Full Description
States of Liberation traces the paths of gay men in East and West Germany from the violent aftermath of the Second World War to the thundering nightclubs of present-day Berlin. Following a captivating cast of characters, from gay spies and Nazi scientists to queer politicians and secret police bureaucrats, States of Liberation tells the remarkable story of how the two German states persecuted gay men - and how those men slowly, over the course of decades, won new rights and created new opportunities for themselves in the heart of Cold War Europe. Relying on untapped archives in Germany and the United States as well as oral histories with witnesses and survivors, Huneke reveals that communist East Germany was in many ways far more progressive on queer issues than democratic West Germany.
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Place Names
Terms and Abbreviations
List of Figures
Introduction
1. Dance on a Volcano: Homosexuality from the German Empire to Zero Hour
2. Paranoid Republic: §175 and West Germany's Persecution of Gay Men
3. Equivocal Animus: Homosexuality and Socialism in East Germany
4. Ever Disdained, Ever Despised: The Crooked Path of Emancipation in West Germany
5. Gay Spies in Cold War Germany
6. Three Million Votes: Gay Citizenship and Power in West Germany
7. Into the Labyrinth: When Gay Activists Met the Socialist State
8. "I'm not the Chancellor of the Gays": Homosexual Politics in 1980s West Germany
9. A Golden Age in the Grey Republic: Liberation and the Stasi in East Germany
Epilogue
Appendices
Bibliography
