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A Queer Typology of Late 19th Century Central Europe

Abstract

Before the word “homosexual” became the popular terminology, the word used in German for same sex attracted men was “urning.” This word was first published in 1864 by a lawyer and activist called Karl Heinrich Ulrichs from the Kingdom of Hanover. He proposed a new way of thinking about sexual orientation and attracted a substantial following of men who began to call themselves urnings. Ulrichs’s 12 pamphlets, which he wrote between 1864 and 1879, contain passages from the hundreds of letters that Ulrichs received from his readers. These firsthand accounts give a unique window onto the lived experience of the writers. A literary analysis of the letter texts, supplemented with other contemporary texts enables the identification of nine individual character types. This paper describes this character typology as a heuristic through which to understand a neglected corner of central European society in the late nineteenth century. The period under discussion in this paper runs from the point that Ulrichs published his first pamphlets in 1864 right up to the end of the nineteenth century.