Sexology, Popular Science and Queer History in Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others)
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: In 1919, the same as year Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) was released in cinemas all over Germany, the Berlin sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld exclaimed that ‘those who work to educate people about sexual matters not only have the right, but the duty to use film, in addition to the spoken and written word’.1 Film apparently offered an alternative way to transmit ideas, but what could the new medium of film achieve that other forms of dissemination, such as lectures, public talks, monographs, scientific journals or popular science books could not? In this article, I investigate how sexology looks different once we understand it in the context of the institution of cinema and the medium of film. In doing so, I examine the contributions, but also the challenges, risks and difficulties of this new medium for the sexological project.2 Different from the Others was directed by the Austrian film-maker Richard Oswald, in collaboration with Magnus Hirschfeld. The film is said to be the first of its kind to explicitly and sympathetically portray homosexuality and to demand the decriminalisation of homosexual acts between men.3 Different from the Others follows the tragic events in the life of Paul Körner (Conrad Veidt), his relationship with his student, Kurt Sivers (Fritz Schulz), his encounter with the blackmailer Franz Bollek (Reinhold Schünzel), Körner's public humiliation and finally his death by suicide. The climactic moment of the film is a lecture given by an unnamed sexologist (and portrayed by Magnus Hirschfeld himself), which explains the plight of sexual minorities. The lecture is attended by Körner, who is accompanied by Kurt's sister, Else (Anita Berber). Today, the film exists only in fragments.4 Of the original, approximately ninety minutes in length, only fifty-one minutes remain. The reconstructed film is based primarily on a fragment of the re-edited, abridged version of Different from the Others entitled Gesetze der Liebe: Aus der Mappe eines Sexualforschers (Laws of Love: From the Portfolio of a Sexologist), a 1927 anthology work consisting of several short films, which re-used parts from Different from the Others and which was preserved by Gosfilmofond in the former USSR.5 This film is important for our understanding of the relationship between film and sexology because, despite its fragmented nature, it is the only remaining example of a collaborative film project between a sexologist and a film-maker. While the following article will examine the opportunities and challenges offered by the medium of film in this particular and famous example, I hope to begin a conversation about the contribution of film to the sexological project at large. The article falls into two parts. Implied in sexology's turn to film is its desire for popularisation: cinema and the new genre of the Aufklärungsfilm (sexual enlightenment film) as educational mass medium show the popular side of sexology. The first part of this article will investigate what opportunities and possibilities Hirschfeld saw in film for this particular purpose. By comparing Different from the Others with Hirschfeld's previous work in popular science, two common aims are shown: to reach a broad audience, and to ‘usualise’ cultural spheres of the ‘third sex’, a term commonly used in sexological work and subculture to describe same-sex desiring as well as gender-variant people. However, using film to communicate these aims altered each in unexpected and contradictory ways. The second part of the article will focus on what happens when a common strategy employed by sexologists – to use history affirmatively to secure identity categories – is represented in the visual medium of film. Here, building on the argument of the first section, the article investigates how film enhances, complicates and contradicts a core aim of Hirschfeld's particular brand of sexology. In this way, I intend to show that the complexity of film served to hold up a mirror to sexology's hidden complexities, threats and losses. Current scholarship about sexology is experiencing a turning point. Until very recently, the dominant assumption among historians and scholars of neighbouring disciplines was that sexology existed as a medical field of knowledge that was clearly understood as such by its contemporaries.6 In recent years, however, some scholars have begun to explore the cross-disciplinary nature of sexology and how other forms of knowledge and other modes of scholarly enquiry, such as literature, life writing, history and ethnography (to name just a few), significantly shaped the sexual sciences, beyond the domain of the medical.7 Sexology also went beyond that field in the sense that sexologists tried to reach new audiences, beyond medical professionals. This included dialogue with patients, efforts to educate the public about sexual matters, and the discussion of sexological matters in magazines and popular journals. As such, with this turn in sexological scholarship in mind, sexology should be understood as a cross-disciplinary endeavour which was not clearly defined and which drew on various alliances across disciplinary and methodological boundaries, thus engaging a variety of audiences. