Liberated, licentious, or merely liberal, the sexual freedoms of Germany's Weimar Republic have become legendary. The home of the world's first gay rights movement, the republic embodied a progressive, secular vision of sexual liberation. Immortalized - however misleadingly - in Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and the musical Cabaret , Weimar's freedoms have become a touchstone for the politics of sexual emancipation. Yet, as Laurie Marhoefer shows in Sex and Weimar Republic , those sexual freedoms were only obtained at the expense of a minority who were deemed sexually disordered.
In Weimar Germany, the citizen's right to sexual freedom came with a duty to keep sexuality private, non-commercial, and respectable. Sex and the Weimar Republic examines the rise of sexual tolerance through the debates which surrounded "immoral" sexuality: obscenity, male homosexuality, lesbianism, transgender identity, heterosexual promiscuity, and prostitution.
Tracing the connections between toleration and regulation, Marhoefer's observations remain relevant to the politics of sexuality today. Marhoefer, Laurie. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Related Links. Status of Research.
Related People. Laurie Marhoefer. Research Type. Related Fields.
