''Der Eigene'' was one of the first

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

journals in the world, published from 1896 to 1932 by

Adolf Brand Gustav Adolf Franz Brand (14 November 1874 – 2 February 1945) was a German writer, egoist anarchist, and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality. Early life Adolf Brand was born on 14 November 1874 in Be ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. Brand contributed many poems and articles; other contributors included writers

Benedict Friedlaender Benedict Friedlaender (8 July 1866 – 21 June 1908; first name occasionally spelled Benedikt) was a German Jewish sexologist, sociologist, economist, volcanologist, and physicist. Friedlaender was born in Berlin as the son of Carl Friedlae ...

Hanns Heinz Ewers Hanns Heinz Ewers (3 November 1871 – 12 June 1943) was a German actor, poet, philosopher, and writer of short stories and novels. While he wrote on a wide range of subjects, he is now known mainly for his works of horror, particularly his trilo ...

Erich Mühsam Erich Mühsam (6 April 1878 – 10 July 1934) was a German-Jewish antimilitarist anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic, for which ...

Kurt Hiller Kurt Hiller (17 August 1885, Berlin – 1 October 1972, Hamburg) was a German essayist, lawyer, and expressionist poet. He was also a political (namely pacifist) journalist. Hiller came from a middle-class Jewish background. A communist, he ...

Ernst Burchard Ernst Burchard (9 September 1876 – 5 February 1920) was a German physician, sexologist, and gay rights advocate and author. Burchard, who was gay, testified as an expert witness in several court cases involving prosecutions on grounds of Parag ...

John Henry Mackay John Henry Mackay, also known by the pseudonym Sagitta, (6 February 1864 – 16 May 1933) was an egoist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of '' Die Anarchisten'' (The Anarchists, 1891) an ...

Theodor Lessing Karl Theodor Richard Lessing (8 February 1872, Hanover – 31 August 1933, Marienbad) was a German Jewish philosopher. He is known for opposing the rise of Hindenburg as president of the Weimar Republic and for his classic on Jewish self-hatre ...

Klaus Mann Klaus Heinrich Thomas Mann (18 November 1906 – 21 May 1949) was a German writer and dissident. He was the son of Thomas Mann, a nephew of Heinrich Mann and brother of Erika Mann, with whom he maintained a lifelong close relationship, and Golo ...

, and

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...

, as well as artists

Wilhelm von Gloeden Wilhelm Iwan Friederich August von Gloeden (September 16, 1856 – February 16, 1931), commonly known as Baron von Gloeden, was a German photographer who worked mainly in Italy. He is mostly known for his pastoral nude studies of Sicilian boy ...

Fidus Fidus was the pseudonym used by German illustrator, painter and publisher Hugo Reinhold Karl Johann Höppener (October 8, 1868 – February 23, 1948). He was a symbolist artist, whose work directly influenced the psychedelic style of graphi ...

, and

Sascha Schneider Rudolph Karl Alexander Schneider, commonly known as Sascha Schneider (21 September 1870 – 18 August 1927), was a German painter and sculptor. Biography Schneider was born in Saint Petersburg in 1870. During his childhood, his family lived ...

. The journal may have had an average of around 1500 subscribers per issue during its run, but the exact numbers are uncertain. __NOTOC__

History of the journal

The title of the journal, ''Der Eigene'' ''(The Unique)'', refers to the classic anarchist work '' Der Einzige und sein Eigentum'' (1844) by

Max Stirner Johann Kaspar Schmidt (25 October 1806 – 26 June 1856), known professionally as Max Stirner, was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen a ...

. Early issues reflected the philosophy of Stirner, as well as other views on the politics of

anarchism Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessa ...

. In the 1920s the journal shifted to support the

liberal democracy Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into diff ...

of the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...

and more specifically the

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties For ...

. ''Der Eigene'' interwove cultural, artistic, and political material, including

lyric poetry Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also ''not'' equi ...

prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...

political manifesto A manifesto is a published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. A manifesto usually accepts a previously published opinion or public consensus or promotes a ...

and

nude photography Nude photography is the creation of any photograph which contains an image of a nude or semi-nude person, or an image suggestive of nudity. Nude photography is undertaken for a variety of purposes, including educational uses, commercial applic ...

. The publisher of ''Der Eigene'' had to fight against government

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...

. For example, in 1903 a published poem "Die Freundschaft" (Friendship) provoked a

lawsuit - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...

against the magazine. The magazine won because the poem was written by

Friedrich Schiller Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friends ...

. In 1933, when

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

rose to power, Adolf Brand's house was searched and all the materials needed to produce the magazine were seized and given to

Ernst Röhm Ernst Julius Günther Röhm (; 28 November 1887 – 1 July 1934) was a German military officer and an early member of the Nazi Party. As one of the members of its predecessor, the German Workers' Party, he was a close friend and early ally ...

. In a major effort in 2020,

Humboldt University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

made available the complete set of the magazine on its website, with censorship in form of pixellation applied to several pages containing artistic photographs and paintings.

Gallery

Image:Der Eigene - 1896.jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 1 (1896), no. 1 - ten issues in this format - an anarchist journal with no gay content in this volume File:Der Eigene 1898 vol 2.jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 2 (1898), no. 1 - two issues in this format - here, the opening page of a gay short story, the journal's first gay text File:Der Eigene 1899.jpg, ''Der Eigene'', "New Series" vol. 1 (= vol. 3, the first entirely gay volume) (1898), no. 1 - ten issues in this format File:Der Eigene New Series vol 2 (1903).jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 4 (or "New Series" vol. 2) (1903), no. 1 - six issues in this format File:Der Eigene New Series vol 3 (1905).jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 5 (or "New Series" vol. 3) (1905), no. 1 - six issues in this format File:Der Eigene, Jahresband 1906.jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 6 (1906) - the only hardback issue, an annual File:Der Eigene 1919 vol 7.jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 7 (1919–20), no. 3 - eleven issues in this format File:Der Eigene 1920.jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 8 (1920), no. 9 - fourteen issues in this format File:Der Eigene 1921-22-23 vol 9.jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 9 (1921-22-23), no. 3 - seven issues in this format File:Der Eigene 1924-25 vol 10 no 4.jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 10 (1924-25), no. 4 - twelve issues in this format File:Der Eigene 1926-27 vol 11.jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 11 (1926), no. 1 - ten issues in this format File:Der Eigene 1929 vol 12.jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 12 (1929), no. 5 - five issues in this format File:Der Eigene 1930-32 vol 13.jpg, ''Der Eigene'', vol. 13 (1930–32), no. 1 - nine issues in this format File:Der_Eigene_6_(1906)_p._158.jpg, Original uncensored page 158 from DER EIGENE 6 (1906) File:DER EIGENE 13 (1930) p.45 PAINTING BY LEONARD SARLUIS CENSORED BY HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY BERLIN.png, Example of a censored page containing a painting by Léonard Sarluis, from "DER EIGENE" magazine scan hosted on Humboldt University of Berlin website

References

External links

Homodok.nl Full text scan (pdf) 1896-1900 and 1903
at

IHLIA LGBT Heritage IHLIA LGBT Heritage, formerly known as the International Gay/Lesbian Information Center and Archive ( nl, Internationaal Homo/Lesbisch Informatiecentrum en Archief; IHLIA), is an international archive and documentation center on homosexuality, bi ...

.
Schillers "Die Freundschaft"

. ?
Complete set digitized on Humboldt University website (some pages with photographs and artworks partially censored)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eigene 1890s in LGBT history 1896 establishments in Germany 1932 disestablishments in Germany Anarchism and free love Anarchist periodicals published in Germany Defunct political magazines published in Germany Egoist anarchism Gay history Gay men's magazines LGBT-related magazines published in Germany German-language magazines Individualist anarchism LGBT anarchism First homosexual movement Magazines established in 1896 Magazines disestablished in 1932 Magazines published in Berlin

History of the journal

Gallery

See also

References

Further reading

External links