(Not Quite) 80 Gays Around the World: Part 5) Monks, Monarchs and Myrrh

Last time on (Not Quite) 80 Gays: The Art Workshop International was founded by 12) Bea Kreloff (1925-2016) and 13) Edith Isaac Rose (1929-2018) in Assisi, a city famous as the home of 14) St. Francis of Assisi (c.1187-1226), founder of the Franciscan order of friars who, in 2022, elected its first openly gay “bishop” 15) Markus Fuhrmann (b.1971).

There are two points I need to clear up. First, despite the title, friars are not monks. Basically, monks keep themselves to themselves in a monastery, while friars go out and minister among the outside community. I thought “monks” worked better in the title than “friars”.

Second, the Franciscan order of friars does not have bishops. That is the term I used because it is the most recognisable term used for someone of a comparable position in other Christian churches. Technically, all Franciscan friars are of equal position. Those elected to take overall charge of the affairs of the global Franciscan order (like an archbishop under the ultimate authority of the Pope) is called the Minister General. The world is divided into provinces (the equivalent of dioceses), and the friar elected to oversee each province is called a Minister Provincial (the equivalent of a bishop).

In June 2022, members of the chapter of the province of St. Elizabeth, the German “diocese”, gathered in Ohrbeck near Osnabruck to, amongst other things, elect their new Minister Provincial in succession to Father Cornelius Bohd, who had served his full term of office. The chapter elected 15) Father Markus Fuhrmann (b.1971). Just a few weeks beforehand he had come out as gay.

I wrote about the Franciscan stance on homosexuality last time on “80 Gays”. The issue of homosexuality in the Catholic Church was among several issues discussed in the Synodale Weg, or Synodal Way, a series of conferences held between 2019 and 2023 by the Catholic Church in Germany. Father Markus had always been a supporter of the Synodal Way and of changing some of the Church’s antiquated and corrupt practices, as was his predecessor. Needless to say, the Synodal Way attracted a lot of criticism from within and outside the Catholic Church in Germany.

Official logo the Synodal Way

During all of this controversy Father Markus came out as gay. He was not just an ordinary friar at the time. He was the Vicar Provincial (the next level down from a Minister Provincial) to his predecessor. Just as there was criticism about aspects of the Synodal Way, so there was criticism of Father Markus’s election. The fact that the province of St. Elizabeth elected an openly gay man as their guiding minister must mean that there is a change beginning to happen in the Catholic Church, at least in Germany.

Father Markus is the third Minister Provincial of St. Elizabeth Province. The province itself is relatively new, having been formed by the merger in 2010 of several smaller provinces. Prior to this, Father Markus was a pastor to the homeless in Cologne, the city at the centre of one of the former smaller provinces, the Province of Cologne and the Three Kings.

There’s a Christmas connection here. The Three Kings refer to those in the Bible story of the birth of Christ. But what are they doing in Cologne, you might be asking? The short story is that Cologne cathedral houses their reputed remains. They were brought there by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa from Milan. Before Milan they were in Constantinople, having been taken there by Emperor Constantine the Great’s mother in the 4th century. She had found them in the Holy Land. No-one today really believes they are genuine, but they help to focus the faith of devout Christians.

I’ve written before about the Three Kings. In my Advent series in 2019 I mentioned how modern scholarship is beginning to look at the Three Kings in a historical context. The earliest translations of the Bible didn’t refer to them as kings. This is a rank assigned to them in the Middles Ages to emphasise their status as important representatives from their countries, and because of several prophecies in the Old Testament.

It is speculated that the kings were in fact priests or astrologers. Taking into account that they are said to have come from “the east” suggests that they came from the areas now covered by Iran, Iraq and Syria. During the time of the birth of Christ these areas predominantly practised the Zoroastrian faith. It is widely believed that their priests were most often either androgynous, intersex, transgender or eunuch.

So, the Three Kings weren’t kings. We don’t know their names either. People of the middle ages liked to give names to anonymous characters in the Bible (such as Simeon Bachos). We still do it. We give names to things that don’t have them (children, genders, nations, inventions, animals, asteroids, etc.). Over the centuries the Three Kings have been given many names. Different early church communities gave different names, and some even said there were more than three kings. So, if other churches had been more influential we may be calling the kings by names such as Eshtanbozon, Zual, or Walastar.

