Kitty Kuse

Käthe 'Kitty' Kuse (born March 17, 1904 in Schöneberg near Berlin as Hedwig Emma Käthe Kuse ; † November 7, 1999 in Berlin) was an activist of lesbian emancipation in Germany after the Second World War. She started the first group for older lesbian women and was the founder, editor and author of the monthly magazine UKZ - Our Little Newspaper .

Life

Memorial stone for Kitty Kuse in the old St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof in Berlin

Kitty Kuse grew up in a left-wing workers' milieu in Berlin-Schöneberg on. After elementary school and vocational training, she worked as a commercial clerk .

During the National Socialist era , Kitty Kuse did not join the NSDAP and did not belong to any NS organization. She was unemployed for a long time and later worked as a punch on the assembly line. She hid her sexual identity and considered adopting a male first name. A doctor from Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexology advised her against it so that she would not be on record with the Nazis. She supported lesbians who were persecuted as Jewish. So she brought Gertrude Sandmann groceries across Berlin to the hiding place. After the Second World War she lived in East Berlin , caught up with her Abitur and studied economics.

Before the Wall was built , she moved to West Berlin with her partner . In the 1950s and 1960s, lesbian sexuality was not a criminal offense, “but the repression that existed under National Socialism against any way of life that did not correspond to the classic family image and the ideal of housewife marriage continued. Women-loving women were exposed to massive marital pressure, which forced them to lead a double life and to deny their sexual orientation. The taboo worked so far that even today the words 'lesbian' or 'lesbian' are hardly pronounceable for witnesses of that time ”. In the feminist movement of the 1970s, the name 'lesbian' was converted from a discriminatory to a positive, resistant term.

In November 1974, Kitty Kuse and other women founded the group "L 74". "L" stood for Lesbos , "74" for the year of foundation. In the group, older working or retired women first met in the rooms of the Homosexual Campaign West Berlin (HAW) . Some of them had got to know the lesbian culture during the Weimar period . It was the first union of older lesbians whose realities differed from those of younger people in the movement . Gertrude Sandmann and her partner Tamara Streck were among the occasional employees. From February 1975, Kuse published the UKZ group's small-format monthly magazine - our little newspaper , which existed until 2001. Sandmann's drawing Lovers illustrated the title page for years. The publication was intended to help make homophobia and sexism visible in society and encourage lesbian women to step out of isolation.

“Kitty Kuse was never a femme fatale and yet lived beyond all conventions. She had had relationships with women since she was 16 and yet never had contact with the dazzling subculture of the Weimar period [...] Kitty Kuse managed the trick of swimming with the flow and yet living against the grain. "

- Use Kokula

On Kuse's 112th birthday, a memorial stone for Kitty Kuse was laid to commemorate the pioneer of the lesbian movement as part of the 160th anniversary of the Old St. Matthew Cemetery in Berlin and the Berlin Women's March 2016. Eva Rieger and Christiane von Lengerke paid tribute to their lives. In June 2017, a green area in Berlin-Schöneberg was named Kitty-Kuse-Platz .

documentary

• Tille Ganz: Kitty Kuse , portrait film, 45 min, 1985/94

Web links

Commons : Kitty Kuse  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• fembio.org
• lesbengeschichte.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Birth register StA Schöneberg I, No. 685/1904
2. ↑ ^{a b} Ilse Kokula: Quite normally different and committed. ibid. p. 131
3. ↑ ^{a b} Ilse Kokula, Christiane von Lengerke, Eva Rieger : Käthe (Kitty) Kuse. On fembio.de
4. ↑ Dilek Kolat : Foreword. In: Christiane Leidinger: Lesbian Existence 1945–1969. Aspects of research into social exclusion and discrimination of lesbian women with a focus on life situations, experiences of discrimination and emancipation in the early Federal Republic (= documents of lesbian-gay emancipation. 34). Senate Department for Labor, Integration and Women - State Office for Equal Treatment - Against Discrimination, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-9816391-5-5 , p. 7.
5. ↑ Ilse Lenz : Lesbians become visible . In this. (Ed.): The New Women's Movement in Germany , VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-17436-5 , p. 226.
6. ↑ Ilse Lenz, ibid. P. 239
7. ↑ UKZ : ZDB -ID 9112-1
8. ^ Eva Bornemann, Helga Trachsel: Group L 74 and the magazine UkZ (Our little newspaper). In: Gabriele Dennert (Ed.): Keep moving. 100 years of lesbian politics, culture and history. Querverlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89656-148-0 , pp. 77-79, here p. 77.
9. ^ Franka Fieseler: On the history of lesbian-feminist magazines in Germany. In: Lea Susemichel, Saskya Rudiger, Gabi Horak (eds.): Feminist media. Publics beyond the malestream. Ulrike Helmer, Königstein (Taunus) 2008, ISBN 978-3-89741-265-1 , pp. 134–150, here pp. 138 f.
10. ↑ Ilse Kokula: Quite normally different and committed. In: Baerbel Becker (Ed.): Bad Women. Luder, Schlampen and Xanthippen (= Elefanten-Press. 315 picture reading book ). Elefanten Press, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-88520-315-4 , pp. 130-131, here p. 131. Quoted by Sigrid Wiegand: Kitty Kuse - With the flow and yet against the grain. In: Schöneberg district newspaper. Online edition, March 1, 2016.
11. ↑ A memorial stone for Kitty Kuse , zwoelf-apostel-berlin.de
12. ↑ Charlie Kaufhold: Stepping out of isolation. Memorial stone for Kitty Kuse: A pioneer of the lesbian movement is remembered in Berlin. In: Junge Welt , 11 March 2016, p. 15.
13. ↑ Memorial stone for Kitty Kuse , press release of the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district office
14. ↑ Schwules Museum ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.