Episode 114: The Transatlantic Legacy of Stonewall
Eric Langenbacher
Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program
Dr. Eric Langenbacher is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Society, Culture & Politics Program at AICGS.
Dr. Langenbacher studied in Canada before completing his PhD in Georgetown University’s Government Department in 2002. His research interests include collective memory, political culture, and electoral politics in Germany and Europe. Recent publications include the edited volumes Twilight of the Merkel Era: Power and Politics in Germany after the 2017 Bundestag Election (2019), The Merkel Republic: The 2013 Bundestag Election and its Consequences (2015), Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe (co-edited with Ruth Wittlinger and Bill Niven, 2013), Power and the Past: Collective Memory and International Relations (co-edited with Yossi Shain, 2010), and From the Bonn to the Berlin Republic: Germany at the Twentieth Anniversary of Unification (co-edited with Jeffrey J. Anderson, 2010). With David Conradt, he is also the author of The German Polity, 10th and 11th edition (2013, 2017).
Dr. Langenbacher remains affiliated with Georgetown University as Teaching Professor and Director of the Honors Program in the Department of Government. He has also taught at George Washington University, Washington College, The University of Navarre, and the Universidad Nacional de General San Martin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has given talks across the world. He was selected Faculty Member of the Year by the School of Foreign Service in 2009 and was awarded a Fulbright grant in 1999-2000 and the Hopper Memorial Fellowship at Georgetown in 2000-2001. Since 2005, he has also been Managing Editor of German Politics and Society, which is housed in Georgetown’s BMW Center for German and European Studies. Dr. Langenbacher has also planned and run dozens of short programs for groups from abroad, as well as for the U.S. Departments of State and Defense on a variety of topics pertaining to American and comparative politics, business, culture, and public policy.
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Lennart Linke
Heidelberg LGBT Network
Lennart Linke is an LGBTQ+ rights activist living in Heidelberg, Germany. In activism, his main goal is to build resilient communities and learn from historic perspectives to design strategies to preserve and strengthen queer rights in the future. He is involved in community building, creating spaces for subculture, as well as engaging with local politics. Lennart has hosted panel discussions with city council members and created a guide on candidates’ stances on LGBTQ+ issues in the council election. In addition, he contributes to social media campaigns and fosters queer subculture spaces, which are not yet represented in his hometown Heidelberg. Beyond his activism, Lennart recently received his master’s degree in Molecular Biotechnology at Heidelberg University and is moving toward a research career in cancer biology.
Phuong Tran
American Civil Liberties Union - Virginia
Phuong Tran is the Managing Community & Coalition Storyteller at the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia (ACLU-VA). She manages ACLU-VA’s storytelling program and works with ACLU-VA clients, partners, supporters, community members, and the creative community in Virginia on multiple storytelling projects, covering issues like LGBTQ+ rights, criminal legal reform, reproductive freedom, and voting rights. Phuong combines photojournalistic practices, ethical storytelling, and a public narrative approach to tell impactful stories that center people and their lived experiences.
In September 2024, participants in AGI’s project “Building LGBTQ+ Communities in Germany and the United States: Past, Present, and Future” traveled to New York City for site visits and discussions about queer activism and rights, including a trip to the Stonewall National Monument. In 1969, the Stonewall riots against police harassment and brutality launched what would become an international movement for LGBTQ+ rights. Two participants, Phuong Tran and Lennart Linke, join the Zeitgeist to reflect on how Stonewall impacted the LGBTQ+ movement globally, how it influenced German and American culture, and why historical memory is important when addressing today’s civil rights challenges.
