Queer History Month: Anders als die Andern

In honour of Queer History Month, MQUP would like to highlight the important books recently published in our Queer Film Classics series. This series aims to meet the diversity, quality, and originality of classics in the queer film canon, broadly conceived, with equally compelling writing and critical insight. Books in the series have much to teach us, not only about the art of film but about the queer ways in which films can transmit our meanings, our stories, and our dreams.

On a weekly basis this October, we will be sharing a blog post featuring an excerpt from a title in the QFC series, as well as clips from the movie in question.

Receive 30% off all Queer Film Classics titles using the code MQQH at check-out: https://bit.ly/3YMV2JV

This week, we’re sharing an excerpt from the Introduction of Anders als die Andern by Ervin Malakaj.

Released in 1919, Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) stunned audiences with its straightforward depiction of queer love. Supporters celebrated the film’s moving storyline, while conservative detractors succeeded in prohibiting public screenings. Banned and partially destroyed after the rise of Nazism, the film was lost until the 1970s and only about one-third of its original footage is preserved today.

Directed by Richard Oswald and co-written by Oswald and the renowned sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, Anders als die Andern is a remarkable artifact of cinema culture connected to the vibrant pre-Stonewall homosexual rights movement of early-twentieth-century Germany. The film makes a strong case for the normalization of homosexuality and for its decriminalization, but the central melodrama still finds its characters undone by their public outing. Ervin Malakaj sees the film’s portrayal of the pain of living life queerly as generating a complex emotional identification in modern spectators, even those living in apparently friendlier circumstances. There is a strange comfort in knowing that we are not alone in our struggles, and Malakaj recuperates Anders als die Andern’s mournful cinema as an essential element of its endurance, treating the film’s melancholia both as a valuable feeling in and of itself and as a springboard to engage in an intergenerational queer struggle.

Over a century after the film’s release, Anders als die Andern serves as a stark reminder of how hostile the world can be to queer people, but also as an object lesson in how to find sustenance and social connection in tragic narratives.

Scenes from Anders als die Andern (1919):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_SJf1gf34

Introduction

The Pleasures and Pains of Watching Anders als die Andern

I was a student in a graduate seminar on the cinema of Germany’s Weimar Era (1918–33) when I first stumbled across a mention of Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919). In preparation for a discussion of Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 1920), which still sits positioned among the most iconic films of the period, I consulted the Weimar chapter in Sabine Hake’s book on the history of German film (Hake 2002, 27–63). As I was reading about the reinstitution of film censor- ship in 1920 following a brief period of relaxation of state intervention in cinema production, I was stunned by the reference to a “controversial” film relating to “alternative sexualities,” a sexologist, “male-male desire,” and a political mission to right historic wrongs (33). (In chapter 1, I will explore in de- tail the important role the film played in the reinstitution of film censorship in Germany.)

I instantly reread the sentences describing Anders als die Andern, and quickly began scanning the rest of the chapter (and then the book itself) for other mentions of it. Slightly disappointed that this film received but a brief passage in an authoritative text on the history of German cinema, I turned to the Internet. A search led me to a clip of the film. I watched a scene in which the protagonist Paul Körner (Conrad Veidt) plays a piano at his home as Kurt Sivers (Fritz Schulz) walks into his study to introduce himself. This encounter ushers in their relationship. Körner’s flirtatious smiles in this scene underscore his happiness in the moment. Over the course of the film, the anti-queer structures of his world will suppress this happiness. I likely smiled along with the protagonist while watching, feeling grateful for the moment he and his love interest secured for one another. More on this emotional alignment shortly. I then located additional resources on the film in my university library. Each one of the articles and chapters I consulted sustained my initial astonishment about the existence of an (at that time) al- most one-hundred-year-old German feature film dedicated to the topic of same-sex love!

As a queer emerging scholar in the field of German film studies, I instantly felt drawn to Anders als die Andern. Each analysis of the film I read facilitated for me a type of heightened emotional attachment to its material that I could not quite explain back then, but that I recall vividly as I am writing this book. This attachment pertains to a complex set of feelings or states of mind that range from excitement about the material to hurt about the protagonist’s fate; from hope for a better world for homosexuals evoked in the film to despair in the face of persistent hostilities against queer people today. My (queer) students regularly cite a similar set of conflicting emotions when they first encounter the film in the Weimar cinema seminar I teach. How could this old film – and, as I will discuss below, a fragmented one at that – have such a powerful grip on viewers long after its time? How can just a mention of it, often with just a brief recourse to descriptors about the early German homo- sexual rights movement within which it is positioned, elicit very powerful supportive emotional responses for the film in 2023?

