Contrary to popular belief, the gay liberation movement didn’t begin at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 (nor, for the record, was it started by a black trans woman).

Instead, movements for the decriminalisation and acceptance of homosexuality can be traced to a loose group of gay male thinkers, scientists and artists in early 20th century Germany.

Modern LGBT rights movements trace their lineage back to the work of German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee.

Hirschfeld pioneered the idea of homosexuality and transgenderism as an innate condition traceable to a biological cause. Gay people, in Hirschfeld’s view, were a ‘third sex’ whose hemaphroditic nature gave rise to unique differences in attitude and behaviour.

Hirschfeld brought together a number of scientific minds to call for the repeal of Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, which criminalised sodomy. His argument being that nobody should be punished for an innate and relatively harmless disposition.

Hirschfeld’s work inspired the formation of the Chicago-based Society for Human Rights (the first gay rights organisation in the US) and its offshoot the Mattachine Society. This, in turn, led Hirschfeld’s ideas to be mainstreamed within global LGBT rights organisations (and also led to a number of founding myths).

However, not all of Hirschfeld’s contemporaries appreciated his efforts.

Many homosexuals (used as a verb) agreed with Hirschfeld’s position on decriminalisation, but not his views on the nature of sexuality and the goals of “liberation”.

One of his most vocal critics was German writer and anarchist Adolf Brand, who formed the first ever gay journal Der Eigene (or ‘The Unique’) to cultivate an alternative perspective on gay liberation.

The following outlines some of the key ideas found amongst contributors to Der Eigene, deciphering their difference from Hirschfeld as well as their relevance for gay thinking today.

The Self-Owner

Adolf Brand was born in 1874 in Berlin and spent much of his life as a school teacher. He had relationships with both men and women throughout his life, although he seemed to prefer men.

Brand’s view of sexuality can be traced back to his reading of egoist anarchist philosopher Max Stirner (1806-1856). Stirner’s work is a precursor to movements such as post-structuralism and shares a strong similarity to the postmodern spirit of Nietzschean thought.

For Stirner, political emancipation begins by dismantling the various social constructs (or “spooks”) we are forced to internalise when thrust into the world. He writes in The Ego and Its Own:

Revolution is aimed at new arrangements; insurrection [Empörung] leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and set no glittering hopes on “institutions.”

The “egoist” part of Stirnerist philosophy, comes in realising that human psychology is an empty space - a vessel which social forms fill to construct the self. Somewhat paradoxically Stirnerist egoism is a selfishness without a real ‘self’ (one is a ‘self-owner’). As Stirner put it:

I am owner of my might, and I am so when I now myself as unique. In the unique one the owner himself returns into his creative nothing, of which he is born. Every higher essence above me, be it God, be it man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and pales only before the sun of this consciousness.

Stirner is therefore keen to emphasise the contingency of cultural constructs, with a deep scepticism of essentialist narratives:

He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.

Brand’s choice of name for his gay journal, ‘Der Eigene’ (The Unique) centres this culturally constructed individuality - the ‘creative nothing’ when it comes to sexuality.

As Harry Ooosterhuis and Hubert Kennedy write in Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany :

While Hirschfeld and his Committee drew from the aspirations of the Enlightenment such things as rationalism and humanism, Brand and his supporters were inspired by the romantic concept of culture (Kultur) according to which the priority of aesthetic and spiritual values was rooted in the German soul.

As we will see, for Brand and the writers and artists drawn to Der Eigene, homosexuality was not some biological aberration, but reflective of a superior culture.

In a kind of ‘manifesto’ for the movement Brand wrote:

[We] strive for a radical improvement in morality, without force or hypocrisy, and a beautiful harmony precisely in the human relationships that are most intimate and important for life… beside the sense of female beauty, also the sense for male beauty, and by again setting friend-love beside woman-love as have completely equal rights…

Cultivating a culture of same-sex sexuality therefore wasn’t a matter of sympathy for a minority, but a necessary radical transformation of individuality in Western culture.

Not So Different

What united the artists and writers who were drawn to Der Eigene was their opposition to the idea that male homosexuality reflected some sort of innate ‘third sex’.

In Germany in the late 19th century, there had been a re-discovering of the sexual lives of great thinkers from antiquity to today (including frequent references to homosexuality).

Of particular note were the collations of homoerotic literature by poet and aesthete Elisar von Kupffer (1872 -1942) which demonstrated same-sex love amongst the greats of Western culture from Zeno of Citium to Alexander The Great to Michelangelo.

