Gay Berlin Page 7
The struggle of this brave and lonely soul appeared all but forgotten at the point of his death. Sadly, Ulrichs’s fundamental goal of achieving legal reform went unrealized. With his stubborn conviction and activism, however, Ulrichs established a powerful legacy. He was arguably the first man in modern history to acknowledge openly his sexual attraction to other men. By outing himself, he also became the first public activist for the legal emancipation of Urnings, or homosexuals. His pamphlets, petitions, and public pronouncements were frequently reviled, but they also ignited debates about the character of same-sex eroticism that still echo today. Although his theories were largely spurned by the German medical establishment, he influenced a group of progressive psychiatric and legal professionals to accept the idea that same-sex love was an inborn phenomenon, not simply a vice, a perversion, or a traditional sin.
Ulrichs also developed the first vocabulary for describing modern sexual identities. If eclipsed in the twentieth century by words like “homosexual” and “heterosexual,” his terminology gained wide popular currency in the German-speaking world. His theories also supported others struggling to understand their sexual urges, and helped to forge—largely with the printed word—an incipient community of like-minded persons, including many of Krafft-Ebing’s correspondents. Perhaps Ulrichs’s greatest contribution to the cause he championed was his serving as the inspiration for the founding of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee) in Berlin, just two years after his death in 1897. Led by the Berlin medical doctor Magnus Hirschfeld, this group represented the world’s first homosexual rights organization. Their raison d’être, like Ulrichs’s own, was the scientific study of homosexuality and an end to legal discrimination. The Prussian anti-sodomy statute, Paragraph 175, which had incensed Ulrichs, was the very spur that prompted Hirschfeld and his colleagues. The work of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee would soon help to make Berlin a center of sexology research and the capital of homosexual rights activism. The German anti-sodomy statute called forth a reaction, in short, that both Hegel and Marx would have immediately understood. The demand for emancipation was a dialectical response to legal discrimination. The committee honored Ulrichs by conducting systematic research to reconstruct his life and biography, and in 1898 they also republished his twelve revolutionary pamphlets.
• CHAPTER TWO •
Policing Homosexuality in Berlin
From the evening hours till early the next day
Through the Friedrichstraße we make our way
We’ve been doing this for quite some time
We prowl the strip arm in arm
As always we are dressed to the nines
Since modest garb does the business harm
This is the dollboy’s first rule
Appear always chic and elegant
The second is to be assertive and cool
Never shy or reticent
And finally if one hopes to inherit
Blackmailing a john is the surest bet
—“Berliner Pupenjungen” (Berlin dollboys), Berlin folksong, first published in volume 3 of Lieder aus dem Rinnstein (Berlin, 1905)1
It was the visibility rather than the mere existence of a homosexual and lesbian subculture that was important, for London and Paris also contained such a culture, but in Berlin it was more readily inspected, photographed, and written about.
—GEORGE MOSSE, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (1985)
On a dark winter evening in February 1885, police officers descen-ded on Seeger’s Restaurant, a small bar located in central Berlin at 10 Jägerstraße, just south of Unter den Linden. Although close to government offices and cultural institutions, the pub was surrounded by a quiet residential neighborhood, dotted with small stores and businesses. Located on the ground floor of a middle-class apartment house, the nondescript locale might never have attracted the attention of neighbors—if not for the police raid. The simple interior was typical of many Berlin taverns: the front door faced the street and opened into a small room with an oak bar, tables, and chairs; from there a doorway led into a second, larger room, where more tables, chairs, and a sofa were arranged. The owner, Carl August Seeger, had opened his establishment in 1881 and always made sure that the bar and its clientele were orderly, discreet, and respectable.
Neither Seeger nor his patrons had done anything to attract attention. As one newspaper later reported, the police, upon entering, identified few “incriminating factors.”2 The men in the bar—there were no women—came from all walks of life and included tradesmen, merchants, and professionals. They lived in a range of neighborhoods; the city’s Stadtbahn, the elevated railway system inaugurated in 1882, extended in all directions from the urban center, like spokes on a wheel, hastening travel to Berlin’s new suburbs. Possibly a few were from Berlin’s eastern working-class districts, but most resided in the historic city core or in the expanding townships of Schöneberg, Wilmersdorf, and Charlottenburg. Despite varied social backgrounds, the bar patrons were all in their prime, most between thirty and fifty years old. What drew them to Seeger’s Restaurant was the opportunity to meet men who preferred men, for love or sociability, and to do so in a safe environment. Seeger cultivated this security together with his barkeep, Paul Block, who answered to a feminine nickname, “the shrew” (die Fuchtel). We know nothing about the family situations of Seeger’s patrons, but some might have been in committed same-sex relationships. Others were likely single and alone, or perhaps married with children. In any case, as Berlin residents or out-of-towners, they met lovers and friends or made new acquaintances in this modest pub, albeit one with a very special profile.3
Seeger’s Restaurant had been investigated several weeks before the raid, when Berlin police commissioner Leopold von Meerscheidt-Hüllessem responded to an anonymous tip. In late January a plainclothes officer—accompanied by an acquaintance—visited the bar and later described the patrons to Hüllessem as warme Brüder, “warm brothers.” On this initial visit, the two interlopers had been heartily welcomed, and they claimed to have observed anywhere from twenty to fifty men. Commissioner Hüllessem required more information before authorizing the raid, however, so the officer returned the following week, this time alone.4 When questioned where his “lover” (Verhältnis) was, the undercover investigator responded that the friend was sick. This second report prompted Hüllessem to order the raid for Sunday, February 25, confident that the evidence would stand up in court. With officers stationed in the street, the undercover agent and his colleagues forced their way into the bar, and then turned on the patrons, arresting twelve men, including Seeger and his employee. The group was trundled in a horse-drawn paddy wagon to Berlin’s old police station, and then charged with creating a public nuisance and jailed.
