Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis

Liberated, licentious, or merely liberal, the sexual freedoms of Germanys Weimar Republic have become legendary. The home of the worlds first gay rights movement, the republic embodied a progressive, secular vision of sexual liberation. Immortalized however misleadingly in Christopher Isherwoods Berlin Stories and the musical Cabaret, Weimars 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 citizens 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, Marhoefers observations remain relevant to the politics of sexuality today.