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935) was one of the most influential sexologists, and one whose work took place at the intersection between science and sexual rights. As activist, writer, publisher, and practitioner and founder of the first Institute of Sexology, Hirschfeld was a prominent public figure in early twentieth-century Germany and beyond, notoriously dubbed the ‘Einstein of Sex’ by the US media during his lecture visit in 1930.8 His most well-known scientific contribution to the study of sexology was his Zwischenstufenlehre, the theory or study of sexual intermediacy, which argued that any form of sexual intermediacy was part of the natural constitution of body and mind, rather than acquired through seduction or the result of degeneracy.9 Sexual intermediates not only included homosexual men and women, but all forms of gender and sexual variance, including ‘transvestitism’ – a term which he coined – and ‘hermaphroditism’.10 Hirschfeld's lifelong commitment to the legal rights and protection of homosexual men was formalised by the co-founding of the ‘Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee’ (WhK), the scientific humanitarian committee, in Berlin in May 1897.11 As Germany's first gay rights lobby, the WhK's priority was to petition the government to decriminalise homosexuality by abolishing §175 of the German Penal Code, which made (male) homosexuality a crime. For Hirschfeld, film provided another format – in addition to pamphlets and lectures – to promote his campaign against §175. With the end of the First World War, the abolition of monarchy, the proclamation of the new Republic on 9 November 1918, the following months of political upheaval, and also the promise of a reformed Penal Code, Hirschfeld and his allies saw a chance to once again rally against the paragraph.12 The pre-war public scandals around homosexuality, especially the Eulenburg scandal from 1906, when the journalist Maximilian Harden accused Prince Philipp Eulenburg, a close confidant of Emperor Wilhelm II, of homosexuality, though detrimental for Hirschfeld's efforts to repeal §175, had also taught him the power of public opinion.13 The extensive sociocultural apparatus of cinema offered an excellent way to reach large audiences: in 1919, the year Different from the Others was released, over 200 production companies released a combined 500 films in Germany. There were 3,000 cinemas across the country. One million people went to the cinema every day.14 The release of Different from the Others in 1919 was the start of an auspicious year for Hirschfeld: the inauguration of his Institute of Sexology took place on 6 July 1919 and the modern Weimar Constitution, which no longer enforced media censorship, came into force on 11 August 1919. This intention to publicise science to educate the public is tightly linked to the circumstances of modernity. The increasing reliance on science in all aspects of life yielded hopes about a modernised future. But the difference in knowledge between scientific experts and lay people also triggered scepticism and mistrust in a modernised world that relied on scientific knowledge without fully understanding it. Popular science attempts to establish communication between experts and the rest of society.15 While the results of my research into the field of homosexuality have only been published in specialist journals to date … it has long been clear to me that knowledge of an area that is intertwined with the interests of so many families, of every class, would not and could not remain forever confined in the closed community of specialists or academic circles.16 Here, Hirschfeld's argument reflects the fundamental premise of his sexological work. If sexual diversity is a fundamental part of all human life, regardless of dividing categories such as class, then everyone should have access to adequate information and education about sexual matters, free from stigma and prejudice. This is what Hirschfeld also claims for film in his speech cited at the beginning of this article. In addition to a shared desire for a broad, non-specialist audience, Berlin's Third Sex and Different from the Others share an intention to ‘usualise’ third sex experience. In Berlin's Third Sex, Hirschfeld takes his readers on an exploration of Berlin's underworld of ‘regular gatherings held by homosexuals on certain evenings in certain bars’, as well as other localities, including ‘restaurants, hotels, pensions, bathing facilities and pleasure spots’.17 Examples of precisely such meeting places can be seen in Different from the Others, too. Here, the audience witnesses two scenes of third sex spaces. The first is a ball, attended both by Körner and his blackmailer. The second is a club or café, where Körner's blackmailer awaits correspondence from his victim. In both Berlin's Third Sex and Different from the Others, these glimpses serve to ‘normalise’ third sex experience, or, to use a less value-laden expression that more adequately represents Hirschfeld's agenda, they serve to ‘usualise’ sexual intermediacy by showing the everydayness and frequency with which it occurs, something Hirschfeld was very keen to show in his other work, too. Throughout his career, he was keen to collect statistics about the prevalence of homosexuality. Thus, in 1904, he published an essay in his Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Sexual Intermediacy), which argued that homosexuals made up more than 2 per cent of the German population.18 Hirschfeld also authored a psycho-biological questionnaire which his patients at the Institute of Sexology were asked to complete. Although exact numbers cannot be stated for certain, Hirschfeld is said to have collected over 40,000 completed questionnaires.19 Both Berlin's Third Sex and Different from the Others add to this project in important ways. Not only do they attempt to draw the attention of the intended heterosexual audience and readership to the fact that sexual intermediaries exist in their midst, but that intermediates live ‘normal’ lives with friendship circles and cultural events that are similar to those of the heterosexual audience and readership. Highlighting the above-mentioned similarities between Berlin's Third Sex and Different from the Others – to reach a broad audience, and to ‘usualise’ third sex culture – what appears important about the visual dimension in Different from the Others is not so much the translation of sexological knowledge into the visual medium per se, but rather the much broader audience that can be addressed via film. Visibility is significant