Why does charlotte Von Mahlsdorf Cortsy? Representations of national queerness in a transvestite hero

GLQ

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 171-196

  Giersdorf, Jens Richard ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33646779175     PISSN: 10642684     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/10642684-12-2-171     Document Type: Review

References (77)

1. The play is now touring the United States extensively. It was also staged to rave reviews in Sweden and Poland. Talks are under way lo bring it to Germany and to adapt it for a movie.
2. I call this fact surprising because the different developments of gay and lesbian identification in East and West Germany - despite their shared earlier history - provide an important case study on the impact of national and social systems on sexual identities. This article is a first step toward such an investigation.
3. For a summary of German gay and lesbian culture, see Jens Richard Giersdorf, "Germany," in Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, ed. George E. Haggerty (New York: Garland, 2000), 398-99.
4. I am referring to Charlotte von Mahlsdorf with the female personal pronoun and as a transvestite to conform to her self-identification. While she can be described in terms of the system of pre-op/post-op and transsexual/transgender common in the United States as Henry S. Rubin, Judith Halberstam, and C. Jacob Hale suggest in their writing on these subjects, I want to highlight the specific national termmologies by insisting on von Mahlsdorf's self-definition. Henry S. Rubin, "Phenomenology as Method in Trans Studies," GLQ 4 (1998): 263-82;
5. Judith Halberstam and C. Jacob Hale, "Butch/FTM Border Wars: A Note on Collaboration," GLQ 4 (1998): 283-86;
6. Judith Halberstam, "Transgender Butch: Butch/FTM Border Wars and the Masculine Continuum," GLQ 4 (1998): 287-310;
7. C. Jacob Hale, "Consuming the Living, Dis(re)membering the Dead in the Butch/FTM Borderlands," GLQ 4 (1998): 311-48.
8. This design period could be compared to the North American Arts and Crafts movement. Gründerzeit heavily influenced architecture in many German cities, leading to the subsequent influence of art nouveau and art deco on furniture and architecture.
9. I am recounting here the established version of von Mahlsdorf's biography. There are doubts about the validity of some main facts. Yet the recognition of such incongruities lies at the center of my argument by conceptualizing von Mahlsdorf's retelling of her biography as another layer of her performance. It also acknowledges history as a construct.
10. The German Democratic Republic was founded in 1949 on the territory of the former Soviet Occupation Zone and existed until its incorporation into the political and state structure of the Federal Republic of Germany in the so-called reunification on October 3, 1990.
11. Katrin Sieg, "Deviance and Dissidence: Sexual Subjects of the Cold War," in Cruising the Performative: Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Sexuality, ed. Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 93-111.
12. Katrin Sieg, Cruising the Performative: Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Sexuality, Ibid., 94. The Röhm Affair and the subsequent prosecution of gays and lesbians by the fascist regime, and homophobic rhetoric in communist media at the time, show that both the National Socialists and the Communists used accusations of homosexuality as a defamatory tool. For a detailed discussion of the conflation of fascism and homosexuality,
13. see Andrew Hewitt, Political Inversions: Homosexuality, Fascism, and the Modernist Imaginary (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996).
14. Hans-Georg Stümke, Homosexuelle in Deutschland: Eine politische Geschichte (Munich: Beck, 1989), 63, 99.
15. Defining itself as antifascist, the GDR reverted to the prefascist law. In contrast, West Germany kept the fascist version of §175.
16. The public sphere in East Germany was differently structured from its capitalist counterparts. Restaurants were few and hard to get into. A café and bar culture existed generally only in larger cities. Groups of people would meet mostly in private homes.
17. The East German government prohibited a planned national lesbian meeting at von Mahlsdorf's museum in 1978 and any subsequent gatherings there. For a lesbian perspective on these earlier developments, see Uschi Sillge, Un-Sichtbare Frauen: Lesben und ihre Emanzipation in der DDR (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 1991).
18. Even though the East German state sponsored atheism, the constitution guaranteed religious freedom. The Protestant Church (Evangelische Kirche) was the largest church in the GDR.
19. The gay rights activist Olaf Brühl was one of those few who pointed at the symptomatic abandoning of Marx's historic and dialectic materialism in the government's approach to homosexuality in the GDR. See Bert Thinius, "Vom grauen Versteck ins bunte Ghetto: Ansichten zur Geschichte ostdeutscher Schwuler," in Kurt Starke, Schwuler Osten: Homosexuelle Männer in der DDR (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 1994), 42-44;
20. Olaf Brühl, "Fünf Begegnungen mit 'homosexuellen Bürgerinnen': Ein Nachtrag," in Die DDR. Die Schwulen. Der Aufbruch. Versuch einer Bestandsaufnahme, ed. Jean Jacques Soukup (Göttingen: Schriftenreihe Waldschlösschen, 1990), 131-36.
