Preliminary Programme

This paper will analyse the role that public monuments and memorials play in LGBTQ public history and heritage. It will argue that LGBTQ monuments and memorials are what Pierre Nora called les lieux de mémoire (sites of memory), “places where memory crystallizes and secrets itself”. Using Nora’s concept, it will show how LGBTQ monuments and memorials are at once material, symbolic and functional.
Looking at monuments and memorials of individuals in LGBTQ history in the UK, such as those of Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing, this paper will examine how they present their sexualities materially and visually, through interpretative plaques and as art. This paper will also discuss acts of collective commemoration through an analysis of LGBTQ group monuments and memorials. International examples of group monuments include the Pink Triangle Park in San Francisco and the Homomonument in Amsterdam, both of which use the pink triangle as a political, historical and cultural symbol to commemorate the past and make pledges for social justice and equality in the present and future. Finally it will discuss the function of LGBTQ monuments and memorials as places of both remembrance and celebration. Fulfilling the three senses of Nora’s lieux – material, symbolic and functional – it will show that public monuments and memorials hold multi-layered and important roles in LGBTQ heritage. (Show less)

Writing LGBTQ history on the basis of files of criminal court procedures, as the author of this paper aims to do so in his dissertation project, bares many challenges but does also offer many opportunities. This paper will analyse various theoretical but also socio-political problems which a project like this has to confront, regarding the topic, the perspective and the sources.
Soon after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1971, historical research on the situation of homosexual men and women – the term LGBTQ, and related scientific theories, had yet not been introduced into this field of research – also set out to be conducted in Austria, yet mostly outside academia. This has changed. However, despite the admission to the ‘ivory tower’, historical research on ‘deviant’ sexualities is still firmly entangled with the LGBTQ-community. This paper will discuss aspects of mutual interaction and stimulation between political agenda and scholarly objectivity, using this project as an example. What effects do changing needs for identification have on research questions, on theoretical approaches or even on historical periodization?
This is culminating in the fundamental question of this paper: Has ‘persecution’, as a topic of LGBTQ-history, become obsolete? From the 1980ies onward, more and more activists of LGBTQ-movements rejected historical narratives of persecution of homosexuals, arguing that those are narratives of victimisation, offering only negative paradigms of identification. However, current debates about memorials for homosexual victims of the Nazi-regime, like the dispute regarding the representation of lesbian women at the memorial in Berlin or the discussion about the installation of such a memorial in Vienna, show a continuing interest and need in historical research on this topic. This paper will address some of the questions which came up in the course of these debates. Which meaning does the history of persecution of homosexuality have today for LGBTQ heritage? Does it only serve as a “lieu de mémoire” or does the political movement gain momentum out of it?
In this context, this paper will also discuss the problem of the historical sources, which will be studied in the course of this research project. Files of criminal court procedures on charges of “same-sex fornication” (§ 129 I b of the Austrian Penal Code, 1852-1971) show, first and foremost, how jurisdiction dealt with a certain facet of sexuality, which was categorized illegitimate by the state. Hence, these sources offer, on the one hand, only a much distorted picture of same-sex desire and love, because expressions of sexual desire were filtered under the paradigm of criminal prosecution. On the other hand, they are documenting stereotypes of homosexuality, which were prevailing among Austrian society, and also continuities and changes in these stereotypes in the course of many decades. This paper will analyse the conditions under which stereotypes of male and female homosexuality were produced or reproduced in the course of court-procedures. Where there legal preconditions which supported the formation of pejorative stereotypes of homosexuality? Which concepts of homosexuality – medical, theological, social, moral etc. – did affect the jurisdiction? (Show less)

This paper will analyse recent changes in the representation of the LGBTQ past in built heritage, especially in historic houses, in England and Wales. It will assess the contemporary history (c.2000-2015) of LGBTQ heritage in the context of rapid policy shifts, from ‘social inclusion’ at the beginning of the century, the Civil Partnership Act (2004), the Equality Act (2010), followed by ‘austerity’ and public funding cuts alongside the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act (2013).

The paper will discuss the influence of equality policies at both the local level (the management of specific LGBTQ-related historic house sites) and the national level (the promotion of LGBTQ heritage by Historic England, the government quango responsible for the historic environment). Recent sociological research suggests that LGBTQ groups are the least effectively served by equalities work in public bodies such as local authorities (Richardson and Monro 2012). However a range of complex factors has been at play in cultural services, including heritage, leading to some important new developments, albeit from a low base.

My title is intended to suggest that representing LGBTQ heritage is a challenge for historic sites, which generally present the history of their past inhabitants to a wide-ranging audience; indeed a group of visitors often believed to be middle-class and conservative in outlook.

What factors have inhibited or enabled managers to develop interpretation of and exhibitions on LGBTQ history at pertinent historic houses? What strategies do they use with their diverse audiences and visitors? How has a wider political shift towards ‘homonormativity’ facilitated greater acceptance of queer heritage? Which queer histories are still missing from or side-stepped in heritage representation, because of the perceived difficulty of dealing with them?

This paper draws on interviews with curators and managers at a range of historic sites (including Plas Newydd, Llangollen, Smallhythe in Kent, and Charleston in Sussex) to discuss the constraints and opportunities within which heritage providers feel they are working. It also draws on the author’s recent experience of leading an LGBTQ consultancy project for Historic England. (Show less)

In this paper we would like to present the first results of some research in progress based on rediscovered French archival files concerning recognition procedures of « homosexuals » persecuted and deported during the Nazi Era. We will explore cultural, institutional and political limits to their inclusion into the category “Victims of Nazism” until today. In our paper, we would like to highlight two kinds of processes: the one concerning more broadly how States have constructed the category “victims of Nazism” in Western Europe and especially in France. Then, in a second part, we will focus on the new files we have found (analysis in progress) concerning compensation and individual recognition claims made by former deportees condemned for Homosexual behaviour in France during the Nazi occupation and annexation. In a third part of our presentation we will highlight the tension between individual and collective recognition forms in order to discuss LGBTQ memory and history on a European level.


CVs
Régis Schlagdenhauffen : Sociologist, Assistant-Professor, Holder of the Chair « Socio-histoire des catégories sexuelles » at the EHESS (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris). PhD (2009 : Humboldt Univ. Berlin & Université de Strasbourg) entitled : La commémoration des victimes homosexuelles du nazisme : Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam / Das Gedenken an die homosexuellen NS-Opfer : Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam.
Main publications (books): 2015, Victims of Nazism, A mosaic of fates ; 2013, Triangle rose, La persecution nazie des homosexuels ; 2013: Die Erinnerung an die nationalsozialistichen Konzentrationslager.

Frédéric Stroh : PhD-Candidate in History (Université de Strasbourg), Researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch (Berlin). PhD-Topic: Perception and penal treatment of the homosexuality during National Socialism : a Comparative study between Alsace and Baden (1933-45).
Main publications (books): 2015, Actes des Journées d’études „L’incorporation de force dans les territoires annexés au IIIe Reich (Belgique, Luxembourg, France, Pologne, Slovénie) with P. Quadflieg ; 2006 : Les Malgré-nous de Torgau. Des insoumis alsaciens et mosellans face à la justice militaire nazie. (Show less)