only in a figurative sense, as political visibility, and hence as a counter-force to societal ignorance, in that it acknowledges that individuals like Körner do exist, do fall prey to the harmful §175, and that their fate should not be ignored by the society in which they live. Despite the obvious shared goals of Berlin's Third Sex and Different from the Others, however, the turn towards film had unforeseen consequences. To begin with, the timing of Hirschfeld's interest in film created a particular context for the topic of sexual intermediacy that distracted from the film's goal to arouse pity for the plight of homosexuals. Hirschfeld's turn towards educational film coincided with a wave of Aufklärungsfilme, enlightenment films or sex education films. The Aufklärungsfilm was an already familiar genre present in pre-war films in Europe, as evidenced, for example, in the Danish film Den hvide Slavehandel (The White Slave Trade) from 1910. Proponents of the social hygiene movement soon realised that film could be enlisted to reach the public in new ways, beyond the use of pamphlets and lectures. This film genre was then picked up in Germany during the interwar years. It was in this climate that the film-maker Richard Oswald rose to fame. Oswald became a prolific film-maker, working in a variety of genres, producing adaptations of crime and romance literature, social melodramas and epic historical dramas.20 Yet, it was the genre of the Aufklärungsfilm, which Oswald himself called ‘social hygiene film’ (sozialhygienisches Filmwerk), that would make him famous. Under Oswald's direction, hygiene films took on a unique shape. As Jill Smith summarises, Oswald's experience with entertainment cinema taught him that ‘hygiene films first had to appeal to the viewing public before they could educate them’.21 Consequently, sexual hygiene films ‘became the prototype for a new symbiosis of science and film, of public health advocacy and entertainment’.22 It was in the context of the Aufklärungsfilm that Oswald began to collaborate with sexologists and professional bodies. In 1917 Oswald released Es werde Licht! (Let There Be Light!, lost) about the dangers of syphilis. During the production of Es werde Licht!, the German Society for Combating Venereal Diseases acted as scientific consultant. Oswald produced several sequels for the film. The technical advisor for Parts 2 and 3 (both lost) was Iwan Bloch, who, together with Hirschfeld, is considered one of the founders of sexology.23 Under his supervision, these two sequels were released with the endorsement of the Medical Society for Sexology.24 In 1918, Hirschfeld, too, became interested in the potential of film. He took over the role of scientific advisor for the fourth and final sequel, entitled Sündige Mütter (Guilty Mothers, lost), which explores the consequences of §218 of the German Criminal Code outlawing abortion. In 1919 Oswald and Hirschfeld collaborated on two further films, Die Prostitution (lost) and Different from the Others. The topic of homosexuality in Different from the Others, however, is at odds with other titles that form part of Oswald's social hygiene oeuvre. Topics such as syphilis, in which people became acutely aware of the prevalence of syphilis among soldiers and its dire consequences for the health of the nation especially in 1917 during the context of the ongoing war, as well as topics such as motherhood and sex work, were seen as issues in need of a broad (though appropriately mature) audience. One conservative reviewer of Different from the Others, the pastor Martin Cornils, comments that, in principle, he is not an opponent of the Aufklärungsfilm. He lauds Oswald's Let There Be Light! for its presentation of the dangers of venereal disease. He sees its presentation in film format justified, because such issues of normal sexual life concern all human beings. His critique of Different from the Others lies in the fact that the film depicts homosexuality, ‘a disease and anomaly concerning a small section of mankind. Its treatment cannot be decided on by a forum of cinema-goers’.25 According to Cornils, the topic of sexual intermediacy did not seem to concern the majority of the heterosexual viewing public and was therefore deemed inappropriate. This was contrary to Hirschfeld's aims. Moreover, opinions on the naturalness of homosexuality were far from unified. Hirschfeld's argument that homosexuality could not be criminalised because it occurred naturally and was therefore part of normal variation were radical and considered controversial by many. His theories contradicted various earlier and competing theories of homosexuality as pathological perversion (Richard von Krafft-Ebing), acquired trait (Albert von Schrenk-Notzing), hereditary disposition (Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal), or a form of evolutionary atavism, a return to a lower evolutionary and hermaphroditic stage (James G. Kiernan).26 As such, unlike other films in Oswald's social hygiene genre, Different from the Others depicted a more controversial political issue that divided expert opinion, and it did so for a potential audience of one million people to see, every day. Add to this the fact that the Aufklärungsfilm was already a controversial form of cinema. Smith argues that Oswald's Aufklärungsfilme ‘must not be seen as products of the alleged of for but rather as and influential to the in the culture of the Weimar however, did not with this The of what they considered and films, were of the new role of cinema as of the that cinema would the and of the as well as a version of forms of such as For it was not the institution of cinema that was but or which served the of the audience, with the of For the cinema had the potential to educate the public and serve a purpose. From this of Aufklärungsfilme, which provided a of and were considered a perversion of the very of Different from the Others was and its audience In Germany, had been in While in theory this of expression to the