#karl heinrich ulrichs: pioneer of the modern gay movement

[aurelianasrandomramblings]

Interesting things I learned from "Gay Berlin. Birthplace of a Modern Identity"

I am reading the book "Gay Berlin. Birthplace of a Modern Identity" in its german translation at the moment. It's really interesting.

I learned the followings things from it:

The word "Homosexualität" was coined 1868 by a german journalist.

About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (wikipedia : DE EN) a pioneer of the LGBT movement. He was one of the first openly gay men in his time and culture.

He called gay love "uranian love" and straight love "dionian love" after the two myths of the birth of Aphrodite in Platons "Symposion". Aphrodite Urania who was born from Uranus cut of genitalia and Aphrodite Dionea, who's parents were Zeus and Dione.A gay man was an "Urning" and a lesbian woman an "Urninde".

The german word "Schwul" for gay man is older than I thought, it was already used in the 19th century. Gay men were also called "warme Brüder" (warm brothers).

[uranianrights]

“Ulrichs finds precedent for this practice in ancient Greece and Rome (the Roman emperor Antoninus Heliogabalus once said to his beloved, “Call me not lord, but lady”) and he shows that he has been searching the medical literature by citing a report in the Medicinische Zeitung des Vereins für Heilkunde in Preußen) (Fränkel 1853, 102–103). There Dr. Hieronymus Fränkel had reported the case of Süsskind Blank, a Jewish curtain hanger, whom he described as a “passive paederast.” Ulrichs does not mention that, but only repeats the description of his feminine characteristics, including the fact that he once publicly announced his engagement to a foreign laborer as “Friederike Blank.” Of interest to Ulrichs here is that he finds the “same inner feeling of femininity” in ancient and modern times, “in Italy, in a Jewish Urning, and in German Urnings” (Inclusa, 18). 

For his part, Fränkel appears to have been more fascinated by Blank’s ability to entice young men into anal intercourse with him and leave them convinced that it had been an ordinary sexual experience with a woman. Blank came to Fränkel’s attention in 1844 when he treated a seventeen-year-old tailor’s apprentice for a bad case of gonorrhea, which the apprentice got from having sex with Blank, who, he claimed, had a completely female vagina. Fränkel notified the police and they brought Blank in for examination by Fränkel, who discovered that Blank’s anus was so enlarged that he could easily insert two fingers. In the act of sex, in order to persuade the young man that he was a woman, Blank would lie on his back and pull up his scrotum and penis with one hand while using his other hand to guide the penis of his “violator” into his anus.

Blank was then and several times later given prison sentences for his activity, both the sexual and the wearing of women’s clothing. Finally in 1853 a warrant for his arrest was issued, but as he was being brought back, he leaped from a bridge and drowned in the river below. ”

- Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement, Hubert Kennedy (2002)

Hmmm..... Listen, if Blank was doing all of this, do we really feel comfortable using “he/him”? I know it’s difficult to apply labels and pronouns to historical figures, but Blank certainly sounds closer to what we’d consider a trans woman than a gay man...

Would have to read the original source and see if it says anything about Blank’s own statements. I don’t have a good solution, but I’d certainly find defaulting to “they” in cases like this more tasteful. 

[todaviia]

- Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, 3rd of May 1865 as his response to being fired for being openly attracted to men and publishing brochures that argued for LGBT rights.

(According to him, a man attracted to other men is basically a third gender - which he called Urning - which is why he names all those other people as examples. His writings for more tolerance towards sexual/gender minorities were not considered criminal, but he lost his job anyway.)

From Hubert Kennedy: "Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement", pg. 79

[study-van]

Today let’s talk about Karl Heinrich Ulrichs who is regarded by some as the pioneer of the modern gay movement and the first person to publicly “come out.” Ulrichs was a judge in Germany but was forced to resign in 1854 after a colleague discovered he was gay. After he resigned, he became an activist for gay rights. He wrote pamphlets about being gay in Germany and was the first gay man recorded in history to speak out openly for equal rights for lgbtq+ people. This happened in Munich at Congress of Jurists on 29th of August 1867 even before the word “homosexual” was invented.

[yourdailyqueer]

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (deceased)

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: 28 August 1825  

RIP: 14 July 1895

Ethnicity: German

Occupation: Lawyer, journalist writer, activist

Note: Seen today as a pioneer of the modern gay rights movement

[southsidemolly]

Gay Men In History

Here we are in the middle of Pride month, a time to celebrate who we are, a time to show that we love, respect and take pride in the LGBTQ community. It’s a time to be thankful for how we’ve come and how much progress we’ve made and to realize how much further we need to go. We should remember and pay tribute to the many LGBTQ people that helped to get us where we are today.

This is just a small sampling of the many who have fought, and sometimes died, to be who they were without shame and without apology.    

Harvey Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Unfortunately, Milk was in office just short of a year he and San Francisco Mayor, George Moscone were assassinated by fellow Supervisor, Dan White. 

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs is considered by many as the first gay activist in modern times, and the first person to publicly come out.  Throughout his life, Ulrichs fought for the rights of gay people,  even before the term homosexual was coined. Throughout his life, Ulrichs fought tirelessly for the rights of gay people – even before the term ‘homosexual’ was coined.  In fact, Ulrichs is widely credited as the pioneer of the modern gay rights movement.   

Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and sexologist. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, an organization that Dustin Goltz characterizes as having carried out "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights."

Bayard Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. He was a leading activist of the early 1947–1955 Civil Rights Movement, helping to initiate a 1947 Freedom Ride to challenge, with civil disobedience, the racial segregation issue related to interstate busing.

Matthew Shepard Although we try to stick to vintage men, pre 1980′s, I felt that Matthew Shepard needed to be included because his place in LGBT history is unique. He was an average young man whose horrifying death became a symbol for the violence and persecution that LGBT youth face on a regular basis. Shepard was an American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming on the night of October 6, 1998, and died six days later at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12, from severe head injuries.

[universitybookstore]

This weekend Seattle celebrates Pride! So let us mark the occasion this Frightful Friday with a story from Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a pioneer of the modern gay rights movement. Today’s selection, “Manor”, in which two sailors are separated by the shroud--though love never really dies, now does it?-- exhibits a German Romantic, almost folktale like quality in its tragic telling.

[todaviia]

From Hubert Kennedy: “Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement”, pg. 92 f.