From Uranians to Homosexuals: Philhellenism, Greek Homoeroticism and Gay Emancipation in Germany 1835-1915

According to our current views and interpretation, the study of antiquity should be seen as a dangerous enterprise, and London, Paris, Rome and Munich with their treasures of ancient art as dangerous places, which threaten our age of pure morality and decency with the plague of the unnatural Greeks! (Hössli 1836 ) 1 In my room hangs an etching of Feuerbach’s painting that represents Plato’s Symposium . How different was the relationship between man and man then, how different the forms of sociability, how untainted by spectres the joie de vivre ! (Friedländer 1904 ) 2