00:00:03:

00:00:19: Welcome to the podcast of The Leibniz Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam, Germany.

00:00:24: My name is Lee Holtz and I will be hosting this English language version.

00:00:38: I'll be speaking with historians from the Institute about a wide range of topics, Transnational Histories of Crime, Morality and Mobility.

00:01:11: They are also the co-editor with Jonah Guard on this series, Transnational Queer Histories from DeGroeterville.

00:01:18: Welcome Bode!

00:01:20: Thanks Leigh it's great to be here.

00:01:23: I'd like to ask first how did you come into interested in diversity as a scholarly topic?

00:01:28: Well The First thing that i should do actually is part my answer.

00:01:33: Just to start off for listeners, I'm an Australian.

00:01:36: You might be able to tell that... ...I am not a German by my accent and my name.

00:01:40: That means that i was raised on and educated on Ghana land in what's now known as Adelaide In South Australia And so at this point, I do want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land past present and future.

00:01:56: And recognize that their sovereignty was never ceded.

00:01:59: This is actually a really important thing for me too be able to say as an Australian because it's very important not only my practice as a historian but also who i am in person.

00:02:14: I am an Australian, but it took me leaving Australia to realise how little i knew about the place that I came from.

00:02:26: Beyond the very basic sort of quite normative baseline we all tend to receive which tends to be very white um...very Christian and anglophone and anglo-centric In Australia, I never actually studied Australian history at any point in time.

00:02:49: So it really did take me coming to Germany over ten years ago now... ...to recognise that.

00:02:56: you know i didn't actually know that much about the rest of my own country!

00:03:01: It's home to the Australian Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders who are the oldest continuing society in the world.

00:03:08: they've been there for at least sixty millennia.

00:03:10: That is quite some history.

00:03:13: But so much of this has over the years been so easily and eerily dismissed or diminished because Of, The fact that a lot of the history of these people is kept in oral tradition which has typically being seen through Public historical engagement as being quote unquote backwards outside of that normative hegemony.

00:03:36: but there's just So Much There to be Known and this was sort of a shameful moment for me to realize that actually I didn't know that much.

00:03:48: So, you know, it's not if there is basic background where i come from but in terms of what they do as the historian are actually started out being straight down-the line nineteenth century political diplomatic and social historian.

00:04:02: my dissertation was on The Kingdom of Wurttemberg during the time with German unification And part of that work.

00:04:10: as an interesting aside, I was looking at the King of Württemberg a guy called Karl who was very gay.

00:04:18: What's fascinating to me is this was sometimes not even a secret – the press actually openly wrote about when he appeared in public with his lover and American man named Charles Woodcock .

00:04:31: The press didn't like it but for no reason expected which were, I assume them to be deeply homophobic.

00:04:40: but instead their problem was well the king's lover is very ugly and we think he can do better.

00:04:47: This so unexpected of course that i've kind of thought there something more here?

00:04:53: There's something look at her that didn't expect And these are my villain origin stories.

00:04:59: really

00:05:01: Once you moved into your career in contemporary history how did your understanding diversity develop as you continued a research?

00:05:08: Well, certainly when I started moving towards the twentieth century and have done that shift of...I started with the the nineteenth.

00:05:17: I went back into the eighteenth a little bit now.

00:05:19: i'd mostly do twentieth centuries so you know we're doing hundreds and hundreds of years here but this also largely developed because I generated an interest in queer history.

00:05:36: You know, looking at the through lines that we have here and looking at... ...the gaps in our knowledge and understanding that we now.

00:05:46: And also the received... ...understanding of not only periods in history but past there's this idea always seems to come about That it was bad before and nowhere more liberal And we're just going to become more liberal in the future.

00:06:07: Obviously, this is false but it's also a very seductive narrative and something that I certainly felt needed to be challenged.

00:06:19: But part of that requires going into the weeds.

00:06:24: looking at complicating existing narratives quite a bit more so ended up becoming central for my work.

00:06:32: Where has your work on diversity taken you in terms of your scholarship?

00:06:36: Like what are you working on right now?

00:06:39: So I've got a couple of projects on the go at the moment.

00:06:42: actually The first is a book project that i've just started which Is Effectively looking at the erosion or rather be the ways In which transgender people lived in Germany throughout the twenties through to the forties and how this gradually was eroded But also an emphasis on that living, how people actually lived in the past.

00:07:12: How they experienced themselves.

