdie de la jeunesse allemande, Paris, Grasset, 1934, 261 p.
Franois PORCH, LAmour qui nose pas dire son nom, Paris, Grasset, 1927, 242 p.
WILLY, Le Troisime Sexe, Paris, Paris-dition, 1927, 268 p.
f) Feminism and lesbianism
E.F.W. EBERHARD , Die Frauenemanzipation und ihre erotischen Grundlagen, ViennaLeipzig, Wilhelm Braumller, 1924, 915 p.
J.M. HOTEP, Love and Happiness, Intimate Problems of the Modern Woman,
London, Heinemann, 1938, 235 p.
Laura HUTTON, The Single Woman and Her Emotional Problems, London, Tindall & Cox,
1937, 173 p.
Mathilde von KEMNITZ, Erotische Wiedergeburt, Munich, Verlag von Ernst Reinhardt,
1919, 212 p.
RACHILDE, Pourquoi je ne suis pas fministe, Paris, ditions de France, 1928, 87 p.
Alice RILKE, Die Homosexualitt der Frau und die Frauenbewegung, in Deutsches
Recht, 15 fvrier 1939, vol. 3/4, p.65-68.
Ruth Margarite RLLIG, Les Lesbiennes de Berlin [1928], Lille, Cahiers Gai-KitschCamp, 1992, 140 p.
Anton SCHCKER, Zur Psychopathologie der Frauenbewegung, Leipzig, Verlag von Curt
Kabitzsch, 1931, 51 p.
Clara ZETKIN, Batailles pour les femmes, Paris, ditions sociales, 1980, 444 p.
g) Others
ANOMALY (pseudonyme), The Invert and His Social Adjustment, London, Baillein, 1927,
159 p.
Archives du surralisme, Recherches sur la sexualit, January 1928-August 1932, Paris,
Gallimard, 1990, 212 p.
Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, The State and Sexual Morality, London,
Allen & Unwin, 1920, 78 p.
Floyd BELL, Love in the Machine Age, London, Routledge & Sons, 1930, 428 p.
Paul BROHMER, Biologie-Unterricht und vlkische Erziehung, Frankfurt-am-Main, Verlag
Moritz Diesterweg, 1933, 84 p.
Franois CARLIER, La Prostitution antiphysique [1887], Paris, Le Sycomore, 1981, 250 p.
Albert CHAPOTIN, Les Dfaitistes de lamour, Paris, Le Livre pour tous, 1927, 510 p.
Louis ESTVE, Lnigme de landrogyne, Paris, Les ditions du monde moderne, 1927,
161 p.
Theodore de FELICE, Le Protestantisme et la Question sexuelle, Paris, Librairie Fischbacher, 1930, 80 p.
Remy de GOURMONT, Physique de lamour [1903], Paris, Les ditions 1900, 1989,
236 p.
440
Alexandre PARENT-DUCHTELET, La Prostitution Paris au xixe sicle [1836], collected
and annotated by Alain Corbin, Paris, ditions du Seuil, 1981, 217 p.
Siegfried P LACZEK , Freundschaft und Sexualitt, Berlin-Cologne, A. Marcus und
E. Webers Verlag, 1927, 186 p.
Paul PROVENT, La Criminalit militaire en temps de paix, Paris, Marchal et Billard, 1926,
340 p.
Heinz SCHMEIDLER, Sittengeschichte von heute, die Krisis der Sexualitt, Dresde, Carl
Reissner Verlag, 1932, 372 p.
Camille SPIESS, Pdrastie et homosexualit, Paris, Daragon, 1917, 68 p.
,LInversion sexuelle, Paris, ditions de lEn-dehors, 1930, 5 p.
,ros ou lHistoire physiologique de lhomme, Paris, ditions de lAthanor, 1932, 280 p.
H.E. TIMERDING, Sexualethik, Leipzig, B.G. Teubner, 1919, 120 p.
Hans von T RESCHKOW , Von Frsten und anderen Sterblichen, Erinnerungen, Berlin,
Fontane, 1922, 240 p.
Harvey WICKAM, The Impuritans, London, Allen & Unwin, 1929, 296 p.
7 Fiction, novels, collections of poetry
W.H. AUDEN, Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957, London, Faber & Faber, 1966, 351 p.
Djuna BARNES, LAlmanach des dames [1928], Paris, Flammarion, 1972, 165 p.
Natalie BARNEY, Aventures de lesprit [1929], Paris, Persona, 1982, 215 p.
,Nouvelles penses de lAmazone, Paris, Mercure de France, 1939, 215 p.
Vicky BAUM, Shanghai Htel [1939], Paris, Phbus, 1997, 669 p.
Andr BEAUNIER, La Folle Jeune Fille, Paris, Flammarion, 1922, 282 p.
Pierre BENOT, Monsieur de la Fert, Paris, Albin Michel, 1934, 314 p.
E.F. BENSON, Snobs, Paris, Salvy, 1994, 217 p.
Gustave BINET-VALMER, Lucien, Paris, Flammarion, 1921, 283 p.
,Sur le sable couches, Paris, Flammarion, 1929, 246 p.
Andr BIRABEAU, La Dbauche, Paris, Flammarion, 1924, 246 p.
douard BOURDET, La Prisonnire, comdie en trois actes (first staged on 6 March 1926
at the Fmina), Paris, Les uvres libres, 1926, 116 p.
Joseph BREITBACH, Rival et rivale [Die Wandlung der Suzanne Dasseldorf], Paris, Gallimard, 1935, 389 p.
Andr BRETON, Nadja [1928], Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1982, 190 p.
Arnold BRONNEN, Septembernovelle [1923], Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1989, 65 p.
Rupert BROOKE, The Poetical Works, London, Faber & Faber, 1990, 216 p.
Ferdinand BRUCKNER, Le Mal de la jeunesse [1925], Amiot-Lenganey, 1993, 108 p.
Francis CARCO, Jsus-la-caille, Paris, Mercure de France, 1914, 250 p.
CHARLES-TIENNE, Notre-Dame-de-Lesbos, Paris, Librairie des Lettres, 1919, 309 p.
,Les Dsexus, Paris, Curio, 1924, 267 p.
,Le Bal des folles, Paris, Curio, 1930, 255 p.
CHARLES-TIENNE and Albert NORTAL, Les Adolescents passionns, Paris, Curio, 1928,
253 p.
Jean de CHERVEY, Amour inverti, Paris, Chaubard, 1907, 212 p.
Jean COCTEAU, Le Livre blanc [1928], Paris, ditions de Messine, 1983, 123 p.
,Les Enfants terribles [1929], Paris, Grasset, 1990, 130 p.
COLETTE, Le Pur et lImpur [1932], Paris, Hachette, 1971, 189 p.
,uvres compltes, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 3 vol., 1984, 1986, 1991.
441

