A peculiar species of meeting-places for the urnings of Berlin is represented by the soldiers’ public-houses in the neighbourhood of the barracks, where soldiers are met and treated by homosexuals, and where arrangements are made for subsequent meetings. There also exists a “soldiers’ promenade,” where the soldiers walk up and down and offer themselves to homosexuals. Athletes also enter freely into relationships with homosexuals.
Urnings’ balls are to-day especially characteristic of Berlin. Von Krafft-Ebing has described them in detail, and recently also Hirschfeld has alluded to them in the above-mentioned work. I myself not long ago attended such a “men’s ball,” at which from eight hundred to a thousand homosexuals were present, some in men’s clothing, some in women’s clothing, some in fancy dress. The homosexuals dressed as women could have been distinguished from real women only by those in the secret. More particularly do I recall an elegant sylph, who, on the arm of a partner, glided across the hall—“glided” is the correct expression. During the dance his delicate features were leaning on the shoulder of the man, and he coquetted continually with ardent black eyes. I really believed this was a woman, but was assured that it was a male hairdresser. In the case of another urning dressed as a woman the diagnosis was rendered easier by a well-developed moustache.
The seamy side of the relationships of homosexuals in public life is constituted by the so-called “male prostitution,” which existed even in ancient times, and in our own day was especially well organized during the Second Empire, as we learn from the details given by Tardieu. The ranks of male prostitution are recruited partly from homosexual and partly from heterosexual men of the lower and more poverty-stricken classes, who give themselves for payment to well-to-do urnings, and are practised in all the arts of elaborate coquetry (they use rouge, make a coquettish display of male charms, etc.). These are the so-called “aunts.” In all large towns there exists what is called a “Strich” (promenade), where male prostitutes are accustomed to walk, in order to attract their clients. In Berlin the principal promenades are the Friedrichstrasse, the Passage,[547] and some of the walks in the Tiergarten. Like female prostitution, so also male prostitution has its “houses of accommodation”; and in France there even existed, and still exist, typical “male brothels.” From 1820 to 1826 such a brothel was to be found in the Rue du Doyenne in Paris. In the neighbourhood of the Louvre the male inmates of this establishment were even subjected to regular medical examination, in order to protect their clients from venereal infection. With the fall of twilight the visitors made their appearance, and were received by young effeminates.[548] Still worse was another form of male prostitution, at the time of the Restoration, and in the earlier years of the reign of Louis Philippe—namely, the so-called grande montre des culs in the Rue des Marais, where a number of male prostitutes displayed and offered their charms to the homosexuals visiting the place. A detailed account of the way in which this was done cannot be given, but is sufficiently indicated by what has already been said.[549]
Male brothels exist even at the present day in Paris. Thus, at the end of the year 1905 in the Rue St. Martin there was a small hotel whose homosexual proprietor not only let rooms to urnings for a brief stay, but also kept on the premises five or six young men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two years, whose services were always available for homosexuals for payment. Besides this hotel there existed also in the year 1905 a kind of male brothel in the house of an urning, where at midday half a dozen young fellows were to be found, or could be fetched at brief notice, for the choice of homosexual visitors, for whose use a room was available at so many francs per hour.[550]
A phenomenon intimately related with male prostitution is blackmail, or “chantage.” Tardieu (op. cit., pp. 128-130) describes these relationships in vivid colours, and lays stress on the close relationship between male prostitution and criminality. Blackmail has become to-day a kind of special profession,[551] which is not directed solely against homosexuals, but also against heterosexuals, and the punishment of which cannot be too severe. Frequently these individuals, whose activity is a danger to the community at large, persecute their victims for many years in succession. Tardieu reports the case of a celebrated literary man, “whose purse the blackmailers regarded as their own.” For more than twenty years in succession he was plucked by successive generations of blackmailers, who considered him an assured source of income. He was “passed on from one to another.” As a rule, blackmailers wait for their victims in public lavatories; they suddenly assert that they have been indecently assaulted, and demand hush-money, which is commonly given to them, even by heterosexuals. A case of the last-mentioned kind recently occurred in Berlin, when a quite innocent young merchant was being plundered in this way, and his wife, by a courageous denunciation of the shameless blackmailer, freed him from this tyranny. It is, however, unquestionable that blackmail often ensues upon real advances on the part of homosexuals, and after the performance of sexual acts; and there is no doubt that in Germany the existence of § 175 of the Criminal Code has been most advantageous to professional blackmailers, has led to numerous scandals (alike disagreeable and dangerous to the community), and has given rise to numerous suicides.
This celebrated § 175 runs as follows:
“Unnatural vice between two persons of the male sex, or between a man and an animal, is punishable with imprisonment; it can also be punished with loss of civil rights.”
This paragraph of the Imperial Criminal Code is identical with § 143 of the former Prussian Criminal Code. Similar ordinances,[552] in some cases even more severe, are found in the laws of Austria-Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Bulgaria, the State of New York, most of the cantons of Switzerland, and more especially in Great Britain, where the most severe punishments are inflicted, and, at any rate logically, are inflicted also on women who practise homosexual intercourse. On the other hand, punishment for homosexual intercourse has been completely abolished in France, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Turkey, Italy, Spain, the Swiss Cantons of Genf, Wallis, Waadt and Tessin, the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, the Principality of Monaco, and in Mexico.
§ 143 of the Prussian Criminal Code was adopted as the basis of § 175 of the German Criminal Code, in view of “the consciousness of right of the people,” who “condemn such practices not only as vicious, but also as criminal.” But this consciousness of right is based upon defective knowledge, and upon an erroneous view of homosexuality. As soon as we recognize that in homosexuality we have to do with a primary natural disposition, and as soon as this view has permeated wide circles of the population, the old consciousness of right will be replaced by a new one, which will demand the repeal of a criminal law, by which a natural phenomenon is regarded as a vice and a crime, and is esteemed as infamous. My studies in recent years having convinced me that in homosexuality we have to do with a typical biological phenomenon, I feel that I must unhesitatingly approve of the efforts of the Scientific and Humanitarian Committee, founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, which aims at making the people understand the nature of homosexuality, and demands the repeal of § 175 of the German Criminal Code. All the more is this reform demanded because real homosexual crimes can be very readily dealt with by means of the sections of the Criminal Code relating to sexual delinquencies in general.
Apart from this general codification of the injustice of § 175, and apart from the above-mentioned tragical consequences of the existence of this section, it is also necessary to point out that the expressions used therein are absurd and illogical.