Homosexuals

From Moscow, Cameron Sawyer says:"There is a discreet homosexual past not just to fascism, but to the German political elite of the early 20th century in general. Wilhelm II was surrounded by homosexuals at a time when homosexuality was a harshly punished crime. Remember the Eulenberg scandal, which implicated not only the Kaiser’s best friend Prince Eulenberg but also the the Chief of Staff of the Army von Moltke, and the head of the Berlin police von Richtofen. Perhaps the strangest incident was the death of General Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler, then chief of the Military Cabinet, while dressed as a ballerina and dancing for the Kaiser". RH. Regarding Spain, we have discussed the homosexuality of people like Lorca, but I do not think that homosexuals would have got anywhere in Spanish politics There are countries in which hatred of homosexuals is not part of the culture, It would be interesting to see if in those countries homosexuals have been active in politics.

RH: "There are countries in which hatred of homosexuals is not part of the culture" George Sassoon comments: "There are also countries in which it is totally incomprehensible. Ex-Yugoslavia is an example, though I believe that there are a few there. I wouldn't mind meeting some if only to discover which grammatical gender they use when referring to themselves. (This is necessary when speaking in the past tense). There are, however, occasional cases of bestiality reported coyly in the local press ...Vegetarianism and feminism are equally incomprehensible to them, and doubtless other -isms too". RH: Is it possible that bagpipe-playing George was hired, like the Pied Piper of Hameln, to rid ex-Yugoslavia of those rats? If so I hope they paid him. Hameln did not past the Pied Piper, so he led all the children up a mountain, where they disappeared.

James Tent writes: "It was well known inside and outside Nazi Germany that homosexuality was simply a given in German society. Hitler was perfectly aware of Roehm's proclivities and chose to ignore them when it suited him. Himmler, Heydrich, Goering, Schellenberg, and others who were involved in the police, para-military organizations, and intelligence-counter-intelligence work, knew perfectly well that homosexuality was not uncommon in Germany, and they assumed, rightly, that it held true elsewhere. SOE, OSS and other organizations assumed the same, so much so that they often instructed agents to have fall-back stories in case they were being interrogated by the Gestapo. The latter were usually suspicious of cover stories that made the accused look squeaky clean. Therefore, under pressure, said agent might reveal the "real" story, e.g. that he was a homosexual, a gigilo trying to end a relationship, petty thief, or whatever might sound plausible. For a look at the issue of homosexuality in Nazi Germany see Harry Oosterhuis, "Medicine, Male Bonding, and Homosexuality in Nazi Germany," Journal of Contemporary History, 32 (1997), pp. 187-205.

Finally, within German society, the police, Gestapo, etc. treated the matter of homosexuality selectively (women were seldom charged) and arbitrarily. Often, they overlooked such behavior. However, when they chose to make an example and condemned a person to a camp, then those homosexuals were treated terribly harshly and suffered the fate of other least favored KZ prisoners (Jews, Slavs, for example): death".

“George Sassoon said of homosexuals in ex-Yugoslavia: "I wouldn't mind meeting some if only to discover which grammatical gender they use when referring to themselves.” From Russia, Cameron Sawyer counters "I don’t know what would be interesting about it. When referring to people, the English language has gender just like Slavic languages do – “he” and “she”. In Slavic languages there’s just an added transformation of verbs in past tense, but this goes hand in hand with whether the subject is “he” or “she”". RH: Now some people write s/he, but that does not seem like a solution. There is an increasing use of "they", "them", which avoids the gender issue.

Christopher Jones says: "John Heelan shouldn't hold Luis Buñuel to the exact number of two -- best to consider it poetic license. I think his point was that Madrid was still a very small, provincial city in the early 20th century and that homosexuality was rare indeed. Buñuel does go on in his memoirs about Spanish male sexuality being incredibly repressed, but if John is interested, he should try and find Buñuel by John Baxter, published in paperback by Fourth Estate in London. If anything, Buñuel had a monk-like mysogeny about him, an evil temper, confusion and rusticity that certainly separated him from the señorito from Andalucía and the master of Port Lligat.

I would warn all WAISers from overreliance on Ian Gibson who has a tendency to read things into documents that are simply not there just to satisfy his anal fixation. I can give a concrete example: Gibson describes a letter that Dalí wrote García Lorca that he addressed as "Mon cheri" (yes, in French, that was typical Dalí.) In fact, the letter begins with "Mon cher ami." Somehow, Mr Gibson overlooked the A and M to fabricate a more homosexual tone to the correspondence. Gibson goes even farther when he literally metamorphosed into a fly on the wall in a homosexual bar in Havana, and reconstructed the entire scene. Gibson has a disturbing tendency to use heresay and innuendo from nosey neighbors instead of actually talking to the person concerned. (I have very clear and concrete and numerous examples) His hatred of Catholicism is well known. To be fare, in the past, Gibson has produced some fine work in particular about the death of Lorca, but he later blemished this with his less than 50% work on Dalí -- a book filled with slanderous remarks that could have easily landed him in court.

