finding a voice

March 7, 2021 1:47 PM

Erica Kastner has spent the pandemic putting together The Weimar Project, an effort to collect and translate articles from The Third Sex, a magazine published between 1930 - 32 in the Weimar Republic, written for and by trans and gender variant people living at that time which "provided a platform to share experiences and dream of a life of being fully authentic." (Content warning for period appropriate language and accounts of transphobia.)

A couple of the articles translated so far:
My First Outing as a Woman by Hans Hannah Berg
Afraid by Anonymous
posted by fight or flight (17 comments total)

Wow. Thanks for sharing this - it's a truly, truly remarkable publication and project. There's already a lot to dive into, but I know that this line (from this article) is going to stick with me:

"It is so limitlessly easy to kill a person from the desk of a bureaucracy."

As a bureaucrat and someone who tries to be an ally: damn.
posted by ZaphodB at 2:01 PM on March 7, 2021 [13 favorites]

The article that stood out for me is "Trans Ball", which documents not only evidence of openly pro-LGBT+ magazines for public sale, but also beautiful social gatherings where queer, trans and gender variant people were encouraged to attend and support each other:

I sat down in a place where I had a good view of the room and noticed a large number of ladies in society gowns. Likewise men in tailcoats and tuxedos, as well as simply bourgeois women and men of all ranks in street suits. It was very cozy and you can say that there was a very harmonious atmosphere. I then got in touch with Lotte Hahm to inquire about individual people who were particularly interested in me. I learned that the vast majority of trans people are married, even have families and, as they say, feel completely normal in their sex life. Their predisposition is that they have to wear the clothes of the other gender if they are to keep their mental balance.

Obviously there's lots of stuff in there going unsaid and clearly they still struggled with the constraints and social requirements of the time. But as trans people we're so often told that we're a recent phenomenon, finding historical evidence of trans people existing (somewhat) happily, as authentically as they can, is a powerful thing indeed.
posted by fight or flight at 2:26 PM on March 7, 2021 [11 favorites]

I really wish there were links to the original text, though I'm only succeeding in finding it for sale. I do disagree with the "modernizing" of the language in the translation.

I have encountered Kastner in another forum, but I'm blanking on her username, so can't alert her to this.
posted by hoyland at 2:28 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]

I had a look around and you can find some original pages and photographs from the magazine here in this publication from the University of Calgary.

The photographs in particular are IMO very striking.
posted by fight or flight at 2:37 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]

But as trans people we're so often told that we're a recent phenomenon, finding historical evidence of trans people existing (somewhat) happily, as authentically as they can, is a powerful thing indeed.

Weimar Berlin was this really particular moment for queer and trans culture that's sort of the culmination of the "invention of homosexuality", which then gets destroyed (literally and figuratively) by Nazism. (Somewhat recently, circulating pictures of the destruction of the Institut für Sexual Wissenschaft on social media was a... thing for a certain kind of progressive person.) By the time Hirschfeld leaves Berlin (in... 1936? I didn't check the date--he died in Paris during the war), there's been a parsing out of transness from homosexuality, and (this gets elided by Kastner's translation notes) it's pretty clear that, while Hirschfeld uses Transvestiten for both groups, that there's been a parsing out of cross-dressing from trans-ness. There was access to medical transition, though they didn't really know what they were doing and some of the things they tried sound horrifying, frankly. It's wasn't some sort of trans utopia (see... Weimar Republic), but there was certainly a move towards the notion of queerness and transness being a natural occurrence that was gaining some traction in Europe. (My understanding is that the US just... wasn't interested.)
posted by hoyland at 2:43 PM on March 7, 2021 [12 favorites]

"My First Outing as a Woman by Hans Hannah Berg" very much impressed upon me (I have not yet read articles that were not linked here). Asking out of ignorance but a wish to know more, are there more resources to understand the trans/gay permissiveness of Wiemar Berlin? It comes as a bit of a revelation to me, "1930!?" It took my breath away a bit.