The names that we are more familiar with today first appeared in the 6th century in a famous mosaic in the Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy. There, above images of the kings, are versions of the names which became the most universal – 15) Caspar, 16) Melchoir) and 17) Balthasar. Another reason why we assume there were three of them is because they brought three gifts, one each – gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Two of these gifts puzzled me as a child. They probably puzzled you as well. Gold is obvious, a precious gift. But what about the others? Frankincense is just incense, also a precious substance at the time and often presented to kings.

We can’t tell much about myrrh from its name, unless you know that is a resinous substance obtained from a thorny tree of the same name. It is used as a perfume, but also in embalming. Its significance as a gift to Christ is to represent His mortality as the only part of the Holy Trinity who could actually die.

The name myrrh is of Semetic origin and means “bitter”. It entered other eastern nations and languages, including ancient Greece. There a myth was created to explain the myrrh tree’s origin. It tells of a girl called Myrrha who fell in love with her father and tricked him into having sex with her, resulting in her pregnancy. Myrrha became remorseful and went into self-imposed exile. She begged the gods to help her out of her situation and they turned her into the tree that bears her name. As for the unborn child, the gods decided to release the child from the tree. This child grew up to be associated with sex, beauty, and fertility and have various gender-fluid relationships. His name was 19) Adonis.

Next time on (Not Quite) 80 Gays: We step into a garden and play some games.

Game of Gay Thrones 8: Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Byzantium, Murcia, Dai Viet and Anhalt

To mark last Saturday’s historic coronation of King Charles III here is another batch of lgbt+ people who were prevented from becoming sovereign, or who unlawfully declared themselves to be one.

We’ll start with a man who was born into the British royal family but was deprived of his titles by the king.

Prince Hubertus von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1909-1943) – heir apparent of the duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

In 1826 the German duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was created. The title of duke eventually passed to the children of Prince Albert von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the husband of Queen Victoria of the UK. By 1917 the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was Victoria and Albert’s grandson, Prince Charles, Duke of Albany.

During World War I Charles (I suppose I should use his German name Karl) fought for Germany against Britain. This prompted the UK to pass the Titles Deprivations Act 1917. This stripped British royals who were fighting for Germany of all their British titles, and the loyal British royals dropped their German titles. This is when the UK Royals adopted the family name Windsor and the Princes of Battenburg became the Mountbattens.

After the war the German Weimar Republic abolished all royal titles, though many remained in use unofficially, as they are still today. The ex-reigning royals became the titular heads of their dynasties. Karl’s eldest son renounced his rights to succeed as head of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha dynasty in 1932. The heir became Karl’s second son, Prince Hubertus.

Like his father Prince Hubertus became a high-ranking Nazi officer, but unlike his father Hubertus was actually anti-Hitler. Surprisingly, there are reports that Hitler would have appointed Prince Hubertus governor of the UK after a successful invasion, making him third in rank in the entire Nazi party. It has become apparent through research carried out in the last decade that Prince Hubertus was a closeted gay man. He never married, had no known relationships, or an interest in getting married.

During World War II Hubertus was a Luftwaffe pilot. He was killed when his plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Force in 1943. His father outlived him and died in 1954 and Hubertus’s nephew became head of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha family.

Staurakios (d.800) – attempted to become Emperor of Byzantium

Staurakios was one of the many eunuchs who held high positions at the imperial Byzantine court. However, Byzantine law forbad eunuchs from occupying the throne. This didn’t stop Staurakios from trying.

Staurakios was the chief minister and most powerful man in the empire during the reign of Empress Irene, who favoured giving top positions to eunuchs. This was mainly because she distrusted the officials who had been appointed by her predecessor, her late husband Emperor Leo IV. This also meant that those officials distrusted the eunuchs, Staurakios in particular.

Staurakios’s career rose and fell on a regular basis. Irene appointed him her foreign minister (in 781); he was captured by Sultan Harun-al Rashid (782); after his release he gained Byzantine control over Slavic Greece (784); was sacked, flogged, and exiled by Irene’s son Co-Emperor Constantine (790); and then recalled back to Byzantium and reinstated (791).

When Constantine died Staurakios found that he had a rival. He and Aetius, another eunuch appointed to a high position by Empress Irene, began a power struggle to ensure control of the empire after Irene’s death. Aetius accused Staurakios of trying to usurp the throne. Although Irene believed this, all Staurakios got was just a metaphorical slap on the wrist and told not to do it again.

