The Closeted Archive

Magnus Hirschfeld opened the world’s first Institute for Sexual Science in Tiergarten, creating a safe space for gay and trans* people. It was defamed by the Nazis as “Jewish,” forcibly closed, and destroyed. As the Nazis increasingly stripped them of their rights and persecuted them, many members of the community—including Jewish leaders—were deported to camps or forced to emigrate.

Together with American author and podcaster Eric Marcus, the Jewish Museum brings their voices back to Berlin this evening, featuring interviews with eyewitnesses recorded as part of Marcus’ podcast Making Gay History.

Following the event, Eric Marcus, literary scholar Janin Afken, and historian Kai* Brust will discuss the challenges involved in researching LGBTQIA* biographies in archives and museum collections.

How can diverse and interconnected experiences of persecution be reconstructed? Is the term “queer,” which is widely used today, appropriate for historical analysis? And how can lesbian, gay, and trans* life stories even be found in archives that often render them invisible through their classification systems?

Eric Marcus

Eric Marcus is an American journalist and the founder and host of the award-winning podcast Making Gay History. He is also the executive director of the nonprofit educational organization Making Gay History, which provides middle and high school teachers with inclusive curriculum on American LGBTQIA* history. Marcus is a co-producer of “Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust,” a podcast based on Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive of Holocaust Survivors, as well as the author and co-author of numerous nonfiction books.

Kai* Brust

Kai* Brust, historian at Freie Universität Berlin, research associate in the LGBTIQ* Movements as Agents of Democratization: Historical, Contemporary, and Future Resources for Imagining Inclusive and Diverse Democracies; previously worked as a freelancer on numerous educational and exhibition projects on trans and queer contemporary history, such as Spektrum des Un_rechts; Initiator of the first Stolperstein without deadnaming for a trans person.

Janin Afken

Janin Afken, literary scholar and researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin in the project Queer Theory in Transit. Reception, Translation, and Production in Polish and German Contexts, author of, among other works, Lesbische* Eigenzeiten. Temporality in Feminist* Literature of the GDR and FRG, 1971–1983 (2024) Editor of the anthology Queer Jewish Poems and Stories in Homosexual Magazines between 1900 and 1932 (2024) and contributor to the project Queer Jewish Lives Between Central Europe and Mandatory Palestine. Biographies and Geographies, 1870–1960 (2021).

Moderator: Anika Reichwald, curator of the JMB’s permanent exhibition

In cooperation with the Magnus Hirschfeld Federal Foundation

IN ENGLISH