The year is 1919. Berlin is no stranger to underground queer culture. Here, a concert violinist falls madly in love with his male student and romance blooms. What follows is blackmail from an ex-lover, family opposition, brawls in bars and brothels, confrontations and lectures, and ultimately suicide. This is the premise of Richard Oswald’s Anders als die Andern ( Different from the Others ), the first ‘pro-gay’ film in history, which released in Germany exactly a hundred years ago to packed cinema halls.
Not everyone appreciated the popularity. With commercial success grew accusations of indecency and vulgarity. Newspapers discussed the controversial film extensively and some called it ‘unwatchable’. The audience had seen men kiss on screen before, but that was in mockery, where oversized effeminate men, like Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, pecked cowboys in American comedies as the auditorium laughed. But Oswald’s film was different — it not only depicted two men in love but also promoted the idea that homophobia was the problem, not homosexuality. It dared to argue against Paragraph 175, which was added to Germany’s penal code in 1871, criminalising homosexuality. This law would not be repealed until 1994.
The silent film released at an opportune time when Germany was in utter chaos following its defeat in World War I and national censorship had been struck down. During the war, the military had exercised heavy censorship on the “new medium” of cinema. And this post-war freedom was short-lived — Anders als die Andern generated so much public outcry and walkouts that the film was banned in 1920. “None of the other topics like abortion, sex and war caused as much riot as homosexuality,” says Stefan Drößler, director of Filmmuseum Munich. The film played an instrumental role in ushering in a new era of censorship in German society.
Still from the newly restored ‘Anders als die Andern’.
Einstein of sex
Being the world’s first feature film with explicit and sympathetic gay characters, Anders als die Andern is pivotal in the history of queer cinema. It was co-written by Magnus Hirschfeld, a trailblazing sexologist and one of the first queer rights advocates, who openly researched diversity in sexuality and gender. Jewish, social democrat and gay, Hirschfeld has been described as the ‘Einstein of sex’ by renowned queer filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim in his 1999 biopic of the same name. If you walk down Berlin’s Tiergarten today, it’s hard to imagine that Hirschfeld opened the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexology) here a hundred years ago in July 1919.
There’s no remnant of the institute, which was once an epicentre for those whose sexual orientation or gender identity did not conform to the norms of the time. It was respected worldwide and was the beacon of the liberal and cosmopolitan Berlin of the 1920s.
After and during World War I, Oswald collaborated with several doctors, including Hirschfeld, to produce a series of ‘enlightenment films’ about sexual diseases. “They were used as propaganda to influence German soldiers, since there was a big problem of sexual diseases during the war and the military did not know how to deal with it,” says Drößler. Apart from Anders als die Andern, the duo also collaborated on Die Prostitution ( Prostitution), another controversial film that released in the same year.
Still from the newly restored ‘Anders als die Andern’.
Nazi assault
But Hirschfeld’s legacy soon met a brutal end when the Nazis gained power. They destroyed the Institute of Sexology and burnt all files and prints of Anders als die Andern . Believed to be lost for over 40 years, fragments of this film were discovered in the 1970s with Ukrainian intertitles in the Russian Film Archive, thanks to Hirschfeld’s foresight. After the ban on Anders als die Andern, he cleverly scrambled portions of the reel and condensed it into an episode in his educational documentary, Gesetze der Liebe ( Laws of Love ) in 1927. The documentary, which discussed hermaphroditism and sexual behaviour in the animal kingdom, was also banned. But one print of this documentary made its way to Ukraine and survived in the Russian Film Archive.
At the turn of the new millennium, the Filmmuseum Munich restored the last chapter in Gesetze der Liebe , and this was broadcast on Arte television. But Drößler had the idea of reconstructing Anders als die Andern for DVD in its original form. “But everybody told me this was not possible because we didn’t have enough material to recreate [the film’s] complicated flashback structure,” recalls Drößler. So he used production stills, publicity photos, censorship documents from different archives and explanatory intertitles to resurrect the film. “I was thrilled by the description of the film in one of Hirschfeld’s yearbooks, in which he very precisely describes the original structure of this film, already fearing it would be forbidden,” says Drößler.
As himself
Hirschfeld appears as himself in the film, delivering a lecture on homosexuality, where he explains, with photos, that not all gay men are effeminate and not all feminine men are gay. The biggest challenge in restoring that portion was the lack of footage. “I only had three seconds of Hirschfeld speaking so we had to use those again, once in the beginning and the ending, so that it looks different,” says Drößler.
Magnus Hirschfeld (R) in ‘Anders als die Andern’.
Recently, while going through Gesetze der Liebe again, the museum discovered additional unseen footage of Hirschfeld with a run-time of almost two minutes, enabling Drößler to restore a new version. Moving images now replace some of the slides and give a more lively impression of one of the transvestites, explaining the difference between sexuality and gender.
The newly restored version will premiere at Bonn’s International Silent Film Festival on August 23, and a Blu-ray edition will be released at the end of this year. The previous version of the film received an overwhelming response at film festivals. “A mother once came to me with tears in her eyes, telling me how she understood her son better,” recalls Drößler. It’s moments like these that stand testimony to the relevance of this film even 100 years later.
