How did Germany go from being one of the most homophobic countries in history under the Nazis to becoming one of the most LGBTQ-friendly states on earth today? To answer that question, I needed to look at what had happened to queer people in Germany during the Cold War, in the decades after the fall of Nazism.Ĭharlotte Von Mahlsdorf, who hosted gay activists in her private museum, where they met, hosted large parties, cabarets, and readings. In an email interview, he describes the book as starting “with a big question. dissertation, which he wrote at Stanford University. This is the first book by Huneke, 33, a professor of modern European history at George Mason University in Virginia. How We've Suppressed the Queer History of the Holocaust.The Gay, Jewish Scientist Spared by the Nazis.
The author shows how the Nazi past continued to cast its shadow over the status of gay men and women in both West and East Germany in the decades after World War II, and compares the separate struggles by the gay communities in each country. The book, published by the University of Toronto Press, offers a comprehensive and illuminating look at the gay sexual and political history of a divided Germany during the era of the Iron Curtain, on both sides of the Berlin Wall. A scene from Heiner Carow's 1989 'Coming Out.'