Neither the investigating officer nor the second witness had observed any illegal sexual acts. Yet their testimony was the only evidence presented in court. As the police official claimed, the bar patrons had flirted with salacious bonhomie during his undercover visits; the twelve accused men “kissed and caressed one another, patted each other’s bottoms, sat on each other’s laps, addressed each other with women’s names, and fondled one another in the crotch.”5 One man had announced loudly that he “wanted to f-ck” that evening but his sexual partner “needed to have a powerful cock.”
The defense questioned whether these homosexual flirtations represented a public disturbance, and countered that the bar patrons never perceived any discomfort on the part of the officer. If the undercover officer and his companion appeared to fit in, how could Seeger or his patrons be accused of creating a public disturbance? Seeger argued that the establishment was not truly public since his clientele sought out the pub for its distinctive character. He also denounced the police and their methods: the surveillance was illegitimate and the arresting officers were aggressive and rude. Neither the undercover investigation nor the raid, Seeger maintained, was customa
ry or acceptable.6
The court ruled against Seeger, however, since the repulsion expressed by the two police informants satisfied the charge that the bar patrons had created a “public disturbance.” After all, the police had no difficulty entering the bar where they observed the “offensive” behavior. Therefore the bar could not be considered a private club at all but was indeed a public accommodation. Moreover, the second room with the sofa where the most offensive behavior took place was visible through the un-curtained doorway from the smaller room in front. Based on this reasoning, the judge convicted Seeger of “procurement” and inciting illegal activity: Seeger and his barkeep received eight- and four-month prison terms, respectively. The patrons—merchants, artisans, a man of independent means (Rentier), and a manservant—were given three- to four-month prison sentences for disturbing the peace. Only one fellow, a schoolteacher, already dismissed from his position, was allowed to go free.7
Commissioner Hüllessem might have taken great pride in the success of his investigation and raid: twelve arrests and the prosecution of eleven men was impressive indeed. Only a few years earlier in 1881, Hüllessem had closed a similar pub on nearby Brüderstraße, just south of the Hohenzollern Palace. In that case, however, no one was charged or imprisoned.8 It now appeared that the commissioner was preparing to clamp down on the “warm brothers” of Berlin and stem the growth of the homosexual bar scene.
Certainly the problem had become acute by the early 1880s. We know from published sources that Seeger’s was clustered within a few blocks of several small taverns serving a homosexual clientele. This group appears to have been anchored by the most prominent venue, the Pariser Keller, a club inside the French embassy complex next to the Brandenburg Gate, which had gained its reputation by about 1880 and was protected from German officials as property of the French state. Hugo Friedländer, an habitué of this early subculture, named more than fifteen other locales that had been popular with homosexuals in the 1880s and ’90s. Like Seeger’s Restaurant, most of the bars were “primitive,” as Friedländer described them, and quite small, located in larger apartment buildings, usually at street level, in basements, or in interior courtyards.
Friedländer also mentioned the raid of Seeger’s Restaurant, but reported—incredibly!—that at least five new bars opened within a few blocks soon after Seeger’s was closed.9 How was this possible? If Hüllessem had just embarked on a policy of zero tolerance, why did new bars open soon after the raid?
Although it appears that the police commissioner was considering a more draconian enforcement policy, this was arguably quixotic. The “homosexual” fraternization of Seeger’s bar patrons was not a crime, and therefore police and court officials confronted an enormous challenge in closing down such an establishment. Illegal sexual acts were committed in private or under cloak of darkness, so Paragraph 175 was highly impractical for controlling alleged homosexual behavior. Consider that only sexual practices between men that simulated heterosexual intercourse (as well as bestiality) could be prosecuted. For this reason the charges of “procurement” or “creating a public disturbance”—not violations of Paragraph 175—were leveled against Seeger and his guests, based entirely on eyewitness testimony of the officer and his friend. In short, Hüllessem faced the impractical task of investigating dozens of small bars where homosexuals might congregate, a nearly impossible task in a large, sprawling city.