But it does appear that Staurakios was indeed plotting to become emperor when Irene died. In 800 Irene decided to limit his authority over the army, which he was bribing, to prevent him from organising a military campaign against Aetius. However, Staurakios was becoming ill at around this time. His advisers and doctors assured him he would recover and become emperor. So he continued his campaign against Aetius. He should have ignored his advisers and rested. He died a few weeks later.

Muhammad ibn Ammar (1031-1086) – self-proclaimed Emir of Murcia, Spain.

This poet was the lover of Abbad III al Mu’tamid (1040-1095), the Emir and Caliph of Seville, who was also a poet. The two met when they were teenagers and a close bond developed quickly though their love of poetry and each other. However, al-Mu’tamid’s father, Emir Abbad II, was suspicious of ibn Ammar’s influence and banished him. Needless to say, when Abbad II died and al-Mu’tamid succeeded as Abbad III, ibn Ammar was recalled, and he was appointed Vizier.

Ibn Ammar led the conquest of the neighbouring kingdom of Murcia, deposing its emir in 1078. He told the Murcian people that they deserved a better emir, and he decided that this better emir was himself. This displeased Abbad III, who had not given him permission to declare himself emir. The two poets exchanged sarcastic poems, not meant to be malicious, but they both took them personally and their friendship deteriorated. Not only that, but ibn Ammar’s reign as self-appointed emir also deteriorated and eventually he was deposed.

Returning to Seville as a prisoner ibn Ammar misjudged Abbad’s attempts at a reconciliation and, reluctantly, Abbad ordered his execution. Nonetheless, Abbad gave ibn Ammar a sumptuous funeral.

Prince Lê Tuân (1482-1512) – heir presumptive of Dai Viet.

Dai Viet was a medieval kingdom in what is now northern Vietnam. Prince Lê Tuân was the eldest son of King Lê Hien Tong. In 1499 the king was persuaded by his high ranking courtiers to name his successor to ensure the stability of the kingdom.

The king thought Prince Lê Tuân, was unsuitable. He was too hot-heated and often dressed as a woman, so he chose his youngest son as his successor instead. An even bigger reason to overlook Prince Lê Tuân than his cross-dressing was because he had plotted to drug his own mother.

Both of Lê Tuân’s younger brothers became kings of Dai Viet in succession. The first was very popular, but the second was a murderous maniac, disposing of many other royal princes. Lê Tuân thought it best to hide away to avoid the same fate as them.

Lê Tuân’s penchant for wearing women’s clothing didn’t hinder his marriage, and he has many living descendants, all, technically, the senior bloodline heirs of the Lê dynasty of Dai Viet. When Lê Tuân died he was declared as god by the people of the Biansia commune of Dai Viet, which is now part of China.

Prince Aribert von Anhalt (1864-1933) – heir apparent to the Duchy of Anhalt

I briefly wrote about Prince Aribert’s involvement in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 (spoiler alert – next month I’ll be writing about another European gay prince who was even more heavily involved).

The duchy of Anhalt was a small sovereign German state within the German Empire, just as the above-mentioned duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Prince Aribert was the last heir apparent before the Weimar Republic abolished all royal titles.

Actually Anhalt was not abolished by the Weimar Republic with the others. In 1918, the final days of the German Empire, Anhalt saw the year of three sovereigns. Aribert’s eldest brother, the reigning Duke of Anhalt, died childless in April 1918. Aribert’s next oldest brother, Prince Eduard, succeeded but died in September 1918. Eduard’s 17-year-old son Prince Joachim-Ernst then became duke. Prince Aribert was appointed regent for his nephew until Joachim-Ernst became 21. Until a time when Joachim-Ernst married and had children, Prince Aribert was heir to the title.

The day after the Armistice of 11th November 1918 was signed, which ended World War I, Prince Aribert announced the abdication of his nephew and the self-abolition of the duchy of Anhalt. As with Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prince Joachim-Ernst lost his royal title but became the head of the dynasty. Prince Aribert lost his place as heir when Prince Joachim-Ernst married and had children.

Game of Gay Thrones 7: Byzantium, Korea, England and Baden

Here we are again with another group of lgbt royal wannabes. Included are a couple of spouses who, for one reason or another, were prevented from sitting beside their spouses. I never stop being surprised by the number of queer claimants and disinherited heirs to thrones past and present there have been, not to mention their spouses. There are even more to come next year.

