Description
Book SynopsisStates of Liberation traces the paths of gay men in East and West Germany from the violent aftermath of the Second World War to the thundering nightclubs of present-day Berlin. Following a captivating cast of characters, from gay spies and Nazi scientists to queer politicians and secret police bureaucrats, States of Liberation tells the remarkable story of how the two German states persecuted gay men and how those men slowly, over the course of decades, won new rights and created new opportunities for themselves in the heart of Cold War Europe. Relying on untapped archives in Germany and the United States as well as oral histories with witnesses and survivors, Huneke reveals that communist East Germany was in many ways far more progressive on queer issues than democratic West Germany.
Trade Review"Samuel Clowes Huneke’s comparative look at gay life in postwar Germany, divided between a liberal capitalist West and a state socialist East, offers a unique opportunity to think through this history in more complicated ways that will resonate in many national contexts. Huneke is elegantly able to ‘weave together and to compare the trajectories of male homosexuality in the two German states across the span of forty years’ – an ambitious project which constitutes his primary intervention." -- Cristopher Ewing *
Journal of Social History"States of Liberation is a pioneering, field-shaping masterpiece. This exceptional book will be a staple of the study of post-war Germany." -- Jason Johnson, History, Trinity University *
German Politics and Society *
“Through intricately detailed stories and rich sources – many of which were oral interviews conducted by Huneke himself – it illuminates the complexities of gay life and activism in both Germanys. Huneke’s work on the GDR is an especially welcome addition to a canon that often focuses on West Germany or overlooks entanglements between the two states.” -- Alexandria N. Ruble, Spring Hill College *
Journal of History *
“Huneke’s dialectical approach to this history is attuned to complexity and contradiction, delineating the main developments, interrelations, and transformations that occurred in the social processes of liberation.” -- George de Stefano *
PopMatters *
“States of Liberation makes a major historiographic intervention in the history of sexual citizenship, and deserves a wide readership not only among historians of sexuality but anyone interested in better understanding Cold War Germany.” -- Craig Griffiths, Manchester Metropolitan University
“A much-needed corrective to the commonly held beliefs that gay liberation was – and is – only possible in Western consumer-capitalist nations … Huneke has written the first history of the gay movement in the two German states from the 1950s until reunification.” -- Javier Samper Vendrell, University of Pennsylvania *
Central European History *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments A Note on Place Names Terms and Abbreviations List of Figures Introduction 1. Dance on a Volcano: Homosexuality from the German Empire to Zero Hour 2. Paranoid Republic: §175 and West Germany’s Persecution of Gay Men 3. Equivocal Animus: Homosexuality and Socialism in East Germany 4. Ever Disdained, Ever Despised: The Crooked Path of Emancipation in West Germany 5. Gay Spies in Cold War Germany 6. Three Million Votes: Gay Citizenship and Power in West Germany 7. Into the Labyrinth: When Gay Activists Met the Socialist State 8. “I’m not the Chancellor of the Gays”: Homosexual Politics in 1980s West Germany 9. A Golden Age in the Grey Republic: Liberation and the Stasi in East Germany Epilogue Appendices Bibliography
