Persistent Ambivalence: Theorizing Queer East German Studies

ABSTRACT

The German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany) had an ambivalent relationship with homosexuality. Under the principles of socialism, everyone was welcome to contribute to the greater good. The situation for queer people, here lesbians and gay men, was different: one of illegality and invisibility. A difficulty in analyzing these experiences is the theory and methodology necessary to find them and draw them together in a historical narrative. This essay offers a mode of analysis in which theories of affect illustrate long-term trends in East German conceptualizations of same-sex sexuality. By discussing a 1950 court ruling and a 1989 film, the essay demonstrates the persistence of homophobic prejudice and fear of homosexual seduction of young people and the links to historical and legal developments.

KEYWORDS:

• East Germany
• affect
• youth
• homosexuality
• queer
• law
• literature
• film
• surveillance
• seduction

Notes

^1. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the German are by the author. I wish to acknowledge the support provided by the Dean of Arts Faculty Research Award at the University of British Columbia. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments.

^2. I use queer in this essay for two reasons. First, I am engaging in taxonomic shorthand to be inclusive of the many identity configurations this rubric can subsume—not always comfortably. This relates to the second reason, which is to highlight in this analysis not only lesbian and gay sexuality, the non-heteronormative identities for which queer is most commonly a synonym, but also other sexually different identities and behaviors. I do not wish to do injury to the identity formulations I emphasize or the behaviors that extend from those identities; rather, using queer highlights the sexually extraordinary and unusual and could include sexual expressions—such as the production, consumption, and distribution of pornography—which were not for the most part publicly visible or acknowledged in the GDR.

^3. Because this article is focused on the scope of discourse primarily during the GDR’s existence, I only take into limited consideration the post-1990 remembrances of queer activists. Personal histories form another part of post-GDR analysis and remain invaluable. Readers are directed to texts such as Grau (1990), Lemke (1989), Sillge (1991), Setz (2006), and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Sachsen-Anhalt et al. (2008).