Urning: Queer Identity in the German Nineteenth Century was launched via zoom in April 2024. View the video of the launch here.
Urning: Queer Identity in the German Nineteenth Century
by Douglas Pretsell
Douglas Pretsell’s Urning: Queer Identity in the German Nineteenth Century reconstructs and describes the world of the men who took on Ulrichs’s neologism as a personal identity. Drawing on letters, memoirs, and autobiographic psychiatric case studies, the book preferences the voices of the men themselves as they describe their experience and personal insights. Starting with Karl Heinrich Ulrichs’s activism, the book explores the first tentative steps by some of the urnings to own their identities publicly and change the world around them through their own activism. Ultimately their efforts paved the way for the foundation of the world’s first queer rights organisation, the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee, in 1897. Urning argues that the urnings were self-identified, self-constructed agents of their own destinies.
The book can be ordered from: (NORTH AMERICA) UTP, Amazon.com, Indigo, and Barnes and Noble; (UNITED KINGDOM) Amazon.co.uk, and Blackwells; (GERMANY) Hugendubel , Thalia and Amazon.de ; (AUSTRALIA) New South Books Amazon.com.au, Booktopia, and Fishpond
CONTENTS:
Introduction: The Age of the Urning Begins
Part One: 1862−18711. The First Urning: Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, 1825–1895
2. From Page to Personhood: The Transmission of Urningtum, 1864–1868
3. Two Trials: Sensation, Horror, and the Urning in the Public Sphere, 1867–1870
4. Sins of the City: Karl Maria Kertbeny and the Social Cross-Dressers, 1865–1880Part Two: 1872–18975. The Matchmaker of Switzerland: Jakob Rudolf Forster’s Grassroots Activism in Germanic Switzerland, 1878–1897
6. Queering Psychiatry: Autobiographical Lobbying of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, 1864–1901
7. Belling the Cat: Adolf Glaser’s Discreet Police-Liaison in Berlin, 1878–1897
8. The Comradely Uranian: John Addington Symonds and the English Translation of the Urning, 1889–1893Conclusion: The End of the Urning AgeENDORSEMENTS:
“Urning tells the inspirational story of a group of nineteenth-century visionaries who pioneered what we now call LGBTQ+ consciousness and the struggle for queer freedom. They risked all to challenge the homophobic consensus a century before the 1969 Stonewall uprising. A fascinating hidden history revealed.”
Peter Tatchell, Activist and Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation
“Douglas Pretsell’s new book contributes to a lively reassessment of the interpretation of sexual knowledge (especially the emerging field of sexology) in relation to how real people understood themselves, to public consciousness of sexual difference, and to emancipation activism. What we see here is the strong degree to which queer people self-consciously intervened in their own representation, leading to – but also pushing against – the understandings of sexuality we take for granted today.” Scott Spector, Rudolf Mrazek Collegiate Professor of History and German Studies, University of Michigan
“By delving into unexplored archives of correspondence between Ulrichs and those who surrounded him, Pretsell undertakes an important new ‘history from below.’ He unpacks how a generation of men came to understand – and value – themselves as urnings, laying the groundwork for future generations of activists and queers. This is a scrupulously researched, insightful, and important book.” Katie Sutton, Associate Professor of German and Gender Studies, Australian National University
“This book is a major contribution to the study of an essential transition period in our understanding of the urning/homosexual.” Hubert Kennedy, Author of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement
Douglas Pretsell is a historian at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. His new book Urning: Queer Identity in the German Nineteenth Century was launched via zoom in April 2024. View the video of the launch here.
The source materials used in Urning have also been published in two critical editions:
The Correspondence of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, 1846-1894. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020;
Queer Voices in the Works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, 1883-1901. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2023.
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