Guest Host
Eric Langenbacher, AGI Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program
Guests
Phuong Tran, Managing Community & Coalition Storyteller, American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia
Lennart Linke, Activist, Heidelberg LGBT Network
Transcript
Eric Langenbacher
Welcome, everybody, to the American-German Institute’s Zeitgeist podcast. I’m Dr. Eric Langenbacher. I am a senior fellow and the director of the Society, Culture & Politics program here at AGI, and I will be the host of this podcast today. This is our first podcast with the second cohort of our building LGBTQ+ communities project and I’m really, really pleased to introduce two of our participants who will be talking about the aftermath of Stonewall. So, from the United States, we have Phuong Tran who is the managing community and coalition storyteller at the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. She manages the ACLU storytelling program and works with a variety of clients, partners, supporters, community members, and the creative community in Virginia on multiple storytelling projects covering issues like LGBTQ+ rights, criminal legal reform, reproductive freedom, and voting rights. And then from Germany, we have Lennart Linke, who is a LGBTQ+ rights activist who lives in Heidelberg, Germany. His main goals in his activism have been to build resilient communities and learn from historic perspectives, develop strategies to preserve and strengthen queer rights in the future. He’s hosted panel discussions with City Council members and created a guide on candidate stances on LGBTQ+ issues in the Council elections. Beyond his activism, he recently received his master’s degree in molecular biotechnology at Heidelberg University and is moving towards a research career in cancer biology. So welcome, Phuong and Lennart. And to start things off, we’ll have Lennart start by giving us some details on what Stonewall was and its aftermath. Lennart.
Lennart Linke
Hi Eric, thanks for having us. So during the first part of our excursion to New York City, we visited the Stonewall National Monument. And as a quick background—I think most of the listeners will be familiar with it—the Stonewall riots took place in June 1969 and were a big pushback against persecution and police brutality in New York City against queer people, and in modern day it’s widely considered to be a catalyst for the modern LGBTQ+ civil rights movement of course, in the United States, but also in other Western countries. And in 2016, the Stonewall Inn, which was the bar where this major riot happened, was designated a national monument by the Obama administration to recognize its significance in American history and culture, and it’s the first American monument dedicated to the queer civil rights movement.
Eric Langenbacher
Phuong, anything you’d like to add?
Phuong Tran
Thank you, Lennart, for the quick overview, and thank you Eric for having us today for the podcast. Stonewall was really a highlight of our trip to New York City this past fall, and I think that it was an opening. These communities had existed for a long time, and for the first time, they were able to be out in a different way, and that’s why as Lennart said, Stonewall was a catalyst. After Stonewall, so many things changed, so many things were started and grew and thrived, and we will explore that further. Something that really stood out for me when we visited Stonewall National Monument was a recognition of Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Zazu Nova, all the leaders in the movement at that time that didn’t get the recognition they deserved within their lifetime. And that’s something I would love to explore and discuss further about the politics of history remembrance. Like what we choose to remember and how it can inform and teach a lesson as we think about our movement today. So that is an overview of Stonewall, and we are ready to dig deeper!
Eric Langenbacher
My first question to you both is it, it’s now been 55 years since the Stonewall uprising. So how do you think that those events have changed society in both the U.S. and in Germany? Who would like to take that question first? Lennart, maybe?
Lennart Linke
Yes. So my first focus is on the way it changed this activism and organizing. Stonewall definitely has inspired a movement that goes way beyond the United States. For example, the German Pride parades. We have every summer called “Christopher Street Days” in remembrance to the street where the Stonewall riots happened, and it gave visibility and space to activists in Western Europe and the United States to fight for equal rights and decriminalization, marriage equality, and also at a later stage protection from discrimination.
Eric Langenbacher
Phuong?
Phuong Tran
Another legacy of Stonewall I think has to do with cultural shift. Stonewall really brought to the surface a lot of the issues that LGBTQ+ people and community face. It increased visibility, awareness, and it kind of started a Pride movement. A year after Stonewall, the first pride march started and then right after that, every year there would be Pride march everywhere in America. And then globally. So, it’s really starting point for a cultural shift. Stonewall also brought national and international attention to LGBTQ+ issues, highlighting the discrimination and violence faced by the community. Stonewall influenced art, literature, and media representation of LGBTQ+ people, which we saw on our trip at the Leslie Lohman Museum and at The Center as well—I’m just thinking of examples from our trip to mention.
