Judith Große

Unter den veröffentlichten Leserbriefen an die Redaktion der Zeitschrift Die Ehe. Monatsschrift für Ehewissenschaft, -Recht und -Kultur findet sich im Jahrgang 1929 die Anfrage einer Leserin „in einer Sache […], die so eigenartig ist, daß es sich wohl lohnt, sie den Lesern vorzulegen.“[2] Die anonymisierte Verfasserin des Briefes bittet um Antwort auf die Frage, „ob moralische oder gesetzliche Bedenken gegen die Ehe einer Weißen mit einem Neger existieren“. Eine Freundin der Verfasserin, die als Wirtschafterin auf einem Gutshof tätig sei, hege die Absicht, einen aus Kamerun stammenden Hausdiener zu heiraten und mit ihm das Gut zu verlassen. Der Heiratskandidat sei 1913 als Junge von dem Rittergutsbesitzer aus der Kolonie nach Deutschland mitgenommen worden. Als besorgte Freundin frage sie sich nun, „ob man davon abraten [solle] und mit welcher Begründung“.

This article examines the impact of the Great War on the political stance and global outlook of sexologist and gay-rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld, a German of Jewish decent. Comparing Hirschfeld's "Kriegsschriften" with a selection of his post-war writings, his transformation from a liberal patriot to a fierce advocate of socialism, pacifism, and cosmopolitanism through the devastating wartime experience becomes manifest. This reading suggests that his early war pamphlet was more than just a strategic gesture of loyalty from someone whose sexual orientation, religious background and reputation as a progressive sex reformer had pushed him to the margins of Wilhelmine German society. In later years, his vision of a world without borders, national and otherwise, had Hirschfeld actively committed to pacifist goals and pursuing the creation of a transnational network in his field of research, ultimately culminating in the World League for Sexual Reform (1928-1935), while focusing his work on the exploration of human common traits and differences. Hirschfeld's critique of racism, which he elaborated after his escape from the Nazi regime in th1930s, can in its basic outline be traced back to the period immediately following the Great War.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the European discourse on marriage conditions gained momentum through the nuanced critique of overcome gender roles and sexual morals by the women’s movement and the rise of sexual science. As 'Western' marriage came under fire by a rather heterogeneous progressive sexual reform movement, non-European customs of marriage came to the fore of sexology, drawing on ethnographical and anthropological knowledge.
Bits and pieces of this already very eclectic corpus found their way into the broader discourse of marriage reform in the interwar years. The paper will offer some insights from two sexual reform periodicals ("Die Ehe" and "Die Aufklärung") that were closely linked to the circles around the Berlin Institute of Sex Research founded by Magnus Hirschfeld. While extra-European practices of sex and marriage were painted as curious factoids in these magazines, often complemented by 'artistic' visuals of 'exotic' female bodies, it seems promising to take a closer look on the specific registers of this exoticizing depiction. Locating these periodicals (and sex reform at large) in the context of German Lebensreform as a current of 'Western' critique of civilization it is not surprising to find a typical ambivalence regarding its use of the 'Other': Descriptions oscillate between a fascination and idealization of the exotic, in tradition of the 'noble savage' as a positive figure of alteration, and a denigration and self-distancing from the 'Other' in the logic of the dominant theories and politics of race.
Focusing on some exemplary articles on marriage and the position of women in non-European cultures the paper will ask how such references were being employed and adjusted to the objectives of 'Western' bourgeois sex reform. In doing so, attention shall not only be drawn to the differentiations regarding the cultures depicted but also to the broad array of different voices in the rather heterogeneous sex reform movement. The one-sided representation of 'non-Westerners' by 'Westerners' will be contrasted with contributions by two Indian authors who followed their own agenda. So the picture is further complicated by the emerging anti-colonial activism and growing anti-imperial sentiments in the 'metropole'.

The interwar period saw a rise of transnational activities by advocates of the sexual reform movement in Europe ultimately culminating in the formation of the World League for Sexual Reform in 1928. Right after the demand for ‘equality of man and women’, marriage reform, or, in the parlance of the time ‘the liberation of marriage’ ranked high on its 10-point agenda. This paper will discuss the tension between the League’s self-conception as a global agent for sexual reform and its exclusively European personnel. In spite of this undeniably Eurocentric bias it will be shown how knowledge about non-western practices of sex and marriage did nonetheless inform the criticism of European marriage.