Ren CREVEL, La Mort difficile, Paris, Simon Kra, 1926, 202 p.
,Mon corps et moi, Paris, ditions du Sagittaire, 1926, 204 p.
Clemence DANE (pseud. Winifred ASHTON), Regiment of Women [1917], London,
Greenwood Press, 1978, 345 p.
Lucien DAUDET, Le Chemin mort, Paris, Flammarion, 1908, 382 p.
Henri DEBERLY, Un homme et un autre, Paris, Gallimard, 1928, 220 p.
Lucie DELARUE-MARDRUS, LAnge et les Pervers, Paris, Le Livre moderne illustr, 1930,
159 p.
Robert DESNOS, La Libert ou lAmour! [1924], Paris, Gallimard, 1962, 160 p.
Jean DESTHIEUX, Figures mditerranennes: Femmes damnes, Paris-Gap, Ophrys, 1937,
135 p.
Alfred DBLIN, LEmpoisonnement [Die beiden Freundinnen und ihr Giftmord,
1924], Arles, Actes Sud, 1988, 108 p.
Andr du DOGNON, Les Amours buissonnires, Paris, ditions du Scorpion, 1948, 286 p.
Ren TIEMBLE, LEnfant de chur, Paris, Gallimard, 1937, 251 p.
E.M. FORSTER, Maurice [written in 1914], Paris, Christian Bourgois, 1987, 279 p.
,Un instant dternit et autres nouvelles [The Life to Come, and Other Stories,
1972], Paris, Christian Bourgois diteur, 1988, 306 p.
Michel GEORGES-MICHEL, Dans la fte de Venise, Paris, Fayard, 1923, 256 p.
Andr GIDE, LImmoraliste [1902], Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1996, 182 p.
,Les Nourritures terrestres [1917], Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1997, 246 p.
,Les Faux-Monnayeurs, Paris, Gallimard, 1926, 499 p.
Ernst GLSER, Classe 22, Paris, V. Attinger, 1929, 317 p.
Ivan GOLL, Sodome et Berlin, Paris, mile-Paul frres, 1929, 250 p.
Julien GREEN, uvres compltes, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 7 vol.
Daniel GURIN, La Vie selon la chair, Paris, Albin Michel, 1929, 281 p.
Amde GUIARD, Antone Ramon, Paris, J. Duvivier, 1914, 390 p.
James HANLEY, The German Prisoner, London, d. part., 1930, 36 p.
Max-Ren HESSE, Partenau, Paris, Albin Michel, 1930, 323 p.
Christopher I SHERWOOD , Mr Norris Changes Train [1935], London, Chatto
& Windus, 1984, 190 p
, Adieu Berlin [Goodbye to Berlin, 1939], Paris, Hachette, 1980, 288 p.
, Down there on a Visit, London, Methuen, 1962, 271 p.
Hans Henny JAHNN, Perrudja [1929], Paris, Jos Corti, 1995, 802 p.
Marcel JOUHANDEAU, De labjection, Paris, Gallimard, 1939, 156 p.
,Mmorial IV. Apprentis et garons, Paris, Gallimard, 1953, 161 p.
Eric KSTNER, Fabian, Paris, Balland, 1931, 308 p.
Jacques de LACRETELLE, La Bonifas [1925], Paris, Gallimard, 1979, 338 p.
D.H. LAWRENCE, Le Paon blanc [1911], Paris, Calmann-Lvy, 1983, 413 p.
,Women in Love [1921], London, Penguin, 1960, 541 p.
,Kangourou [1923], Paris, Gallimard, 1996, 668 p.
T.E. LAWRENCE, Les Sept Piliers de la sagesse [1926], Paris, Payot, 1989, 820 p.
Rosamund LEHMANN, Dusty Answer [1927], London, Collins, 1978, 355 p.
Wyndham LEWIS, The Apes of God [1930], London, Penguin, 1965, 650 p.
Compton MACKENZIE, Vestal Fire [1927], London, The Hogarth Press, 1986, 420 p.
,Extraordinary Women [1928], London, The Hogarth Press, 1986, 392 p.
Klaus MANN, La Danse pieuse [1925], Paris, Grasset, 1993, 272 p.
442
,Le Tournant [1949], Paris, Solin, 1984, 690 p.
Thomas MANN, Tonio Krger [1903], Paris, Stock, 1923, 124 p.
,La Mort Venise [1912], Paris, Fayard, 1971, 189 p.
,La Montagne magique [1924], Paris, Le Livre de poche, 1977, 2 vol., 509 p.
Victor MARGUERITTE, La Garonne [1922], Paris, Flammarion, 1978, 269 p.
Roger MARTIN DU GARD, Le Cahier gris, in uvres compltes, Paris, Gallimard, coll.
Bibl. de la Pliade, 1981, t.I, 1 403 p.
,Un taciturne, in uvres compltes, ibid., 1983, t.II, 1 432 p.
Henry MARX, Ryls, un amour hors la loi, Paris, Ollendorff, 1923, 252 p.
MNALKAS (pseud. Suzanne de CALLIAS), Erna, jeune fille de Berlin, Paris, ditions des
Portiques, 1932, 254 p.
Francis de MIOMANDRE, Ces Petits Messieurs, Paris, mile-Paul frres, 1922, 258 p.
Henry de MONTHERLANT, Les Garons, Paris, Gallimard, 1973, 549 p.
Robert MUSIL, Les Dsarrois de llve Trless [1906], Paris, ditions du Seuil, 1960,
250 p.
Beverley NICHOLS, Patchwork, London, Chatto & Windus, 1921, 305 p.
OLIVIA (pseud. Dorothy BUSSY), Olivia, Paris, Stock, 1949, 148 p.
Wilfred OWEN, The Poems of Wilfred Owen, ed. by Jon Stallworthy, London, The
Hogarth Press, 1985, 200 p.
Fortun PAILLOT, Amant ou matresse, ou landrogyne perplexe, Paris, Flammarion, 1922,
283 p.
Liane de POUGY, Idylle saphique [1901], Paris, Latts, 1979, 272 p.
Marcel P ROUST , A la recherche du temps perdu, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la
Pliade, 4 vol., 1987-1989.
Adela QUEBEC (pseudonyme), The Girls of Radclyffe Hall, printed for the author for
private circulation only, London, 1935, 100 p.
RADCLYFFE HALL, The Well of Loneliness [1928], London, Virago Press, 1982, 447 p.
Ernest RAYMOND, Tell England: A Study in a Generation, London, Cassell & Cie, 1922,
320 p.
Paul REBOUX, Le Jeune Amant, Paris, Flammarion, 1928, 289 p.
Charles-Nol RENARD, Les Androphobes, Saint-tienne, Impr. spciale ddition, 1930,
324 p.
Maurice ROSTAND, La Femme qui tait en lui, Paris, Flammarion, 1937, 127 p.
Alain ROX, Tu seras seul, Paris, Flammarion, 1936, 403 p.
Naomi ROYDE-SMITH, The Tortoiseshell Cat, London, Constable, 1925, 310 p.
,The Island, A Love Story, London, Constable, 1930, 328 p.
Maurice SACHS, Alias [1935], Paris, ditions dAujourdhui, 1976, 220 p.
,Le Sabbat [written in1939, published in1946], Paris, Gallimard, 1960, 298 p.
Vita SACKVILLE-WEST, Ceux des les [1924], Paris, Salvy, 1994, 360 p.
SAGITTA (J.H. MACKAY), Der Puppenjunge [1926], Berlin, Verlag E.C.H., 1975, 367 p.
Ernst von SALOMON, Les Rprouvs [1930], Paris, Plon, 1986, 378 p.
,Les Cadets [1933], Paris, Correa, 1953, 277 p.
Siegfried SASSOON, Collected Poems, 1908-1956, London, Faber & Faber, 1984, 317 p.
Dorothy SAYERS, Lautopsie na rien donn [Unnatural Death, 1927], Paris-London,
Morgan, 1947, 253 p.
Stephen SPENDER, Le Temple [The Temple, 1929], Paris, Christian Bourgois, 1989, 310 p.
Violet TREFUSIS, Broderie anglaise [1935], Paris, UGE, coll. 10/18, 1986, 185 p.
443

