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). By focusing on middle- and small-sized cities and employing the concept of metronormativity, it deconstructs persistent myths and narratives about rural and urban spaces in order to expose the inadequacy and artificiality of that dichotomy and of the totality of related associations and stereotypes that this distinction entails—liberal/conservative, safe/dangerous, public/private, liberating/stifling and so on. The monograph is one of the very few works to examine queer history—that of spaces, culture, sociability and political groups specifically—from a geographical perspective and therefore follows the path set by groundbreaking works such as George Chauncey’s Gay New York, Matt Houlbrook’s Queer London or Robert Beachy’s Gay Berlin.
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
Seaul
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 locality beyond Berlin.
Jennifer V. Evans
Carleton University
Ottawa
Canada
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
New Heaven
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
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
Vancouver
Kanada
Mathias Foit has assembled a rich alternative archive from the national queer press of the German Reich containing a wealth of information about grassroots queer groups outside of the metropolis. What emerges from this research is a rigorous analysis of a hitherto unknown vibrant social scene existing in large towns but also surprisingly in smaller places, where queer life was often more evident back then than it is even today.
(Click here to read Douglas Pretsell’s full review of my book)
Douglas Pretsell
La Trobe University
Melbourne
Australia
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