Would you like to organize your own exhibit? Please contact a Goethe-Institut near you, or the Schwules Museum Berlin.
With a foundation of more than 100 digitized exhibits from the Schwules Museum, the exhibition can now be mounted at any location “on demand” and enriched with local components. Documents and archival materials become objects that form structured or anarchic installations that invite the public to interact.
CSD
Parades commemorating the Stonewall Riots took place as early as 1970 in the United States. It was not until 1979 that this tradition was adopted in Germany, with the first demonstrations taking place in West Berlin, Cologne, and Bremen.
First pride parade in the Federal Republic, West Berlin, 1979, image: Rolf Fischer, Schwules Museum Berlin
Not Perverse
The film It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives by Rosa von Praunheim (b. 1942) in collaboration with sexologist Martin Dannecker (b. 1942) ignited the West German gay movement. Less critical of society’s repressive majority than of adjusted gay men eager for social acceptance, it ends with the legendary call “Raus aus den Toiletten, rein in die Straßen!” (“Out of the toilets and into the streets!”). The film premiered in 1971 and was shown nationwide, often leading to the formation of political action groups in the aftermath of public screenings.
Scene from the film “It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives”, West Berlin, 1971, Schwules Museum Berlin
Hibaré
With its “bisexual, gay, and lesbian” cabaret program Hibaré, the Homosexual Interest Group Berlin (HIB) proved that political engagement can be funny, too. In their acts, the protagonists debated the strains and joys in bi- and homosexual people’s lives with equal doses of self-deprecating and self-confident humor. Hibaré’s venues included bars such as the Bärenschänke in East Berlin and the Mulackritze in the Gründerzeit Museum in Berlin-Mahlsdorf, which was a regular meeting spot for the HIB. The amateur production was popular: according to a report of the GDR’s secret police, which surveilled the meetings, the audience was enthusiastic about a performance in February 1976.
Performances by the theater group “Hibaré”, East Berlin, 1970s, Schwules Museum Berlin
Coming Out
Due to the strong US influence on the emancipation movement after the Stonewall Riots, coming out as a “commitment” to one’s queer identity became a dominant moment in the self-narrations of many LGBTQIA. It is also the title of the first GDR film to portray gay life in East Germany. Directed by Heiner Carow (1929-1997), Coming Out celebrated its premiere on November 9, 1989. Because the Berlin Wall fell on the same night, the film received no attention at first but later toured festivals around the world and won a Teddy Award and a Silver Bear at the 1990 Berlin International Film Festival, also known as Berlinale.
Film poster “Coming Out”, 1989, Schwules Museum Berlin, © DEFA-Stiftung/Wolfgang Fritsche
Must Lesbians Be Feminists?
The first national meeting of lesbian activists in the Federal Republic took place in West Berlin in 1974. More than 200 participants discussed the question “Is feminism the theory and lesbianism the practice?” with reference to the popular thesis attributed to Ti-Grace Atkinson. American authors such as Rita Mae Brown, Kate Millet, Jill Johnston, and Mary Daly were vital instigators of radical lesbian feminism in the Federal Republic.
Rally against paragraph 218, West Berlin, around 1974, image: Anke-Rixa Hansen (Vedant)
Self-defense groups in East Berlin
In the mid-1970s, lesbian activists separated from the gay movement; they no longer called themselves gay (schwul) but lesbian, became involved in the women’s movement, and were key to the success of the feminist revolt. In the GDR, too, lesbian women initially organized along with homosexual men but started forming their own groups by the mid-1980s.
The group Lesbians in the Church at a private self-defense evening in East Berlin in 1986, image: Bettina Dziggel, Robert Havemann Gesellschaft Berlin
Boycott Marlboro!
Founded in New York in 1987 as a broad alliance against the discrimination of people infected with HIV and suffering from AIDS in society, medicine, and politics, ACT UP (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) spread across the Western world. The Marlboro boycott in 1990/91 was ACT UP Germany’s largest campaign. It was directed against the tobacco company Philip Morris for its support of the homophobic US Senator Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. (1921–2008).
