Anarchism and homosexuality in Wilhelmine Germany: Senna Hoy, Erich Mühsam, John Henry Mackay.

Homosexuality and its social and legal suppression were heatedly discussed in early twentieth-century Germany, including on the left. Among the anarchists, positions with markedly diverse forms of argument were espoused by such prominent advocates of individualist anarchism as John Henry Mackay and by others coming from the Bakuninist tradition, such as Senna Hoy and Erich Mühsam. Their writings evidence that prior to World War I and into the 1920s, German anarchists--especially when compared with the Social Democrats--intervened consistently on behalf of individual self-determination extending into the sexual sphere, even though an undercurrent of hostility toward homosexuals persisted within the leftist movement as a whole.