Eric Langenbacher
Right. Why don’t we focus and delve a little bit more deeply into that phenomenon of backlash that you just mentioned, Phuong. Would you like to talk a little bit more about backlash to LGBTQ+ civil rights initiatives, both immediately after the Stonewall riots, and then more recently?
Phuong Tran
I can talk about what happened in the U.S. Like I said, right after the Stonewall riots in 1969, several LGBTQ+ rights organization were started such as STAR. Pride marches also started, and not just in New York City but even in my state, Virginia, you would have a Pride March as early as 1970/1971. But then at the same time in the 80s and in the 90s, you have the AIDS pandemic hitting the LGBTQ+ community really hard. And it was a major failure of the U.S. government to address it as a public health epidemic and to push LGBTQ+ people further in the shadows and saying that it’s OK, and so many people died that we remember. When we visited New York City and the NYC AIDS Memorial, so that one of the backlash that I kind of think about right after Stonewall, you thought that you get the visibility, you get the awareness. And then, yeah, your problems, your mental health, your physical health isn’t treated as a public health issue. And then, later on, after Stonewall, we have, major legal victories like marriage equality, the decriminalization of the sodomy law, and the passing of anti-discrimination laws in the U.S. All of that just happened in the early 2000s. So many years after Stonewall.
But nowadays, in the current political climate, you have a lot of targeted attacks on transgender and gender expansive youth in public schools. You have a whole wave of book banning, seeking to ban or restrict access of young people to stories. And many of those stories are considered “sexually explicit.” But they are actually stories about LGBTQ+ experiences, stories about people of color, stories about black indigenous experiences. So there is a whole targeted attack. And then also at the Supreme Court level, you have the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which led a lot of people to question if the decision legalizing same sex marriage can also be overturned and lead to the state to decide, as well as other wins that we have gained so far as the Supreme Court take on cases about transgender rights.
Eric Langenbacher
So a history of some accomplishments, but then unfortunately backlash as well. Lennart, what about the situation in Germany?
Lennart Linke
So the historical context in the late 60s in Germany was much different than in the United States. The most important thing to know is that the criminalization of homosexuality, especially targeting gay men and also gender non-conforming people was continued from the Nazi era. During the Holocaust, tens of thousands of queer people were murdered in the concentration camps, and the German government, even the Democratic one afterwards, continued to put queer people into jail, and only in the late 60s—at the same year as Stonewall in ‘69—there was the first decriminalization happening on the federal level. And because in whole Western Europe, the zeitgeist was moving towards a more progressive liberal attitude, sparked by how to deal with the responsibility of the Holocaust and generally the antiwar movement fueled by the Cold War, this gave space to decriminalize homosexuality and also, at least in Western Germany, organize and voice demands. Until ‘89 we always have the history of two Germanys. In East Germany, we know about a small hidden community in East Berlin and other bigger cities, but overall people there were not able to form a civil rights movement and protest properly because there was surveillance, and the East German regime did not tolerate any independent organizing and movement outside of its party system.
Then in the 80s the German community did not face the same suffering in the AIDS crisis as in the United States, especially by conservative politicians. There had been a lot of backlash because the political attitude was shifting more to white, right-wing conservatism, and multiple conservative politicians called for encampment or exclusion of HIV positive people, but at the same time, the Conservative Health Minister led to the foundation of the community collaborative effort on preventing the spread of STIs, which is a big success story, and it still continues today. Meanwhile, in East Germany, homosexuality was decriminalized much earlier than in the West, but there the promoted family ideal was still the heterosexual nuclear family, so you could not exist queer in public and organize a parade. And then after the German reunification in 1990, this sodomy paragraph criminalizing queer people was finally cut in opposition to some Catholic Bishops, and then only in the 2000s, queer people got reparations for the criminalization or were included in Holocaust memorial.