Imperial symbol adopted by the Byzantine emperors

1) Basiliskianos (pre-846- after 866); named as a possible Emperor of Byzantium, 866.

The throne of Byzantium has seen more than its fair share of dethronements, assassinations and claimants. Basiliskianos became a pawn in the power struggle between Emperor Mikhael III (840-866) and his lover and co-Emperor Basileios (c.830-886). I explain the emperors’ relationship in more detail here. Briefly, Mikhael spotted Basileios at a sporting event and became besotted with him. He later made him co-emperor.

In 866 Mikhael began to show more than a casual interest in a young courtier called Basiliskianos. After Mikhael won a chariot race Basiliskianos gave him a lot of enthusiastic praise. The emperor was wearing the imperial red boots, and he told Basiliskianos to remove them and wear them himself. This angered co-emperor Basileios and a bit of an argument ensured. Mikhael said to him “I made you emperor, and do I not have the power to create another?” He later added, “I am ready to make Basiliskianos emperor”. He never did, but the possibility was always there and it upset Basileios enough to assassinate Mikhael. There’s no record of what happened to Basiliskianos after Mikhael died.

Imperial emblem on the Joseon kingdom

2) Crown Princess Sun-Bin Bong (1414-after 1436); consort of the future king of Josean.

Sun-Bin was a member of the aristocratic Haeum Bong clan. In 1429 she married Crown Prince Hi Hyang of the Joseon kingdom in Korea. The marriage, however, was not a very congenial one, and it is reported that the king himself told the Crown Prince to take more interest in his new bride. It didn’t help the marriage, and it deteriorated even more when Princess Bong got angry after one of the Crown Prince’s concubines became pregnant.

Another stumbling block in the marriage was Princess Bong’s habit of giving clothes from the royal wardrobe to her own family. But what really put an end to the marriage, and any chance of her sitting on the Korean throne with her husband in the future, was her blatant over-friendliness towards her female servants, in particular a maid with whom she confesses to having been intimate with on more than one occasion.

This was too much for the king and he banished Sun-Bin Bong from court, annulled the marriage, and reduced her to the rank of commoner. As with Basiliskianos above, there’s no real record of what happened to her after that.

Coat of arms the Mervyn, Earl of Castlehaven

3) Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (1594-1631); consort of the legal heir to King Henry VIII of England.

Before the 1701 Act of Settlement defined the order of succession to the British throne it was sometimes decided by the last will of the previous monarch. King Henry VIII’s will of 1546 decreed that after the extinction of his own descendants the throne should pass to descendants of his younger sister, not his elder sister as would have been the case under primogeniture rules.

After the last of Henry VIII’s children, Queen Elizabeth I, died in 1603 the heir to the throne under his will was Lady Anne Stanley (1580-1647), who should have become Queen Anne. However, parliament decided to ignore the will and gave the throne to the primogeniture heir, the gay King James VI of Scotland. Some people considered Anne to be the rightful monarch though she never pressed her claim.

It is Anne’s second husband, the Earl of Castlehaven, who is our lgbt royal wannabe. Their marriage was disastrous. I wrote about it several years ago and it is best to read about it here because it’s a bit complicated. Thankfully, the whole sordid affair ended in 1631 when the earl was executed and he never got the chance to be the prince consort to the lawful (under King Henry’s will) queen of England.

Coat of arms of the Pinces Sanguszko-Lubartowicz

4) Prince Janusz Sanguszko-Lubartowicz (1712-1775); bloodline heir of King Harold II of England.

The most famous date in English history is 1066 – the year of 4 kings and 2 invasions. King Edward the Confessor died and was succeeded by King Harold II. Harold faced an invasion led by William of Normandy. Harold was killed in battle, but before William could take the throne as the victor one of King Edward’s nephews was declared king. He quickly abdicated in William’s favour.

Several sites online track Harold’s bloodline to determine who is his direct heir. None match my own research, which I believe is accurate. Harold’s bloodline passed through his daughter to the Kievan royal family, then to the Princes of Warsaw, and finally to the Counts Potocki, the present heirs. On the way several senior bloodlines became extinct and switched to surviving junior branches. One such senior line ended with Prince Janusz Sanguszko-Lubart.

Janusz became Harold’s heir at the age of 17 on the death of his mother, the previous bloodline heir. Janusz was a bit of a party animal and squandered his inheritance on parties and his many gay lovers. In contrast, he was also a great benefactor to local religious institutions. In 1730 he entered a dynastic marriage, but he showed little interest in performing his dynastic duty by fathering an heir. His wife soon left him, and Prince Janusz spent the rest of his life trying unsuccessfully to have his marriage annulled.