An additional explanation for Hüllessem’s mysterious about-face might have been political. In the same year as the raid on Seeger’s establishment, Bernhard von Richthofen received a royal appointment as the new police president, making him Hüllessem’s formal superior. Richthofen, who never married, was widely rumored to have been homosexual himself. Allegedly, his own underlings had to monitor his sexual escapades to prevent public disclosure and scandal.10 A newspaper profile and portrait of Richthofen published in 1893 suggested that the man had little public presence and that he remained enigmatic and obscure despite his high office.11
Although few internal police sources survive from this period, the reports of contemporary observers make it clear that Hüllessem adopted a policy of tolerating homosexual bars and entertainments. A study published in 1886, just one year after the Seeger’s raid, Die Verbrecherwelt von Berlin (The criminal world of Berlin), claimed that the police had come to accept Berlin’s homosexual haunts: “[Homosexuals] have their own specific locales where they meet for beer and to socialize.”12 It creates a feeling of “togetherness for pederasts [Päderasten],” the author continued, and even allows them “to imagine that their activities are sanctioned.” Arguably, the writings of Ulrichs and others had begun to undermine the law’s perceived legitimacy, which encouraged the more lenient policy. “There’s no shortage of jurists and doctors,” the author claimed, “who demand exemption from punishment [Straffreiheit] for this vice.” As long as there are no public disturbances, “the police are tolerant, even if they monitor closely.”13 This account implies that Hüllessem had resigned himself sometime soon after the raid to the growth of a homosexual milieu. The author of Die Verbrecherwelt also suggested that the implicit policies of Hüllessem and his subordinates actually fostered the growth of Berlin’s homosexual community: the sociability of an undisturbed bar culture created a feeling of “togetherness” as well as the sense of official sanction. Certainly, as we will see, Hüllessem was aware of the innovative medical and psychiatric assessments of homosexual behavior. The recent “invention” of homosexuality—as an inborn condition with a corresponding identity—shaped the attitude that homosexual conduct, at least among consenting adults, was a victimless crime.
The enlightened self-interest of Hüllessem’s enforcement policy is counterintuitive, perhaps, yet an important if underappreciated factor in the history of gay Berlin. It helps to explain the rapid growth and incredible visibility of Berlin’s homosexual scene after 1890. Of course, Hüllessem inaugurated this new approach only after staging the raid on Seeger’s Restaurant, which itself offers an amazing glimpse of Berlin’s same-sex sociability. While the fate of Seeger and his friends was atypical, the raid itself was a watershed moment in Berlin’s enforcement policy, and marked the beginning of an era in which same-sex bars, clubs, and other entertainments would multiply and thrive. As we will see, Hüllessem’s approach played a powerful role in fostering Berlin’s emergent homosexual community.
· · ·
The challenge of policing a sexual minority was even more daunting if we consider the speed with which Berlin expanded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the time Karl Heinrich Ulrichs studied in Berlin in 1846–47, the city was the provincial capital of Brandenburg-Prussia with a population of 400,000. As the new German capital in 1871, Berlin’s population stood at 865,000, reaching the 1 million mark within a few years. By 1905 this figure had doubled again to more than 2 million. Including the population of the independent suburban townships, greater Berlin reached nearly twice this size in 1914, with over 3.5 million inhabitants. When the city incorporated its neighboring communities in 1919, Berlin’s population stood at 3.9 million. Driven by explosive growth, Berlin’s development was sudden and wildly disorienting, creating one of the most modern cities in Europe, if not the world.14
The contradictory observations of foreign visitors document well the speed of Berlin’s dramatic transformation. Among those who visited before the city’s abrupt development was Harvard student Henry Adams, a member of the American political dynasty and a prominent historian, who described Berlin in 1858 as “a poor, keen-witted, provincial town, simple, dirty, uncivilized, and in most respects disgusting.”15 British diplomat Frederick Hamilton, stationed in Berlin after unification, remarked on the city’s strained effort to wear the mantle of a national capital: “Berlin of the ’seventies was still in a state of transition. The well-built, prim, dull, and somewhat provincial Residenz was endeavoring with feverish energy to transform itself into a world city, a Weltstadt.”16 Throughout the 1
870s, foreign and German visitors commented on Berlin’s backwardness—unlit streets, the stench of open sewers, and the crude manners of city residents.17 “Berlin is not a lively nor even a particularly bustling city,” London journalist and publisher Henry Vizetelly wrote in 1879. “It altogether lacks the gay, kaleidoscopic life of a great metropolis.”18
A dramatic shift in these travel reports appeared through the course of the 1880s, as Berlin became known for cleanliness, savvy urban administration, and an extensive transportation grid.19 This new reputation for urban modernity was shaped most powerfully by Mark Twain’s travel report “The German Chicago,” published in 1892. Berlin has “no resemblance to the city I had supposed it was,” Twain opined: “a dingy city in a marsh, with rough streets, muddy and lantern-lighted, dividing straight rows of ugly houses all alike.” No, Twain continued, “[i]t is a new city; the newest I have ever seen…as if it had been built last week.” The most striking feature, claimed the American sage, “is the spaciousness, the roominess of the city. There is no other city, in any country, whose streets are so generally wide.” Perhaps the amenities of urban modernity offended Twain: “Gas and the electric light are employed with a wasteful liberality, and so, wherever one goes, he has always double ranks of brilliant lights stretching far down into the night.” According to Twain, Berlin was “the European Chicago.”20