Karl Giese

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Karl Giese (left) and Magnus Hirschfeld, photo from the archive of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society

Karl Giese ( October 18, 1898 in Berlin - March 16, 1938 in Brno ) was a German archivist , museum curator and life partner of Magnus Hirschfeld .

life and work

Giese came from a working-class family and was a student when he met Magnus Hirschfeld after a lecture in Munich around 1918 . Hirschfeld is said to have been seriously injured by "völkisch hooligans" and Giese came to his aid. Giese later became an employee and ultimately Hirschfeld's lover. He took over the management of the archive of the Institute for Sexology in Berlin. Hirschfeld described the relationship as a "physical and emotional connection". In the Hirschfeld Salon, Gieses was on friendly terms with the archaeologist Francis Turville-Petre and the writer Christopher Isherwood . He also lectured, designed exhibitions, and wrote articles.

Giese was interested in theater and acting and was part of a theater group himself ( Theater der Eigenen ).

In 1932, when Hirschfeld did not return to Germany from his world tour, Giese drove to meet him. He had to realize that Hirschfeld had found another partner in the 23-year-old medical student Li Shiu Tong . In French exile, they then led a ménage à trois .

After books from the Institute for Sexology had fallen victim to the book burning , Giese stayed for a few months in Brno in 1933 and tried to buy copies there. Here he also made contact with the magazine Nový Hlas : list pro sexuální reformu (New Voice: Magazine for Sexual Reform ) . In this journal, contributions by Hirschfeld and Giese finally appeared.

After a "bathing establishment affair" in October 1934, Giese was asked to leave France. He went to Vienna and lived there for a year. After Hirschfeld's death in 1935, he managed to return to Nice for the funeral. Two months before his death, Hirschfeld had appointed his two lovers, Li Shiu Tong and Karl Giese, as his sole heirs. However, this was linked to the condition that their inheritance should not be used for personal use, but for the purposes of sexology. Karl Giese was awarded the library and those items that had been "saved from Germany" from the institute with his help. But he did not succeed in realizing the material part of the inheritance. In 1936 Giese moved to Brno and lived with the lawyer Karel Fein for a few months, but then moved into his own apartment.

Stolperstein , John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, in Berlin-Tiergarten

Karl Giese committed suicide in Brno in March 1938 after the annexation of Austria . His heir Karel Fein was deported and murdered by the Nazi regime in 1942. Since then, his property and the Hirschfeld heritage have been lost.

On February 9, 2016 , a stumbling block was laid in front of his former home, Berlin-Tiergarten , John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 .

Christopher Isherwood on Karl Giese

“'This committed, serious, intelligent veteran in the struggle for sexual freedom (possessed) an extraordinary innocence,' recalls Isherwood, 'Christopher saw in him the rough farm boy with the heart of a girl who lived in Hirschfeld a long time ago Father figure who fell in love. He also called him his "papa". '"

- Christopher Isherwood on Karl Giese

As a movie character

Karl Giese is mentioned as an actor in the 1919 film Anders als die Andern , as Paul Körner as a student. Rosa von Praunheim pays tribute to Giese in his film drama Der Einstein des Sex .

Publications

  • The Homosexual Murders (1934), In: Capri 49 , Journal of Gay History

swell

  • Capri - Gay History Magazine No. 49 2015
  • Sexology - Journal for Sexual Medicine, Seaxual Therapy and Sexology Volume 20/2013

Web links

Commons : Karl Giese  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Volkmar Sigusch, Günter Grau (ed.): Personenlexikon der Sexualforschung , Campus 2009, 288
  2. ^ Institute for Sexology: Institute employees and domestic staff , accessed on November 5, 2015
  3. ↑ Manfred Herzer: Magnus Hirschfeld. Life and work of a Jewish, gay and socialist sexologist. Frankfurt / New York 1992, 147
  4. ↑ Ralf Dose: In memoriam Li Shiu Tong (1907-1993) on the 10th anniversary of his death on October 5, 2003 . In: Mitteilungen der Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft, Heft 35/36, Berlin 2003, pp. 9–23 (= box), p. 9, note 1
  5. ↑ Hirschfeld in Berlin , accessed on November 6, 2015
  6. ↑ Hirschfeld's heirs , accessed on November 6, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Giese, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German archivist and museum curator
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 1938
Place of death Brno