Description

The proposed thesis aims to explore queer organisation, culture and resistance in the period between the emergence of the first German scientific and non-scientific magazines discussing and/or addressed to sexually non-normative people in 1890s and the suppression as well as the subsequent eradication of homophile culture that accompanied the beginning of the Nazi regime in 1933 in a region that has come to be known as the “Western Territories,” or Germany’s Ostgebiete – the country's easternmost provinces that became Polish territories after the Second World War. The focus will be on six major cities, whose queer life was documented in the said journals —Wrocław (Breslau), Gdansk (Danzig), Szczecin (Stettin), Legnica (Liegnitz), Opole (Oppeln) and Gliwice (Gleiwitz). Traces of their homophile subcultures are scarce and disjointed, demanding that the historian search further in miscellaneous sources such as criminological literature and heteronormative press of that time for the presence of queer lives. Beginning with a general introduction to the history of the Western Territories, the particular cities and the German homophile movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the thesis will proceed to discuss the structures as well as the social, political and cultural activities of groups and associations of sexually non-normative people and the lives of individuals known to have been queer and to have lived in this region. The final part of the thesis will relate to the merits of studying the queer history of the Western Territories for both Poland and Germany as well as the contribution that this project may make to East-Central European queer history in general and selected disciplines of social studies.

Project Details

Project Type

Dissertation

Subject Group

Humanities

Subject Classification

Recent and Modern history

Start

2019

End

2022

Organization

Faculty/Central Institute

History and Cultural Studies

Institute/Seminar

Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut

Field/Work Area

History Education

Project Team

Director

Mathias Foit

Keywords

East and Central Europe; German homophile movement; Polish-German relations; queer history; queer theory

Researchers

• Mathias Foit

  Former