Of course, I might have know a little more had I committed to finishing all of "The Construction of Homosexuality" by David Green that I have sitting by my front door, overdue and intent for return to the library. I had checked it out for a research project for a pre-teen nephew, that lasted several months, trying to genuinely answer "What does the Bible really say about homosexuality?" Reading the Blue, I immediately rushed over to the book, thumbed to the index, "Germany" "gender differences as innate in, 394, 407; homosexual subcultures in, 408", thumb thumb thumb, and discovered:

Against [the backdrop of innate gender differences], several scandals involving homosexual affairs and orgies among the kaiser's close associates were instigated for political reasons in the first decade of the new century, and threatened to implicate Wilhelm II himself. With revelation after revelation, it began to appear that a large part of the military might be involved, as well as many high civilians in government,..."

compensation for which, Greenberg goes on to argue was the root of Wilhelm's "bellicose militarism" that was later picked up by the Nazis. Though he never elaborates with the progressive gestalt that seems to be suggested here. The book is a fascinating sociology/history for the push-and-pull of gender norms, in times of peace and unrest, over thousands of years of human history. Though the academic in me would still like to find some critical analysis of it one-way or the other.

Thank you fight or fight and hoyland
posted by rubatan at 4:32 PM on March 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

Rubatan, I can recommend "Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity" by Robert Beachy. I found it incredibly eye-opening.
posted by EllaEm at 4:43 PM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

Bookmarked for much later perusal. Danke schön!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:28 PM on March 7, 2021

Quick plug for a project run out of the same hallway as me at work: The Transgender Archives.
posted by Rumple at 6:20 PM on March 7, 2021 [7 favorites]

I do disagree with the "modernizing" of the language in the translation.

Agree. Obscuring the differences between current concepts of sexuality and gender and those of the past is not doing anyone any favors. This is how we get modern translations of the Bible that use words and concepts like "homosexual" which did not exist when the Bible was written. Obviously the modernizing in this article was done with different motives, but it still creates the false impression that contemporary ideas and vocabulary are eternal and changeless. I think people can handle unfiltered history in all its alienness, and still make connections with it.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:28 PM on March 7, 2021 [12 favorites]

Weimar Berlin was this really particular moment for queer and trans culture that's sort of the culmination of the "invention of homosexuality", which then gets destroyed (literally and figuratively) by Nazism.

FWIW, I strongly recommend visiting the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism on any trip to Berlin. It's a a simple concrete box, with a tiny window in it. When you peer inside, you see darkness... and in the midst of it, a small screen showing a silent film loop of happy, smiling queer people from prewar times. It's intensely moving.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:34 PM on March 7, 2021 [16 favorites]

The photographs in particular are IMO very striking.

The page 25 illustration juxtaposed with the photo, of Voo-Doo Is burned into my brain now honestly. The photo itself is edited too, and just... wow. I realize I’m kind of the intended audience, but there’s so very much being said here.

Trans art and artistry has been pushing the boundaries for a very, very long time. And you can tell when you go back and look at things from nearly 100 years ago that still look like they could come out today, and be arresting right now.
posted by emptythought at 1:17 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

I had a look around and you can find some original pages and photographs from the magazine here in this publication from the University of Calgary.

Thank you Fight or flight for the link to this publication by Rainer Herrn. I just Finished reading it is fascinating background on the Magazine, its publisher and especially the photographs.
posted by 15L06 at 4:12 AM on March 8, 2021

And then came fascism. I wrote a post last year about the first gay magazine, Die Eigene, which was for sale in the newstands of Berlin alongside the papers. I was surprised that such a thing existed. It turns out Berlin between the wars was quite progressive.

Goes to show how we could lose it all. As much as we enjoy our new freedom there are those that hate it, and we know how powerful they can be.
posted by adept256 at 4:37 AM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

Hey this is my friend! Hoyland I'll let her know your feedback.
posted by rossmeissl at 8:46 AM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

Anyone interested in this topic, might want to check out Heike Bauer's 2017 book, The Hirschfeld Archives: violence, death, and modern queer culture. Also, you can hear Juliet Jacques read her short story, 'The Woman in the Portrait' (2014) about a trans woman in Weimar-era Berlin here.
posted by a Rrose by any other name at 9:09 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

rossmeissl--she's either reading this post or someone told her--we actually already talked.
posted by hoyland at 9:31 AM on March 9, 2021