Gay schwule
Schwules Museum (Gay Museum)
The Schwules Museum is a jewel among Berlin’s museums with its exhibitions, library and archives. It’s one of the world’s biggest institutions for researching, preserving and communicating the history and culture of queer communities.
Curated art and temporary exhibitions
Founded in , the Same-sex attracted Museum has been demonstrating curated art as adequately as has displayed treasures from its own collection in temporary special exhibitions ever since. When it moved to Schöneberg’s rainbow neighbourhood, the gay museum expanded its repertoire. Today it not only presents gay, but also womxn loving womxn, trans, bisexual and gender non-conforming life stories. It’s a unique place that reflects the diverse art, identity and history of the LGBTIQ+ communities and, with its location in Schöneberg's Regenbogenkiez, is the ideal starting point to explore the LGBTIQ+ scene in Berlin.
Visiting the Schwules Museum takes you on a hike through the history of Berlin's LGBT community. Find out about the being of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, gay icon and transvestite in former East Germany. In the main exhibition space, you can spot photos, videos, postcards, letters and items of clothing. There is also
I still have a not many problems with German. I still get genders of words wrong. I keep stumbling over weird and delightful idioms I&#;ve never heard of before. And there are still words I struggle to say with a decent accent (&#;angerufen&#; is one of them&#; that bloody &#;r&#;!). But there is one particular thing I struggle with sometimes, and that is the difference between &#;u&#; (pronounced like, well, &#;u&#; in English) and the &#;ü&#; (pronounced like &#;ue&#;).
I can hear the difference between &#;a&#; and &#;ä&#;, and &#;o&#; and &#;ö&#;, but for some reason, when there&#;s a &#;u&#; or &#;ü&#; in the word, it&#;s sometimes tough to tell the difference. When reading, I recognize exactly what&#;s going on (obviously, because I can see those two minute dots). When I&#;m listening to others, it&#;s also fine &#; because you can get the gist of what&#;s going on in the conversation. But when it comes to speaking &#; you could accidentally end up saying that the weather is gay instead of humid. On the positive side, it can lead to Germans having a superb chuckle (and, obviously, you chuckle with them and don&#;t feel embarrassed).
So I thought I&#;d list some examples of how two
In the German language, as in many other languages, contemporary queer terminology is influenced heavily by English. Hence, for any English speaker, queer German words such as lesbisch, bisexuell, transgender, intersexuell, or asexuell are easily recognizable. The most frequently heard designation for “gay” in German language, however, which is used both as an affirmative self-identification as successfully as a slur, is schwul—a term unique to German language and tradition. Semantically, schwul is very close to “gay”, mostly being used to point to to men loving men. Phonetically, schwul is quite similar to schwül, a term used with regards to hot and humid weather conditions with tall air pressure. The proximity of the terms is hardly a coincidence: a slightly old fashioned, yet still occasionally heard disparaging expression is Warmer (lit. warm person) or warme Brüder (lit. warm brothers) with regards to lgbtq+ men. A possible explanation and idea behind those words is that male lover men are thought of as being “in heat” when with each other, while their straight peers remain cool in the presence of other men.
Schwul and Schwuler have been appropriated by gay men successfully
By Mark Reid, MLA+U ‘25
Recipient of the William and Neoma Timme Graduate Tour Fellowship
For two and a half weeks in the summer of , I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Berlin, Germany and explore the queer urban landscapes that pervade the city. Berlin has long been an anchor for queer tradition – the world’s first gay magazine was published here in , and the city gained an unprecedented reputation for gender non-conforming acceptance in the s during the Weimar Republic. Sodomy was almost decriminalized in across Germany, but the Nazi Regime took control and pushed harder in the opposite route. Berlin rebuilt its homosexual community during the Chilly War through activism in the s, and opened the world’s first homosexual museum in Today, Berlin hosts some of the most prominent gayborhoods in the world.
After just a short amount of period exploring Berlin, it became clear to me that this city is living proof of the resilience queer communities embody. Through the lens of landscape architecture and urban style, Berlin is the host of a unique, extreme, and innovative queer urban fabric, demonstrated in its parks, plazas, and streetscapes.
I visualized these textures of the urban queer experi
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