Bruno VOGEL, Alf, Berlin, Gilde freiheitlicher Bcherfreunde, 1929, 349 p.
Alec WAUGH, Pleasure, London, Grant Richards Ltd, 1921, 320 p.
Evelyn WAUGH, Retour Brideshead [Brideshead Revisited, 1947], Paris, UGE, coll. 10/
18, 1991, 429 p.
,Ces corps vils, Paris, UGE, coll. 10/18, 1991, 245 p.
A.E. WEIRAUCH, Der Skorpion, Berlin, Crest Book, 1964, 192 p.
WILLY et MNALKAS, LErsatz damour, Amiens, Librairie Edgar Malfre, 1923, 206 p.
,Le Naufrag, Amiens, Librairie Edgar Malfre, 1924, 181 p.
Christa WINSLOE, Manuela ou Jeunes filles en uniformes, Paris, Stock, 1934, 253 p.
Virginia WOOLF, Mrs Dalloway [1923], Paris, Stock, 1988, 220 p.
,Orlando [1928], Paris, Stock, 1974, 351 p.
Francis Brett YOUNG, White Ladies, London, Heinemann, 1965, 693 p.
Marguerite YOURCENAR, Alexis ou le Trait du vain combat [1929], Paris, Gallimard,
1971, 248 p.
,Le Coup de grce [1939], Paris, Gallimard, 1971, 248 p.
Stefan ZWEIG, La Confusion des sentiments [1926], Paris, Le Livre de poche, 1991, 127 p.
C.
Testimonies
1 Memoirs, autobiographies, personal journals, interviews
J.R. ACKERLEY, My Father and Myself [1968], London, Penguin, 1971, 192 p.
Valentine ACKLAND, For Sylvia: An Honest Account, London, Chatto & Windus, 1985,
135 p.
Harold ACTON, Memoirs of an Aesthete [1948], London, Hamish Hamilton, 1984, 416 p.
Noel ANNAN, Our Age: English Intellectuals between the Wars: A Group Portrait,
New York, Random House, 1991, 479 p.
Natalie BARNEY, Souvenirs indiscrets, Paris, Flammarion, 1960, 234 p.
Simone de BEAUVOIR, Mmoires dune jeune fille range [1958], Paris, Gallimard, 1995,
503 p.
Claude CAHUN, Aveux non avenus, Paris, ditions du Carrefour, 1930, 238 p.
Jean COCTEAU, Portraits-Souvenir 1900-1914, Paris, Grasset, 1935, 253 p.
Quentin CRISP, The Naked Civil-Servant [1968], London, Fontana, 1986, 217 p.
Pierre DRIEU LA ROCHELLE, Journal 1939-1945, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Tmoins,
1992, 519 p.Andr GIDE, Journal, 1887-1925, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1996,
1 840 p.
, Journal, 1889-1939, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Bibl. de la Pliade, 1951, 1374 p.
,Si le grain ne meurt [1926], Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1986, 372 p.
Daniel GURIN, Autobiographie de jeunesse, Paris, Belfond, 1972, 248 p.
,Le Feu du sang: autobiographie politique et charnelle, Paris, Grasset, 1977, 286 p.
Cecily HAMILTON, Life Errant, London, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1935, 300 p.
Heinz HEGER, Les Hommes au triangle rose. Journal dun dport homosexuel,
1939-1945, Paris, ditions Persona, 1981, 160 p.
Christopher ISHERWOOD, Christopher and His Kind [1929-1939], London, Methuen,
1977, 252 p.
,Lions and Shadows [1938], London, Methuen, 1985, 191 p.
Marcel JOUHANDEAU, Chronique dune passion [1949], Paris, Gallimard, 1964, 223 p.
Violette LEDUC, LAffame, Paris, Gallimard, 1948, 197 p.
444
,La Btarde, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, 462 p.
Ella MAILLART, La Voie cruelle [1947], Paris, France Loisirs, 1987, 369 p.
Golo MANN, Une jeunesse allemande, Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 1988, 412 p.
Klaus MANN, Kind dieser Zeit [1938], Munich, Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung,
1965, 264 p.
,Journal. Les annes brunes, 1931-1936, Paris, Grasset, 1996, 452 p.
Robin MAUGHAM, Escape from the Shadows [1940], London, Cardinal, 1991, 472 p.
Walter MUSCHG, Entretiens avec Hans Henny Jahnn, Paris, Jos Corti, 1995, 203 p.
Suzanne NEILD and Rosalind PARSON, Women Like Us, London, The Womens Press,
1992, 171 p.
Nigel NICOLSON, Portrait dun mariage [1973], Paris, Stock, 1992, 319 p.
Ernst Erich NOTH, Mmoires dun Allemand, Paris, Julliard, 1970, 506 p.
Dennis PROCTOR (ed.), The Autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson, London, Duckworth,
1973, 287 p.
Francis ROSE (Sir), Saying Life, London, Cassell & Cie, 1961, 416 p.
Maurice SACHS, Au temps du Buf sur le toit [1939], Paris, Grasset, 1987, 235 p.
Annemarie SCHWARZENBACH, La Mort en Perse [written in1935], Paris, Payot, 1997,
161 p.
Pierre SEEL, Moi Pierre Seel, dport homosexuel, Paris, Calmann-Lvy, 1994, 198 p.
Nicolaus SOMBART, Chroniques dune jeunesse berlinoise, 1933-1943, Paris, Quai Voltaire,
1992, 369 p.
Stephen SPENDER, World within World [1951], London, Faber & Faber, 1991, 344 p.
Charlotte WOLFF, Hindsight, London, Quartet Books, 1980, 312 p.
Virginia WOOLF, Instants de vie [1976], Paris, Stock, 1986, 273 p.
T.C. WORSLEY, Flannelled Fool. A Slice of Life in the Thirties, London, Alan Ross,
1967, 213 p.
Marguerite YOURCENAR, Quoi? Lternit, Paris, Gallimard, 1988, 340 p.
2 Correspondence
Cyril CONNOLLY, A Romantic Friendship, The Letters of Cyril Connolly to Noel
Blakiston, London, Constable, 1975, 365 p.
Correspondance Andr Gide/Dorothy Bussy, Jan. 1925-Nov.1936, Paris, Gallimard,
Cahiers Andr Gide, 1981, t.II, 650 p.
Klaus MANN, Briefe und Antworten, vol.1, 1922-1937, Munich, Spangenberg, 1975,
405 p.
Donald MITCHELL and Philip REED (ed.), Letters from a Life, Selected Letters and Diaries
of Benjamin Britten, vol.1, 1923-1939, vol.2, 1939-1945, London, Faber & Faber, 1991, 619 and
1 403 p.
Louise de SALVO and Mitchell A. LEASKA (ed.), The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, London, Hutchinson, 1984, 473 p.
Violet TREFUSIS, Lettres Vita, 1910-1921, Paris, Stock, 1991, 509 p.
Virginia WOOLF, Paper Darts, The Illustrated Letters, London, Collins, 1991, 160 p.
3 Oral testimonies
The following works are based on oral testimony given by gays and lesbians who
lived during the period under discussion.
445

Gay Mens Oral History Group, Walking after Midnight. Gay Mens Life Stories, Hall-Carpenter Archives, London, Routledge, 1989, 238 p.
Joachim S. HOHMANN (ED.), Keine Zeit fr gute Freunde, Homosexuelle in Deutschland, 1933-1969, Berlin, Foerster Verlag, 1982, 208 p.
Lesbian Oral History Group, Inventing Ourselves. Lesbian Life Stories, Hall-Carpenter
Archives, London, Routledge, 1989, 228 p.
Kevin PORTER and Jeffrey WEEKS (ed.), Between the Acts. Lives of Homosexual Men, 18851967, London, Routledge, 1991, 153 p.
SECONDARY SOURCES
A. France, England and Germany in the Twenties and Thirties: reference
works
The following works provide the political, economic and social context in which
the hisroty of homosexzuality evolved. Of course, there are thousands of books onthe
history of Germany, England and France during the 1920s and 1930s ; in a somewhat arbitraty manner I have selected a certain number of works that seemed indispensible in
developing an understanding of the era, with a preference for synthetic works and those
research works that contribute to an understanding of the history of sexuality and public
atitudes.
1 Epistemology
A few works that indicate the value of a history of sexuality, of atitudes and
behaviors.
Guy BOURDE and Herv MARTIN, Les coles historiques, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll.
Points histoire,1989, 413 p.
Alain BOUREAU, Propositions pour une histoire restreinte des mentalits, in
Annales ESC, November-December 1989.
Maurice HALBWACHS, La Mmoire collective, Paris, PUF, 1950, 170 p.
Pierre LABORIE, De lopinion publique limaginaire social, in XXe sicle, n 18,
April-June 1988.
Jacques LE GOFF (dir), La Nouvelle Histoire, Bruxelles, Complexe, 1988, 334 p.
Bernard LEPETIT, Les Formes de lexprience, une autre histoire sociale, Paris, Albin
Michel, 1995, 337 p.
Denis PESCHANSKI, Michael POLLACK and Henri ROUSSO, Histoire politique and sciences
sociales, Bruxelles, Complexe, 1991, 285 p.
2 History of sexuality
These were groundbreaking works in the history of sexuality and which provide a
broader context within which to consider the history of homosexuality in the betweenwar era. These works also suggest new angles to be researched and suggest an approach
to the endeavor.
446
Amour et sexualit en Occident, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points histoire, 1991,
335 p.
Alain CORBIN, Les Filles de noce. Misre sexuelle et prostitution au xixe sicle,
Paris, Flammarion, 1978, 496 p.
Jean-Louis FLANDRIN, Lglise et le Contrle des naissances, Paris, Flammarion, 1970,
133 p.
,Le Sexe et lOccident, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points histoire, 1981, 375 p.
,Familles, parent, maison, sexualit dans lancienne socit, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll.
Points histoire, 1984, 332 p.
,Les Amours paysannes, XVIe-xixe sicle, Paris, Gallimard, 1993, 334 p.
Michel FOUCAULT, Histoire de la sexualit, t.I, La Volont de savoir, Paris, Gallimard,
1976, 211 p.
Philippe PERROT, Le Corps fminin, xviiie-xixe sicle, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll.
Points histoire, 1984, 279 p.
Anne-Marie SOHN, Du premier baiser lalcve, la sexualit des Franais au quotidien (1850-1950), Paris, Aubier, 1996, 310 p.
3 Politics
Fabrice ABBAD, La France des annes vingt, Paris, Armand Colin, 1993, 190 p.
LAllemagne de Hitler, 1933-1945, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points histoire, 1991,
420 p.
Jean-Pierre AZMA and Michel WINOCK, La Troisime Rpublique, Paris, CalmannLvy, 1976, 520 p.
Hannah ARENDT, Les Origines du totalitarisme, t.III, Le Systme totalitaire, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points politique, 1972, 313 p.
Pierre AYCOBERRY, La Question nazie, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points histoire,
1979, 314 p.
Jean-Jacques BECKER, La France en guerre (1914-1918), Bruxelles, Complexe, 1988,
221 p.
Jean-Jacques BECKER and Serge BERSTEIN, Victoire et frustrations, 1914-1929, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points histoire, 1990, 455 p.
Serge BERSTEIN, La France des annes trente, Paris, Armand Colin, 1993, 186 p.
Serge BERSTEIN and Pierre MILZA, Histoire du xxe sicle, Paris, Hatier, 1987, t.I, 433 p.
,Histoire de lEurope, Paris, Hatier, 1992, t.V, 378 p.
,LAllemagne, 1870-1991, Paris, Masson, 1992, 278 p.
Dominique BORNE and Henri DUBIEF, La Crise des annes trente, 1929-1938, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points histoire, 1989, 322 p.
Martin B ROSZAT , Ltat hitlrien: lorigine et lvolution des structures du
IIIe Reich, Paris, Fayard, 1985.
Jacques DROZ (dir.), Histoire gnrale du socialisme, t.III, 1919-1945, Paris, PUF, 1977,
714 p.
Eugen KOGON, Ltat SS [1947], Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points histoire, 1993,
445 p.
Jean MAITRON, Le Mouvement anarchiste en France, t.II, De 1914 nos jours, Paris,
Maspero, 1983, 435 p.
Roland MARX, LAngleterre de 1914 1945, Paris, Armand Colin, 1993, 175 p.
447