In 1748 his openly gay lifestyle was forced temporarily into the closet when his father imprisoned his lover for fraud. Two years later, his father died and Janusz had another vast inheritance to squander away. Although not interested in politics the king of Poland-Lithuania appointed him a Court Marshal, among other offices.

When Janusz died in 1775 he was in debt and there were no close living relatives on his mother’s side, King Harold’s bloodline, to succeed him. It had to go back to descendants of his great-grandfather’s younger brother, from which it has passed to today.

Coat of arms of the Grand Dukes of Baden

5) Prince Maximilian von Baden (1876-1929); heir presumptive to the Grand Duchy of Baden.

The Grand Duchy of Baden was one of the sovereign states within the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire until it was abolished in 1918. The last Grand Duke was Prince Friedrich II (1857-1928). He was childless and his cousin Prince Maximilian was his nearest living male relative and heir presumptive.

In the 1890s the British Queen Victoria attempted to marry Maximilian to her grand-daughter, Princess Alexandra von Hessen. Alexandra wasn’t interested because she was already in love with the future Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. I wonder how history would have been different if Alexandra had married Maximilian. After all, it was Alexandra’s relationship with Rasputin that was one of the causes of the Russian Revolution.

In 1900 Prince Maximilian did marry into the British royal family. His wife was Princess Marie Louise, one of Queen Victoria’s cousins and a member of the “old Royal Family” (i.e. junior descendants of King George III), the Cumberlands. This branch of the family still exists, but most of them sided with Germany in World War I and were deprived of their British royal titles, Princess Marie Louise included.

Before his marriage Prince Maximilian was listed in Berlin police records as a homosexual. This fact was only revealed in a biography of him in 2013. Maximilian and Marie Louise had two children, both of whom have interesting connections. Their son married the late Duke of Edinburgh’s sister (he was named after Prince Philipp von Hessen, heir presumptive of Finland). Maximilian’s daughter married Philipp von Hessen’s twin brother.

In September 1918, when it seemed Germany would lose the war, the Kaiser appointed Prince Maximilian as Chancellor of Germany. The following day the Kaiser offered an armistice to the Allies and Maximilian advised him to abdicate. Once armistice was accepted a political “rebellion” against the Kaiser’s appointments forced Maximilian to resign. A republic was declared, royal titles were abolished, and Maximilian spent the rest of his life in retirement. On his cousin’s death in 1928 he became the head of the abolished Baden royal family, and claimed by monarchists as the rightful Grand Duke of Baden. He died the following year.

Advent 3: Christmas Can Be a Bit of a Drag

The “family tree” of Christmas gift-bringers that I have been working on, and which I had hoped to present to you today, has proved so much of a tangled web that it is not ready. Perhaps next year?

If you’ve read the previous two Advent articles you’ll know just how much gender confusion there is around at Christmas. This is, as historians remind us, a hangover from non-Christian festivals from the past. I won’t label all of them as “pagan pre-Christian” because a lot of the traditions attributed to paganism were created relatively recently (e.g. the pagan Slavic gods have been proven to be 18th century inventions).

Gender reversal among traditional characters is a common element in many pre-modern customs, both religious and secular. The prominent feature is male-as-female transvestitism. There are, it should be emphasised, many, many traditional female Christmas gift-bringers and characters around the world. Although equally important as their male counterparts they have no gender-queer characteristic, except the ones I’ve mentioned in the previous two Sundays who were primarily transgender in essence – it is the character themselves that changed gender.

There are many regional, Christmas traditions and customs that include male-as-female cross-dressing. From my research I have been able to group them into three categories as follows.

1) The wife of St. Nicholas. We must distinguish St. Nicholas’s wife from the modern Mrs. Santa Claus as established in her present form by Katherine Lee Bates in 1889. The customs in the regions where St. Nicholas is given a wife have no connection to the American Santa Claus. In the article I wrote on Mrs.Claus several years ago I said that St. Nicholas wouldn’t have been given a wife because he was a Catholic bishop. Since then, I have been doing years of research and discovered current traditions where St. Nicholas has a wife in a supporting role. Here are some of them.

