Matyáš covers staggering stories of people struggling with homosexuality

Author: Queer Memory — 26.3. 2021 — Share on Facebook / Copy link

In the diary entries and documents left by Imrich Matyáš, we can find valuable mentions of specific people who did not cope with a life of persecution by the police and decided to end their own lives. In Matyáš's records, we can also find testimonies of people who underwent the so-called treatment of homosexual affection. In the interwar period, physicians did not have a well-established view on the origin of homosexuality that would be universally accepted. On the one hand, experts from the Berlin Institute for Sexual Sciences argued that homosexuality was innate and incurable. On the other hand, other experts offered treatment to cure these people in various clinics, for example by the means of hypnosis.

"How can one work and breathe freely,
If we live in a world of pretense oppressing people’s hurting hearts?
How can the truth be told, how can we say "look at the light!"
when we have to be ashamed of our own truth?”

Excerpt from the poem "Hard to Understand?" By Pavel Forman in The Voice of the Sexual Minority, 1931, no. 5-6, p. 14.

Author: Queer Memory
Published at: 26.3. 2021

More reading

loading:
love
loading:
love
6 min
i am some track description