and sciences, in of and could to Anders in Berlin on May 1919, the film into a but it and attempts to have the film in the of Germany but in the was more based on a new went into which a film to before and on Anders was to the public and to for specialist audiences. This the reach of the film and its aim to reach a broad audience. The 1927 of was also large and for This in which came about when Hirschfeld's sexual rights was in the form of film, also other sexological aims. In attempts to ‘usualise’ third sex culture were significantly altered when in the context of the Aufklärungsfilm. the in which Körner and Franz Bollek will up a relationship at a homosexual This a in the film's but one that is at odds with the film's aim of and in with other men in historical two are in and and various or cannot be as clearly or The by the make a of experience. The at which Körner a of before Bollek a sense of and these are in the context for As Richard have more of a because people to something The with which one can into a of two and a million the so in the sexual The professional and the sexual and are two in one the one and most and the other its This to homosexuals as well as the This to ‘usualise’ the homosexual is also in Different from the Others. The film a in which the Körner is to a by his Here, he is soon by two who him towards and Körner their and their The much like Körner, have a and In the context of the visual medium of film, however, the between the and the not to Hirschfeld's of but the attention to the between homosexual and heterosexual and and the same among the men and at the The visual between the scenes also attention to the of the which people in with one another and to This serve to ‘usualise’ third sex experience, but it also an on and Berlin's Third Sex also on the of but in the context of the which provided into in to make for further the of third sex in Anders als die Andern only that Aufklärungsfilme are more than If we Different from the Others in the context of Hirschfeld's previous work, which to educate the public about matters to human and to show that scientific education the way to a and more just Hirschfeld's turn towards film can be understood not so much as a turn towards the but a further into the to his popular science Berlin's Third Sex, Different from the Others aims to a broad and non-specialist audience and ‘usualise’ sexual intermediacy in the of the audience by it to the world of the third Yet, when this popular science is into the visual medium of film, it takes on a life of its The audience is to experience Different from the Others as an Aufklärungsfilm. In this it more controversial and than previous films of this genre, and the aim of was by the of its and the of the drew attention to and rather than for homosexuals. This discussion of the challenges of a popular science from the written to the is not to that Different from the Others is a film or that Hirschfeld the medium of film. it the complexity of this new which have been by Hirschfeld to his scientific but which altered intended aims in unexpected and contradictory ways. In Different from the Others, we do not encounter of the third sex in the underworld of and The film also a more common strategy of the third sex as and The film with a in which Paul Körner is about various of As he to a Körner the The that follows explains Körner a common the of that is §175 made life for these In his he sees an of from all and in In 1919, the audience would have then seen a long of a of men in Körner's he the as its final In the version of the film, a production this historical which is considered The further the in this such as of and of Sexology was in the of of the historical in Different from the Others had already been in Hirschfeld's earlier He essay on despite its on his sexological In his Hirschfeld published of famous homosexual and including attempts at sexual intermediacy in cultural history served to his that they were part of a long and of sexual too, were not from this one of Hirschfeld's very first to This strategy to use an encounter with the historical in to in the present in the of other sexologists, too, including Iwan and in Germany, and and in before Different from the Others was released, famous from the German had been used as to that homosexuality had existed across the In Die der (The of the from the the and as of historical homosexuals. the German and influential sexologist who for and science, in a on historical argues that reliance of on long of and as for the and of same-sex desire came to in for a homosexual so much so that, the end of the these were to historical homosexuality served one very to use the historical of sexual intermediates to the of sexual intermediacy in the present and to hope for a of and In attempts like these to identity as an or the of identity however, are more on the desire of the these than history production of identity categories across is as on to not everyone in the early understood in of identity categories such as homosexual or The as sees is to for forms of experience in the that cannot be clearly identity the of Different from the Others fully to an history of The historical in Different from the Others a of the homosexual as and in to a that gay The film claims that a of well-known historical are part of Körner's homosexual The of the particular men as to a of homosexual a a a and famous for their contribution to and This of historical men as a kind of which the and of homosexual men in to the with homosexuality. the trait of a of and This historical also to the of homosexuals not as an but as a of to show the of by and to for and up in a homosexuality is as a identity in a that can be through the and across But the of homosexual as its purpose. The homosexual a
Source: Gender & History
Author: Ina Linge
Language: English
Topic: Gender and Feminist Studies
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,432
Funders: Wellcome Trust, University of Exeter
OpenAlex ID: W2893916671