In short I cannot understand why some people have this obsession with homosexuality. So and so, we live in times where sex is handled like a cheap commodity on par with coca cola and hamburgers and this has led to the destruction of the essential building block of society -- the family".

RH: I strongly agree with the last statement. Both the critics and their subjects were sick people, capable only of creating a sick society.

RH. "Regarding Spain, we have discussed the homosexuality of people like Lorca, but I do not think that homosexuals would have got anywhere in Spanish politics". John Heelan says: "Not quite true perhaps? Just from Lorca connections, Azaña was reputed to be homosexual (or at least bisexual); suspicions have been raised about whether the life-long attachment of Fernando de los Ríos to Lorca was motivated by elements additional to patronage of the Arts; there has been WAIS discussion already about the alleged affairs between José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Lorca;

Dan Eisenberg says there is a case for examining the alleged bisexuality of Franco himself, suggesting that is long-term companion was Carrero Blanco (assassinated in 1973 some two blocks fro me in Madrid- what an explosion that was!). Another worthy of study, he suggests, is Sánchez Bella of Opus Dei.
(see http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/deisenbe/Other_Hispanic_Topics/Research_Topic
s_in_Hispanic_Gay_and_Lesbian_Studies.htm)

RH: Some of these charges were made to discredit individuals. As for Dan Eisenberg, he has an obsession with making these assertions I do not view him as an unbiased scholar.

It is even possible that his jealousy of Lorca's influence over Dalí stemmed from he himself being a closet homosexual. There is much circumstantial evidence: for example "Despite his own taste for cross-dressing, he detested homosexuality. To win a bet he flirted with one of Madrid's well-known gays, letting himself be picked up at a bus stop and coaxing 25 pesetas our of the man 'for school books'. He even indulged in gay-bashing, accosting a man in a public lavatory and luring him outside to be beaten by other Residencistas" (p.23).

Similar to Dalí, his alleged fear of total sexual contact led him to fetishism (feet in Buñuel's case, rear-ends in Dalí's). Further, some psychoanalysts might consider Buñuel's devotion to "manly pursuits" like boxing ( didn't Hemingway also do everything to be a "man's man"?), his interest in sadism, his violent treatment of women in his films, as "displacements" in his denial of his own underlying sexual nature. Max Aub commented in his interviews with Buñuel that one could perceive that (his) strong resistance to speaking clearly about the poet's sexuality (this was in the early 1980s, that it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the film-maker had little confidence in his own. [Quoted in Gibson's Lorca-Dalí. El amor que no pudo ser (1999) p.141]". RH Spain is a land with a great cultural history, and we reduce it to this. I loathe and despise Lorca, Dali and their ilk. I suppose "Residencistas" refers to the Residencia de Estudiantes. I recall that there was one homosexual there. He was forced to leave.

John Heelan says: "It is the very richness of Spain's cultural history that has so captivated me for the last 35 years that I have devoted much time, expense and effort in attempting to understand its nature and roots. Implicit in understanding cultural roots is to appreciate the people themselves and the contemporary society in which they lived.

I agree with you that neither Lorca, nor Dalí nor Buñuel were attractive characters, but you cannot deny that each had a profound impact on Spanish cultural scene of the twentieth century. All were prone to be "economical with the truth", especially the first two who were outright liars at times. Such little reliance can be placed on their autobiographical writings and reported conversations that each piece of data needs to be cross-referenced with other inputs (and the reliability of those inputs needs to be ascertained as well).

Up to the late twentieth century and in Spain especially, "political correctness" impeded research by not permitting scholars to openly recognise the impact of the sexual preferences of public figures on their actions and outputs. In assessing the sources of artistic inspiration of Lorca, Dalí and Buñuel it is necessary to understand *all* the influences on their works, including their impact of their sexuality that either gave them - or denied them- entry to the cultural groupings and artistic fads of the day. Failure to do otherwise would be scholarly research which I would be disappointed if you did not reject as incomplete.

{By the way, that terrible word, "Residencistas", was a direct quotation from John Baxter's biography of Buñuel that somehow the reference got omitted.]

RH: Lorca, Dalí, Buñuel and co, were sick individuals, evidence of a sickness in society. I welcome an objective study of them, but not the cult of them to which we have been subjected. The book Invertebrate Spain deserved a sequel: Sick Spain.

Ronald Hilton -

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