Franois-Charles MOUGEL, Histoire du Royaume-Uni au xxe sicle, Paris, PUF, 1996,
600 p.
Norman PAGE, The Thirties in Britain, London, Macmillan, 1990, 147 p.
Detlev J.K. PEUKERT, La Rpublique de Weimar, Paris, Aubier, 1995, 301 p.
Ren RMOND, Notre sicle, 1918-1988, Paris, Fayard, 1988, 1 012 p.
Marlis STEINERT, Hitler, Paris, Fayard, 1991, 710 p.
Rita THALMANN, La Rpublique de Weimar, Paris, PUF, coll. Que sais-je?, 1986.
David THOMSON, England in the Twentieth Century, London, Penguin, 1981, 382 p.
Jean TOUCHARD, Histoire des ides politiques [1958], Paris, PUF, 1985, t.II, 865 p.
4 Society, economics, culture
Annes trente en Europe: le temps menaant, 1929-1939, catalogue from the 20 February25 May 1997 exposition, Paris, Paris Muses, 571 p.
Andr ARMENGAUD, La Population franaise au xxe sicle [1965], Paris, PUF, 1992, 127 p.
Jean-Pierre AZMA, De Munich la Libration, Paris, ditions du Seuil, coll. Points
histoire, 1979, 412 p.
Stphane AUDOIN-ROUZEAU, 14-18, les combattants des tranches, Paris, Armand Colin,
1986, 223 p.
Christine BARD, Les Filles de Marianne. Histoire des fminismes en France, 1914-1940, Paris,
Fayard, 1995, 528 p.
Olivier BARROT and Pascal ORY (dir.), Entre-deux-guerres, Paris, Franois Bourin,
1990, 631 p.
Jean-Jacques BECKER and Stphane AUDOIN-ROUZEAU, Les Socits europennes and la
Guerre de 1914-1918, Nanterre, Publications de luniversit de Nanterre, 1990, 495 p.
Franois BDARIDA, La Socit anglaise du milieu du xixe sicle nos jours, Paris, ditions
du Seuil, coll. Points histoire, 1990, 540 p.
Hans Peter BLEUEL, La Morale des seigneurs, Paris, Tallandier, 1974, 247 p.
Renate BRIDENTHAL, Atina GROSSMANN and Marion KAPLAN, When Biology Became
Destiny, Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1984, 364 p.
Renate BRIDENTHAL, Claudia KOONZ and Susan STUARD, Becoming Visible, Women in
European History, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Cie, 1987, 579 p.
Asa BRIGGS, A Social History of England, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, nouvelle
d., 1994, 348 p.
Claude CAHUN, Photographie, exhibition catalogue from the 23 June-17 September
1995 show, Paris, Paris Muses, 169 p.
Jean-Louis CRMIEUX-BRILHAC, Les Franais de lan quarante, Paris, Gallimard, 1990,
2 vol., 647 and 740 p.
Dominique DESANTI, La Femme au temps des annes folles, Paris, Stock, 1984, 373 p.
Yvonne DESLANDRES and Florence MULLER, Histoire de la mode au xxe sicle, Paris,
Somogy, 1986, 404 p.
Georges DUBY and Michelle PERROT (dir.), Histoire des femmes en Occident, Paris, Plon,
1992, t.V, 647 p.
Modnis EKSTEINS, Le Sacre du Printemps, la Grande Guerre et la Naissance de la modernit,
Paris, Plon, 1989, 424 p.
Andr ENCREV, Les Protestants en France de 1800 nos jours, Paris, Stock, 1985, 276 p.
Norbert FREI, Ltat hitlrien and la Socit allemande, 1933-1945, Paris, ditions du
Seuil, 1994, 369 p.
448
Paul FUSSELL, The Great War and Modern Memory, Oxford, Oxford University Press,
1975, 363 p.
Peter GAY, Le Suicide dune rpublique, Weimar 1918-1933, Paris, Gallimard, 1993, 268 p.
Richard G RUNBERGER , A Social History of the Third Reich, London, Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1971, 535 p.
Pierre GUILLAUME, Mdecins, glise et foi, Paris, Aubier, 1990, 267 p.
Guerres et cultures (1914-1918), a collective work, Paris, Armand Colin, 1994, 445 p.
Samuel HYNES, A War Imagined, The First War World and English Culture, New York, Atheneum, 1991, 514 p.
Claudia KOONZ, Les Mres-patries du IIIe Reich, Paris, Lieu Commun, 1989, 553 p.
Sergiusz MICHALSKI, Nouvelle objectivit, Cologne, Taschen, 1994, 219 p.
Jean-Pierre NORDIER, Les Dbuts de la psychanalyse en France, 1895-1926, Paris, Maspero,
1981, 274 p.
Jean-Michel PALMIER, Weimar en exil, Paris, Payot, 1988, t.I and II, 533 and 486 p.
Antoine PROST, Histoire de lenseignement en France, 1800-1967, Paris, Armand Colin,
1968, 524 p.
,Les Anciens Combattants et la Socit franaise, 1914-1939, Paris, Presses de la FNSP,
1977, 3 vol., 237, 261 and 268 p.
Lionel RICHARD, La Vie quotidienne sous la Rpublique de Weimar, Paris, Hachette, 1983,
322 p.
Paul ROAZEN, La Saga freudienne, Paris, PUF, 1976, 474 p.
Marcel SCHEIDHAUER, Le Rve freudien en France, 1900-1926, Paris, Navarin, 1985, 227 p.
Jean-Franois SIRINELLI, Gnration intellectuelle, Paris, PUF, 1994, 720 p.
Rita THALMANN, tre femme sous le IIIe Reich, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1982.
Franoise THBAUD, La Femme au temps de la guerre de 1914, Paris, Stock, 1986, 314 p.
John WILLETT, LEsprit de Weimar. Avant-gardes et politique, 1917-1933, Paris, ditions du
Seuil, 1991, 287 p.
Robert WOHL, The Generation of 1914, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980, 307 p.
Thodore ZELDIN, Histoire des passions franaises, ambition et amour, 1845-1945, Paris,
Payot, reprinted. 1994, 1 278 p.
B.
History of Homosexuality
The history of homosexuality has only just begun; nonetheless, there is already a
plethora of bibliographic sources, mainly for the post-World War II period. These works
are of very uneven quality (some do not follow the norms of scholarly research, and some
are too biased); I will indicate a few of those which I found most useful. I have also listed
some of the better-known works, noting those I consider to be flawed).
1 Bibliographies
There are many bibliographies on homosexuality, but rarely do they touch on the
period anterior to the Second World War. The following titles may help guide further
research.
Vern L. BULLOUGH, An Annotated Bibliography of Homosexuality, New York, Garland,
1976, 2 vol.
449

