Abstract
Arguably more than any other aspect of a Western industrialized economy, urbanization has contributed to the social organization of homoerotic life and a freer expression of alternative gender roles and identities.1 Lack of acceptance and negative sentiments toward queer communities and lifestyles are often found in accompaniment with antipathies toward symbolic and experiential realities of life in the city. Despite the legal obstacles and social inhibitions toward the expression of homoerotic identity that continue to persist throughout many cities of the world, the city continues to provide a refuge, or at a minimum, a tolerant haven of sorts for queer life well through the present.2
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Notes
For an interesting discussion on modernity and homoerotic life, see John D’Emilio, “Capitalism and Gay Identity,” in Larry Gross and James D. Woods (eds.), The Columbia Reader: On Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society and Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 48–55.
For discussions on the how the cities support gay life see George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994)
Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America (New York: Grove Press, 2007)
Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
For an interesting discussion of the urbanism and Western values, see Ian Buruma, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (New York: Penguin Group, 2004).
See The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg (eds.) (California: University of California Press, 1994)
For a great overview of the cultural, political transformations ushered by the Weimar Republic, see Peter Gay’s landmark work, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: W.W Norton, 2001. 1968).
Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, Thomas Y. Levin (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
Dorothy Rowe, Representing Berlin: Sexuality and the City in Imperial and Weimar Germany (Vermont: Ashgate, 2003).
See George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985).
For different perspectives that illuminate this phenomenon, see Magnus Hirschfeld, The Homosexuality of Men and Women. Michael A. Lombardi-Nash (trans.) (New York: Prometheus Books, 2000)
For a comprehensive study of the debates concerning urban development in Imperial Germany, see Andrew Lees’s Cities, Sin, and Social Reform in Imperial Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002).
Magnus Hirschfeld, Berlins Drittes Geschlecht: Schwule und Lesben um 1900, Manfred Herzer (ed.) (Berlin: Verlag Rosa Winkel, 1904, 1991).
Ethan Watters, “Urban” Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family and Commitment (New York: Bloomsbury, 2003).
Magnus Hirschfeld, The Homosexuality of Men and Women, Michael A. Lombardi-Nash (trans.) (New York: Prometheus Books, 2000), 369.
Andrew Lees, Cities Sin and Social Reform in Imperial Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002).
Klaus Mann, The Pious Dance: The Adventure Story of a Young Man, Laurence Senelick (trans.) (New York: Paj, 1987), 69.
John Henry Mackay, The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love from Friedrich Street, Hubert Kennedy (trans.) (Boston: Alyson, 1985).
For more on Paragraph 175, see James Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany (New York: Beaufort Books, 1977, 1993).
Stefan Zweig, Die Verwirrung der Gefühle (Meisternovellen, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 2001).
Walter Benjamin, “A Berlin Chronicle,” in Peter Demetz (ed.), Edmund Jephcott (trans.) Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (New York: Schocken Books, 1978) 21.
See Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York: Routledge, 1991).
George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985).
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© 2009 Michael J. Thompson
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Mancini, E. (2009). Boys in the City: Homoerotic Desire and the Urban Refuge in Early Twentieth-Century Germany. In: Thompson, M.J. (eds) Fleeing the City. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101050_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101050_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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