21. Compare especially reports by Erich Honecker (head of state and general secretary of the Socialist Unity Party) on teaching and communist education. See Protokoll des X. Parteitagen der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1981), 104-16;
22. Protokoll des XI. Parteitages der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1986), 72-86.
23. Still, in 1989, twenty-three church groups and only twelve to fifteen government-sponsored groups existed in East Germany (Soukup, Die DDR, 31).
24. At this point, §151 had not been enforced for years. Olaf Leser, "Homosexuelle in der DDR: Versuch eines historischen Überblicks," in Soukup, Die DDR, 40.
25. Thinius provides the following exchange that exemplifies the ironic and confident approach. Question: "Are homosexuals not suited for particular professions?" Answer: "Yes, if they have a tree pollen allergy, they should probably not become a woodsman" ("Vom grauen Versteck," 60).
26. Soukup, Die DDR, 19.
27. Helmut Kißling and Axel Otten, Die andere Liebe (Berlin: DEFA, 1988).
28. For instance, when the East Germans closed it in 1963, von Mahlsdorf preserved the furniture of the Mulackritze (a gay and lesbian bar since the end of the nineteenth century, frequented for instance by Bertolt Brecht. Magnus Hirschfeld, and Marlene Dietrich).
29. Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, Ich bin meine eigene Frau (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995);
30. Rosa von Praunheim, Ich bin meine eigene Frau (Berlin: Rosa von Praunheim Filmproduktion, 1992).
31. I explain in another article the impact of the awareness of possible observation on corporeality and movement vocabulary. See Jens Richard Giersdorf, "Border Crossings and Intra-national Trespasses: East German Bodies in Sasha Waltz's and Jo Fabian's Choreographies," Theatre Journal 3 (2003): 413-32.
32. Von Mahlsdorf, Ich bin meine eigene Frau, 182. All translations are my own unless noted otherwise.
33. Even though von Mahlsdorf reports on a variety of sexual practices with male partners, her refusal to have surgery as a transvestite does not easily allow a definition of her sexuality in terms of either gay or straight.
34. For one theorization of gender crossing, see Patricia Elliot and Katrin Roen, "Transgenderism and the Question of Embodiment: Promising Queer Politics," GLQ 4 (1998): 231-62.
35. Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Body: Imitation of Life," in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. Bruce Robbing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 173-208.
36. I purposefully use the term mimicry in my understanding of von Mahlsdorf's resistance, and not the term mimesis. See Elin Diamond, "Mimesis, Mimicry, and the 'True-Real,'" Modern Drama 32 (1989): 58-72.
37. Homi K. Bhabha, "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse," in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 85-92.
38. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Ibid., 86.
39. Von Mahlsdorf, Ich bin meine eigene Frau, 191.
40. As Henry S. Rubin stresses in his reevaluation of phenomenology to theorize transsexual and transgender experiences, "Transsexual men know all too well that they have female bodies. They are not psychotic" ("Phenomenology as Method in Trans Studies," GLQ 4 [1998]: 263-82). Von Mahlsdorf acknowledges her male body and integrates it into her female gender identity as well as practiced sexuality, without erasing it.
41. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), xi-xxiv.
42. I Am My Own Wife continued after sold-out performances at Playwrights Horizons to the Lyceum Theater on Broadway.
43. West German TV stations could be received in most parts of East Germany.
44. West German gay liberation mirrored many appearances in U.S. queer culture. In contrast to most of the U.S. movements, however, the West German gay movement defined itself as considerably more left wing in its political agenda and included in its program a vehement critique of capitalism.
45. One heeds the words of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who in 1996 warned that globalization needed to be understood first and foremost as a phenomenon driven by migrant labor, not simply as a question of cultural flows. See Jasbir Kaur Puar, "Circuits of Queer Mobility: Tourism, Travel, and Globalization," GLQ 8 (2002): 114-27.
46. Studies for a Play about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, the subtitle of I Am My Own Wife, supports this notion. The entire production, including the stage design, became much more polished with its Broadway run and the subsequent tour through major cities in the United States. For instance, the door was now clearly part of a backdrop when I saw the play again during its slop in Los Angeles in June 2005. Despite these improvements, the production still seemed to aim for a small-theater aesthetic.
47. Wright's decision to include his position in the play recalls methodologies of contemporary ethnography. Considering ethnographers' limited knowledge of a foreign cultural or social system and their subjective view as well as possible influence on the other system, the inclusion of the ethnographers and the ethnographic process endeavors to avoid a universalizing objectivity that haunted many early anthropological studies.