In my assessment, such heightened emotionality relates to the history of queer rights advocacy. My amazement about the film stems in part from the fact that it was positioned in a vibrant pre-Stonewall homosexual rights movement in Germany. Before watching Anders als die Andern, I did not know about the part of queer history to which it belonged. My students likewise learn about early homosexual rights advocacy for the first time in my Weimar cinema seminars. And when I give public talks about the film, or when I mention it in private settings, queer audiences tend to express a similar astonishment. Stonewall, it seems, persists as the central point of orientation for North American queer people with regard to the history of queer rights advocacy.

And rightfully so! The critical energies of the 1960s Gay Liberation movement were transformative for the private and public life of queer people. Consequently, these energies continue to preoccupy popular culture. For instance, David France’s The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017) concerns one of the most important figures in the movement. And although the film high- lights Johnson’s collaborations with other trans women of colour who collectively resisted the exclusion of the most vulnerable from queer rights discourses advanced by the movement, it still centres Stonewall (figure 0.1). The documentary was distributed widely via the streaming platform Netflix, and is only one example of many that foregrounds the various public, private, and contested histories around the movement. Each year, often in anticipation of pride festivities throughout the summer, similar stories, literature, film, and new media products emerge commemorating (or otherwise engaging with) Stonewall. In this (popular) media environment, Stonewall is enshrined as the central historic moment for homosexual and trans rights advocacy.

I believe that the movement’s centrality in the popular queer imagination likely informed my own initial astonishment about Anders als die Andern. It likely also shaped (and continues to shape) my students’ reactions to the film. The long history of homosexual rights struggles indeed takes a secondary status to advances in queer rights historically closer to our time, advances that have also secured a stronger presence in popular media cultures. For some, Stonewall even becomes the first organizational effort toward queer rights worth mentioning. And what would position queer people to know or claim otherwise? The broader histories of queer rights struggles are rarely (if ever) taught in school. Even at universities they tend to be allocated to footnotes in textbooks dedicated to other topics or are centred in specialized courses. Thus there is all the more cause to be astonished when these histories come into view.

Figure 0.1 Documentary footage from a Marsha P. Johnson interview reproduced in The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, 2017.

In my assessment as a queer film studies scholar whose work tends to focus on early cinema history, other cinematic mediation of queer life in the silent era solicits similar astonishment from viewers. One only need to do a quick online search for William A. Wellman’s 1927 film Wings to find clips with com- mentary from fans, various screengrabs, blog posts, and numerous popular writeups about “the first gay kiss in cinema history.” Film studies scholars will warn you about “firsts discourse” – that is, the practice of proclaiming some- thing is the first of its kind. In film studies, these types of claims usually do not go well. For instance, Cecil B. DeMille’s 1922 film Manslaughter features a queer kiss, as does Ernst Lubitsch’s 1918 film, Ich möchte kein Mann sein (I Don’t Want to Be a Man). Next to these examples, there are dozens of come- dies, melodramas, and other genres of filmmaking in the silent era that in some way address queer life. Firsts-discourse tends to simplify the historical record. In this regard, I am not keen on the firsts-discourse that accompanies Anders als die Andern. It is, indeed, not the first film about queer love, an idea that quite many articles in popular venues advance. For instance, Mauritz Stiller’s Vingarne (The Wings) was released in 1916 in Sweden and in various European countries.1 Nonetheless, I can appreciate the enthusiasm of people astonished to discover for themselves these wonderful texts. And it is in this regard that the kiss in Wings meets such astonishment among viewers. Two pilots kiss in the film. Initially rivals, Jack Powell (Charles Rogers) and David Armstrong (Richard Arlen) are shown in an intimate moment toward the end of the film. Following a series of misrecognitions and misunderstandings, Jack shoots a plane David operates. In his dying moments, David reaches out for Jack, and the two kiss (figure 0.2). If you are a queer person watching this film for the first time, you will likely be astonished in the same way I was when I first discovered Anders als die Andern for myself.

The heightened emotionality about Anders als die Andern I cite above also relates to the history of hostility against queer people. I was devastated by the fate of the protagonist. This extreme emotional response stems from acknowledging the severe structural violence to which this fictional homosexual character was exposed. In my mind – and, as I will outline shortly, as intended by the creators of the film – Körner’s struggles navigating a world hostile to homosexuals by extension also speaks to the experiences of real-life homosexuals living in early-twentieth-century Germany. By being given access to past struggles through this film, I could recognize the long history of hostility against queer people. This engagement with historic injustices activated for me a particular type of pain conditioned by my own history of facing anti- queer resentment. Here, I wish to tread carefully, because I do not want to give the impression that I am interested in collapsing historical time. Living life as a homosexual in Weimar Germany is not the same as living life as a homosexual in 2023 in Canada. But the queer struggles that Anders als die Andern cites – for example, facing challenges to navigate familial, professional, and personal life as a homosexual – resonate on a personal level with those of us who have had to struggle in similar ways when our queer selves stumble into hostile interactional situations. Even those of us long out of the closet, positioned in a vibrant queer community, might find some comfort in knowing we are and have really never been alone in some of our struggles.

