Liberated, licentious, or merely liberal, the sexual freedoms of Germany€s Weimar Republic have become legendary. The home of the world€s first gay rights movement, the republic embodied a progressive, secular vision of sexual liberation. Immortalized €“ however misleadingly €“ in Christopher Isherwood€s Berlin Stories and the musical Cabaret, Weimar€s freedoms have become a touchstone for the politics of sexual emancipation.
Yet, as Laurie Marhoefer shows in Sex and Weimar Republic, those sexual freedoms were only obtained at the expense of a minority who were deemed sexually disordered. In Weimar Germany, the citizen€s right to sexual freedom came with a duty to keep sexuality private, non-commercial, and respectable.
Sex and the Weimar Republic examines the rise of sexual tolerance through the debates which surrounded €œimmoral€ sexuality: obscenity, male homosexuality, lesbianism, transgender identity, heterosexual promiscuity, and prostitution. It follows the sexual politics of a swath of Weimar society ranging from sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld to Nazi stormtrooper Ernst R¶hm. Tracing the connections between toleration and regulation, Marhoefer€s observations remain relevant to the politics of sexuality today.
