Queer Urbanisms in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany: Of Towns and Villages

“Mathias Foit successfully questions the belief that most queer people gravitated to and prospered in larger cities and metropoles. By contrast, Foit’s nuanced study draws attention to the impressive and surprising levels of queer social, cultural, and political organization in the smaller cities and towns of the eastern territories of Imperial and Weimar Germany. This important monograph not only questions the historiographic emphasis on Germany’s largest cities but should also inspire the study of what Foit describes as ‘historical queer geography.’”

―Robert Beachy, Underwood International College, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

“In this richly detailed, absorbing account of trans*-inclusive queer histories in the Eastern provinces of the German Reich, Mathias Foit gives us craftsmanship at its best, showing us how much there is to gain from a shift in perspective. A must read for anyone interested in thinking about nation, region, and localitybeyond Berlin.”

―Jennifer V. Evans, Carleton University, Canada

“Drawing on a rich archive of queer magazines published in the first decades of the twentieth century, Mathias Foit reveals a remarkable picture of flourishing queer life in Eastern Germany at an important historical juncture. Working to critique metronormativity, and zooming in on ‘temporary sites of queer encounter and pleasure,’ this book unearths the queer historical geography of this region and period, with far-reaching implications for rethinking queer geographies.”

―David Bell, University of Leeds, UK

“A welcome addition to our understanding of modern metronormativity and its many discontents. Mathias Foit elegantly extends the scholarly record by looking within and beyond the queer and trans life-worlds of Weimar-era Berlin. Cultural historians across gender and sexuality studies, urban studies, rural studies, German studies, and print culture studies will embrace this book’s page-after-page findings for an underexplored period and an eye-popping range of locales.”

―Scott Herring, Yale University, USA

“Mathias Foit’s important study moves modern Germany LGBTQI+ history beyond the metropolis. Taking readers on a journey into the eastern provinces of Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany, it presents a fascinating picture of the richness and complexities of queer life in towns and villages outside of the today much more familiar queer territory of the city.”

―Heike Bauer, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

“Mathias Foit’s study is an invaluable addition to ongoing discourses on queer Weimar studies. Detailed archival research meets extensive engagement with existing scholarship to open up new avenues of study for those interested in non-metropolitan queer urbanisms during the Weimar era.”

―Ervin Malakaj, The University of British Columbia, Canada

“Mathias Foit’s book is a much-needed contribution to the queer history of the Weimar Republic. This indispensable volume reveals for the first time how queer people not only lived but thrived in provincial cities and towns. Gay Berlin is hardly the whole story.”

―Javier Samper Vendrell, University of Pennsylvania, USA

This book explores the queer history of the easternmost provinces of the German Reich―regions that used to be German, but which now mostly belong to Poland―in the first third of the twentieth century, a period roughly corresponding to the duration of Germany’s first queer movement (1897-1933). While the amount of queer historical studies examining entire towns and cities in the German Reich has grown to an impressive size since the 1990s, most of that research concerns, firstly, the usual, large metropoles such as Berlin, Hamburg or Cologne, and, secondly, municipalities located in Germany ‘proper’; that is, within its modern borders, not those of the German state in the first half of the twentieth century. Smaller cities (not to mention rural areas) in particular have received very little scholarly attention. This book is therefore one of the first to examine queer history―that of spaces, culture, sociability and political groups specifically―from this geographical perspective.
Mathias Foit received his PhD from the Free University of Berlin, Germany.