Figure 0.2 Jack (Charles Rogers) and David (Richard Arlen) kiss in Wings, 1924.

And so, Anders als die Andern often elicits complicated, at times conflicting emotional alignments with its subject matter to which I will turn in various ways throughout this book. I would like to begin illustrating what is at stake here based on a famous scene from the film. Anders als die Andern was co- written by Richard Oswald (who also directed the film) and the sexologist and homosexual rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld. The first time I watched the film, I marvelled at the scene featuring a lecture in which a sexologist played by Hirschfeld outlines his theses about “sexual indeterminacy” – a nomenclature Hirschfeld developed to account for varied gendered embodiment and sexual practices (Kuzniar 2000, 25). In this much-referenced scene from the film, the sexologist authoritatively proclaims that queer ways of being in the world are innate and thus not pathological (figure 0.3). An ex- cited audience heightens the affirmative tone of this moment of the film. Among the audience members is Sivers’s sister, Else (Anita Berber), for whom the lecture becomes transformative. She even proclaims that she understands homosexuality better as a result of attending the lecture and can consequently support her brother and his lover in ways she was not able to do before. Notwithstanding this uplifting message and its transformative effect for the audience, the scene also contains traces of pain. The protagonist’s presence in the audience for the lecture offers a sombre reminder of the challenges Körner faces in the world outside. He stands positioned in the background of the large lecture hall. As the sexologist presents his findings in the fore- ground of the shot, Körner’s lit up forehead draws our attention to the pro- tagonist in the background. We are reminded of the previous sequence, which presented a flashback that chronicled Körner’s history of experiencing hostility growing up and living life as a homosexual. In the lecture hall, the dark makeup around his eyes underscores his brooding frame of mind. Here, the hopeful tenor affiliated with the lecture and its impact on Else collides with Körner’s worries, generating a tension that persists throughout the film be- tween affirmative politics and the pain of living life as a homosexual in a hos- tile world.

Figure 0.3 The sexologist (Magnus Hirschfeld) gives a lecture on the innateness of homosexuality as Paul Körner (Conrad Veidt) stands against the wall in the back of the lecture.

To me, this tension is a vital component of the film. After I watched Anders als die Andern for the first time, I struggled to reconcile the film’s occasional affirmative tone, which culminates in the sexologist’s call to action at the end of the film, with the deep pain registered primarily on Körner’s body. The fact that Hirschfeld’s hopeful message and support ultimately could not pro- tect Körner against the structures of oppression the protagonist faced is a constitutive feature of the film. In my interpretation, Körner’s pain indeed resists simple conscription into Hirschfeld’s call for reform at the end of the film. This means that the suffering and death in the film are more than a rhetorical resource for Hirschfeld’s advocacy work. Körner’s fate is not just a means to substantiate an affective punchline at the end of the film aligned with a reform initiative. The sorrow, instead, becomes a mechanism for (especially queer) viewers across time to engage with the film. Here I evoke again the strange comfort I cited above, or similar supportive or generative engagements with the film’s sorrowful representational strategies for queer life. Queer viewers like me familiar with the pain accompanying anti-queer hostility might respond with a supportive nod coupled with a concerned frown when recognizing what informs Körner’s brooding presence in this uplifting venue. After all, some of us have been in similar situations.

In this vein, my focus on pain does not mean that I interpret Körner’s death at the end of the film to be an “obligatory suicide,” as Vito Russo did in his 1981 landmark study, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (21). For Russo, the film becomes an early example of how cinema nurtured its relationship to gay representation on the premise that gays on screen “would suffer for their sexuality” (21). In such a reading, mediated queer suffering relates to a type of negativity that limits audience engagement. This mediation procedure, for Russo, proliferates a sense of futility about living life queerly that is inevitably harmful for queer viewers. There is too much suffering in queer cinema history, which renders screen cultures inadequate re- sources to account for the richness and capacity of queer life. I, as other queer film studies scholars – for example, B. Ruby Rich in New Queer Cinema: The Director’s Cut (2013, 256) – remain inspired by Russo’s insistence in his study that queer viewers are deeply affected by cinema while pushing back against Russo’s totalizing claims. To this end, Rich remarks that we, as queer viewers, “fight back and resist [movies] or use them for our own goals” (256). Here, mournful imagery can be more than limiting. It can, indeed, be generative for viewers on several fronts. A comradely sigh, a supportive tear, a sorrowful nod as responses to negative mediation of queer life indeed pertain to living queerly in our present. At times such moments might inspire political action, as envisioned by the ending of Anders als die Andern. Or – and I think this is much more likely the case – they might just propel us to feel along with the emotive structures of a given film, as is the case with Körner’s brooding in the background of an uplifting lecture. Feeling bad with others is part of life. Cinema – in particular melodrama – affords us an opportunity to do so.

Ervin Malakaj is assistant professor of German studies at the University of British Columbia.