Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
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Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (28 August 1825 – 14 July 1895) was a German lawyer,
Early life
Ulrichs was born in the
From 1849 to 1854, Ulrichs worked as a lawyer for the civil service in the Kingdom of Hannover. Initially he worked as an official administrative lawyer in various locations but did not enjoy the work or thrive. He transferred to the court system in 1853 and joined the bench as an assistant judge in the district court of Hildesheim. He resigned on 30 November 1854 rather than face dismissal should a possible blackmail attempt be made and his sexuality become common knowledge.[citation needed]
Campaigner for sexual reform
In 1862, Ulrichs took the momentous step of telling his family and friends that he was, in his own words, an
In the 1860s, Ulrichs moved around Germany, always writing and publishing, and always in trouble with the law — though always for his words rather than for sexual offences. In 1864, his books were confiscated and banned by police in Saxony.[3] Later the same thing happened in Berlin, and his works were banned throughout Prussia. Some of these papers were later found in the Prussian state archives and published in 2004. Several of Ulrichs's more important works are back in print, both in German and in translation.[citation needed]
Ulrichs was a patriotic Hanoverian, and when Prussia annexed Hanover in 1866 he was briefly imprisoned for opposing Prussian rule. On release, he was forced into exile and left Hanover for good and moved to
Later he moved to Stuttgart, where he cultivated silkworms for an income but convened a weekly discussion at a restaurant on Gymnasiumstrasse with other urning activists.[citation needed]
In 1879, Ulrichs published the twelfth and final pamphlet in his series on man-manly love, Critische Pfeile. Believing he had done all he could in Germany, he went into self-imposed exile in Italy shortly afterwards. For several years he travelled around the country before settling in L'Aquila.
He continued to write prolifically and publish his works (in German and Latin) at his own expense, notably a latin newspaper Alaudae, which had a wide readership. In 1895, he received an honorary diploma from the
But with your loss, o Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the fame of your works and your virtue will not likewise disappear... but rather, as long as intelligence, virtue, learning, insight, poetry and science are cultivated on this earth and survive the weakness of our bodies, as long as the noble prominence of genius and knowledge are rewarded, we and those who come after us will shed tears and scatter flowers on your venerated grave.
Legacy
Ulrichs distributed his pamphlets widely in a pamphleteering strategy to lawyers and the medical authorities of his day. Karl Westphal, quoted Ulrichs' writings in the first psychiatric paper on 'contrary sexual feeling' and largely used Ulrichs' theoretical framework. Ulrichs also corresponded for many years with the psychiatrist, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, who later acknowledged in a letter to Ulrichs that:
From that day when you sent your writings – I believe it was in 1866 – I have turned my full attention to this phenomenon, which was just as puzzling as it was interesting to me; and it was only the knowledge of your books which motivated me to study this highly important area.[10][11]
Krafft-Ebing went on to publish Psychopathia Sexualis, arguably the foundational text in sexology. Ulrichs' huge influence on the emerging fields of the sexual sciences was not his only legacy though. When he first started publishing his pamphlets, he received hundreds of letters from same sex attracted men, who began calling themselves 'urnings'. So arguably Ulrichs' greatest legacy was the dissemination of a sexual identity.[12]
Forgotten for many years, Ulrichs later became something of a cult figure in Europe in the late 1980s. There are streets named for him in Munich, Bremen, Hanover, and Berlin.[13] His birthday is marked each year by a lively street party and poetry reading at Karl-Heinrich-Ulrichs-Platz in Munich. The city of L'Aquila has restored his grave and hosts the annual pilgrimage to the cemetery. Later gay rights advocates were aware of their debt to Ulrichs. Magnus Hirschfeld thoroughly referenced Ulrichs in his The Homosexuality of Men and Women (1914). Volkmar Sigusch called Ulrichs the "first gay man in world history."[2]
In Ulrichs' memory, the
In an interview,
Latin writer
During his stay in Italy, he devoted himself, between 1889 and 1895, to the international use of Latin with the publishing of the Latin newspaper Alaudae,[16] which was widely disseminated and made known many European Latin poets of his time. This review found a suite,[17] in Vox Urbis: de litteris et bonis artibus commentarius published twice monthly by the architect and engineer Aristide Leonori between 1898 and 1913.
