#lgbeurope

[lgbhistory]

Lina Poletti (1885-1971)

Was an Italian writer, poet and feminist. Considered one of the first italian woman to openly declare her lesbianism.

She used to wear masculine clothes and was a quite rebellious woman for her epoch.

In 1908 she attended the First National Congress of Women. This is where she met met the well-known writer Sibilla Aleramo, who shared her commitment to social change.

Both quickly got involved in a love affair, though Aleramo was living with a well-known poet Giovanni Cena at the time. Poletti and Cena didn’t like it and the two of them eventually left Aleramo.

The following year, Poletti married Santi Muratori, the director of the Biblioteca Classense in Ravenna, though they did not live together.

Shortly after their marriage, she met Eleonora Duse, at the time a popular stage actress, and became involved with her. The two moved in together in a house located in Florence, Italy, where Poletti started working on plays for Duse.

From 1918 to 1958 Poletti was in a relationship with the Countess Eugenia Rasponi, a noblewoman and ardent fellow feminist.

They later moved to Rome where they attended theosophical and philosophical meetings and traveled throughout Europe and Asia seeking answers for existence.

Poletti was unable to write during the twenty years of fascism in Italy, as she and Rasponi were constantly under the scrutiny of authorities and their home was often raided.

Poletti died on 12 December 1971 in Sanremo, in the northern coastal region of Liguria.

[lgbhistory]

Richard Puller von Hohenburg

• Richard Puller von Hohenburg was a French and Swiss nobleman and knight. He is notable for his homosexual liaisons.

• He lived in the 15th century and was a citizen of Strasbourg in Alsace.

• In 1463, a Swiss noble captured one of Puller's servants, a man named Ludwig Fischer, after “he had been seen dressed in lavish clothes and with more money than his occupation would afford him.” Back then gifts of clothing were seen as evidence of improper sexual services. Under torture, the servant revealed that Puller had romantically pursued him, an act he used to his advantage by blackmailing Puller for money and status.

•Though he had managed to evade prosecution this time, in 1474 Puller was again accused of sodomy, but managed to evade negative consequences through the strategic manipulation of his social status.

• Puller fled from Alsace stripped of his possessions, intending to recover them in the future.

• In 1482, city officials discovered a homosexual relationship between Puller and his servant, Anton Mätzler, this time because of the gifts of clothing given to the servant as well.

• Under torture by the city officials, Puller confessed to having had same-sex relationships with Mätzler and several other men.

• On 24 September 1482, a large crowd had gathered to see Puller executed. Puller was asked to repeat his confession, but he refused, instead claiming that the accusation of sodomy was only a cover for the Zürich officials who wished to seize his land and fortune.

• One of the officials mentioned by name was Hans Waldmann, then mayor of Zurich, who was later executed for several charges (among them, sodomy).

[lgbhistory]

Empar Pineda i Erdozia

• Empar is a Spanish feminist activist born in Hernani, Gipuzkoa in 1944.

• She was enrolled in a German nun's school, where she was required to learn English.

• As there was no public university in the Basque Country, she moved to Madrid, where her sister lived.

• She participated in the anti-Francoist student movement and was banned from enrolling at the Universities of Madrid and Barcelona. She ended up enrolling at the University of Salamanca in 1964, and a little later at the University of Oviedo, where she graduated in Romance philology.

• She returned to Madrid, where she began teaching Language and Literature while continuing her membership in left-wing organizations.

• An anti-Francoist militant, she was arrested by the authorities and spent some time in Martutene Prison.

•In the 1970s, during the transition to democracy, she moved to Barcelona. There she was the leader of the Communist Movement of Catalonia.

•In 1985 she was interviewed in the magazine Interviú with the headline "I am a lesbian just because ", to demand an end to the repression of homosexual women.

• In 1980 she was co-founder of the Lesbian Feminist Collective of Madrid and participated in the creation of the Right to Abortion Commission.

• In 2008 she received the Creu de Sant Jordi for "her dedication sustained for so many years in defense of women's rights, from the action – as an active member of various organizations – and reflection – as a co-author of several volumes, including 'El feminismo que existe'."

[lgbhistory]

Sylvia Beach (1887-1962)

A writer, publisher and the owner of the prominent Shakespeare and company bookstore in Paris (yes, the pictures of which you have probably seen on pinterest).

She was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris, where she was one of the leading expatriate figures between World War I and II.

