Raimund Wolfert
Auf den Spuren der "Invertierten" im Breslau der zwanziger und dreißiger Jahre
Looking for "inverts" in the Twenties and Thirties in Breslau/Wroclaw
English abstract
Information about the life and prospects of homosexual men and women in the former German eastern territories before World War II is rare. Raimund Wolfert's article is a first attempt at writing a gay urban history of Breslau/Silesia - the seventh largest town of the Reich in the Interwar period and since 1945 Wroclaw, Poland. His sources are mainly Weimar Germany's homosexual journals, because relevant material can hardly be found in today's Breslau. Wolfert focuses on the years 1919 to 1933 and despite the scarcity of the sources, it becomes clear that Breslau has been an important city for homosexual emancipation in Germany after 1919. At this time a first "Freundschaftsverein" (friendship society) was established like in so many other German cities. In 1922 this society was named Sagitta and one year later it merged apparently with the local society of the Bund für Menschenrecht (Union for Human Rights). This group hosted a great number of events for its members until the early Thirties, when all information about the cultural and political life of homosexuals in Breslau disappears. Ernst Bellenbaum, a bookseller and journalist, was an important figure in the Weimar period. For a short time he was not only editor of the journal Der Freund (The Friend) which succeeded the banned journal Die Freundschaft (Friendship). From 1923 onwards he also tried to establish a news service to gather information about contemporary homosexual life for all German newspapers and journals interested. After a character assassination campaign in Friedrich Radzuweit's journal Freundschaftsblatt (Friendship's Journal), all traces of Bellenbaum are lost after 1927. Wolfert's article also refers to homosexual members of the Nazi Party, like Edmund Heines and Helmuth Brückner.