48. Wright applied for a grant to research von Mahlsdorf for his play. "As far as grant applications go - forgive me - but from where I sit, you're a slam dunk" (Doug Wright, I Am My Own Wife [New York: Faber and Faber, 2004], 19).
49. I am employing the term communist here in line with North American terminology in regard to the East Bloc. The GDR was, of course, not a communist country but defined itself as a developed socialist society in line with Marxist-Leninist doctrine.
50. Martin Sherman, "Bent," in Out Front: Contemporary Gay and Lesbian Plays, ed. Don Shewey (New York: Grove, 1988), 79-148.
51. John Cameron Mitchell, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (New York: New Line Platinum Series, 2001).
52. Wright's play was not the first depiction of von Mahlsdorf. In addition to his movie I Am My Own Wife, Rosa von Praunheim released a short film Charlotte in 2002 using footage from her new life in Sweden. The East German Jürgen Lemke published a brief autobiographical account by von Mahlsdorf in his collection of interviews with East German gay men. See Jürgen Lemke, Cay Voices from East Germany (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). The Belgian director Lies Pauwels and the writer Vanessa von Durne employed von Mahlsdorf's life for an improvised theater piece,
53. White Star (German premiere in Berlin at Hebbel am Ufer, 2004).
54. Wright does not explicitly state who initiated the agreement between him and von Mahlsdorf to request her file. He only recounts that, as a foreign researcher, he had faster access to such files and that von Mahlsdorf "cut a deal" with him to let him read the file if that would secure it faster for her (Wright, I Am My Own Wife, xiii).
55. Doug Wright, interview by author, New York, April 4, 2004. Alfred Kirschner was the fellow collector who had been imprisoned for selling art and antiques to American GIs. His imprisonment might have been enabled by von Mahlsdorf's whistle-blowing.
56. The reliability of Stasi files has been at the center of much controversy, especially when they seem to indicate collaboration of politicians with the Stasi in their earlier careers in East Germany. Wright stated, "Her [Charlotte von Mahlsdorf's] file was curious and inconsistent and no more trustworthy a document than her own autobiography" (interview by author).
57. Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 88-90.
58. There is "talk" in Hollywood about turning Wright's play into a movie. The distribution rights of a major studio would truly globalize the "product von Mahlsdorf."
59. "Columbia University, on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board, annually awards a Pulitzer Prize in drama of ten thousand dollars 'for a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life'" (Pulitzer Prize Office, Terms of the Award, Pulitzer Prize in Drama, www.pulitzer.org, 2004, [accessed January 5, 2005]).
60. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other, 88.
61. Puar asks for a problematization of such restructuring when she states: "Thus one concern to map out is the conjunction between queerness and nationalism that often seems to result from certain recuperations and rewritings of queerness into ethnic and national identity (recuperations by both the nation and the queer, and even by the queer diasporic or racialized subject)" ("Circuits of Queer Mobility," 114).
62. Jill Dolan, "Practicing Cultural Disruptions: Gay and Lesbian Representation of Sexuality," in Critical Theory and Performance, ed. Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 267.
63. For a partially similar argument about sex in the public sphere, see also Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
64. Wright, interview by author.
65. I purposefully refrain from labeling this Brecht's alienation. For an insightful elaboration on the problems of Brechtian technique in regard to feminist issues, see Sue-Ellen Case, ed., The Divided Home/Land: Contemporary German Women's Plays (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 19-22.
66. Helen Thomas, The Body, Dance, and Cultural Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 128.
67. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other, 88.
68. Wright, I Am My Own Wife, 4.
69. Wright, I Am My Own Wife, Ibid., 5.
70. Wright, I Am My Own Wife, Ibid., 4.
71. "In our production, transvestism would be the norm, not the exception. Everyone from the callow playwright (me) to the fiercest Nazi officer would wear a skirt. How very democratic!" (Wright, I Am My Own Wife, xix).
72. Wright also identified that difference between his and Praunheim's intentions in the interview with me.
73. For a different national approach to the performance of contradiction and ambivalence, see José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
74. Paul Gilroy, Between Camps: Nations, Cultures, and the Allure of Race (London: Routledge, 2004).
75. Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument about Homosexuality (New York: Vintage, 1996).
76. For a powerful critique of this position, see Warner, Trouble with Normal.
77. Warner gives the following examples for such localized queer potential: "Younger queers, in drag culture, among black and Latino cultures, in club scenes and the arts, on web sites and in queer zines" (Trouble with Normal, 67).