In present day, the situation is similar to the United States, as we live in a more globalized world and also people who hate queer people, learn from each other. We have a big backlash against gender-inclusive language in schools and public spaces. Also, access to LGBTQ inclusive sex ed and education in general. And also, it’s especially targeting trans people, as from the first of November, we will have a new self ID law in Germany that allows trans people to access HRT and get their gender recognized more easily, and there has been heavy backlash against that.
Eric Langenbacher
I just want to kind of emphasize one point that you brought up, Lennart. So when we were with our first cohort in Cologne, Germany, back in the spring, we met with the President Emeritus of the German AIDS Foundation. He actually really emphasized that point that you made, that there was bipartisan, both conservative and more liberal or Social Democratic support, behind the public health response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, and he really emphasized that point as one of the reasons for the comparatively successful German response to the AIDS epidemic.
But I’d like to switch gears just a little bit, because we’ve been talking about greater visibility, greater awareness. Yes, there’s also been backlash at times, but I’d like to talk a little bit about your thoughts on how this greater visibility has manifested itself. In particular, what always matters is, well, high culture and low culture as I sometimes put it. So, pop cultural representations are also super important. So maybe we could talk a little bit about how that’s changed in the aftermath of Stonewall over half a century at this point, maybe we can start with the United States. Phuong?
Phuong Tran
Yeah, I think that after Stonewall, many queer and gay and LGBTQ+ representations started to have a place in not only our pop culture, but also in art, politics, and literature. Just naming a few TV shows like the L Word and Queer Eye that are making great waves around the U.S. with supporting casts, who are LGBTQ+ people themselves. So it’s not just straight people playing queer roles, but also queer people having a say in how they should be represented, and then they can have their own career develop, that way they can be out and proud of who they are. That is a real asset. And then just thinking of visibility, like Pride marches and events everywhere, even in Vietnam, where I’m from, you know, we had the first Pride march inspired by what happened in the U.S. in 2019.
And then I’m thinking of LGBTQ+ celebrities, including politicians and lawmakers. I’m from Virginia, so we have Danica Roem, the first openly transgender woman to be serving in the State House. And even though she still faces some discrimination here and there, some Senators and delegates refused to use her right pronouns and address her accordingly. But that’s still a major victory for representation, that when a young person sees transgender people serving in the State House and not just representing transgender issues, but also representing their community and being trusted with that responsibility, it means a whole lot. During our trip to New York City, we also got to meet with Chi Ossé, who is a gay young man who started out in activism and then moved into politics. And that’s just a really exciting, interesting perspective of how young queer people can really change the way that we do our business, the way that we make laws and policy and connect with the community they serve.
So all of that is just an example of how Stonewall really sparked a whole wave of visibility and awareness, and there’s power in visibility. You cannot address a problem if you cannot name it, if you cannot help people speaking about it being safe to go out to pride marches, being safe to show up authentically as who they are in the State House and run for office, or just playing in TV series and movies, and normalize and make sure that the community, the public, understand that LGBTQ+ people and communities are just people in our community who want to just exist and be treated with dignity and respect.
Eric Langenbacher
Lennart, any thoughts?
Lennart Linke
So it was actually a piece of media that is now, in hindsight, considered to be a Stonewall-ish moment for the German community, it’s the movie—I will translate the title real quick—It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is a Pervert, But the Situation that He Lives In by Rosa von Praunheim. So, this was the first time that homosexuality became visible on public broadcast on a nationwide level, and it was the first time for a lot of people that they saw gay people on their screens. And it was also the first time, probably for a lot of queer people, that their identity was recognized in a piece of media, and this of course paved the way for more visibility, more organization. The movie itself actually ends with the quote, “out of the closet, into the streets,” with a call for action for queer people to organize and fight for their rights. And over the years when, especially when we moved towards the 90s, we have much more visibility of queer people in public, but it was still happening that people, for example, were forced to come out because they were blackmailed by political opponents or they were subject to be stereotyped and typecast when they were actors and media personalities, and it was always that more visibility led to more backlash. For example, only in recent years trans community members got more visibility, especially when we talk about the self ID law, and the backlash and the increase in hate against trans people has been immense in Germany.
