German, Jew, Muslim, Gay : The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus / Marc David Baer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baer, Marc David, Author.

Series:

Religion, culture, and public life.

Religion, Culture, and Public Life ; 42

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marcus, Hugo, 1880-1966.

Marcus, Hugo.

Gay men--Germany--Biography.

Gay men.

Muslim converts from Judaism--Germany--Biography.

Muslim converts from Judaism.

Holocaust survivors--Germany--Biography.

Holocaust survivors.

Jews--Europe--History--20th century.

Jews.

Muslims--Europe--History--20th century.

Muslims.

Europe--Ethnic relations--History--20th century.

Europe.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (317 pages).

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Hugo Marcus (1880–1966) was a man of many names and many identities. Born a German Jew, he converted to Islam and took the name Hamid, becoming one of the most prominent Muslims in Germany prior to World War II. He was renamed Israel by the Nazis and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp before escaping to Switzerland. He was a gay man who never called himself gay but fought for homosexual rights and wrote queer fiction under the pen name Hans Alienus during his decades of exile.In German, Jew, Muslim, Gay, Marc David Baer uses Marcus’s life and work to shed new light on a striking range of subjects, including German Jewish history and anti-Semitism, Islam in Europe, Muslim-Jewish relations, and the history of the gay rights struggle. Baer explores how Marcus created a unique synthesis of German, gay, and Muslim identity that positioned Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as an intellectual and spiritual model. Marcus’s life offers a new perspective on sexuality and on competing conceptions of gay identity in the multilayered world of interwar and postwar Europe. His unconventional story reveals new aspects of the interconnected histories of Jewish and Muslim individuals and communities, including Muslim responses to Nazism and Muslim experiences of the Holocaust. An intellectual biography of an exceptional yet little-known figure, German, Jew, Muslim, Gay illuminates the complexities of twentieth-century Europe’s religious, sexual, and cultural politics.

Contents:

Introduction: Goethe as pole star

Fighting for gay rights in Berlin, 1900-1925

Queer convert: Protestant Islam in Weimar Germany, 1925-1933

A Jewish Muslim in Nazi Berlin, 1933-1939

Who writes lives: Swiss refuge, 1939-1965

Hans Alienus: yearning, gay writer, 1948-1965

Conclusion: a Goethe mosque for Berlin.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 05. Mai 2020)

ISBN:

0-231-55178-9

OCLC:

1119063899