Gay Berlin Page 4
In a second letter from November, addressed “Dear Loved Ones,” Ulrichs shared the basic insight that would shape his ultimate theory of sexual identity. Men who loved men, he ventured, represented a third sex, characterized by a feminine nature trapped in the physical body of a man. The chief evidence for this claim came from Ulrichs’s recollections of his own boyhood and adolescence: “How often did my dear mother complain, ‘You are not like other boys!’ How often did she warn me, ‘You will be an odd one.’ Coaxed or by force, nothing could bring me up to the standard of boys. It was not in me. I was already an odd one, namely by nature. Because of my feminine nature even as a boy I was unjustly mistreated and set apart.” The lack of appropriate “boyishness” that Ulrichs identified in himself was also something he claimed to have observed in other men attracted to their own sex: “a so-called feminine mannerism, can be observed since childhood in the inclination to girlish preoccupations, in shyness, in play, in not scuffling, or throwing snowballs as boys do, in manners, gestures, and in a certain gentleness of character.” It was unjust, however, Ulrichs declared, that he be expected to live a life of celibacy. Sexual gratification was a God-given right, “on the assumption that the means of gratification is achieved in the way which nature intended for the individual.” To demand, as his closest family members did, that he and those like him lead a life of sensual deprivation was “an extreme abuse, since we are justified to exist in human society, just as you are.”28
In two additional letters, both dated December 1862 and addressed “Dear Uncle,” Ulrichs elaborated his views, emphasizing the “hermaphroditic” identity of those who loved their own sex. The occurrence of hermaphrodites in nature offered positive proof, Ulrichs claimed, that sexual drives did not always correspond to sexual organs. Not only human hermaphrodites born with male and female genitalia but also “hermaphroditic” animal species such as snails confirmed for Ulrichs the natural character of same-sex eroticism. Since nature endowed individuals and entire species alike with ambiguous or even paired male and female sexual organs, Ulrichs reasoned, it followed that same-sex eroticism was similarly a natural, if fairly uncommon, phenomenon. Ulrichs marshaled additional support for his claims, citing his own interviews with like-minded men as well as a range of medical and biological sources, including anatomy textbooks and medical journals. This evidence was likely drawn from a manuscript that Ulrichs mentioned in the second letter to his family members.29
Ulrichs’s siblings, uncle, and aunt could not accept easily, if ever at all, his extraordinary arguments. Their resistance was clear not only from his labored attempts to refute their objections, but also from the postscripts they added to his circulated letters. One brother-in-law attempted to dissuade Ulrichs from publishing his tracts, arguing that they would tarnish the family name. Ulrichs’s uncle scribbled the note “I am unable to judge to what degree your detailed information is substantiated, but I am saddened, dear Karl, that you continue to excuse yourself of that which is, according to my conviction, unpardonable.” (Despite his censure, however, this skeptic signed off, “Love you dearly, Uncle.” One comment in the margins of the first letter—written perhaps by Ulrichs’s older sister—conceded, “I have always believed to have noticed just such a feminine mannerism about Karl.” But the remarkable, indeed marvelous result of this difficult correspondence was the simple fact that Ulrichs’s beloved family members never explicitly disowned or rejected him: he remained forever welcomed into their homes. The family support that Ulrichs had always enjoyed was not compromised, even after divulging a radical, disturbing truth about his private sexual urges. The ability to come out into the open and find that he was still loved surely bolstered his confidence.30
Now Ulrichs pursued his mission with growing assurance and purpose. His first pamphlet, titled “Vindex: Social and Legal Studies on Man-Manly Love,” appeared under the pseudonym Numa Numantius—in deference to his family’s wishes—in April 1864. Here he introduced new terms for describing innate sexual identities: the word Urning named the identity of those men who love their own sex; Dioning denoted the heterosexual majority. Ulrichs took inspiration for these neologisms from his classical schoolboy training. He derived Urning from the Greek god of the heavens, Uranus, whose solitary parentage of Aphrodite, the goddess of Eros or sexual love, symbolized same-sex eroticism in Plato’s Symposium. In Plato’s dialogue, the discussion of Eros (sexual love) mentions two contrasting accounts of Aphrodite’s birth. The first Greek myth claims that Aphrodite was parented by Uranus, a birth in which “the female played no part.” The second identifies Aphrodite as the offspring of Zeus and Dione. While the single-parented Aphrodite of the first story was invoked in the Symposium to symbolize the Greek masculine love of male youths, or same-sex attraction, the second represented the more common sexual attraction of a man to a woman. Ulrichs introduced the term Urninden in his second pamphlet to describe same-sex loving women or lesbians.31
