Gothic Cinema and Sexology in the Weimar Republic: Towards a Queer Gothic Aesthetic on Screen

As a specific focus for early twentieth-century Queer Gothic, the author has honed in on the Weimar Republic in order to explore Gothic cinema and the fruition of sexology – specifically sexology that had positive queer messages through Magnus Hirschfeld’s work. This chapter analyses seminal German Gothic horror films like the 1913 The Student of Prague with the theme of the doppelgänger and the classic vampiric horror film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) for underlying queer readings. Beyond the queer readings of these essential early films, the essay moves to an analysis of a 1919 queer education film featuring Magnus Hirschfeld: Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others). This silent film combines melodrama and tragedy with documentary footage of Hirschfeld lecturing on and advocating for homosexuality as a normal sexual variant. Wegner brings a fresh Gothic perspective to this rare queer film by analysing the machinations of the sinister blackmailer figure who so terrifies one of the gay male characters that he commits suicide. The film, itself, is a miracle that barely escaped Hitler’s raid on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin.