Gesetze der Liebe

Gesetze der Liebe: Aus der Mappe eines Sexualforschers (English: "Laws of Love: From the Portfolio of a Sexologist") is a 1927 film produced by Magnus Hirschfeld, a sexologist who ran the Berlin Institut für Sexualwissenschaft ("Institute for Sexual Science"), Hermann Beck and the Humboldt-Film-Gesellschaft.[3]

Gesetze der Liebe
c. 1927 poster
Directed by
Written byMagnus Hirschfeld[2]
CinematographyMax Fassbender[2]
Production
company
Humboldt-Film GmbH[2]
Release date
  • 16 November 1927 (1927-11-16) (Berlin)[2]
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman

Like its predecessor film from 1919, Anders als die Andern[4][5] (English: "Different from the Others") – believed to be the first film in the world which positively depicted gay men – it campaigned against Paragraph 175, the provision of the German Penal Code which prohibited sex between men (sodomy law).

Plot

The film is framed as a lecture in five chapters, given by Magnus Hirschfeld.[3] Hirschfeld was a sexologist from Berlin and an early gay rights activist.[6]

The film dealt with sexual intercourse in the animal kingdom, discussing gestation, birth, and the nurturing of newborns, before dealing with "sexual intermediates" in chapter four, a term used by Hirschfeld to refer to certain gender and sexual minorities: hermaphrodites (intersex people), transvestites (cross-dressing and transgender people) and homosexuals.[3]

The fifth and final chapter was an abridged version of Anders als die Andern entitled Schuldlos geächtet! Tragödie eines Homosexuellen ("Innocently Outlawed! Tragedy of a Homosexual").[3]

Timeline of censorship
  • 6 October 1927: The film is approved by the Film Review Office, provided it removed references to law reform (opposition to Paragraph 175).
  • 12 October: At the behest of FRO chairman Ernst Seeger, the film was re-screened before a new panel of censors, who decided to totally ban the film.
  • 31 October: On appeal, the previous decision to totally ban the film is reversed. The new panel ruled that the film could be shown, if accompanied with a lecture by a doctor or scientist. However, two members of this panel dissented.
  • 9 November: The film is released for adult audiences only, with the segments on sexual intermediacy in chapter four removed, dealing with homosexuality along with all of chapter five.[3]

Legacy

During the few days it actually ran in Berlin, chapter 5 ("Innocently Outlawed") was not well received, even among the gay press.[3]

However, it is this chapter which was smuggled out of Berlin and into the Soviet Union in 1928, where it played under the title Zakony Ijubvi ("Laws of Love"), now the sole version of Anders als die Andern in circulation today (the German copies being destroyed during Nazi Germany, who saw Hirschfeld's work on homosexuality as degenerate).[3][7]

In 2021 a restored version of the film was released by the Munich Film Museum.[8]

References
  1. "Gesetze der Liebe". filmportal.de. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  2. "Anders als die Andern". Edition Filmmuseum. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  3. Steakley, James D. (1999). "Cinema and Censorship in the Weimar Republic: The Case of Anders als Die Andern". Film History. 11 (2): 194. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 3815322.
  4. Steakley, James D. (1993). The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany. Ayer. p. 90. ISBN 978-0-88143-015-8.
  5. Isherwood, Christopher (2012). Christopher and His Kind. Vintage books. p. 24. ISBN 978-0-09-956107-1.
  6. Djajic-Horváth, Aleksandra (2014-03-24). "Magnus Hirschfeld". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
  7. Prawer, S. S. (2007). Between Two Worlds: The Jewish Presence in German and Austrian Film, 1910-1933. Berghahn Books. p. 76. ISBN 978-1-84545-303-9.
  8. Würmann, Isaac (2021-09-24). "Lost during Nazi rule in Germany, one of the world's first pro-gay films has finally been restored for modern viewers". Xtra Magazine. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
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