2012 Anita A. Kurimay ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

389 Pages·2012·3.6 MB·English

by  Anita Kurimay

©2012
Anita A. Kurimay
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
SEX IN THE “PEARL OF THE DANUBE”: THE HISTORY OF QUEER LIFE, LOVE,
AND ITS REGUALTION IN BUDAPEST, 1873-1941

By

ANITA A. KURIMAY

A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Program in History
written under the direction of
Professor Belinda Davis and Professor Paul Hanebrink
approved by

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New Brunswick, New Jersey
October 2012
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Sex in the “Pearl of the Danube”: The History of Queer Life, Love, and its Regulation in
Budapest, 1873-1941

By
ANITA A. KURIMAY

Dissertation Advisors: Belinda Davis, Paul Hanebrink

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

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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.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my advisers, Belinda Davis and Paul Hanebrink, for their
generous support that guided me through the entire process of earning a Ph.D. degree.
Their feedback and suggestions were instrumental in writing this dissertation. I also
want to thank my dissertation committee, Melissa Feinberg, Seth Koven, and Dagmar
Herzog for providing invaluable ideas and new ways of thinking and writing about my
subjects.
Thanks to the archivists at Budapest City Archives. Special thanks goes to the
members of the Sex Reading Group at Rutgers University, whose constructive comments
were important in shaping the final version of the dissertation. I greatly appreciate all of
the editing work done by Lisha Nadkarni, Chris Engert and Mary Lee Sargent.
Thanks to my friends across the globe. Their friendship and teasing about my
“forever scholarship” status has been essential for my mental well-being.
My family, including my extended family has been my greatest support. I want to
thank them for their unconditional love and encouragement. Finally, Bridget Gurtler for
putting up with me.

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DEDICATION

A világ legjobb nagyijának ès nagypapájának akik feltètlen szeretete minden eddigi
sikerem alapja

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………..ii

Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………….iv

Dedication………………………………………………………………………………...v

Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………...vi

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….1

Chapter 1

The Registry of Homosexuals……………………………………………………………44

Chapter 2

The “Knights of Sick Love”:
The queers of Kornèl Tábori and Vladimir Szèkely……………………………………..94

Chapter 3

Rehabilitating “Sexual Abnormals”:
Queers and Hungary’s 1919 Soviet Criminology Tribunal…………………………….152

Chapter 4

Peepholes and “Sprouts”:
Servant Voices Speak of Same-Sex Sexuality in Interwar Hungary…………………...207

Chapter 5
Unlikely Allies:

Queer Men and Horthy Conservatives……………………………………………….…267

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Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...328

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………342

Curriculum Vita ………………………………………………………………………..381

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1

Introduction

In 1908, the celebrated Hungarian writer Soma Guthi published Homosexual
Love, as part of his new crime novel series.1 The novel, which revolves around a tragic
love story between two well-situated gentlemen, stands as one of the few Hungarian
sources from this period that directly addresses same-sex love and sexuality. It offers a
rare window onto early twentieth-century representations of homosexuality in Hungary.
Guthi’s frankness with his readers about homosexual people remains striking and seems
remarkably liberal, even over a century later:
The papers do not provide enough information [about homosexuality] for the
curious lay reader. This is despite the fact that the nature of homosexuality can be
described in two short words: sensual friendship. Brave definition, but I believe it
is quite accurate. In friendship, the existence of sensuality is nothing else than a
wonderful exception to the rule…

Whoever knows them, knows very well that they are different from their fellow
men only in the nature of their sexual desire, and otherwise, they are, by and
large, intelligent, kind-hearted, and honest people, who never sin against public
morality because of their unnatural desire. The Hungarian Criminal Code labels
love between men “unnatural fornication,” and according to paragraph 241 makes
it punishable with up to one year in prison. The penal code does not actually
define what constitutes a criminal offense in this case, however, and it is up to a
judge to decide and assess whether or not “unnatural fornication” had taken place.
And since the establishment of the Criminal Code, we know not a single case
when any Hungarian urning [contemporary name for male homosexual] had been
fined or had been prosecuted for unnatural fornication. This also proves that these
unlucky, bastard children of nature (whose numbers are considerable, about 1500
in Budapest), despite their different sexual preference, commit no offense against
public decency. Rather, they would sacrifice all their property and belongings
and even take their own lives, rather than be put in front of the law or society’s
judgments, following the denunciations of an informer ("chanteur"), or a
prostitute.2

1 Guthi, Soma. Homosexuális Szerelem  : Bűnügyi Regény (Homosexual Love: A Crime Novel), Fekete
Könyv: Eredeti Bűnügyi És Detektív Történetek (Black Book: Crime and Detective Stories). Budapest:
Kunossy - Szilágyi és társa, 1908. Italics are mine.
2 Guthi, 6-7; 159-164.
2

The writer of these lines, along with Hungarian officials and many of their
contemporaries, was painfully aware of the growing presence of men in Budapest who
had sex with, bought sex from, or sold sex to other men. As this dissertation will argue,
many of Gutha’s observations, such as the considerable presence of queer men in the city,
suggest an ambiguous legal discourse of same-sex sexuality, which on the one hand
criminalized male homosexuals, and, on the other hand, left a lot of room not to prosecute
them. It also pointed toward the general silence around same-sex desire and acts that
were characteristics of non-normative (queer) Budapest and that took place in both public
and private places of the city. What was common knowledge for contemporaries about
Budapest’s extensive sexual public culture throughout the first three decades of the
twentieth century, however, has been subsequently forgotten and, at times, actively
written out of history. This is particularly true for the history of same-sex sexuality.
Unlike Berlin, Paris, London, and Vienna, but similar to other East-Central European
capitals, the historical existence of a vibrant queer sexual culture of Budapest has not
been acknowledged, either in public memory or in the broad historical scholarship.3 This
project originated in a prolonged and frustrating search to locate queer sexualities in
Hungary’s past. Consequently, the driving force behind my work has been to historicize
non-normative sexualities and thereby reinsert Hungary and East-Central Europe into the
history of sexuality and vice versa.4 The dissertation examines the ideas, regulations, and

3 The place of Vienna has been acknowledged in history of sexuality in the last five years. The most
important works include, Gunter, Pelinka, and Herzog, eds. Sexuality in Austria (Contemporary Austrian
Studies 15). Transaction Publishers, 2007.
4 The historical scholarship on urban homosexuality is considerable, yet to date Budapest (along with East-
Central Europe) has received no attention. The title of the most comprehensive book on the interwar period
by Florence Tamagne is telling: The History of Homosexuality in Europe: Berlin, London, Paris 1919-
1939. United States: Algora Publishing, 2004. Prior to WWII Russian cities were the only non-Western
European cities that had been studied. See Dan Healey’s Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The
Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2004.