Sylvia was born in United Stated but in 1901 her family moved to Paris. Her father’s name was Sylvester Beach and that might be why she changed her birthname (Nancy) to Sylvia later so that she could be Sylvia Beach.

While conducting research at the Bibliothèque Nationale, in a French literary journal Beach read of a lending library and bookshop, La Maison des Amis des Livres. When she came there, she met an owner who turned out to be a young woman Adrienne Monnier. The two later became lovers and lived together for 36 years.

Beach started dreaming of her own book shop , so with Monnier's help, Beach opened an English language bookstore and lending library that she named Shakespeare and Company.

Shakespeare and Company quickly attracted both French and American readers, including aspiring writers to whom Beach offered hospitality and encouragement as well as books.

In July 1920, Beach met the writer James Joyce at a dinner party. Soon after, Joyce joined Beach's lending library. Joyce had been trying, unsuccessfully, to publish his manuscript for his masterpiece, Ulysses, and Beach, seeing his frustration, offered to publish it.

Shakespeare and Company gained considerable fame after it published Ulysses in 1922.

Beach would later be financially stranded when Joyce signed on with another publisher, leaving Beach in debt after she had bankrolled, and suffered severe losses from, the publication of Ulysses.

Shakespeare and Company experienced financial difficulty throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s but remained supported by wealthy friends, including Bryher.

In 1936 when Beach thought that she would be forced to close her shop, André Gide organized a group of writers into a club called Friends of Shakespeare and Company. Subscribers paid 200 francs a year to attend readings at Shakespeare and Company.

Beach later recalled "we were so glorious with all these famous writers and all the press we received that we began to do very well in business".

In 1956, Beach wrote Shakespeare and Company, a memoir of the inter-war years that details the cultural life of Paris at the time. The book contains first-hand observations of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Stephen Benet and many others.

After Monnier's (her lover) suicide in 1955, Beach had a relationship with Camilla Steinbrugge.Although Beach's income was modest during the last years of her life, she was widely honored for her publication of Ulysses and her support of aspiring writers during the 1920s. Beach died in 1962.

George Whitman (her friend) opened a new bookshop in 1951 at a different location in Paris (in the rue de la Bûcherie) originally called Le Mistral, but renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964 in honor of Sylvia Beach. Since his death in 2011, it has been run by his daughter Sylvia Whitman (who was named after Sylvia Beach).

[lgbhistory]

Anna Freud

She was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent born in Vienna and the youngest child of Sigmund Freud.

She followed the path of her father and contributed to the field of psychoanalysis, and she may be considered one of the founders of psychoanalytic child psychology.

After the Freud family were forced to leave Vienna in 1938 with the advent of the Nazi regime in Austria, she resumed her work in child psychology establishing the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic in 1952 (now the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families).

Anna Freud appears to have had a comparatively unhappy childhood, in which she may have suffered from depression which caused eating disorders.

She was a lively child with a reputation for mischief.  In adolescence she took a precocious interest in her father's work and was allowed to sit in on the meetings of the newly established Vienna Psychoanalytical Society which Freud convened at his home.

Anna Freud created the field of child psychoanalysis, and her work contributed greatly to our understanding of child psychology. She also developed different techniques to treat children. A fundamental principle of Anna Freud's work is that every child should be recognised as a person in his or her own right.

While Anna was the closest intellectual and emotional companion of Sigmund Freud, she was also a lesbian. Freud taught that lesbianism is always the fault of the father and is curable by psychoanalysis. Hence, Anna involuntarily became an object of his inappropriate experiments.Nevertheless, Freud failed to “correct” Anna’s lesbianism.

Anna Freud's life-long romantic partner was Dorothy Burlingham, an American child psychoanalyst and educator. Anna and Dorothy soon developed intimate relationships and lived together as "companions".

Freud died in London on 9 October 1982. Her life-partner Dorothy Burlingham and several other members of the Freud family also rest there. 

[lgbhistory]

Ladies of Llangolen

The "Ladies of Llangollen", Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, were two upper-class Irish women whose relationship scandalised and fascinated their contemporaries during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Their families lived 15 miles (25 km) from each other. The two women met in 1768, and quickly became close. Over the years they formulated a plan for a private rural retreat. It was their dream to live an unconventional life together.

Rather than face the possibility of being forced into unwanted marriages, they escaped together in April 1778. Their families found them and forcefully tried to make them give up their plans—but in vain. They moved to Wales and then sent for Sarah's servant, Mary Caryll, who lived with and worked for them for the rest of her life. Mary died first and they were buried in the same plot and share the same grave marker.

