Selli Engler

Selma "Selli" Engler (27 September 1899 – 30 April 1972 ) was a German writer and a leading activist of the lesbian movement in Berlin from about 1924 to 1931.

Selma Engler, 1929
Autograph Selma Engler, 1938

In 1931, Engler withdrew from the movement and focused on her career as a writer, courting the Nazi regime. After the war she lived in Berlin and unsuccessfully attempted to continue her literary work. She did not return to activism, and died in obscurity in Berlin in 1972.[1]

Life
House at Grossbeerenstrasse 74 in Berlin, former domicile of the BIF

Engler was born in Schwiebus and grew up with eleven siblings in poor economic conditions. In 1914, after the death of her father, a manufacturer of slippers, her mother moved to Berlin, along with Selma and four more of her siblings.

Engler was working as a sales clerk and later as an accountant. Several attempts to establish herself as a businesswoman in the 1920s failed. Some described her as a "virile" lesbian.[1]

Nothing is known about Engler after 1943 except for her death, which occurred in Berlin in 1972.[1]

Work

According to Franz Scott, a contemporary chronicler of the Weimar Republic's lesbian scene, Selli Engler was, together with Lotte Hahm and the pseudonymous "Charly", a pioneer of the German lesbian movement.[2]

Editor of Die BIF (1924–27)
BIF 3/1927 (click to browse)

Engler's work as an activist began either in 1925 or 1926 (probably the latter) with the founding and editorship of the magazine Die BIF – Blätter Idealer Frauenfreundschaften ("Papers of ideal women's friendship").[1] Die BIF was unique among lesbian publications of the time because it was the only one published, edited and written solely by women; other comparable magazines were dominated by men.[3]

Die BIF ceased publication after three monthly issues in 1927. As it was short-lived and failed to have a wide circulation, it remains very poorly documented today.[2] The only known original issues are kept in the German National Library in Leipzig.

Literary work

From 1927 to 1929, Engler contributed to the magazine Frauenliebe and from 1929 to 1931 to Die Freundin. Beside many texts related to her activist work her writings included, in particular, short fiction, poems and serial novels.[2][4]

Text from her novel Erkenntnis was re-used in a parodic manner by Alfred Döblin in a part of his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz that addresses homosexual love. In this context, Döblin expert Sabine Becker described Engler's writing as using "a very trivial Courths-Mahler style".[5] In contrast, Doris Claus's analysis of Engler's novel Arme kleine Jett emphasizes its emancipatory value: By portraying a lesbian lifestyle in the Berlin artists' scene that does not clash violently with the heroine's social environment and society at large, the novel outlines an utopia that provides a means of identification to the reader.[6]

Activism

As an activist, Engler sought to improve the organization of lesbian women, following the lead of gay activists such as Friedrich Radszuweit and Carl Bergmann. She particularly asked lesbians to join Radszuweit's Bund für Menschenrecht.[2]

In addition to her work as a writer, she organized ladies' clubs to allow lesbian women to gather without distraction. From 1926 to 1927, she ran the weekly "Damen-BIF-Klub",[7] and in September 1929, she opened the ladies' club Erâto on the premises of the Zauberflöte, a well-known gay and lesbian venue.[2] It appears to have been popular, as some of the club's events took place in venues with a capacity of some 600 persons.[7] The club shut down after a few months and reopened in January 1931 on a smaller scale. It was last recorded as active in May 1931.[4]

After 1931

After May 1931, Engler is no longer recorded as being active in the lesbian movement. Her name or that of the club Erâto does not appear again in scene publications.[8]

In 1933, she sent a play titled Heil Hitler to Adolf Hitler.[2] The Reich Dramaturgist, Rainer Schlösser, approved of the play's ideology, but believed that it lacked artistic and dramatic merit. In 1933, 1938 and 1943, Engler filed an application for membership in the Reichsschrifttumskammer, part of the Reichskulturkammer, the state organization to which all artists were required to belong. In that application, Engler described her past work with significant alterations. Due to a lack of publications, her application was rejected. Apart from this, there is no record of Engler interacting with the Nazi state.[1]

Novels
  • Erkenntnis (before 1929)
  • Das Leben ist nur noch im Rausch zu ertragen (1929)
  • Arme kleine Jett (1930)

Further reading
  • Amy D. Young. Club Of Friends: Lesbian Periodicals In The Weimar Republic. In: Mary McAuliffe, Sonja Tiernan (ed.): Tribades, Tommies and Transgressives; History of Sexualities: Volume I, 2009. ISBN 1-4438-0788-5
  • Florence Tamagne, History of Homosexuality in Europe, 1919–1939. 2005. ISBN 978-0-87586-356-6

See also

References
  1. Denis Barthel: Selli Engler (1899-1972): Verlegerin, Aktivistin und Dichterin - Addenda zu ihrer Biografie In: Mitteilungen der Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft Nr. 64, 2020, S. 26–34.
  2. Heike Schader: Virile, Vamps und wilde Veilchen - Sexualität, Begehren und Erotik in den Zeitschriften homosexueller Frauen im Berlin der 1920er Jahre, 2004, ISBN 3-89741-157-1, pp. 74–76
  3. Florence Tamagne: History of Homosexuality in Europe, 1919–1939. 2005, ISBN 978-0-87586-356-6, p. 80
  4. Julia Hürner: Lebensumstände lesbischer Frauen in Österreich und Deutschland – von den 1920er Jahren bis zur NS-Zeit (PDF; 657 kB), PhD thesis 2010, pp. 48–50, accessed 28 June 2013
  5. Sabine Becker: Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblins Epos der städtischen Moderne, in: Marily Martínez de Richter (ed.): Moderne in den Metropolen. Roberto Arlt und Alfred Döblin. Internationales Symposium, Buenos Aires – Berlin 2004. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3198-9, p. 129
  6. Doris Claus: Selbstverständlich lesbisch in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik. Eine Analyse der Zeitschrift "Die Freundin", Bielefeld, 1987, pp. 76–93
  7. Christiane Leidinger: Eine „Illusion von Freiheit” – Subkultur und Organisierung von Lesben, Transvestiten und Schwulen in den zwanziger Jahren, in: Ingeborg Boxhammer, Christiane Leidinger (eds.): Online-Projekt Lesbengeschichte, Berlin 2008, accessed 28 June 2013
  8. Katharina Vogel: Zum Selbstverständnis lesbischer Frauen in der Weimarer Republik. Eine Analyse der Zeitschrift ‘Die Freundin’ 1924-1933 in Eldorado: Homosexuelle Frauen und Männer in Berlin 1850–1950, Geschichte, Alltag und Kultur, Berlin, 1984, ISBN 3921495369, p. 165
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