Eric Langenbacher
All right. Well, switching gears a little bit. You know, one of the things that we’re trying to do in this exchange program is to study various dimensions of the LGBTQ+ community: the past, the present, and the future. So why don’t we talk a little bit about the past and the issue of historical recognition and reparations? How do people remember LGBTQ+ history in Germany and the U.S.? what are your key takeaways when it comes to that? Phuong?
Phuong Tran
I kind of alluded to this earlier when I talked about Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two Black and Latina transgender women who played a major role, who threw the rock and started the riot in a lot of ways, based on just what I’ve been reading about. And at that time, they didn’t really get the recognition they deserved. When we visited the National Monument in Greenwich Village, we were told by the docent that Sylvia Rivera was actually booted off of the stage when she was trying to speak at the first Pride march right after Stonewall, and there were just a lot of exclusions of trans and black and brown activists at that time, many of whom were homeless, many of whom were sex workers, many of whom were also experiencing poverty, substance use disorder. That is just kind of part of the politics at that time. We talked about the conflict between the movement itself, the exclusion within the movement itself, and that reflected on what people remember and recognize about that time. I think that later on, with a Netflix documentary about Marsha P. Johnson, then a younger generation and movement that focused on the leadership of Black, Brown, indigenous, young transgender leaders, we are having different focus on our reexamination of history and that’s kind of something that you know came about later on in history. I think it’s just later in the early 2000s that we have a better understanding of the role of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, and we gave them the recognition that they deserve after they died. Both of them died pretty tragically, even though they were historical figures, they died by being murdered, allegedly, no one really did the investigation even nowadays, but Marsha P. Johnson was found dead in the Hudson River, and Sylvia Rivera died in the hospital as a complication of her illness for many years. So just a quick reminder that even though they were really major figures within the movement, they didn’t really get the treatment and the respect they deserved during their lifetime.
Eric Langenbacher
If I could just add a couple of things on the issue of recognition and memory, we did a couple of other things on the New York study tour as well that kind of speak to this. We had a really very fruitful briefing with some folks involved with the initiative to start the first ever LGBTQ+ Museum in New York City that will be associated with the New York Historical Institute. And then we also had an opportunity to meet some of the curators of the Lesbian Herstory Archive, which is located out in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which was a very, very moving visit, where we can see just the dedication that so many of these folks have put to preserving the history of the community. Anyway, Lennart, would you like to share some thoughts on such efforts in the German context?
Lennart Linke
The process of getting recognition and reparations for the queer community in Germany was a very slow and difficult process, but it led to some successes. For example, queer people were finally included in the national Holocaust memory and in the public ceremony since 2002. And in 2017, they started rehabilitating the victims of this sodomy paragraph 175, which was criminalizing same-sex relationships. So, there were some progresses on a government level. At the same time, most people will probably remember the pink triangle, which was used in the Holocaust concentration camps to originally mark gay men or trans women, and it has been reclaimed a few decades later by a lot of artists, I can think of the Keith Haring example, which we saw some of his artwork during our trip in New York City. And a lot of people in the modern day also have memory of Stonewall, as Germans are very influenced by American pop culture as well. The Netflix documentary about Marsha P. Johnson definitely helped. But generally, intersectionality is a rather new topic, in my opinion, in the queer community in Germany, and there has been a lack of inclusion, especially for marginalized communities, trans people of color, people who are not from a white Christian background, and so on.
Eric Langenbacher
We are rapidly coming to the end of our time for this podcast. Before I hand it back to the both of you to share some concluding thoughts, I would also point out that there is a memorial to gays and lesbians who were persecuted by the Nazis that was opened in 2010, which is actually in the Tiergarten in Berlin across the street from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; there’s also the Schwules Museum (Gay Museum) in Berlin. So, there are some similar initiatives in some German cities, especially in Berlin, to what we saw in New York City. But now we will transition to some concluding thoughts. So, Phuong, would you like to share your thoughts?
