HMD 2014 & LGB&T Journeys

 

For much of the last 14 years I’ve been involved in events to tie in LGB&T issues with Holocaust Memorial Day and I don’t think it could be more relevant today to keep doing so, what with mass executions in the middle east and rampant homophobia in the east of Europe, Africa, Asia and just about everywhere else on earth. You could be forgiven for  thinking that human beings are just a savage species that  have never learned to truly accept and love one another, but still we all must try to see hope in everyone.

This year I spent a lot of time trying to find something of interest to coincide with the UK official HMD theme of Journeys which has been hard when there isn’t a vast amount of material around relating to an LGB&T audience that most interested people haven’t already seen.

As we watch in horror on the news every night at ongoing developments in Syria, Egypt, Central Africa, Sudan, Ukraine and we worry about what will happen in Russia, Uganda and India to name just a few places currently facing dark days, it seems appropriate to look back on a progressive country like Germany and to a time before the Holocaust when many would have thought we were becoming more liberal, but how wrong could we have been if we had been alive over 100 years ago.  

The First LGBT Activist by Germany’s Pioneer of Queer Cinema

One person I have been drawn too is Rosa von Praunheim, Germany's, Maverick, gay German filmmaker, who has for many years been sharing interesting stories of LGB&T journeys over the last century.

Born in 1942 as Holger Mischwitzky, the director adopted "Rosa" for both gender ambiguity and as a reminder of the pink triangle (Rosa Winkel) that gays were forced to wear in concentration camps. Two years after the Stonewall riots, his first feature caused a furor in Germany but also led to the foundation of the modern German gay liberation movement. Since then Von Praunheim  has dealt with many issues, including the AIDS crisis, in a career of over 70 films and is still considered the most popular (and in turns the most unpopular!) filmmaker in Germany today, even in his seventies.

One of the film’s being shown this week at The Lesbian &Gay Foundation in Manchester to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day 2014 is ‘The Einstein of Sex’. The film’s title is in reference to its subject Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a German Jew whose pioneer studies in human sexuality in the late 19^th and early 20^th century were abruptly halted when the Nazis took power.

The film shows attitudes towards human sexuality at the end of the 19th century. Human subjects under scrutiny are treated abominably, and homosexuals are especially mistreated. German law (specifically Paragraph 175) stated that homosexuality was illegal, and Hirschfeld’s goal was to have the law repealed. If you need any more recommendation than checkout what PeterTatchell had to say about the film at the time of its original release over a decade ago.

Not a film you can see on Netflix, iTunes or easily get from Amazon yet the film is available in German with English subtitles from the Rosa Von Praunheim official site