Queer Reading – A Methodology. German Literature in the Age of Paragraph 175 (1872-1994)

The project investigates German literature written in the era of Paragraph 175, which criminalized male homosexuality. It develops a methodology of Queer Reading to examine intentional modes of non-heteronormative writing that can be encountered in different phases of literary history defined by different versions of the paragraph: from 1872 to 1935 (German Empire and Weimar Republic), 1935 to 1968/69 (National Socialism and FRG/GDR), and 1968/69 to 1994 (FRG/GDR and reunified Germany). The project takes up the concept of camouflage as developed by Heinrich Detering (The Open Secret), but, following recent Queer Theory, shifts the focus from taboo to criminalization, from homosexuality to heteronormativity, and from biographism to social critique.