00:07:15: That's sort of at the heart of this and I think This is all so especially important given what we're seeing At The moment with sort Of this backlash to transgender rights Especially In countries where We imagine To be the liberal democratic bastions Where we've had these hard one queer rights places like the United States, The United Kingdom but also Germany.

00:07:36: So that's a work that is also response to this too.

00:07:41: sort of be like well we can go back and have look at how people engaged in the past especially as the past moved towards these more illiberal times and repressive time escalated it such way.

00:07:57: But other project I On the go at the moment is looking after The war and looking at recovery of trans communities in West Germany, In particular basically proceeding on this idea Of you do have these vibrant gender diverse Queer communities people we would call trans now or would fall under an umbrella of trans Before the Nazis came to power.

00:08:25: And After the Nazis are defeated These Communities have effectively been smashed, but they don't disappear.

00:08:36: There are still trans people and obviously you know They gain more and more prominence such that by the start of the nineteen eighties The West German government is legislating about trans people with their first transsexual ingezettes.

00:08:50: So obviously they become more and More important in this period such That they become a political issue.

00:08:57: And my question here is basically how do these communities that were smashed by nineteen forty five recover enough, they then become this important political issue as of the nineteen eighties and certainly beyond.

00:09:13: I want to emphasise there are transnational connections between similar communities in other places close to West Germany.

00:09:22: so you have networks both material and otherwise, coming from places outside of West Germany.

00:09:32: So people find each other after the war in these communities?

00:09:35: I mean... The entire continent was in disarray And there were refugees underway In every possible direction.

00:09:41: How did they find one another After the War?

00:09:44: This is going to be One of the important questions Of project rights Like how do you reform a community that Is gone effectively That has been exploded?

00:09:56: One of the issues that we have here is, so we know there are plenty trans people who do actually survive the war.

00:10:03: So... We had a number who were persecuted and killed but also some survived the war And we know them.

00:10:11: But they survived largely because kept their heads down.

00:10:18: As result They don't necessarily take position on prominence after the war.

00:10:25: So until recently, we thought that Dorre Richter... The first trans woman to have what we would call gender-affirming surgery at Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin.

00:10:38: We thought she died during the War but only recently has it been uncovered by my colleague Lada Hartmann That actually survived and she lived for decades afterwards, but in obscurity.

00:10:50: In a small rural village where she didn't make waves uh... And she wasn't this sort of lightning rod of community.

00:10:59: so you see that there are plenty of trans people in West Germany after the war who do have learned the lesson to keep their heads down not draw any attention But at the same time public number of visible trans people outside of West Germany who are then acting as a kind I'm trying to think of the English kind of a forebuild, so-to speak for people who remain within Germany.

00:11:36: So it's not really a coincidence that during the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties you get The rise Of A Number Of Variety Shows That Include A Number of Gender Diverse People Who Are Generally Exoticized And It's Emphasized That They Come From Somewhere Else.

00:11:54: And this, I think is probably the genesis of the rebuilding of these sorts of communities that you then have people who are able to be standard bearers.

00:12:05: Who aren't necessarily initially from Germany themselves and German transpeople sort of taking a little bit of backseat as opposed through what it had been under the Weimar years.

00:12:18: Could you just talk about more about this transnational component?

00:12:23: It's very striking to me that before the war, national cultures were largely insular homogenous.

00:12:29: Then after the War, the socio-political realities—the fracturing of those nation states is then also accompanied by a new diversity in all kinds of dimensions

00:12:52: sorts of identities that we're talking about here.

00:12:55: So for me, that's queer identities or people who would be regarded as trans.

00:12:59: now these don't know national boundaries.

00:13:03: you are not trans because your German.

00:13:08: You're not Queer Because Your From Berlin and in fact We see well before the war And In The Weimar Period For instance That Germany Becomes And Particularly Berlin but also Hamburg and other places, become sort of gathering points for a number of queer people from around the world.

00:13:28: You get a lot of British queer people end up in Berlin.

00:13:34: very famously Christopher Isherwood W H Orden come to Berlin.

00:13:38: we could almost call them sex tourists really because they're actually coming to experience being gay part.

00:13:46: But they've come to Berlin to experience their homosexuality because that is something that they're able to do in Berlin, but then not as easily able to elsewhere.

00:13:58: There's also the sexual sciences, sexology and so on a huge number of the sexologists who end up in the Scandinavian countries are trained initially in Berlin.

00:14:14: Also, you have other sexologist.

00:14:18: Harry Benjamin becomes a very important one in the United States.

00:14:21: He's very famous for arguably popularizing the term transsexual and also being responsible But he too was trained under Hirschfeld in Berlin.