Last Sunday I mentioned that in Limburg, Belgium, an incarnation of the gift-bringer St. Barbara under the name of Sinte-Berb came to be regarded as St. Nicholas’s wife. There’s no indication, however, that she has ever been portrayed by a man in drag.

St. Nicholas’s wife appears most frequently in the Christmas customs of the Netherlands, Germany and eastern Europe, usually appearing on December 5th or 6th, St. Nicholas’s Eve and Day. In each case the character of St. Nicholas is portrayed as a medieval bishop similar to the Dutch Sinterklaas, and is most cases his wife is one of a group of companions, both demonic and good. The Nikoloweibl (Nicholas-wife) of the Buttnmandllauf custom of southern Bavaria is one of the good companions, often carrying a basket of sweets to give to children. This custom involves St. Nicholas, Nikiloweibl, an angel and demonic straw men parading through the local villages. They visit people’s homes, perform songs or play pranks, and receive gifts before moving on to the next house. At one time Nikoloweibl was always played by a young man. Today he is often played by a teenage boy in drag, but young women have been welcomed as the saintly wife in some areas since the 1950s. In other areas Nikoloweibl has been dropped in favour of a larger role for the angel, always played by a girl.

Perhaps the most unusual, not to say fun, drag wife of St. Nicholas is Wiefke in the Klaasohm celebrations on the Frisian island of Borkum. Klaasohm means “Uncle Claus” and occurs on December 5th. A group of seven young unmarried male villagers dress in costumes with exaggerated masks, each representing a caricature of St. Nicholas, hence the name. A boy dressed as Wiefke accompanies the senior Klaasohm as the group parade through the village, just like Nikolowiebl does in Bavaria. What distinguishes the Klaasohm custom from all the others is the climax to their parade. The villagers gather in the village square as the Klaasohm and Wiefke climb onto a brick pillar. What they do next is….. well, I’ll let you see for yourself. Here’s a video of the climax to the 2016 “Klaasohmfest”. Wiefke is the character dressed in red.

2) Witches and “perchten”. These are actually two different groups of characters but they share a lot of characteristics and are often interchangeable in some times and places. Perchten is a term used for both good and demonic characters of any gender in traditional winter customs. The term may be related to Frau Perchta, the name of a female deity from ancient folklore who evolved into a child-belly-slitting boogey-woman appearing on Twelfth Night (January 5th).

One perchten-type character based on someone we met last week is the Lucky or Luken of Bohemia and the modern Czech Republic. These female characters are an amalgamation of St. Lucy with St. Barbara, “ancestor” of the veiled Barborka brides played by men in Poland. Once again, tradition says that the Lucky should be played by a man. The Lucky, up to six in number, have different appearances depending on which part of central Europe they occur. Some have white-painted faces, some have long beaked masks. What they have in common are white robes and a broom with which they sweep their way through the streets and into houses. The earliest records of the Lucky, however, describe these women as belly-slitting boogey-women like Frau Perchta.

The sweeping of streets is also a frequent activity in other Christmas traditions. In the town of Rauris near Salzburg, Austria, you can encounter the Schnabelperchten. This is a group of men dressed as peasant women with beak masks and brooms like the Lucky. On Twelfth Night they sweep their way through the houses of the town making bird-like “caw caw” sounds.

Some of the female Christmas characters are more like traditional witches than human-bird hybrids. It is no surprise that these witch characters are perfect for men to portray. In the Trestern custom of Pinzgau, also in the Salzburg area, is a character called Hex. This is a witch who also sweeps her way through houses like her Schnabelperchten neighbour, which makes me think the two characters have a common origin. Nowadays the Hex is often played by someone wearing a Hallowe’en witch mask though originally it was man with witch make-up.

3) General female characterisations. This category includes human, non-demonic female characters. Perhaps the most famous of these is La Befana, one of the principal Christmas gift-bringers in Italy, and yet another character who carries a broom. She could be included in the previous category if it wasn’t for her origin. She is generally depicted as a stereotypical witch today, but originally La Befana (who first appears in the 1500s) was just an old woman. There isn’t much evidence to suggest that she was often played by a man in traditional celebrations, but a modern portrayal of her is worth a mention.

For the past few years on January 6th Venice has held a very special gondola race. It’s part of the Regatta della Befana. Dozens of gondoliers dress up as La Befana and race along the Grand Canal. The winner is the first to grab a sock dangling from the Rialto Bridge full of Christmas goodies. It sounds like great fun, certainly more fun than the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race in the UK.

