Not Straight from Germany: Sexual Publics and Sexual Politics since Magnus Hirschfeld ed. by Michael Thomas Taylor, Annette F. Timm, and Rainer Herrn

Abstract

Reviewed by: Not Straight from Germany: Sexual Publics and Sexual Politics since Magnus Hirschfeld ed. by Michael Thomas Taylor, Annette F. Timm, and Rainer Herrn Robert Tobin Not Straight from Germany: Sexual Publics and Sexual Politics since Magnus Hirschfeld. Edited by Michael Thomas Taylor, Annette F. Timm, and Rainer Herrn. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. Pp. vii + 408. Cloth $85.00. ISBN 978-0472130351. As Annette F. Timm explains in her introduction, Not Straight from Germany is "a hybrid: part exhibition catalog, part a collection of interdisciplinary scholarship, and part a visual documentary of a historical past and its resonances in the present" (4). In addition to scholarly papers on Magnus Hirschfeld and his legacy, the volume describes art from PopSex!, a 2011 exhibition in Calgary, Alberta about sexology and its aftermath. Not Straight from Germany organizes many of its papers on sexual publics and sexual politics in terms of moral panics, the gaze, and print media. Reorganizing the contributions under different rubrics will give a sense of the variety of topics addressed in the volume. A constant theme of Not Straight from Germany is the visual aspect of sexological work. Michael Thomas Taylor's essay focuses on Hirschfeld's center and research as an exhibition, with a focus on the paradoxes inherent in Hirschfeld's public images of private matters. Katherine Peters's contribution concentrates on the status of Wilhelm von Gloeden's photographs in the scientific world. Although they were carefully staged on neoclassical models, early twentieth-century scientists enthusiastically appropriated them for images related to sexuality (182). In general, the illustrations and images in this collection are lavish. The editors have put together a useful visual sourcebook of forty-five images related to Hirschfeld and his institute, including copies of the "transvestite pass" that allowed people to cross-dress in Berlin and other cities in the early twentieth century, as well as a membership card in the Hilfsbund der Berliner Prostituierten (Aid-league of Berlin prostitutes). Similarly, Elizabeth Heinemann's contribution, "Consuming Sex," is "a photo-essay on the legacy of Magnus Hirschfeld in the West German industry, 1945–1975" (332). Both of these photo-essays point to the continuities between Hirschfeld's era and the postwar period, continuities that the collection also finds in censorship and the regulation of sex. Gary Stark provides a detailed analysis of the laws regulating performances on the stage and in film, as well as rules on censorship of print material, starting in the late nineteenth century and culminating in the 1926 Gesetz zur Bewahrung der Jugend von Schund- und Schmutzschriften (Law on the protection of children from trashy and smutty literature), which was then used as justification for the 1933 book burnings committed by the Nazis (127). Heinemann adds an account of how West Germany updated the Weimar-era law, while also reaffirming a more permissive 1927 law on sexually transmitted diseases, which provided a narrow window of opportunity for postwar purveyors of erotica (335). [End Page 158] Another strand within the collection examines the interface between science and the public. In a well-documented essay, Kevin Amidon argues that German scientists—often more interested in persuasion than data (193)—transition from the "diagnostic moment" of the early sexologists to the "narrative moment" of later thinkers, who became increasingly interested in heredity and eugenics (202). Rainer Herrn and Christine N. Brinckman analyze the films that promoted Eugen Steinach's popular early studies on the endocrine system. They focus not only on the cinematic representation of the research, but also on the specific images of the lab rats, which were cruelly "crucified" as their testicles were removed (225–226). Pamela E. Swett documents the continuing use of Hirschfeld's science, even after the Nazis came to power. They continued to sell his "Titus pills" for male sexual enhancement, but, according to Swett, the advertising shifted away from a focus on the unmet needs of the neglected wife to a direct celebration of male virility in the 1930s (314–317). Another strand of essays studies the relations between the genders in modern German life. Tobias Becker adds the foyers and corridors of variety theaters to the parks, bars, dance halls...