See also
References
- ^ Hans-Martin Lohmann: Geschichte der Sexualität – Vom Widerspruch her gedacht (Buchbesprechung: Volkmar Sigusch, Geschichte der Sexualwissenschaft, Campus, 2008), Frankfurter Rundschau Online.
- ^ a b Volkmar Sigusch, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Der erste Schwule der Weltgeschichte, Männerschwarm 2000.
- ^ a b c d "Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
- ISBN 9781315475677.
- ^ LeVay, Simon (1996). "Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality". The Washington Post. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
- ISBN 9781134735938. Archivedfrom the original on 17 March 2017. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
- ^ "Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: Congress of German Jurists, first gay rights protest - 1867". Speakola. 10 October 2019. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
- ^ "150 Years Ago, the Word "Homosexual" was Coined in a Secret Correspondence". GVGK Tang. 6 May 2018. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
- S2CID 219491782.
- S2CID 255715774.
- S2CID 219491782.
- ISBN 9781487555610.
- ^ "Berlin names street after gay rights pioneer". 17 December 2013. Archived from the original on 1 July 2014. Retrieved 29 May 2014.
- ISBN 978-1-59884-306-4.
- ^ Stack, Liam (1 July 2020). "Overlooked No More: Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Pioneering Gay Activist". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 4 July 2020. Retrieved 4 July 2020.
- ^ Wielfried Stroh (ed.), Alaudæ. Eine lateinische Zeitschrift 1889–1895 herausgegeben von Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Reprint with an introduction by Wilfried Stroh, Hamburg, MännerschwarmSkript Verlag, 2004.
- ^ Vox Urbis (1898–1913) quid sibi proposuerit, in : Melissa, 139 (2007) pp. 8–11.
Works
- Forschungen über das Rätsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (Max Spohr, 1898; repr. Rosa Winkel, 1994)
- The Riddle of Man-Manly Love. Trans. Michael Lombardi-Nash. 1864-1879; Prometheus Books, 1994.
- Pretsell, Douglas Ogilvy, ed. (2020). The Correspondence of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, 1846-1894. Springer. ISBN 978-3-030-39763-0.
Further reading
- Brooks, R. (2012). "Transforming Sexuality: The Medical Sources of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-95) and the Origins of the Theory of Bisexuality". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 67 (2): 177–216. PMID 21081540.
- Heede, Dag (2017). "Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: En sexologisk kulturpioner". Bibliotek for Laeger (in Danish). 209 (4): 334–351. ISSN 0906-5407.
- Hertz, Gal (2020). "The Nature of Guilt: Myth, Politics and Gay Love in Karl Heinrich Ulrichs". Schuld. Velbrück Wissenschaft. pp. 178–199. ISBN 978-3-95832-233-2.
- Janssen, Diederik F. (2017). "Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: First Theorist of Erotic Age Orientation". Journal of Homosexuality. 64 (13): 1850–1871. S2CID 205471270.
- H. Kennedy, Ulrichs The Life and Works of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement (1988)
- M. Hirschler, "De Carolo Henrico Ulrichs qui magis fecit quam ut revivisceret lingua Latina", Melissa. Folia perenni Latinitati dicata, vol. 192, 2016, pp. 8–9.
- Leck, Ralph M. (2016). Vita Sexualis: Karl Ulrichs and the Origins of Sexual Science. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-09818-5.
- Matzner, Sebastian (2015). "Literary Criticism and/as Gender Reassignment: Reading the Classics with Karl Heinrich Ulrichs". Sex, Knowledge, and Receptions of the Past. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-966051-3.
- Matzner, Sebastian (2015). "Of That I Know Many Examples…: On the Relationship of Greek Theory and Roman Practices in Karl Heinrich Ulrichs's Writings on the Third Sex". Ancient Rome and the Construction of Modern Homosexual Identities. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-968972-9.
- Quinn, Carol V. A. (2015). "What Ulrichs Knew". International Journal of Applied Philosophy. 29 (1): 1–17. .
- Singy, Patrick (2021). "Sexual Identity at the Limits of German Liberalism: Law and Science in the Work of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895)". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 30 (3): 390–410. S2CID 245191814.