Liberated, licentious, or merely liberal, the sexual freedoms of Germany’s Weimar Republic have become legendary. The home of the world’s first gay rights movement, the republic embodied a progressive, secular vision of sexual liberation. Immortalized – however misleadingly – in Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories and the musical Cabaret, Weimar’s freedoms have become a touchstone for the politics of sexual emancipation.
Yet, as Laurie Marhoefer shows in Sex and Weimar Republic, those sexual freedoms were only obtained at the expense of a minority who were deemed sexually disordered. In Weimar Germany, the citizen’s right to sexual freedom came with a duty to keep sexuality private, non-commercial, and respectable.
Sex and the Weimar Republic examines the rise of sexual tolerance through the debates which surrounded “immoral” sexuality: obscenity, male homosexuality, lesbianism, transgender identity, heterosexual promiscuity, and prostitution. It follows the sexual politics of a swath of Weimar society ranging from sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld to Nazi stormtrooper Ernst Röhm. Tracing the connections between toleration and regulation, Marhoefer’s observations remain relevant to the politics of sexuality today.
Laurie Marhoefer is the Jon Bridgman Endowed Associate Professor in History at the University of Washington.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Opening Night of the Institute for Sexual Science, July 1919
1. Homosexual Emancipation, Censorship, and the Revolution of 1918/9
2. Lesbianism, Reading, and Law
3. Female Prostitution, Modern Heterosexuality, and the 1927 Venereal Disease Law
4. Male Prostitution, Homosexual Emancipation, and the 1929 Vote to Repeal the Sodomy Law
5. “The Third Sex Greets the Third Reich!” The Röhm Scandal, 1931–2
6. The Politics of “Immoral” Sexuality in the Fall of the Weimar Republic and the Rise of the Nazis
Conclusion: The Weimar Settlement on Sexual Politics
What People are Saying About This
Elizabeth Heineman
“An ambitious book. Marhoefer asks us to reconsider the politics of sexuality in the Weimar years – including its role in bringing Hitler to power. Sex and the Weimar Republic is carefully researched, broad in its scope, and packs important insights for those interested in queer politics today.”
Robert G. Moeller
“Sex and the Weimar Republic makes a compelling argument about the importance of sexual politics – writ large – in the Weimar Republic. It is an important book, of interest to those who study twentieth-century Germany and to those interested in the history of sexuality.”
