Queer Lives across the Wall: Desire and Danger in Divided Berlin, 1945–1970 by Andrea Rottmann (review)

Reviewed by: Queer Lives across the Wall: Desire and Danger in Divided Berlin, 1945–1970 by Andrea Rottmann Mark Fenemore Queer Lives across the Wall: Desire and Danger in Divided Berlin, 1945–1970. By Andrea Rottmann. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023. Pp. xiv + 247. Paper $36.95. ISBN 9781487547806. This is a truly remarkable book. Going beyond merely cataloging the most dominant queer traces and spaces of postwar Berlin, the author's aim is nothing less than to provide a full and inclusive cityscape of sexuality. By pointing to their role in self-fashioning, the book seeks to bring the full range of queer subjective experiences vividly to life. This expands the scope of previous iterations by Mort, Chauncey, Houlbrook, Beachy, and Evans, in which cis gay men's experiences predominated. Recognizing that queer people in the past are "both similar and different to us," Rottmann points to the problems inherent in attempting to "draw clean analytical borders" around sexual identities (13, 7). This is the first book to map out a sexual cityscape in which lesbian and trans identities are not only present but prominent. In particular, it focuses on individuals whose "unusual" cross-dressing also posed a challenge to the norms of the contemporary queer community (3). In contrast to narratives that ignore or marginalize them, Rottmann highlights the crucial role played by "feminine men, trans women, and non-binary queers" in creating a genuinely queer scene (161). Non-normative gender expressions are as important to the author as same-sex desire. While critiquing it as reduced to some kind of "queer Eldorado" (8), the book retains some of Berlin's mythic magnetic power as a symbol of queer freedom. Rottmann opens it with a depiction of the cross-dressing legend (and irrepressible force of personality) Mamita. Just as the latter's humor and enthusiasm were contagious, winning over even her most hardened enemies, so too Rottmann's open-minded approach to documenting diverse queer subjective identities proves infectious. Not only do the protagonists seem familiar and endearing by the end of the book but also the breadth of experience, as presented in its pages, is exhilarating and intoxicating. The exhaustive archival search process Rottmann chronicles for identifying queer experiences beyond cis gay men is remarkable in its complexity and nuance. Faced with similar adversity, many other scholars would have simply given up and gone home. Rottmann, however, is dogged in chasing down leads and unlocking even the most apparently austere and barren of archives. In the process, a whole series of inner worlds open up to reveal their subjective secrets. Together, oral histories, photographs, official documents, letters, and diaries provide crucial fragments with which to reconstruct changing subjectivities. Rottmann points to the lack of a public [End Page 171] sphere accessible to queer historians in East Germany. Even in the West, queer people often had to destroy documentary evidence so as not to incriminate themselves or their lovers. Sometimes, as a consequence, it is necessary to read non-queer sources "queerly" against the grain. The book thus juxtaposes insider accounts—created by those who frequented the ballrooms and bars—with outside views of sexologists and psychologists. Pointing to their importance as spaces in which to construct queer identities, the book contains documentation of more private spaces like homes and gardens. The intimate photographs reveal how lesbians developed queer self-knowledge through playful enactments of eroticism. Chronologically, the book stretches from the end of Nazism to the beginning of the 1970s. Its chapters juxtapose home and prison bodies with queer nightlife and cruising spaces. Rottmann seeks a broadening of the academic gaze/discourse beyond a narrow focus on entertainment, legal restrictions, or homophile politics. The book thus avoids overly focusing on criminalization and the sources such machinery generates. Similarly, by shearing and censoring problematic elements, oral histories can also skew our understanding of sexual lives in the past. Paying attention to the "gestures and demeanor," as well as nuances like hairstyles and clothing, the book sketches out the delicate performances of gender over the jagged faultline of the Cold War. Instead of marked differences between the two German states, Susanne zur Nieden saw a "homophobic consensus" (9...

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