Putting their plan into motion, they undertook a picturesque tour of the Welsh countryside, eventually settling in North Wales. Living first in a rented home in the village of Llangollen, they moved in 1780 to a small cottage just outside the village they called Plas Newydd or "new mansion". They proceeded to live according to their self-devised system, though they could rely on only a modest income from intolerant relatives, and eventually a civil list pension. They "improved" Plas Newydd in the Gothic style with Welsh oak panelling, pointed arches, stained glass windows, and an extensive library, in which they received their many guests. They hired a gardener, a footman and two maids. This led to significant debt, and they had to rely on the generosity of friends.

After a couple of years their house became a haven for visitors travelling between Dublin and London, including writers such as William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, but also the military leader the Duke of Wellington and the industrialist Josiah Wedgwood, aristocratic novelist Caroline Lamb, who was born a Ponsonby, came to visit too. Anne Lister from Yorkshire visited the couple, and was possibly inspired by their relationship to informally marry her own lover. Eventually their families came to tolerate them.

Butler and Ponsonby lived together for 50 years. Their books and glassware carried both sets of initials and their letters were jointly signed. Towards the end of their lives, they both dressed in black riding habits and men's top hats; some visitors thought it was eccentric and outdated – especially the hair powder – but neighbours thought the clothes were practical for living outdoors.

[lgbhistory]

Frédéric François Chopin

Frédéric Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period who wrote primarily for solo piano.

A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his earlier works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of 20.

He settled in Paris and he didnt give many public performances there, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon. He supported himself by selling his compositions and by giving piano lessons, for which he was in high demand. 

After a failed engagement to Maria Wodzińska, he maintained an often troubled relationship with the French writer Amantine Dupin (known by her pen name, George Sand). In his final years, he was supported financially by his admirer Jane Stirling. For most of his life, Chopin was in poor health. He died in Paris in 1849 at the age of 39.

While many sources deny it, there is no doubt that Chopin was attracted to his own sex. He used to write a lot of letters to his male lovers. These letters contained erotic and passionate messages.

He had feelings for Tytus Woyciechowski, who may have been the love of his life. It is to him that he dedicated his Variations op. 2 and the composition of the Waltz op 70 no. 3. He also was involved with J. Matuszyński, A. Wodziński und J. Fontana. In Paris he lived together with Matuszyński and Fontana for several years.

Because Frédéric Chopin is an idolized national hero in Poland,the current government try hard to prevent any official recognition of Chopin's love for men.

[lgbhistory]

A gay island community in Italy

Seventy-five years ago in Fascist Italy, a group of gay men were expelled from their homes and interned on an island. They were held under a prison regime - but some found life in the country's first openly gay community a liberating experience.

Back in the late 1930s the archipelago played a part in the effort by Benito Mussolini's Fascists to suppress homosexuality.

Gay men undermined the image that the dictator wanted to project of Italian manhood.

No discriminatory laws were passed. But a climate was created in which open manifestations of homosexuality could be vigorously suppressed.

So in 1938 around 45 men believed to be homosexuals in Catania were rounded up and consigned to internal exile to the island of San Domino, in the Tremitis.

The whole episode has been largely forgotten.It's thought that nobody who endured this punishment is still alive today, and there are few detailed accounts of what went on there.

But some of the few accounts given by former exiles make clear that life was not all bad on San Domino.

It seems that the day-to-day prison regime was comparatively relaxed.

The Fascists accidentally created a corner of Italy where you were expected to be openly gay. For the first time in their lives, the men were in a place where they could be themselves.

What this meant to the exiles was explained in a rare interview with a San Domino veteran, named only as Giuseppe B - published many years ago in the gay magazine, Babilonia - who said that in a way the men were better off on the island.

"In those days if you were a femminella [a slang Italian word for a gay man] you couldn't even leave your home, or make yourself noticed - the police would arrest you," he said of his home town near Naples.

"On the island, on the other hand, we would celebrate our Saint's days or the arrival of someone new... We did theatre, and we could dress as women there and no-one would say anything." And he said that of course, there was romance, and even fights over lovers.

San Domino was the only island where all the exiles were gay. It is ironic that in the Italy of that time, they could find a degree of freedom only on a prison island.

In 2013 a group of gay and lesbian rights activists came to the island in order to put down a plaque in memory of the exiles. "This is necessary, because nobody speaks of what happened in those years".