There are quite a few female characters that are more “normal”. As well as Hex in the Pinzgau Trestern there is Lap and Lappin, a married couple, both played by men. Sadly, they have traditionally been played as a couple with intellectual disabilities, and Lappin is always portrayed as pregnant.

Among other female characters in traditional Christmas customs played by men are: Zusslweibl in the Klöpfeln custom from the Italian Alps, appearing on the three Thursdays before Christmas; Jumpfere the virgin in the Bärzeli-Buebe custom of the Hallwil in Switzerland (also home of the Wienachts-Chindli I mentioned last Sunday), appearing on January 2nd; and the Huttfroueli, an old woman who appears in several local customs in the Alps, appearing between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

One final entry into this group is another Alpine character. In various Swiss towns on either New Year’s Eve or January 13th groups of men dress up as various characters, the Silvesterklaus. They go from house to house, singing, yodelling and wishing everyone a Happy New Year. Among the Silvesterklaus is a character played by men, the Schöne. The name means “beautiful”, and the men put on traditional female Swiss costumes and wear masks of a young woman’s face with a large, elaborate, and very heavy headdress.

But what about women dressing as male characters? While the majority of the cross-dressing roles have been men in drag there have been a few instances in modern times of women playing male roles. As mentioned above and last week, the instances of women playing the Christkind came about because the gender of the character itself changed from male to female. Instances of women playing male characters have increased in recent years, particularly as one of the most controversial Christmas character of our time, Zwarte Piet.

Discussing and analysing the racism attributed to Zwarte Piet, the black-faced companion of Sinterklaas, is outside the scope of this blog. What these accusations, modern interpretations of race that have no relation to the historical development of the character, have forced the Dutch to question Piet’s inclusion in Christmas festivities. In a lot of places a compromise has taken place. Instead of Piet appearing in black face he has begun to appear in red-face, green-face, blue-face, and any other colour. At the same time more women are playing Piet, and the traditional male name and gender of the character is generally retained. A similar change is beginning to occur in portrayals of the demonic Krampus. With the increase in the worldwide appeal of the character more women are beginning to dress up as a new character, a female Krampus, in traditional European festivals. Krampus has always been regarded as a male demon. Both the Krampus and Piet are instances of a traditional character evolving before our very eyes.

Who knows which of the Christmas characters we love today will remain the same in a hundred years. Who knows what influences will change them, and who knows which new characters will appear as a result. Will the current cultural climate of increasing recognition of gender diversity and racial representation have any effect?

But, let’s go back to antiquity next week and look at the history and development of the tradition of men playing women in festivals and theatre to see why this is so, and look at the version that is hugely popular in the UK at Christmas time.

Advent 2: How Jesus Became a Bride

Last Sunday we learnt that the Reformation turned the Christ Child (Christkind) into a Christmas gift-bringer and merged with representations of angels to change gender into female. Germans took the female Christkind to America where she merged with another German gift-bringer, the Weihnachtsmann, to become Kris Kringle. By adopting the name of the Dutch colonial Sinterklaas he became our modern Santa Claus (in a children’s book published as Christmas 1821, meaning SANTA CLAUS IS 200 YEARS OLD THIS MONTH! Why aren’t people celebrating?).

The female Christkind merged with other Christmas characters who have been portrayed by both women and men. Let’s begin In Sweden with St. Lucy.

Lucy was a Christian saint martyred during the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian at the beginning of the 3rd century. She is said to have secretly visited the Roman catacombs where Christian families were hiding from persecution to bring them food and drink. She lit her way with a candle, which later legends evolved into the crown of candles that St. Lucy is usually depicted wearing.

German missionaries in the 10th century introduced the Nordic lands to Christianity and its saints. St. Lucy’s Day is December 13th, which was around the same time as a traditional Swedish winter solstice celebration called Lussinatta, allegedly named after a pagan goddess called Lussi (of whom there is no evidence). What Lucy and Lussi have in common is the origin of their names from an ancient Indo-European word meaning “light”. Lussinatta is a celebration of light, and St. Lucy is venerated as a bringer of light. The connection between the two is obvious and the reason they became linked.

How St. Lucy became a Christmas gift-bringer took a long time. The Swedes adopted St. Nicholas as a Christmas gift-bringer when Christianity was introduced. As the Reformation spread Sweden adopted Lutheranism and dropped St. Nicholas and adopted the German female Christkind.

The earliest recorded processions on St. