Kurt Hiller (17 August 1885,

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 ...

– 1 October 1972,

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

) was a German essayist, lawyer, and

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

poet. He was also a political (namely

pacifist Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...

) journalist. Hiller came from a middle-class

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

background. A communist, he was deeply influenced by

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...

and

Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...

, despising the philosophy of

G. W. F. Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...

, which made him quite unpopular with Marxists. Hiller was also an influential writer in the early German

gay rights Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality. Notably, , 3 ...

movement in the first two decades of the 20th century. Hiller was elected as vice-chairman of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in 1929. In 1929 he took over as chairman from fellow gay activist

Magnus Hirschfeld Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a German physician and sexologist. Hirschfeld was educated in philosophy, philology and medicine. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Com ...

. Like Hirschfeld, he had affairs with men but did not publicly identify himself as homosexual. He is remembered, too, for his book ''§175: Schmach des Jahrhunderts'' (Paragraph 175: Outrage of the Century) published in 1922. Hiller maintained that if homosexuals wanted change, they would have to effect it themselves. Hiller was arrested by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

in March 1933 following the Nazi seizure of power and was severely beaten before his release in August 1933. He spent nine months in prisons and in the earliest

concentration camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

, being transferred to Columbia-Hauss,

Brandenburg Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a states of Germany, state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an ar ...

and

Oranienburg concentration camp Oranienburg was an early Nazi concentration camp, one of the first detention facilities established by the Nazis in the state of Prussia when they gained power in 1933. It held the political opponents of Nazi Party from the Berlin region, mos ...

. He was released in April 1934. He fled to

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

immediately after his release, and met his partner (a member of the

Social Democratic Party of Germany The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the ...

) there while in exile. He later left Prague for

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 1938. In 1955, he returned to

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

, shortly after which he tried and failed to reestablish the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. In the 1960s, he began formulating another attempt to petition against

Paragraph 175 Paragraph 175 (known formally a§175 StGB also known as Section 175 in English) was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision ...

, but did not complete it. He lived and wrote in Hamburg until his death in 1972. As a renowned and prominent gay activist from the beginning of the century to his death he was connected with many other activists of the

first homosexual movement The first homosexual movement thrived in Germany from the late nineteenth century until 1933. The movement began in Germany because of a confluence of factors, including the criminalization of sex between men (Paragraph 175) and the country's ...

such as

Eva Siewert Eva Siewert (11 February 1907 – 3 December 1994) was a German journalist, writer, radio announcer and opera singer, who lived and worked mainly in Berlin. Childhood Eva Siewert was born in Breslau (today Wrocław, Poland), the daughter of tw ...

and many more.

References

External links

BiographyKurt Hiller: A 1928 Gay Rights Speech
1885 births 1972 deaths German gay writers German political writers German male non-fiction writers German Peace Society members Homosexual concentration camp survivors Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom Jewish pacifists Jewish socialists LGBT Jews LGBT journalists from Germany LGBT rights activists from Germany Male journalists People convicted under Germany's Paragraph 175 Writers from Berlin 20th-century German journalists {{Germany-activist-stub

References

Further reading

External links