With this inventive nomenclature, Ulrichs was able to frame the specific identity of men who loved men, and in so doing to address their characteristics, interests, and the persecution they experienced as a group or class. Same-sex eroticism was no longer simply a collection of disembodied sexual practices, but rather the innate sensuality that defined, at least in part, a significant, if tiny, sexual minority. The pamphlet’s title, “Vindex,” or “Vindicator,” signaled Ulrichs’s purpose: he presented himself as the defender, indeed emancipator, of all Urnings who suffered under the prejudice and persecution of a Dioning majority. His central thesis was that Uranian love was inborn or natural, caused neither by pathology nor willful perversion, and as such its expression could not be criminalized. Ulrichs suggested that at least 25,000 adult Urnings resided in the German states. Nothing could justify the denial of fundamental rights to such a large group.32
Ulrichs’s second pamphlet, “Inclusa: Anthropological Studies on Man-Manly Love,” appeared just one month later, in May 1864. In this work Ulrichs presented evidence for his argument that Urnings were psychological hermaphrodites—in short, biological men with a feminine character. By way of example Ulrichs asserted that when Urnings formed social networks, they frequently gave each other feminine nicknames, or referred to one another as Schwester (sister) or Tante (aunt). Myriad historical figures demonstrated the timelessness of an Urning identity, Ulrichs offered, and urban ethnographies of Berlin and Rome, among other cities, would illustrate the persistence of this minority.33
Ulrichs was prolific, and he issued the third, fourth, and fifth pamphlets in 1865. These installments continued his passionate advocacy for tolerance and the decriminalization of same-sex love. Titled “Vindicta: Battle for Freedom from Persecution,” the third volume described the legal ramifications of German anti-sodomy laws: many people were imprisoned under these laws, and more than a few of those accused and convicted committed suicide. Although many German states did not formally punish same-sex acts, including Ulrichs’s native Hanover, popular prejudice and public decency laws, as Ulrichs understood so well, remained sources of harassment and discrimination. Equally pernicious was the threat of blackmail by male prostitutes, a threat, Ulrichs claimed, that was “growing rapidly in the dark streets of the largest cities.” The fourth volume, “Formatrix: Anthropological Studies on Man-Manly Love,” broadened Ulrichs’s earlier analysis and suggested a wide continuum of sexual identities. Now Ulrichs recognized that some male Urnings had a very masculine demeanor, while female Urninden might very well exhibit feminine character traits. For the first time, Ulrichs also described an identity of Uranodionism, bisexual individuals attracted to both sexes.34
In the fifth volume, “Ara Spei” (“Refuge of Hope”), Ulrichs considered the traditional Christian condemnations of same-sex eroticism, perhaps his thorniest challenge. Of course, this had been an important issue for him when he confronted his imposing Lutheran family. As he had in that earlier argument, here he asserted that “Christianity has a place not only for Dionian but also f
or Uranian love.” The larger issue was that congenital Uranian love had been unknown to Christianity; how then could the religion possibly have developed a coherent theology about the question? While the Bible condemned same-sex male prostitution or those who perverted their nature, it said nothing about an inborn Urning nature. “There is simply an omission,” Ulrichs wrote. And since Uranian love could not produce children, he reasoned, neither the institution of marriage nor sanctions against extramarital sex had any particular bearing for Urnings. This line of argument conveniently ignored the traditional Christian teaching that sex was meant only for procreation, perhaps the greatest barrier for Christians in accepting same-sex eroticism. The Christian principle of charity, Ulrichs declared optimistically, would promote the acceptance of Uranian love as well as its open expression.35
In late-nineteenth-century Europe, these arguments were extremely provocative, even explosive, and surely enough to stir up the censors. Commissioned by Ulrichs, the publisher Heinrich Matthes, based in Leipzig, printed just under fifteen hundred copies each of the first two volumes and was responsible for distributing them at the annual Leipzig book fairs and through postal orders. But six weeks after they were first printed, officials in Leipzig seized the remaining copies of the first two titles from Matthes’s shop. At the trial conducted later in the month, the prosecutor charged both author and publisher with “degradation of family and marriage” and the advocacy of “illegal behavior.” These charges were hardly surprising, since the kingdom of Saxony, where Leipzig was located—unlike Hanover—had a particularly oppressive anti-sodomy statute.