Claude COUROUVE, Bibliographie des homosexualits, Paris, Nouvelles ditions, 1978,
27 p.
Waynes R. DYNES, Homosexuality: A Research Guide, New York, Garland, 1987, 853 p.
Manfred HERZER, Bibliographie zur Homosexualitt, Berlin, Verlag Rosa Winkel, 1982,
255 p.
2 General works
These works are good background for a general approach to homosexual history
between the wars. Most of them emphasize the homosexual movements.
Barry D. ADAM, The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement, Boston, Twaynes Publishers,
1987, 203 p.
Jean BOISSON, Le Triangle rose. La dportation des homosexuels (1933-1945), Paris, Robert
Laffont, 1988, 247 p. [ viter, peu fiable; se rapporter lhistoriographie allemande].
Richard DAVENPORT-HINES, Sex, Death and Punishment, London, Fontana Press, 1990,
439 p. [trs utile].
Martin DUBERMAN, Martha VICINUS and George CHAUNCEY Jr (dir.), Hidden from
History, London, Penguin Books, 1991, 579 p. [an especially valuable series of articles].
Waynes R. DYNES (dir.), Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, New York-London, Garland,
1990, vol.1 and 2, 1484 p. [the articles are for the mos part on homosexual figures and the
important dates in homosexual history; very useful].
Eldorado, homosexual Frauen und Mnner in Berlin, 1850-1950, Geschichte, Alltag und
Kultur, Berlin, Frhlich und Kaufmann, 1984, 216 p. [catalogue from the exposition on
homosexuality under Weimar; indispensible].
Gnther GRAU (ed.), Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany, 19331945, London, Cassell & Cie, 1995, 308 p., trans. from German: Homosexualitt in der NS-Zeit:
Dokumente einer Diskriminierung und Verfolgung, Frankfurt-am-Main, Fischer Taschenbuch
Verlag, 1993 [fundamental: collected from archives on the persecution of homosexuals in
Nazi Germany].
Joachim S. HOHMANN, Der unterdrckte Sexus, Lollar, Achenbach, 1977, 627 p.
,Der heimliche Sexus, Frankfurt-am-Main, Foerster Verlag, 1979, 330 p.
100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung, Berlin, Schwules Museum, 1997, 384 p.
Burckhard JELLONNEK, Homosexuelle unter dem Hakenkreuz, Paderborn, Schningh,
1990, 354 p. [indispensible].
John LAURITSEN and David THORSTAD, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (18641935), New York, Times Changes Press, 1974, 91 p. [un ouvrage pionnier].
Rdiger LAUTMANN, Seminar: Gesellschaft und Homosexualitt, Frankfurt-am-Main,
Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 1977, 570 p. [this is a fundamental work, much of which has
been borrowed by later writers].
,Terror und Hoffnung in Deutschland, 1933-1945, Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1980, 570 p.
Salvatore J. LICATA and Robert P. PETERSEN, The Gay Past: A Collection of Historical
Essays, New York, Harrington Park Press, 1985, 224 p.
Neil MILLER, Out of the Past, Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present, London,
Vintage, 1995, 657 p. [a synthetic work, with excerpts from period documents].
Harry OOSTERHUIS and Hubert KENNEDY (dir.), Homosexuality and Male Bonding in
Pre-Nazi Germany, New York, The Haworth Press, 1991, 271 p.
450
Richard PLANT, The Pink Triangle, New York, Holt & Cie, 1986, 257 p. [indispensible].
A.L. ROWSE, Les Homosexuels clbres, Paris, Albin Michel, 1980, 310 p. [ouvrage trs
connu and viter: anecdotique and complaisant].
Heinz-Dieter SCHILLING (dir.), Schwule und Faschismus, Berlin, Elefanten Presse, 1983,
174 p. [trs utile].
James D. STEAKLEY, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany, New York,
Arno Press, 1975, 121 p. [a pioneering work that offersa solid approach to the question].
Hans-Georg STMKE, Homosexuelle in Deutschland, eine politische Geschichte, Munich,
Verlag C.H. Beck, 1989, 184 p. [very rich].
Hans-Georg STMKE and Rudi FINKLER, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen, Homosexuelle und
gesundes Volksempfinden von Auschwitz bis heute, Reinbeck, Rowohlt, 1981, 512 p.
Jeffrey WEEKS, Coming Out. Homosexual Politics in Britain from the 19th Century to the
Present, London, Quartet Books, 1979, 278 p. [indispensible resource on homosexuality in
Great Britain].
,Sex, Politics and Society, London, Longman, 1989, 325 p. [larger than the preceding
work but very useful].
3 Homosexual and lesbian theory
Simone de BEAUVOIR, Le Deuxime Sexe, Paris, France Loisirs, 1990, 1059 p.
Evelyn BLACKWOOD, The Many Faces of Homosexuality, Anthropological Approaches to
Homosexual Behavior, New York, Harrington Park Press, 1986, 217 p.
Vern L. BULLOUGH, Sin, Sickness and Sanity, New York, Garland, 1977, 276 p.
Susan CAVIN, Lesbian Origins, San Francisco, Ism Press, 1989, 288 p.
Susan FALUDI, Backlash, Paris, Des femmes, 1993, 743 p.
Gay Left Collective (dir.), Homosexuality, Power and Politics, London, Allison
& Busby, 1980, 223 p.
David F. GREENBERG, The Construction of Homosexuality, Chicago, The University of
Chicago Press, 1988, 635 p.
Daniel GURIN, Essai sur la rvolution sexuelle, Paris, Belfond, 1969, 247 p.
,Homosexualit et rvolution, Paris, Utopie, coll. Les Cahiers du vent du chmin,
1983, 66 p.
Guy HOCQUENGHEM, Le Dsir homosexuel, Paris, ditions universitaires, 1972, 125 p.
Sheila JEFFREYS, The Lesbian Heresy: A Feminist Perspective on the Lesbian Sexual Revolution,
New York, Spirifex Press, 1993, 262 p.
Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group, Love your Enemy? The Debate between Feminists
and Political Lesbianism, Leeds, Only Feminist Press, 1981, 68 p.
Kate MILLETT, La Politique du mle, Paris, Stock, 1971, 463 p.
Kenneth PLUMMER (dir.), The Making of the Modern Homosexual, London, Hutchinson,
1981, 380 p. [the best, it presents the different theses and conflicting perspectives].
4 Works on lesbians
Marie-Jo BONNET, Les relations amoureuses entre les femmes du XVIe au xxe sicle, Paris,
Odile Jacob, 1995, 416 p.
451