Benedict Friedländer made this very explicit in an article in Der Eigene addressed to the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee:

[To accept Hirschfeld’s view] in ancient Hellas in particular most of the generals, artists and thinkers would have to have been hermaphrodites. Every people from whose initiative in all higher human endeavours every later European culture fed must have consisted in great part of sick, hybrid individuals.

As sexual desire appears to be culturally contingent and varying in quality throughout history, the writers of Der Eigene saw sexual drives as undifferentiated at birth and shaped through experience. As Peter Hamecher wrote:

I altogether hold the sexual instinct, in all its apparent determinacy, to be something very intangible, something swinging back and forth between extremes.

Furthermore, Edwin Bab wrote:

To solve the homosexual problem one must take the single individual into account much more than has been done up till now. The individual person from the beginning on has feelings to a certain extent for persons of the same and of the other sex. Mostly through public prejudices one feeling is reduced to traces; occasionally however it is so strong from birth on that it attains indomitable validity… But a homosexual feeling is found along with the heterosexual in almost every person.

Rather than focusing on sex as the object of desire, the writers of Der Eigene were keen to emphasise the beauty of individuals. Bab again writes:

One never loves women or men after all, but rather one quite distinct woman or one man. And the number of “grandes passions” in the life of an individual is never very great.

The writers and artists were concerned that focus on a “innate homosexuality” simplifies erotic desire to base response to stimuli. On the contrary, they viewed sexuality as heavily cultivate and mediated by culture.

von Kupffer wrote:

Every rational and reflective person must ask himself: Can it be chance that so many outstanding representatives of our cultural history have cultivated that inclination and those love relationships or, where they were themselves still caught up in the madness of their times, were ruled by that inclination?

One may quibble that these writers seem to treat all people as innately bisexual, a form of essentialism itself, but that would misunderstand their goal.

The writers are not arguing that homosexuality is a choice, indeed many write about being enraptured by male beauty in ways that are entirely involuntary. Instead, they question the notion of homosexual desire as designating a stable subcategory of humanity.

This insight being particularly pertinent today given the repeated failures of scientists (as followers of Hirschfeld) to identify a discrete genetic “cause” of sexual orientation.

We have become so accustomed to “born this way” as a justification for gay rights, that many believe the inability to find a biological origin for same-sex desire is of detriment to gay liberation.

For the writers of Der Eigene this is mistaken, a far stronger argument is that cultures with high rates of homosexuality (particularly male homosexuality) are superior to those without.

A Lost Homoerotic Culture

The history of Western culture is one of intense homoeroticism and amorous male friendship.

One often thinks of the ancient Greeks with their love of male youths, but it equally extends to everything from Shakespeare’s sonnets to a young man in ‘Fair Youth’ to Abraham Lincoln’s romantic friendship with Joshua Speed.

Although not always explicitly sexual, a very intense love between men can be found to peak and trough throughout Western history.

One notable peak occurred in 19th century Germany, where letters between male intellectuals were so intense they often read like cheesy gay romance novels. Take the following correspondence sent by Ludwig II to Richard Wagner :

My one Friend, my ardently beloved!

This afternoon, at 3.30, I returned from a glorious tour in Switzerland! How this land delighted me! – There I found your dear letter; deepest warmest thanks for the same. With new and burning enthusiasm has it filled me; I see that the beloved marches boldly and confidently forward, towards our great and eternal goal.

All hindrances I will victoriously overcome like a hero. I am entirely at thy disposal; let me now dutifully prove it. – Yes, we must meet and speak together. I will banish all evil clouds; Love has strength for all. You are the star that shines upon my life, and the sight of you ever wonderfully strengthens me. – Ardently I long for you, O my presiding Saint, to whom I pray! I should be immensely pleased to see my friend here in about a week; oh, we have plenty to say! If only I could quite banish from me the curse of which you speak, and send it back to the deeps of night from whence it sprang! – How I love, how I love you, my one, my highest good! . . .

My enthusiasm and love for you are boundless. Once more I swear you faith till death!

Ever, ever your devoted

Ludwig

This (rather adorable) form of intense male friendship declined in the latter half of the 19th century, with romanticism giving way towards a more “practical” and “sensible” bourgeois mindset focused on the family.

For the writers in Der Eigene, the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Germany was not about protecting a minority, but rather reviving Germany’s lost homoerotic culture.

‘Lieblingminne’ was a term coined by von Kupffer to describe their goal, a combination of Frundesliebe (love of friends) with Minne (chivalric love).

