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cflinterman 's review for:
Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity
by Robert Beachy
This was a very interesting read. Beachy describes the history of homosexuality in Germany, starting in the 1860s, when the word Homosexualität was 'invented', and ending in 1933, when the Nazi's seized power.
Beachy has a clear writing style and his story is well structured, making the story he tells easy to follow. His story is well documented, with many endnotes, and includes many interesting examples, making the history come to life.
In the book, Beachy enlightens different aspects of homosexuality in Germany. These include amongst other the theoretization of homosexuality and other themes like gender, its links to activism, the criminalization of homosexuality (and strangely enough how the police contributed to the constitution of a homosexual identity) and homosexual (night)life. Every chapter is centered around a theme, in which Beachy makes a convincing case about the theme. There are probably many aspects not covered, but I never had the feeling that there was a part where Beachy left out information, so it provides enough information about each theme; this is probably also partly due to the large information density provided, without ever feeling that it is too dense.
More or less surprising is the quality of research that was done up and until the 1920s and the amount of knowledge they had about themes like transgenderism, gender and homosexuality. When reading this book, one can't help but wonder where we would have been now when the Second World War hadn't taken place...
Beachy has a clear writing style and his story is well structured, making the story he tells easy to follow. His story is well documented, with many endnotes, and includes many interesting examples, making the history come to life.
In the book, Beachy enlightens different aspects of homosexuality in Germany. These include amongst other the theoretization of homosexuality and other themes like gender, its links to activism, the criminalization of homosexuality (and strangely enough how the police contributed to the constitution of a homosexual identity) and homosexual (night)life. Every chapter is centered around a theme, in which Beachy makes a convincing case about the theme. There are probably many aspects not covered, but I never had the feeling that there was a part where Beachy left out information, so it provides enough information about each theme; this is probably also partly due to the large information density provided, without ever feeling that it is too dense.
More or less surprising is the quality of research that was done up and until the 1920s and the amount of knowledge they had about themes like transgenderism, gender and homosexuality. When reading this book, one can't help but wonder where we would have been now when the Second World War hadn't taken place...