Claudine BRECOURT-VILLARS, Petit glossaire raisonn de lrotisme saphique, 1880-1930,
Paris, La Vue, 1980, 123 p.
Terry CASTLE, The Apparitional Lesbian, Female Homosexuality and Male Culture, New
York, Columbia University Press, 1993, 307 p.
Lillian FADERMAN, Surpassing the Love of Men, New York, Morran & Cie, 1981, 496 p.
[indispensible; une tude novatrice].
Sheila JEFFREYS, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880-1930, London,
Pandora, 1985, 282 p. [trs utile].
Ilse KOKULA, Weibliche Homosexualitt um 1900 in zeitgenssischen Dokumenten, Berlin,
Frauenoffensive, 1981, 288 p.
Lesbian History Group, Not a Passing Phase. Reclaiming Lesbians in History, 1840-1985,
London, The Womens Press, 1989, 264 p. [intressant].
Claudie LESSELIER, Aspects de lexprience lesbienne en France, 1930-1968, from the postgraduate dept. of sociologie, Paris-VIII, under the direction of R. Castel, November 1987,
148 p. [very useful on France].
Das Lila Wien um 1900, zur sthetik der Homosexualitten, Vienna, Promedia, 1986, 127 p.
[a reference on decadent Vienna].
Jane RULE, Lesbian Images, New York, Doubleday & Cie, 1975, 246 p.
Claudia SCHOPPMANN, Der Skorpion, Frauenliebe in der Weimarer Republik, Berlin,
Frhlings Erwachen, 1984, 81 p.
,Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik und weibliche Homosexualitt, Berlin, Centaurus,
1991, 286 p. [fondamental].
Kristine von SODEN and Maruta SCHMIDT (dir.), Neue Frauen, die zwanziger Jahre,
Berlin, Elefanten Presse, 1988, 176 p.
Eric TRUDGILL, Madonnas and Magdalens, London, Heinemann, 1976, 336 p.
Catherine VAN CASSELAER, Lots Wife, Lesbian Paris, 1890-1914, Liverpool, The Janus
Press, 1986, 176 p.
5 Specific works
These works deal with an aspect of the situation of homosexuality in the betweenwar period or shed light on certain points in the history of homosexuality.
Jean-Paul ARON and Roger KEMPF, Le Pnis et la Dmoralisation de lOccident, Paris,
Grasset, 1978, 306 p.
Gilles BARBEDETTE and Michel CARASSOU, Paris gay 1925, Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 1981, 312 p. [one of the few French works].
Hans Peter BLEUEL, Strength through Joy, Sex and Society in National-Socialist Germany,
London, Pan Books, 1973, 352 p.
John BOSWELL, Christianisme, tolrance sociale et homosexualit. Les homosexuels en Europe
occidentale des dbuts de lre chrtienne au XVIe sicle, Paris, Gallimard, 1985, 521p.
,Les Unions du mme sexe dans lEurope antique et mdivale, Paris, Fayard, 1996, 537 p.
BRASSA, Le Paris secret des annes trente, Paris, Gallimard, 1976, 190 p.
Vern L. BULLOUGH, Challenges to Societal Attitudes towards Homosexuality in
the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, Social Science Quarterly, June 1977,
vol.58, n 1, p.29-41.
452
Peter COLEMAN, Christian Attitudes to Homosexuality, London, SPCK, 1980, 310 p. [a
very useful synthesis on the Churchs attitudetoward homosexuality].
Emmanuel COOPER, The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the Last 100 Years in
the West, London, Routledge & Kegan, 1986, 324 p. [excellent].
Anthony COPLEY, Sexual Moralities in France, 1780-1980. New Ideas on Family, Divorce and
Homosexuality, An Essay on Moral Change, London, Routledge, 1989, 283 p. [very rich].
Claude COUROUVE, Les Homosexuels et les Autres, Paris, ditions de lAthanor, 1977,
155 p.
,Les Origines de la rpression de lhomosexualit, Paris, C. Courouve, coll. Archives des
homosexualits, 1978, 19 p.
,Vocabulaire de lhomosexualit masculine, Paris, Payot, 1985, 248 p.
Jean DANET, Discours juridique et perversions sexuelles (xixe-xxe sicle), Nantes, University
of Nantes, 1977, vol.6, 105 p. [a remarkable work, indispensible for an understanding of
Frances legal position on homosexuality].
W.U. EISSLER, Arbeiterparteien und Homosexuellenfrage zur Sexualpolitik von SPD und KPD
in der Weimarer Republik, Berlin, Verlag Rosa Winkel, 1980, 142 p. [indispensible, on the atttitude of the German leftist parties toward homosexuality].
Thierry FRAL, Nazisme et psychanalyse, Paris, La Pense universelle, 1987, 92 p.
Hubert FICHTE, Homosexualitt und Literatur, Frankfurt-am-Main, S. Fischer, 19871988, t.I et II, 502 et 359 p. [complexe].
Lain FINLAYSON, Gay Dress, in Gay News, n 60, p.19.
John GATHORNE-HARDY, The Public-School Phenomenon, 1597-1977, London, Hodder
& Stoughton, 1977, 478 p. [the best work on this question, and contains personal testimonies].
Ulfried GEUTER, Homosexualitt in der deutschen Jugendbewegung, Frankfurt-am-Main,
Suhrkamp, 1994, 373 p.
Arthur N. G ILBERT , Conception of Homosexuality and Sodomy in Western
History, in Journal of Homosexuality, vol.6, nos 1-2, fall-winter 1980-1981.
Gnther G OLLNER , Homosexualitt, Ideologiekritik und Entmythologisierung einer
Gesetzgebung, Berlin, Duncker und Humblot, 1974, 264 p.
Heide GTTNER-ABENDROTH, Das Matriarchat I, Stuttgart-Cologne-Berlin, Verlag
W. Kohlhammer, 1989, 192 p.
Kurt HILLER, Against Injustice, in Gay News, n 98, p.15-16.
Hans Gnther HOCKERTS, Die Sittlichkeitsprozesse gegen katholische Ordensangehrige und
Priester, 1936-1937, Mayence, Mathias Grnewald Verlag, 1971, 224 p. [a good synthesis on
the Nazi trials against the Catholic Church].
Joachim S. HOHMANN, Sexualforschung und -aufklrung in der Weimarer Republik, Berlin,
Foerster Verlag, 1985, 300 p. [very useful].
Homosexualitt und Wissenschaft, collective work, Berlin, Verlag Rosa Winkel, 1992,
287 p.
Ronald HYAM, Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience, Manchester, Manchester
University Press, 1990, 234 p.
H. Montgomery HYDE, A Tangled Web, Sex Scandals in British Politics and Society, London,
Constable, 1986, 380 p. [anecdotique, viter].
James W. JONES, We of the Third Sex, Literary Representations of Homosexuality in Wilhelmin Germany, New York, Peter Lang, 1990, 346 p.
Philippe JULLIAN, Montmartre, Bruxelles, Squoia, 1979, 206 p.
453

Friedrich KOCH, Sexuelle Denunziation, die Sexualitt in der politischen Auseinandersetzung,
Frankfurt-am-Main, Syndikat, 1986, 223 p.
Thomas KOEBNER, Rolf-Peter JANZ and Frank TROMMLER (dir.), Mit uns zieht die
neue Zeit. Der Mythos Jugend, Frankfurt-am-Main, Suhrkamp, 1985, 621 p. [very rich on the
youth myth in Germany].
Rdiger LAUTMANN (dir.), Mnnerliebe im alten Deutschland, Berlin, Verlag Rosa
Winkel, 1992, 268 p.
Cornelia LIMPRICHT, Jrgen MLLER and Nina OXENIUS, Verfhrte Mnner, das
Leben der Klner Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich, Cologne, Volksblatt Verlag, 1991, 146 p. [a
rare work on homosexuality outside the cities].
Andrew LUMSDEN, Censorship in Britain, in The European Gay Review, vol.1, 1986,
p.75-81.
J.A. MANGAN and James WALVIN, Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in
Britain and America, 1800-1940, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988, 278 p.
Hans MAYER, Les Marginaux: femmes, juifs et homosexuels dans la littrature europenne,
Paris, Albin Michel, 1994, 535 p. [trs discutable; htrosexiste].
Jrn MEVE, Homosexuelle Nazis, ein Stereotyp in Politik und Literatur des Exils, Hamburg,
Mnnerschwarmskript, 1990, 111 p. [very useful].
George L. MOSSE, Nationalism and Sexuality, Respect and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern
Europe, New York, Howard Fertig, 1985, 232 p. [polmique].
Rictor NORTON, One Day They Were Simply Gone, in Gay News, n 82, p.13-15.
Detlev PEUKERT, Inside Nazi Germany, Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life,
London, Batsford Ltd, 1987, 288 p.
Bertrand PHILBERT, LHomosexualit lcran, Paris, Henri Veyrier, 1984, 181 p.
Klaus THEWELEIT, Male Fantasies [Mnnerphantasien, 1977], Minneapolis, The University of Minnesota Press, 1987-1989, 2 vol., 517 p. [trs contest].
Achim THOM (dir.), Medizin unterm Hakenkreuz, Berlin, Verlag Volk und Gesundheit,
1989, 503 p.
Joseph WINTER, The Law that Nearly Was, in Gay News, n 79, p.11.
C. STUDIES ON INTELLECTUALS AND PROMINENT HOMOSEXUALS OF THE PERIOD

