Economy and Zeitgeist (1900-1925)

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This article was first published on Skeivopedia 2020-05-19.

Young Erling Næss (1895-1992) moved in 1913 to a rapidly growing capital. Youth flocked from the countryside to the capital, and Kristiania grew from 69,000 inhabitants in 1865 to 330,000 in 1920. This is the third part of a series about the pioneer Erling Næss and his time. The activist and journalist Svein Skeid is behind the series - which is based on unique interview material.

As the son of a destitute tenant farmer in Western Norway, he encountered a Kristiania marked by the world war, with high prices, food and fuel shortages, while speculation and profiteering brought profit to others.

In the period 1896-1933, Germany was the center of a homopolitical liberation movement.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson wrote in Dagbladet as early as 1891 that homosexuality must be decriminalized. And ten years later, he became internationally known as a defender of homosexuals by supporting the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld's campaign against the German Penal Code § 175, which criminalized sex between men.

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But the zeitgeist was far from ready for Bjørnson's liberal attitudes.

-"We felt like hunted criminals," Erling Næss told the newspaper Fritt Fram in 1990.

Streets, squares, and cruising areas received electric lighting from the 1890s, which literally "illuminated" the rest of society about "the homosexual cultural wave" whose immorality had already flooded Berlin, Copenhagen, and Stockholm (Koren, 1907).

At the end of the 19th century, the vague formulation "intercourse against nature" was replaced with "indecent intercourse between men" - in line with an increased awareness that there were homosexual men who had their meeting places – parks and urinals, etc.

Moral Panic 

The years around 1907 can be considered a turning point when the word "homosexual" began to appear as a new term in the Norwegian press, notably in connection with the Eulenburg affair in Germany and "The Great Morality Case" in Copenhagen. We also know of cases against homosexuals in Stavanger and Kristiania in 1909. The moral panic spread when shipbroker Fridtjof Sundt in Bergen was exposed, which almost led to a "spiritual battle" in the newspapers.

Led by the newspaper Arbeidet, a public meeting with 700 adult men called for measures against "perverse and degenerate" individuals. On the other hand, chief physician Henrik A. T. Dedichen defended homosexuals in the newspaper Social-Demokraten. Inspired by the German gay movement, he warned against blackmailing homosexuals. He wanted to prevent suicides and abolish Penal Code §213. Homosexuality was, according to Dedichen, an innate disease, the nature of which the individual could not change and something that should be considered a private matter.

Homosexuality was new and frightening. It was compared to the fall of the Roman Empire. Homosexuality, pedophilia, and prostitution were systematically conflated in newspaper headlines well into the 1960s. Homosexual men were dangerous to children, youth... and especially to women, as seen in two Norwegian novels from 1912 and 1913.

The word "homosexual" or "homosexuality" does not appear in the books In the Shadow of Karl Johan and Drude Helmer's Marriage. The nameless love is attributed to scorned wives. The men are described as "disgusting half-men with frivolous jargon," who drink "sweet sticky wines" and "wiggle their way into all positions." This "degenerate race stifles manhood, covers art and literature with its slime, and poisons homes with its toxic breath."

The books received good reviews and were read by many. In the Shadow of Karl Johan was serialized in the newspaper Social-Demokraten before being published in book form. The book became very popular and went through several editions.

The two books suggest that Kristiania's upper class had early established homosexual friendship networks.

Read more about this in the last two articles in this series:

Article 4: Characteristics of an early homosexual subculture.

Article 5: Where Kristiania's homosexuals met.

Apropos: 

"Half-men" also refers to lesbians.

"Half-men" was also used derogatorily about "manly, bearded, large-limbed, and coarse women," which, according to the newspaper Kysten on September 3, 1908, "lies far outside the natural order of these things." The word "lesbian" is mentioned by parish priest G. Skagestad in Morgenbladet on July 17, 1926, page 3, as an example of the sinfulness of Berlin, but the term did not become widely known in Norway until the 1960s-70s.