Sex in the “Pearl of the Danube”: the history of queer life, love, and its regulation in Budapest, 1873-1941

The dissertation examines the ideas, regulations, and experiences of queer sexualities in Hungary between the birth of Budapest as a unified metropolis in 1873 and Hungary’s entry into World War II in 1941. Focusing on same-sex sexuality throughout Hungary’s turbulent history provides an illuminating case study about how political conservatism and tolerance of non-normative sexualities could coexist prior to WWII. By piecing together scattered information on how regulatory bodies (police, courts, and medical establishments) and individuals negotiated sexuality throughout Hungary’s turbulent history, while simultaneously reading for historical and current silences around sexuality, the study exposes the complex interplay between the modernization efforts of Hungarian authorities, liberal ideas that equated “gay friendliness” with progress, and practical realities on the ground. I reconstruct the ambiguous legal discourse of same-sex sexuality, which criminalized male homosexuals, and, yet left a lot of room not to prosecute them. The chapters examine both discourses and lived experiences of non-normative sexualities using a wide range of sources that include: the homosexual registry of the Budapest Metropolitan police, contemporary investigative journalism reports, a lesbian scandal and legal case involving two of Hungary’s leading conservative women, the records of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic Revolutionary Tribunal’s Experimental Criminology Department, and various documents from the Hungarian legal system. I argue that regardless of the varying political constellations between 1873 and 1941, authorities did not attempt to repress “respectable” homosexuals because they believed that tolerance was a means to secure Budapest’s place in the transnational Western urban community. I demonstrate that in spite of Hungary’s authoritarian conservative climate of the interwar years, the discourses, regulation, and policing of same-sex sexuality show remarkable continuities from the pre-WW I era. Using same-sex sexuality as a lens, the dissertation also illustrates that Budapest was not a cultural backwater in prewar and interwar Europe, but was in fact an important location in a European conversation about non-normative sexuality that is more commonly associated with Berlin, London or Paris. In spite of the West’s sense of “superiority” and Hungary and Eastern Europe’s keenness to “catch up,” the transmission of knowledge about sexuality and its management was not a one-way flow.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Anita A. Kurima