Full Description
In 1864, the German jurist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs coined the term "urning" as a word for same-sex attracted men. Over the next few years, first anonymously and then publicly, he campaigned against the public persecution of these men. In response, some of his readers took on the urning terminology for themselves and engaged with Ulrichs to negotiate the finer points of their new identities.
In Urning, Douglas Pretsell writes of same-sex attracted men in German-speaking Europe who used the neologism "urning" as a personal identity in the late nineteenth century. This was in the period before other terms such as "homosexual" gained currency. Drawing on letters, memoirs, and psychiatric case studies, the book uses first-hand autobiographical accounts to map out the contours of urning society. Urning further explores individual accounts of some urnings who attempted their own forms of activism to transform the world around them , even though they had no formal organization. As the century drew to a close, the efforts of Ulrichs and his urning followers paved the way for the launch of the world's first homosexual rights organization. Urning argues that the men who called themselves urnings were self-identified, self-constructed agents of their own destinies.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes on Terminology
Introduction: The Age of the Urning Begins
Part One: 1862-1871
1. The First Urning: Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, 1825-1895
2. From Page to Personhood: The Transmission of Urningtum, 1864-1868
3. Two Trials: Sensation, Horror, and the Urning in the Public Sphere, 1867-1870
4. Sins of the City: Karl Maria Kertbeny and the Social Cross-Dressers, 1865-1880
Part Two: 1872-1897
5. The Matchmaker of Switzerland: Jakob Rudolf Forster's Grassroots Activism in Germanic Switzerland, 1878-1897
6. Queering Psychiatry: Autobiographical Lobbying of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, 1864-1901
7. Belling the Cat: Adolf Glaser's Discreet Police-Liaison in Berlin, 1878-1897
8. The Comradely Uranian: John Addington Symonds and the English Translation of the Urning, 1889-1893
Conclusion: The End of the Urning Age
Timeline of Events
Bibliography
Index