There are a great many monographs concerning homosexual intellectuals. The multiplicity of biographies and literary analyses provide a more personal history of homosexuality, allowing for a comparison of the paths chosen, the manners by which an identity
was forged. Of couse, that can only offer clues on one facet of the question and still leaves
us almost completely in the dark as to the daily life of the anonymous homosexuals.
1 General works
Quentin BELL, Bloomsbury [1968], London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986, 127 p. [a
good synthesis, by someone who was close to the group].
Shari BENSTOCK, Women of the Left Bank, Paris 1900-1940, Austin, University of Texas
Press, 1986, 518 p. [indispensible work on the lost generation of American lesbians in
Paris].
454
Bernard BERGONZI, Reading the Thirties, London, Macmillan Press, 1978, 157 p.
Alexandra B USCH, Ladies of Fashion, Djuna Barnes, Natalie Barney und das Paris der
20er Jahre, Bielefeld, Haux, 1989, 229 p. [in German].
John CAREY, The Intellectuals and the Masses, Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939, London, Faber & Faber, 1992, 246 p.
Jon CLARK, Margot HEINEMANN, David MARGOLIES and Carole SNEE (dir.), Culture
and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1979, 279 p.
Valentine CUNNINGHAM, British Writers of the Thirties, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1988, 530 p. [indispensible].
Timothy DARCH SMITH, Love in Earnest, Some Notes on the Lives and Writings of English
Uranian Poets from 1889 to 1930, London, Routledge & Keagan, 1970, 280 p. [on the little
group of Uranian poets].
Paul FUSSELL, Abroad, British Literary Travellers between the Wars, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980, 246 p.
GALILEO, The Gay Thirties, in Gay News, n 54, p.11-12.
Martin GREEN, Children of the Sun: A Narrative of Decadence in England after 1918, London,
Constable, 552 p. [on Brian Howard and Harold Acton; very useful].
Christopher HOLLIS, Oxford in the Twenties, Recollection of Five Friends, London, Heinemann, 1976, 136 p.
Samuel HYNES, The Auden Generation, London, Faber & Faber, 1976, 427 p. [trs
utile].
Incognito (George MALLORY), Gay in the Twenties, in Gay News, n 30, p.9.
Youri Ivanovitch MODINE, Mes camarades de Cambridge, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1994,
316 p. [sur les espions de Cambridge].
S.P. ROSENBAUM (ed.), The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs, Commentary and
Criticism, London, Croom Ltd, 1975, 444 p.
Gifford SKINNER, Cocktails in the Bath, in Gay News, n 135, p.21-24.
Franoise du SORBIER (dir.), Oxford 1919-1939, Paris, ditions Autrement, srie
Mmoires, n 8, Paris, 1991, 287 p. [a colection of articles and interviews; presenting a
comparison between the aesthetes and the athletes].
George STAMBOLIAN and Elaine MARKS (dir.), Homosexualities and French Literature,
London, Cornell University Press, 1979, 387 p.
Lewis D. WURGAFT, The Activist Kurt Hiller and the Politics of Action on the German Left,
1914-1933, Philadelphie, The American Philosophic Society, 1977, 114 p.
2 Monographs
Anthony ALPERS, The Life of Katherine Mansfield, New York, The Viking Press, 1980,
466 p.
Deirdre BAIR, Simone de Beauvoir, Paris, Fayard, 1991, 854 p.
Michael BAKER, Our Three Selves: A Life of Radclyffe Hall, London, Hamish Hamilton,
1985, 386 p.
Vincent BROME, Havelock Ellis, Philosopher of Sex, London, Routledge & Kegan, 1979,
271 p.
Robert CALDER, Willie. The Life of Somerset Maugham, London, Heinemann, 1989,
429 p.
455

Humphrey CARPENTER , W.H. Auden, a Biography, London, Allen & Unwin, 1981,
495 p.
,The Brideshead Generation, Evelyn Waugh and his Friends, London, Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1989, 523 p.
,Benjamin Britten, a Biography, London, Faber & Faber, 1992, 680 p.
Ren de CECCATTY, Violette Leduc, loge de la Btarde, Paris, Stock, 1994, 256 p.
Jean CHALON, Liane de Pougy, Paris, Flammarion, 1994, 389 p.
John COLMER, E.M. Forster, The Personal Voice, London, Routledge & Kegan, 1975,
243 p.
Emmanuel COOPER, The Life and Work of H.S. Tuke, 1858-1929, London, Gay Men
Press, 1987, 72 p.
Michael de COSSART, Une Amricaine Paris. La princesse de Polignac et son salon, 18651943, Paris, Plon, 1979, 245 p.
Paul DELANY, The Neo-Pagans: Friendship and Love in the Rupert Brooke Circle, London,
Macmillan, 1987, 170 p.
ric DESCHODT, Gide, le contemporain capital, Paris, Perrin, 1991, 335 p.
Lovat DICKSON, Radclyffe Hall at the Well of Loneliness, London, Collins, 1975, 236 p.
Richard ELLMANN, Oscar Wilde, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1987, 632 p.
Michel ERMAN, Marcel Proust, Paris, Fayard, 1994, 286 p.
Andrew FIELD, Djuna Barnes, Paris, Rivages, 1986, 303 p.
Noel Riley F ITCH , Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, New York-London,
W.W. Norton & Co, 1983, 447 p.
Penelope FITZGERALD, Charlotte Mew and her Friends, London, Collins, 1984, 240 p.
Gillian FREEMAN, The Schoolgirl Ethic. The Life and Work of Angela Brazil, London, Allen
Lane, 1976, 159 p.
Burdett GARDNER, The Lesbian Imagination (Victorian Style): A Psychological and Critical
Study of Vernon Lee, New York, Garland, 1987, 592 p.
Victoria GLENDINNING, Edith Sitwell, a Unicorn among Lions, London, Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1981, 391 p.
,Vita, la vie de Vita Sackville-West, Paris, Albin Michel, 1987, 437 p.
Richard Perceval G RAVES , A.E. Housman, the Scholar-Poet, London, Routledge
& Kegan, 1979, 304 p.
,Robert Graves, The Heroic Assault, 1895-1925, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1986, 432 p.
Dominique GRENTE and Nicole MLLER, LAnge inconsolable, Annemarie Schwarzenbach,
Paris, Lieu commun, 1989, 274 p.
Manfred HERZER, Magnus Hirschfeld, Leben und Werk eines jdischen, schwulen und sozialistischen Sexologen, Frankfurt-am-Main/New York, Campus, 1992, 189 p.
Philip HOARE, Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant, London, Penguin, 1992,
463 p.
,Noel Coward: A Biography, London, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995, 605 p.
Michael HOLROYD, Lytton Strachey, a Biography, London, Penguin, 1979, 1 144 p.
Christopher ISHERWOOD, A Figure-Head, not a Leader, in Gay News, n 126, p.1719.
Francis KING, E.M. Forster, London, Thames & Hudson, 1978, 128 p.
Friedhelm KREY, Hans Henny Jahnn und die mannmnnliche Liebe, Berlin, Peter Lang,
1987, 458 p.
456
Marianne KRLL, Les Magiciens. Une autre histoire de la famille Mann, Paris, ditions du
Seuil, 1995, 398 p.
Monique LANGE, Cocteau, prince sans royaume, Paris, Jean-Claude Latts, 1989, 347 p.
James L EES -MILNE , Harold Nicolson, a Biography (1886-1929), London: Chatto &
Windus, 1980, vol.1, 429 p.
Herbert LOTTMAN, Colette, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1990, 496 p.
Irmela von der LHE, Erika Mann, eine Biographie, Frankfurt-am-Main/New York,
Campus, 1994, 350 p.
Brenda MADDOX, The Married man: A Life of D.H. Lawrence, London, Sinclair-Stevenson,
1994, 652 p.
Joy MELVILLE, Ellen and Edy: A Biography of Ellen Terry and her Daughter Edith Craigh, 18471947, London, Pandora, 1987, 293 p.
Wendy MULFORD, This Narrow Place, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, Life,
Letters and Politics, 1930-1951, London, Pandora, 1988, 276 p.
George D. P AINTER , Marcel Proust [1959], Paris, Mercure de France, 1985, 2 vol.,
464 and 515 p.
Peter PARKER, A Life of J.R. Ackerley, London, Constable, 1989, 465 p.
Norman PITTENGER, Wystan & Morgan, in Gay News, n 156, p.23-24.
Henri RACZYMOW, Maurice Sachs ou les Travaux forcs de la frivolit, Paris, Gallimard,
1988, 503 p.
J.E. RIVERS, Proust and the Art of Love, New York, Columbia University Press, 1980,
327 p.
Jean-Louis SAINT-YGNAN, Drieu La Rochelle ou lObsession de la dcadence, Paris, Nouvelles ditions latines, 1984, 260 p.
Josyane SAVIGNEAU, Marguerite Yourcenar, linvention dune vie, Paris, Gallimard, 1990,
790 p.
W.I. SCOBIE, Christopher Isherwood, in Gay News, n 93, p.16-17.
Meryle SECREST, Between Me and Life: A Biography of Romaine Brooks, London, Macdonald & Janes, 1976, 432 p.
Kenneth SIMCOX, Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth, London, Woburn Press,
1987, 166 p.
Pierre SIPRIOT, Montherlant sans masque, t.I, LEnfant prodigue, 1895-1932, and t.II, cris
avec ton sang, 1932-1972, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1980-1990, 500 and 505 p.
Robert SKIDELSKY, J.M. Keynes, Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920, London, Macmillan, 1983,
447 p.
Charles SOWERWINE and Claude MAIGNIER, Madeleine Pelletier, une fministe dans
larne politique, Paris, ditions ouvrires, 1992, 250 p.
Gillian TINDALL, Rosamund Lehmann: An Appreciation, London, Chatto & Windus,
1985, 201 p.
Hugo VICKERS, Cecil Beaton, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985, 656 p.
Franoise WERNER, Romaine Brooks, Paris, Plon, 1990, 334 p.
George WICKES, The Amazon of Letters. The Life and Loves of Natalie Barney, London,
W.H. Allen, 1977, 286 p.
Jeremy WILSON, Lawrence dArabie, Paris, Denol, 1994, 1 288 p.
Brenda WINEAPPLE, Gent, a Biography of Janet Flanner, London, Ticknore Fields, 1989,
361 p.
457

