A review by late_stranger
Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity by Robert Beachy

4.0

This was the last book I started in 2019! It's a reasonably dense non-fiction book that truly does not lend itself to marathon reading but it was absolutely amazing to work through slowly. The depth of the history contained here is incredible, even through the clouded lens of the pre-Nazi past (so much documentation was destroyed) and the slight distraction of sometimes problematic authorial voice (I would have made different calls about how to discuss most of the trans folks mentioned in this book. While I understand and respect the reticence to use anachronistic terms and am totally on board with discussing and using contemporary terms like Hirshfeld's "total-transvestite" I don't think it's appropriate to refer to people who described their experiences with shockingly modern-sounding language and sought out the first ever gender confirming surgeries with the pronouns assigned to them at birth).

I was especially intrigued by the deep roots (or rather, repeated historical appearances) of various phenomena I thought of as uniquely modern such as right wing/ nationalist gays, complicated non-antagonistic relationships with police on the part of institutions, and a wellspring of public interest whenever information is made available. The lost world that our queer ancestors built was a whole place, and I do feel like I got glimpses into it.