00:14:43: So you have these very interesting connections, In which the world is kind of coming to Germany and then going back And... The expansion Of These Queer Identities Is Part and Pastel of Pre-War Years As Well.

00:15:02: It's Important To Me That These Connections Already Exist that these are also identities, but to some extent no-no borders.

00:15:11: A gay man in London and a gay men in Berlin might not share nationality ,but they share sexuality And These are identities That can cross these constraints of geopolitical borders.

00:15:26: It's only Since you have this calamity at the end of the war, that you have these destroyed communities and so on but also the opportunity to rebuild.

00:15:37: That you end up having people being able to come back or actually start building something... And it's same time you still see a lot of influence in pre-war years happening.

00:15:51: So there's a discourse that still exists in Denmark, for instance of the fact that Denmark was well ahead of a lot of the world in terms of its queer rights.

00:16:01: it creates an explicit Queer Rights Organization in nineteen forty eight and at least one of the narratives of why this happened in Denmark before elsewhere Was The Fact That Denmark Is Quite Close To Berlin.

00:16:16: So you have these connections already hard-baked into these communities.

00:16:22: Still speaking about the postwar era and the reconstitution of queer or transgendered communities, were there differences in developments in the East and the West?

00:16:31: Oh absolutely not.

00:16:34: my place necessarily to talk so much.

00:16:39: My focus here is a lot more on west Germany because My standpoint here is effectively that we know so little about trans history post-war.

00:16:49: It would be fantastic to have comparative studies of Eastern West Germany, but in order to do that We really need to know where we stand for at least one Of them So that we have points of comparison In the first place and this sort of history simply doesn't exist.

00:17:07: Quinnis in general, there have been some landmark works that had been done.

00:17:12: Andrea Rotman for instance has recently published Queer Lives Across the Wall which looks at queer relationships in sort of this flashpoint of East and West Berlin.

00:17:25: Sam Klaus Hoenecke has written a fantastic book called States Of Liberation which looked specifically at gay movements in both Eastern-West Germany.

00:17:38: The point here is that we do have some very interesting and very complex competing narratives where there is also this kind of received image.

00:17:48: That East Germany was actually further ahead on Gay or queer rights compared to the West, as a result Being a little bit less concerned about the sort of moral imperatives that we're at play here, um... The truth is significantly more complicated than that.

00:18:15: Um as Sam Hoonika points out among others But this just demonstrates how much more is needed right now How Much More Research Is Required.

00:18:25: You and I also recently spoke About how the history Of transgender communities in Germany Continues to be contested specifically about the persecution That went on under the Nazis And you were recently involved in a court case, I believe.

00:18:38: We'd like to hear more about

00:18:39: that.".

00:18:41: I don't really need to go into the specifics so much there, but it was simply the fact that someone had been accused of denying national socialist crimes by suggesting that trans people had not being persecuted under the Nazis and have therefore brought a case of defamation.

00:19:13: And I was asked to write illegal briefs to answer.

00:19:22: I mean, the first question of that is were there trans people at the time of The National Socialists?

00:19:27: Um...I was not the only person asked to do that.

00:19:31: My colleague Laurie Marhofer from the University Washington also wrote a brief for that and ...the end result.

00:19:39: if that was effectively say yes transpeople existed or people we would understand as trans now they didn't use this same terminology.

00:19:46: Of course our vocabulary has developed quite a lot in uh, in the intervening decades.

00:19:53: Um so we don't have people who call themselves trans or transgender at this time.

00:19:58: um but certainly The characteristics as we understand them would place them under the umbrella of trans now.

00:20:07: So yes trans people existed.

00:20:09: Yes they were certainly persecuted by the Nazis As well And the decision from the court and then on appeal By the upper court was effectively.

00:20:21: Though they weren't explicitly judging on the question of whether or not trans people were persecuted, it was part and parcel of the decision.

00:20:29: So de facto there is a legal precedent now to establish that yes, trans people where persecuted under the Nazis.

00:20:36: this has also been acknowledged by The Bundestag, the German parliament which included queer people off all stripes in its Holocaust memorialization on the twenty-seventh of January in twenty, twenty three.

00:20:54: And more recently there has been a discussion in The Bundestag than the Bundesrat so the German equivalent of the Senate effectively as to whether trans and queer people should be protected under under Article III, its anti-discrimination clause.

00:21:14: And a lot of that has been on the basis of were these people discriminated against or persecuted under The Nazis as well?

00:21:23: That was an open hearing in twenty-twenty three.

