2 Series: The 1920s in the Weimar Republic: a queer and Jewish perspective
Dr. Ofri Ilani
The Erotic Brotherhood of Men: Homosexuality, Judaism, and the Youth Movements
Hila Lavie, The Koebner Center for Jewish History, The Hebrew University
At the bar at “Mali Weigel”: Being a Jewish Lesbian in Gay Berlin of the Twenties

Dr. Ofri Ilany, a postdoctoral fellow at the Polonsky Academy at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, will lecture on The Erotic Brotherhood of Men: Homosexuality, Judaism, and the Youth Movements.

During the second decade of the twentieth century a new and radical ideology spread through the German-speaking world: the Männerbund, or the erotic brotherhood of men, which identified the erotic attraction between men, rather than the family, as the pillar on which society rests, and defined those men who are attracted to their own sex as the vital spirit at the heart of culture and country. The most powerful repercussions of this theory were felt in the youth movements, including Jewish youth movements, despite the theory’s anti-Semitic bias. Hans Blüher, the proponent of the theory, claimed that Jews are incapable of creating this bond of brotherhood between men.

The lecture will trace the rise and fall of the erotic brotherhood of men, and will discuss some of its Jewish disseminators, among them Benedict Friedlaender, Walter Moses, and Hans-Joachim Schoeps.

Dr. Ofri Ilany is an historian and postdoctoral fellow at the Polonsky Academy at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. His current research focuses on Jewish homosexuals during the first half of