Registration ends 07.4.2026 at 23:59 h

This seminar introduces queer history, primarily but not exclusively in Germany and the German-speaking world. It explores the understandings of sexuality developed by sexologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and activists in German-speaking countries in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, including Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Sigmund Freud and Magnus Hirschfeld. It addresses the ways in which theories of sexuality were caught up with theories of gender, the colonial context in which these theories emerged, and the role of eugenics within sexology and early gay rights activism. The seminar also looks at the uneven criminalisation of sexual and gender minorities (including gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people) in the Weimar Republic, the National Socialist period, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and in the Federal Republic of Germany both before and after reunification.

The seminar includes a day of activities in Basel, including a visit to “The First Homosexuals: The Birth of New Identities, 1869-1939” exhibition at Kunstraum Basel.

- Explore the development of theories of sexuality in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, including in the fields of sexology and psychoanalysis
- Interrogate the broader historical context in which these theories and early forms of LGBT identity emerged
- Explore the criminalisation (and resistance to the criminalisation) of queer and trans people in the Weimar Republic, National Socialism, the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany

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