Ulrichs’s great advantage, however, was the influence of the Leipzig publishers, who dominated the German-language book trade. This powerful industry was represented by a well-organized professional group, the Association of German Publishers and Printers (also based in Leipzig), which influenced Saxon censorship laws, their application, and press freedoms more generally. Saxony’s liberal standards for censorship also shaped the print culture of the rest of the German-speaking world, which remained relatively open as a result. Honoring the interests of the Leipzig publishers, the court rejected the prosecutor’s claims and cited the “scientific value” of Ulrichs’s first two publications: “It seems they have been published without the intention of eliciting immorality.” As a consequence, the ban was lifted and the confiscated copies were returned to Matthes on the same day. The court’s decision discouraged the Leipzig prosecutor from filing charges against Ulrichs’s subsequent publications, which were distributed without difficulty, at least from Leipzig. This early victory for freedom of expression was also an important harbinger of the relative tolerance that later German activists and sexologists would enjoy. Officials in Prussia were less tolerant, and Ulrichs’s first two volumes were banned there in September 1864. Certainly this prevented Berlin booksellers from displaying Ulrichs’s works openly, but it was always possible for private individuals to order them from Matthes directly or from other book dealers outside of Prussia.36
The print run was limited for the first five pamphlets, but their distribution was wider than anyone could have expected. Ulrichs certainly achieved one of his primary goals: stimulating debate about the legal treatment of same-sex eroticism. Moreover, the mere threat of censorship seemed to enhance the sale of his pamphlets. In his introduction to the third volume, “Vindicta,” Ulrichs reported that the first two works, “Vindex” and “Inclusa,” had nearly sold out. While most of the copies were purchased in Saxony, Baden, the western Rhine provinces, and Austria, there were also orders from outside the German-speaking world, including Italy, France, the Low Countries, and England. Because Ulrichs published under the pen name Numa Numantius, most correspondence was addressed to the publisher, Matthes, who then forwarded it to Ulrichs. Many missives came from grateful Urnings, who saw themselves reflected in Ulrichs’s analysis. There were letters from some sympathetic Dionings as well, and Ulrichs reported proudly that the Frankfurt municipal library had placed his first two volumes in its collection. Others condemned Ulrichs, however, for his “perversions” or “moral turpitude.” Newspapers and journals in Hanover, Berlin, Vienna, and the Rhine region included notices of Ulrichs’s publications and the controversy they provoked, most with scorn but a few with guarded tolerance. The volumes also inspired attacks in the Leipzig press, which reported that officials had confiscated the first two volumes. All three Leipzig dailies condemned the court’s original decision and acquittal. Ulrichs rebutted the papers’ editors, and two, including the pan-German Deutsche Allgemeine, printed his response: “By publishing these writings I have initiated a scientific discussion based on facts. This should interest doctors and jurists. Until now the treatment of the subject has been biased, not to mention contemptuous. My writings are the voice of a socially oppressed minority that now claims its rights to be heard.”37
The scientific interest that Ulrichs hoped to inspire had become a reality. Ulrichs’s claims about the congenital character of same-sex desire seemed—in fact—to converge with and confirm the arguments of recent German medical scholarship. From the outset, Ulrichs had sought medical accounts of Urnings and hermaphrodites, both to educate himself and to corroborate his views; he began citing these articles in his very first volume. One of his most important medical sources was the forensic pathologist Johann Ludwig Casper (1796–1864). While serving as Berlin’s chief medical officer, Casper had been responsible for investigating sexual crimes and providing evidence of them in court. In this capacity, he examined both victims and defendants. He also founded and edited a prominent scientific journal, as well as an influential medical manual. Long after his death, the journal continued publication, and the forensics manual was reissued in multiple new editions.38
