Adolf Brand | |
|---|---|
 Brandc. 1930 | |
| Born | (1874-11-14)14 November 1874 |
| Died | 26 February 1945(1945-02-26) (aged 70) |
| Cause of death | Wartime airstrike |
| Occupation(s) | School teacher, journal publisher, writer |
Gustav Adolf Franz Brand (14 November 1874 – 26 February 1945) was a German writer,egoist anarchist, and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of malebisexuality andhomosexuality.
Adolf Brand was born on 14 November 1874 inBerlin, which was then part of theGerman Empire. He grew up in Wilhemshagen. His father was a blacksmith.[1]
He became a school teacher briefly before establishing a publishing firm and producing a German homosexual periodical,Der Eigene (The Unique) in 1896. This was the first ongoing homosexual publication in the world,[2] and ran until 1931. The name was taken from writings of egoist philosopherMax Stirner, who had greatly influenced the young Brand, and refers to Stirner's concept of "self-ownership" of the individual. Der Eigene concentrated on cultural and scholarly material, and may have had an average of around 1500 subscribers per issue during its lifetime, although the exact numbers are uncertain. Contributors includedErich Mühsam,Kurt Hiller,John Henry Mackay (under the pseudonym Sagitta) and artistsWilhelm von Gloeden,Fidus andSascha Schneider. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself. Brand's writings, together with those of other contributors toDer Eigene, aimed at a revival of Greek pederasty as a cultural model for modern homosexuality.[3]
In 1899 or 1900, Brand publishedElisar von Kupffer's influential anthology ofhomoerotic literature,Lieblingminne und Freundesliebe in der Weltliteratur. The work was reprinted in 1995.[citation needed]
In 1900, he was sentenced to a year in prison for insultingCenter Party leaderErnst Lieber.[4] In 1903, he was incarcerated for two months due to the sexual content published inDer Eigene.[1]
Brand became involved inMagnus Hirschfeld'sScientific-Humanitarian Committee (the first public homosexual rights organization), until there was a split in 1903.[citation needed]
That year, Brand formedGemeinschaft der Eigenen with the scientist (and principal theorist)Benedict Friedlaender andWilhelm Jansen. The GdE met weekly at Brand's house.[1] To this new group, male-male love, in particular that of an older man for a youth, was viewed as a simple aspect of virile manliness available to all men; they rejected the medical theories of doctors such as Magnus Hirschfeld who found that a gay man was a certain type of person, theintermediate sex.[5] The GdE was a sort ofscouting movement that echoed the warrior creed ofSparta and the ideals ofpederasty in Ancient Greece, and the ideas on pedagogic eros ofGustav Wyneken.[5] The GdE was heavily involved withcamping and trekking. They occasionally practisednudism – the latter then common as part of theNacktkultur ('culture of nudity') sweeping Germany. In the 1920s this would develop into theFreikörperkultur underAdolf Koch.[citation needed]
TheGemeinschaft opposed Hirschfeld and the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee's stance that homosexuality existed on a continuum with femininity. Brand and theGemeinschaft instead believed that homosexuality was the epitome of manliness and brotherly love, to be expressed by any man. The group tended towards elitism who based their ideas of attractiveness around Germanic racial purity. Their views towards women were oftenmisogynistic. TheGemeinschaft followed a strategy ofouting high-visibility homosexuals. They termed this strategy the "path over corpses" (German:Weg uber Leichen).[6]
The GdE was similar to other such groups in Germany at the time, such as theWandervogel.Wilhelm Jansen, co-founder of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, was one of the chief financial supporters of the Wandervogel and also a leader in it.[7]
The writings and theories of the romantic anarchistJohn Mackay had a significant influence on the GdE from 1906.[8] Mackay had lived in Berlin for a decade and had become a friend of Friedlaender, who did not share the anarchist leanings of Brand and Mackay, favoring instead the thinking on 'natural rights' andland reform, then current in Germany.[citation needed]
Brand was imprisoned multiple times for his actions. Even in court, he unapologetically identified with hisbisexuality.[6][9]
In the early 1930s, Brand retreated from activism, married a woman, and retired.[6]
He and his wife were killed byan Allied bomb inWilhelmshagen on 26 February 1945. He was 70 years old.[10][11] During 1945 civilian areas of Berlin were bombed intensely by U.S. led allied forces.[12]
Am 26. Februar 1945 traf eine Bombe sein Wilhelmshagener Haus. Dabei kamen er, seine Frau und einquartierte Flüchtlinge ums Leben. [On February 26, 1945, a bomb hit his house in Wilhelmshagen. He, his wife and the refugees living there were killed.]
Brand somehow survived until 1945, when he fell victim to Allied bombs.
In February of 1945, under great pressure to bring the European war to an end, the American commanders finally agreed to bombard Berlin — foregoing the strategy of targeting only military sites. Home to nearly four million civilians, Berlin was nearly entirely destroyed. Author Don Miller described the raid as the crossing of "a moral threshold. And that moral threshold is, we will not deliberately bomb civilians… once we crossed the moral divide in Berlin, it made everything else, including the atomic bomb, a little bit easier".
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