ACT UP flyer on the Marlboro boycott, Berlin, around 1990, Schwules Museum Berlin
SEX WARS
Women’s fight against sexual violence and for control over their bodies was at the center of the feminist movements of the 1970s. With the insight that sexual relationships are not free from domination, pornography and sex work came under criticism, as did the sexual culture of gay men and sexual practices of women such as BDSM and the use of dildos. The participation of trans women in the movement also became the subject of controversy. Triggered by developments in the US, “sex-positive” feminists emerged in the Federal Republic in the mid-1980s. They positioned themselves against anti-gay resentments in the feminist movement and against “bourgeois” tendencies in the gay and lesbian scene, while advocating for queer forms of caring communities that did not model themselves after the heteronormative marriage-based family. The dispute went down in history as the “feminist sex wars” and remains an important reference for contemporary queer political activism today.
Initiative against pornography, undated, image: unknown, FFBIZ. Das feministische Archiv Berlin
Showing Our Colors
ADEFRA (Black Women in Germany) is a network of black women and women of color. Founded in 1986 as a non-profit organization, it was one of the first associations of black people in Germany. The work of black activists inspired by Audre Lorde (1934-1992) led to a debate about racism, anti-Semitism, and classism in the women’s and lesbian movement and beyond. From 1984 until her death in 1992, the African-American writer taught several times as a visiting professor at Freie Universität Berlin. Encouraged by her, the groundbreaking book Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out, edited by May Ayim (Opitz), Katharina Oguntoye, and Dagmar Schultz, was published in 1986. May Ayim (1960-1996) made a name as an activist and writer. In 2009 a street was named after her: the May-Ayim-Ufer (May Ayim Bank) in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
Audre Lorde at a reading in Munich, 1987, image: Daniela Tourkazi
TRANSGENIAL
In reaction to the increasing commercialization and depoliticization of the “official” Christopher Street Day (CSD), Berlin saw the launch of alternative events such as the Transgenial CSD (tCSD) in 1998, the Kreuzberg CSD from 2014, and the X*CSD in 2016. These collectively organized demonstrations explicitly placed themselves in the “tradition of the Stonewall Riots and the militant resistance of above all migrant gays, lesbians, and trans people.” In the wake of conflicts over racism, anti-Semitism, and the handling of sexual assault, the last event took place in 2016.
tCSD Berlin banner, 2008/2009, credit: tCSD Berlin
WTF?!
Conservative, Christian-fundamentalist, and rightwing organizations and parties that regard the heterosexual nuclear family as the “germ cell of the nation” and see it threatened are growing stronger. These groups resemble each other in their anti-feminism: parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) want to abolish gender studies programs in universities; allegedly “worried parents” protest against sexual and gender diversity education in school curricula; and the pro-life movement demands a ban on abortions and advocates traditional gender roles. The What-the-Fuck!? alliance mobilizes against the most important rally of Christian-fundamentalist pro-life groups in Germany, the annual March for Life in Berlin. With the slogan “my body my choice,” the alliance advocates the right to sexual self-determination and gender self-identification and demands the abolition of paragraphs 218 (which criminalizes abortion, save in exceptional cases) and 219 (which complicates access to information about abortion). The struggle of the feminist movements of the 1970s, for which the legalization of abortion was a central demand, continues.
Rally against paragraph 218, West Berlin, 1984, image: Petra Gall, Schwules Museum Berlin
CSD
Today, annual Christopher Street Day (CSD) parades take place in more than 50 cities across Germany. Criticism of the increasing commercialization of the events and of the marginalization of women, trans persons, and queer black people and people of color has led to the Transgenial CSD in Berlin and since 2013 to Dyke Marches all over the country.
First pride parade in the Federal Republic, 1979, Bremen, image: Wolfgang Vogt; flyer: Schwules Museum Berlin
Civil Registry Office Campaign
Since the beginning of the 1990s, homosexual civil rights associations – most prominently the SVD (Gay Association in the GDR), renamed LSVD in 1999 (Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany) – have been fighting for marriage equality. In 2001, the German Bundestag passed the “Act on Registered Civil Partnerships.” This law introduced a kind of “marriage lite” for homosexual couples and did not grant full legal equality with heterosexual marriage. While conservative groups agitated against the law, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled in favor of homosexual couples in several instances and acted as a motor for marriage equality. In June 2017, the Bundestag voted in favor of extending marriage to same-sex couples. “Homo marriage” remains controversial among the queer population itself. The main criticism is that it does not take into account the living arrangements of many queer people, which may include more than two people assuming responsibility for each other and in some cases also for children.
Poster Aktion Standesamt 19. August 1992 (Civil Registry Office Campaign, August 19, 1992), 1992, design: trash line design, image: Jörg Mang, Gay association SVD