In 1852 Casper published the first scholarly analysis of same-sex eroticism based on the case studies he encountered in his official duties. The article—cited for generations by psychiatrists and medical researchers—broke with older stereotypes by arguing that same-sex love might stem from a congenital condition. Casper began his analysis of “sodomy” or “pederasty,” as same-sex love was then labeled, with a powerful critique. The relevant scientific literature, Casper claimed, provided no empirical evidence and simply repeated the unsubstantiated claims of older sources. For example, the traditional, nineteenth-century forensic manuals predicted that a “sodomite” might be easily identified based on physical symptoms, including a broad range of debilitating viral and venereal diseases that were often observed to afflict prostitutes. This literature also predicted that while a “passive” sodomite would exhibit flaccid buttocks and a funnel-shaped sphincter, an “active” sodomite could be detected by his narrow, arrow-headed penis. Among Casper’s eleven case studies introduced in his 1852 article, however, not one suffered a venereal disease or exhibited such physical characteristics.
The most startling of Casper’s subjects introduced in the 1852 article was Count Alfred von Maltzan-Wedell (1792–1858), a Berlin aristocrat who was tried and incarcerated under the Prussian anti-sodomy law. In addition to interviewing and physically examining the count, Casper also read his personal journals, which gave detailed information about his sexual exploits and a broad network of Berlin sodomites.39 Casper never published Maltzan-Wedell’s journals, which are now lost, and he provided little specific description of their contents. “I can only hint,” Casper claimed, “at the depictions of orgies that are given in these diaries.” Although clearly disturbed by the count’s sexual activity, Casper approached his subject with open-minded curiosity. Maltzan-Wedell, Casper wrote, had engaged in passive pederasty for nearly thirty years, but showed no awareness that his sexual activities were even illegal. Endowed with a “feminine-childish essence,” the count responded openly, “without inhibition,” to every question. Casper marveled at the man’s heartfelt feelings: the “love and longing” with which he remembered his first affair; the “effusive nicknames” he used for his lovers; and the “jealousy”
he experienced when competing for affection.40
Not only the count’s dramatic emotional life but also the results of his physical examination undermined the conventional wisdom on sodomy. Based in part on Maltzan-Wedell’s physical condition, Casper determined that pederasts could not be identified with certainty by any external signs; those diagnostic markers of sodomy asserted by most forensic physicians were without any basis in fact. But Casper’s most contentious assertion was that the “sexual inclination of man for man among many of these unfortunates, though I presume only among a minority, is innate.”41 In 1858 Casper argued more radically that “for most who are given to this [pederasty], it is innate and at the same time a form of mental hermaphroditism.”42 This revolutionary claim refuted decades of traditional medical opinion that viewed same-sex love as an acquired perversion, caused by masturbation, overwrought desire, or extreme sexual activity.
The similarities between Casper’s innate “mental hermaphroditism” and the characteristics that Ulrichs ascribed to the Urning are certainly striking. Yet Ulrichs appears to have developed his own explanation for same-sex eroticism before he ever encountered Casper’s scholarship. It was only in his second volume, “Inclusa,” that Ulrichs cited Casper on hermaphrodites, and still later in the fourth and fifth volumes that he considered Casper’s claims that same-sex love stemmed from an innate predisposition. In the fourth pamphlet, “Formatrix,” Ulrichs lauded Casper’s research under the heading “Dioning Testimony That Uranism Is Natural.” However, he also scolded Casper for his expressions of scorn and pity for Urnings. In contrast, Casper likely never learned of Ulrichs’s campaign, and his death in 1864 prevented Ulrichs from initiating any direct correspondence with one of the pioneering investigators of same-sex love.