00:21:26: I also involved and along with colleagues at mine including Anna Heikova from University Warwick in United Kingdom... ...and most experts there actually historians!

00:21:40: Points to the importance of their history here, too.

00:21:43: The present day constitutional discussions.

00:21:45: I'm

00:21:46: another question now that brings us more closely into the president.

00:21:49: why is diversity becomes such a front and center issue throughout the world?

00:21:58: One of the basic ones here is that we have become what it's not necessarily, but We've become more diverse societies.

00:22:06: But we've become openly diverse societies and there's also The point hear that I'm with Also talking Here in the context Of higher education In academia.

00:22:18: of course Higher Education has Become much more of a mass education apparatus, it's no longer necessarily the purview of very small elite.

00:22:30: Here in Germany for example higher education is free.

00:22:35: that does mean students from theoretically at least students form wide range backgrounds can now access university education where previously they couldn't.

00:22:46: In other countries, you have similar things as well.

00:22:49: The advent of education loans in a number of places.

00:22:53: whatever we want to think about education loans has still made it possible to go to university and study there.

00:23:03: so that means they aren't just elites anymore.

00:23:07: That means this is not entirely restricted to vast majority men from a particular social class, from the particular socio-economic background.

00:23:18: From a particular racial or ethnic backgrounds.

00:23:22: you have women and queer people who are finally able access higher education... And of course they're coming into this.

00:23:33: if we look at history for example traditional histories that we have also tend to be pale male and stale.

00:23:43: And so there is this want of people coming to universities, being like well where am I in this history?

00:23:51: Because clearly I exist!

00:23:53: And i didn't spring up from nowhere... ...I HAVE forebears.

00:23:58: Where are they in this

00:23:59: History?!

00:24:00: So There IS certainly a lot looking for ourselves in.

00:24:04: history has made this shift possible and it's lit a fire under us, to sort of take on more diverse topics in what we do.

00:24:17: Also I think that there is a degree of dissatisfaction with the certain inertia you know, there's a lot of disenfranchisement.

00:24:35: There is a lot unhappiness with the way things are run or taught

00:24:40: etc.,

00:24:46: and we recognize that wonderful wonderland of unfettered rights and so on.

00:25:02: And, maybe we need to actually start questioning the basis behind all these assumptions?

00:25:09: That means being open to alternate approaches or different ideas... ...and a more diverse cast of characters in our history and present people who have agency that don't just do things done then!

00:25:26: So, diversity can sometimes be a perhaps uncomfortable topic in conservative cultural circles.

00:25:33: And how do you think scholars can communicate innovative cutting-edge research on the subject of diversity to a broader public?

00:25:41: Perhaps the follow up question would be….

00:25:44: Do you think that scholars and academics have responsibility towards the public – some sort educational imperative or presumptuous?

00:25:53: I'm going to answer these in reverse order.

00:25:56: Do we have a responsibility towards the public?

00:25:58: Yes, one hundred percent.

00:26:00: there is no question in my mind of that.

00:26:02: Is that presumptuous?

00:26:03: i don't think so.

00:26:04: it's One Of The Things That A Number Of People Seem To Believe That Everyone Can Just Do History And I Certainly Believe That History Belongs Through Everyone.

00:26:14: The democratization of history has been a wonderful thing that Has Happened and There Is A Magnificent Appetite of the general public.

00:26:24: People like history, they often don't like the way that used to be taught it!

00:26:29: They have very bad memories about what is was in school for example where all timelines and you know remember name this king but... In reality I've rarely come across people who are not interested in history and some ways deeply fascinated by various elements.

00:26:49: so there's appetite for it there.

00:26:52: And we have the privilege and the honor to have been trained in how to be the custodians of this history, We're not that gatekeepers but with a custodian's where they people who had given them critical training to interpret ,to understand .And to able communicate this.

00:27:17: quite frankly if you don't do that beyond the, you know The cliched ivory towers of academia then I don't actually understand what we're doing or why were there.

00:27:32: We do have that responsibility.

00:27:34: We do Have their obligation.

00:27:36: and again?

00:27:37: We Do have that privilege to be able To do That.

00:27:41: so Absolutely!

00:27:44: Is this uncomfortable in some conservative circles?

00:27:48: yeah Some of this discomfort is perhaps a little bit understandable.

00:27:55: I like to lie to myself a little and say that i'm relatively young-ish still, there are plenty people who have been doing history for literally decades before me... There's plenty of people method of history.

00:28:18: There have been, there are certainly people who continue to do... Again I was sort of dismissive with my previous work.