As Gotamo wrote:

Through our own lives we must demonstrate to those who have learned to see at all that this prohibited love, to which Elisar von Kupffer gave the lovely name Lieblingminne, in fact represents a quiet, powerful fountain of strength and that it is a sin against the holy spirit of creation if one seeks to dam up this fountain or to poison it.

Homoeroticism is presented as a way to develop individual uniqueness and raise oneself above the mediocrity of “practical” bourgeois culture.

As an aside, as somebody who frequently reads early 20th century gay thinkers, it is refreshing to see the writers of Der Eigene were not opposed to laws regarding age of consent (in the writings of Bab, the age of 14 is suggested).

The contributors often praised Greek pederasty and the ‘cult of youth’ but this generally referenced either relationships between adolescent males or an arrangement between an older youth (15 to 20) and an adult male.

A protection against predatory behaviour was foundational for their encouragement for adolescent males to find sexual release with one another. Brand wrote:

[T]he seduction of decent young girls, without wishing to marry them, is a great meanness and severe wrong, which harms not only the seduced girl and her family, but also the illegitimate child and the whole community.

Moreover, Bab’s writes:

The state, which, without any demonstrable reason, threatens sexual intercourse between men with degrading punishment, forbids the seduction of a girl over sixteen by no kind of penal clause and society even rewards it.

There were also concerns regarding the spread of venereal disease due to prostitution and the “perils” of excessive masturbation amongst male youths. This was used to encourage men to find satisfaction with one another, as was common in ancient military cultures.

Above all else, the contributors to Der Eigene wished to cultivate a culture where intense homoerotic male friendship thrived and men were not limited to a tedious existence of work and family.

The Elephant In The Room

One may be asking why Brand and other contributors to Der Eigene are not more well known outside of certain historical circles in Germany.

The less awkward explanation is that translations have been limited, with the exception of the wonderful work of translator Hubert Kennedy.

The more complex reason is that there is an assumed connection between the “masculinist” writings of thinkers like Brand in Weimer Germany and certain intellectual strands within the Nazi Party.

One can easily make a connection between the valorisation of homoerotic male culture in Der Eigene and Nazi propaganda regarding the “feminisation” of German culture through Jewish influence.

However, for what it’s worth, Adolf Brand was never a supporter of the Nazi Party and was highly critical of homosexual members of the party such as Ernst Röhm, calling him a “hypocrite and a traitor”.

Brand, despite his anarchist philosophical leanings, was an ardent supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and generally had centre-left leanings politically.

Nevertheless, it is fair to say Brand was far too liberal in his willingness to publish anyone who criticised Hirschfeld (who, it should be noted, was Jewish). As Harry Oosterhuis has noted:

Karl Günther Heimsoth, who was…the inventor of the conception “homophile”, but also a member of the Nazi Party and a friend of SA leader Ernst Röhm… criticised Hirschfeld by asserting that the “homosexual feminism” of the “Jewish Committee” was dangerous to the “German eros.” Instead of refusing the article or expunging the anti-Semitic phrases, Brand only wrote a preface stating that he did not agree with all of the author’s views.

A more direct criticism of the politics of the contributors to Der Eigene is their frequent opposition to early feminist movements.

In the minds of many contributors, including Brand, female demands for greater male responsibility in family life were contrary to the journal’s goals in re-establishing a homoerotic male culture. Oosterhuis notes:

Friedländer declared that women, despite their [social] inferiority, exerted too much influence in modern society. In their view, mothers, mistresses and wives made too many demands upon men, so that intimate male friendships were thwarted.

The misogyny of many contributors is particularly unfortunate given their (unusual for the time) view of the historical contingency of gender. Frequent contributor Edwin Bab wrote:

I assert that there is no difference between man and woman in the psychic and intellectual characteristics. It is asserted that man is productive, woman reproductive and receptive. But only our customs, which make every productive activity highly difficult for the woman, are to blame for the fact that the number of productive women is relatively small.

Overall, the political and moral flaws of contributors to Der Eigene need to be reckoned with if one wishes to gain inspiration from their work.

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Why care about a long forgotten group of (likely problematic) gay writers?

If one is satisfied with the current norms underpinning LGBT rights today, this may be a fair question.

However, if you are hungry for an alternative view on sexuality, one that situates pleasure not in innate identity but in cultural ideals of beauty and love, the “other gay rights movement” is worth your attention.

On their view, homosexuality is not a deviation of biology but a reflection of a superior culture where intimate friendship is freed from the restraints and “utility” of work and reproductive sex.