Phuong Tran
Yeah. I just have some thoughts about when I think about Stonewall, I really think a lot about intersectionality, and how by examining that part of our history, it can inform how we learn from history and shape our action today. I’m from Virginia; I’m from the South, and it’s a funny thing to mention that in the South, Stonewall doesn’t only refer to the Stonewall riots, but also Stonewall Jackson. So we are at an interesting intersection because there are two Stonewalls in the South, the queer one and the Confederate one. And if you look into Virginia’s history, even after Stonewall, where LGBTQ people and community have better visibility, the community and bars here were still segregated. There are organizations who advocate for gay liberation that exclude transgender people who are mostly drag performers and sex workers, and even nowadays, you know, one of the lessons from Stonewall is that it’s not just about marriage equality. It’s not just about having representation in pop culture. It’s also about access to housing, especially for young people, which is what we learned from visiting the Ali Forney Center in New York and The Center as well. And the Harvey Milk School is also about making sure that young people have all the support that they need when they are in public school, not being forcibly outed, having access to LGBTQ+ stories and experiences, having supportive teachers in school, and being able to access the healthcare they need, or being able to make that decision between them and their doctor. So they’re just a whole host of issues nowadays that we can still learn from Stonewall if we really center the leadership and the issues that black, trans, and gender non-conforming people face. So that is one lesson from Stonewall about intersectionality. Lennart, do you have anything you want to add?
Lennart Linke
So, Phuong, I agree with you that civil rights are definitely connected to the social justice topic and achieving support for marginalized groups as a whole. And for me, after visiting the Stonewall Memorial, my key takeaway was that social progress is not a linear thing. More visibility is always accompanied with more backlash, and for me it’s especially important to notice that we need as wide a coalition within the community to stay strong in contrast to this backlash, because throughout history there has always been a fight within the community between if it’s the wisest choice to assimilate to the mainstream society to live a safe and well-adjusted life? Or should we have a more revolutionary non-conforming approach, and that’s a difficult matter that’s too big to discuss for this format, but it’s foolish to think that if you bring up these talking points like “gay, not queer” or “trans inclusion” or feeding into anti-Muslim rhetoric—which happens a lot in Germany that some people within the LGBTQ community feed into this right-wing narrative that especially migrants from predominantly Muslim countries would bring homophobia into Germany as if it never existed here in this country, which is just wrong and foolish—and I think overall it’s an effort to divide our community. And then, you know, at first trans rights will be on the chopping block. But it’s naive to think that they will let anti-discrimination laws and marriage equality untouched—that’s naive to think. Overall, I think it’s important that we see the greater goals and not get lost in the small fights. Because in the end people who hate us for our identity don’t care if we assimilate or are non-conforming. They will still target us.
Eric Langenbacher
Thank you very much. So that will conclude our podcast for today. I’d like to mention to all of our listeners that we’ll have many more materials that will be available on the website of the American-German Institute, including the story map that will go in detail with many pictures into all of the wonderful meetings that we had. When we were in New York back in September, we will also have an article precisely on housing issues, which Phuong had mentioned just now. So please look to our website for that. I just really want to thank both Lennart and Phuong for taking the time to do this very illuminating podcast with us today in our Zeitgeist podcast series. Thank you and goodbye.
This podcast is part of the project “Building LGBTQ+ Communities in Germany and the United States: Past, Present, and Future” and is generously funded by the Transatlantik-Programm der Bundesrepublik Deutschland aus Mitteln des European Recovery Program (ERP) des Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz(BMWK) (Transatlantic Program of the Federal Republic of Germany with Funds through the European Recovery Program (ERP) of the Federal Ministry for Economics and Climate Action (BMWK)).
