Gay Berlin by Robert Beachy

New York : Knopf, 2014

I don't often read non-fiction, however when I saw this title I was immediately hooked. Not exactly linear, it reads more like a collection of essays on various aspects of gay life in Berlin from the mid-1800s and stopping just short of Hitler taking power, with particular focus on the Wiemar years.

We think of the gay rights movement as it relates to the Stonewall riots but multiple organizations in Berlin were fighting for gay rights (particularly the repeal of Paragraph 175) years before. Then as now, the philosophies of these organizations were not monolithic. As well, they included members who ranged from the most liberal to the most conservative (including members of the far right Nazi Party).

It is a complicated history with strong connections to both the youth group movement and male prostitution. Along the way Beachy makes the connections to many literary works, some of which are well known ... some not so much. Isherwood and Auden spent time in Berlin as has been widely read about in Isherwood's Berlin Stories and more truthfully in Christopher and His Kind. I'll definitely want to track down the diaries, autobiographies and thinly veiled autobiographical novels from others of the time. A short list of literary works available in German at the time (André Gide's Immoralist (1902), Herman Bang's Mikaël (1904), Mikhail Kuzmin's Wings (1906)) will also make for some interesting reading. Maybe less well known are the gay silent films of the era and I'm really looking forward to exploring those.

This is a fascinating read. Let us hope that we need not wait too long for the next installment from Mr. Beachy covering gay life under Hitler.