Charlotte WOLFF , Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology, London,
Quartet Books, 1986, 494 p.
3 Specific works
Eva AHLSTEDT, La Pudeur en crise: un aspect de laccueil d A la recherche du temps perdu de
Marcel Proust, 1913-1930, Paris, Jean Touzot, Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1985,
276 p.
,Andr Gide et le Dbat sur lhomosexualit, Paris, Jean Touzot, Acta Universitatis
Gothoburgensis, 1994, 291 p.
Karl Werner BHM, Zwischen Selbstsucht und Verlangen, Thomas Mann und das Stigma
Homosexualitt, Wurzbourg, Knigshausen & Neumann, 1991, 409 p.
Henri BONNET, Les Amours et la Sexualit de Marcel Proust, Paris, Librairie A.G. Nizet,
1985, 101 p.
Lilian FADERMAN and Ann WILLIAMS, Radclyffe Hall and the Lesbian Image, in
Conditions, n 1, April 1977.
Barbara F ASSLER , Theories of Homosexuality as a Source of Bloomsburys
Androgyny, in Signs, vol.5, n 2, winter 1979.
Serge GINGRAS, LHomosexualit dans la prose dHenry de Montherlant, thse Calgari,
1985, 90 p.
Gerhard HRLE, Die Gestalt des Schnen, Knigstein/Ts, Hain, 1986, 165 p. [on Thomas
Mann].
,Mnnerweiblichkeit, zur Homosexualitt bei Klaus und Thomas Mann, Frankfurt-amMain, Athenum Verlag, 1988, 412 p.
Marita KEILSON-LAURITZ, Von der Liebe die Freundschaft heisst, Berlin, Verlag Rosa
Winkel, 1987, 159 p. [sur Stefan George].
Hdi KHELIL, Sens, jouissance. Tourisme, exotisme, argent dans deux fictions coloniales dAndr
Gide, Tunis, ditions de la Nef, Passerelles 1, 1988, 172 p.
Rebecca OROURKE, Reflecting on the Well of Loneliness, London, Routledge & Kegan,
1989, 146 p.
Arthur King PETERS, Jean Cocteau and Andr Gide, an Abrasive Friendship, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1973, 426 p.
Patrick POLLARD, Andr Gide, Homosexual Moralist, New Haven, Yale University
Press, 1991, 498 p.
Jean RAISON, Publish and Be Banned, in Gay News, n 148, p.17-18.
Katrina R OLLEY, Cutting a Dash: The Dress of Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge, in Feminist Review, n 35, t 1990.
Sonja RUEHL, Inverts and Experts: Radclyffe Hall and the Lesbian Identity, in
Brunt and Rowan (dir.), Feminism, Culture and Politics, Lawrence & Wishart, 1982, 190 p.,
p.15-37
Stefan ZYNDA, Sexualitt bei Klaus Mann, Bonn, Bouvier Verlag, 1986, 156 p
458

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A HISTORY OF

BERLIN, LONDON, PARIS

2006 by Algora Publishing.

Originally published as Histoire de l'homosexualit en Europe, ditions Seuil, 2000

Tamagne, Florence, 1970[Histoire de l'homosexualite en Europe. English]

Front Cover: Otto Dix, Eldorado, aquarelle, 1927

A History of Homosexuality in Europe (1919-1939) was originally published in

A BRIEF APOGEE: THE 1920S, A FIRST HOMOSEXUAL LIBERATION

A MYTH IS BORN: THOSE FLAMBOYANT DAYS

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

LIBERATION ON THE MOVE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENTS

AN INVERSION OF VALUES: THE CULT OF HOMOSEXUALITY

UNACKNOWLEDGED FEARS AND DESIRES:

AWAKENING: WORKING TO CONSTRUCT A HOMOSEXUAL IDENTITY

BREAKING THE SILENCE: HOMOSEXUALS AND PUBLIC OPINION

HOMOSEXUALS AS POLITICAL CHIPS

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

CRIMINALS BEFORE THE LAW

THE END OF A DREAM: THE GERMAN MODEL BLOWS UP

TOWARD HOMOSEXUAL LIBERATION

PROGRESS OR INCREASED REPRESSION?

APPENDIX II. SONGS

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

APPENDIX III. GERMAN LEGISLATION ON HOMOSEXUALITY

APPENDIX IV. DR. CARL VAERNETS EXPERIMENTS AT BUCHENWALD (1944)

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

RESEARCH IN HOMOSEXUALITY: METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

A BRIEF APOGEE: THE 1920S, A FIRST HOMOSEXUAL LIBERATION

LOOKING BACK: 1869-1919

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

One Scandal after Another

A Myth is Born: Those Flamboyant Days

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

A Myth is Born: Those Flamboyant Days

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

A Myth is Born: Those Flamboyant Days

The Shock of the First World War

26. Michael de Cossart, Une Amricaine Paris, op. cit., p.95.

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

A Myth is Born: Those Flamboyant Days

The front as a school in homosexuality

34. In Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined, op. cit., p.227.

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

A Myth is Born: Those Flamboyant Days

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

A Myth is Born: Those Flamboyant Days

The war casts open the blinds

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

A Myth is Born: Those Flamboyant Days

56. Ibid., p.36.

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

Homosexual Talk: from Slang to Camp

A Myth is Born: Those Flamboyant Days

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

A Myth is Born: Those Flamboyant Days

Camp helps homosexuals to formulate their own culture. According to Quentin

Dandies and Flappers: Homosexuals Have Style

A History of Homosexuality in Europe

Others, however, sought a departure from the ubiquitous classicism. Suits in

A Myth is Born: Those Flamboyant Days

A History of Homosexuality in Europe