00:28:27: when it's straight down the line political diplomatic history you know?

00:28:32: They're a people that do extremely good political and diplomatic history And quite a lot.

00:28:39: those may not take into account certain more diverse topics.

00:28:47: It's possible to hear something like this where I've been talking about, This is our responsibility.This Is Our Obligation Here.

00:28:53: Let Me Talk About Trans History For A Bit and then think well you know i did political history of the nineteen seventies And trans people didn't turn up in that.

00:29:04: Are You Saying That My History Is Bad Or That You Know Im Not a Good Historian or Something Along Those Lines There?

00:29:13: Definitely A Way To Feel defensive about that.

00:29:20: And to that, I would certainly answer the we.

00:29:23: you know no one can do everything.

00:29:27: We need to approach history in a way that is open and in good faith.

00:29:32: i don't Advocate That every single person listening To this or every single Person wherever I work Or Every Single Person In The Discipline Around The World Needs to Suddenly Put Down Tools and Start Writing Trans History.

00:29:46: That's not what I'm suggesting at all.

00:29:49: What i do argue is that we need to be open To the possibility, that there are potentially these further aspects that could integrate into our work?

00:30:03: That you know... There are Labour history implications of trans-history in West Germany as I've discovered more recently.

00:30:12: there's a lot to be said, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to focus on it.

00:30:23: But I think an open mind which is certainly something we're encouraged to have as a major part of our training... An Open Mind is extremely important tool for this!

00:30:36: That would sort my answer the fears let us say some more conservative elements

00:30:46: And moving outside the discipline, outside of the field of history or even the field humanities.

00:30:51: I wanted to ask you how does this study our discussion contemporary history and we can remain focused here somewhat on the dimension diversity?

00:30:59: How is that affect sociopolitical reality?

00:31:02: are what be called a real world?

00:31:04: oh This is the relevance question.

00:31:07: um i hate their relevance questions But I also love it.

00:31:11: It's important, um...I very much have the Love-Hate relationship here.

00:31:15: so i'm going to give my boilerplate answer to be that we don't need to boil everything down to relevance That research for researchers' sake is actually valid and should be done.

00:31:29: However there IS a real world relevance To all of this.

00:31:35: So We've already touched on the aforementioned court case.

00:31:41: The fact that, you know there is a de facto acknowledgement in German law now that trans people were persecuted has important implications for uh...the understanding of the transpast and therefore also the trans present.

00:31:55: um we can also point for example to uh..the work that's been done by a number of my colleagues post-colonial or decolonial studies, which has led for example to things as basic but also important.

00:32:15: As the renaming of roads and public spaces in Germany away from names that were deeply racist based on a colonial past.

00:32:30: uh, important people from what we might call quote unquote diverse backgrounds in this country.

00:32:37: that has previously been sort of understood in this existing narrative as being quite homogenous.

00:32:44: Uh nothing could be further from the truth but this has not necessarily been reflected In our public spaces and this is slowly changing.

00:32:53: Not without protest But it's slowly changing And I think This can only Be an important and good step because it provides visibility, and that provides representation.

00:33:05: And... An important aspect of how communities see themselves or are seen as being legitimate for better or worse is having a community history!

00:33:17: So to have the community history front-and-center IS very important to recognise people as they are now.

00:33:27: On the flip side, what we're seeing right now in for example The United States where we are seeing the erasure of specific histories of women or people of colour from government history initiatives.

00:33:39: Or taking down monuments that acknowledge the past of chattel slavery... ...or removing mention of transgender people from Stonewall National Monument.

00:33:51: This actually shows the flipside here.

00:33:52: Um, this is demonstrating again the importance of history to The uh social existence of various communities and consequently it Is not a coincidence That one of the first steps in what we might look at as As repressive measures.

00:34:14: It's the erasure Of that history.

00:34:16: so we have sort of this This rather negative acknowledgement This history does have, and this history of diversity has an extremely important socio-political consequence.

00:34:28: And so therefore there's the elision on that.

00:34:31: Thank you very much Bode for speaking with us today.

00:34:34: I'm looking forward to reading your future work.

00:34:36: It's been a pleasure.

00:34:38: it is lovely be able talk about these things their own histories and to be able to see themselves in history, not necessarily believe that they have to conform a particular narrative.

00:35:00: This is the great thing about our history.

00:35:03: it's more diverse than you can possibly imagine from the Leibniz Zentrum für Zeithistorische

00:35:19: Forschung

00:35:20: in

00:35:47: Potsdam.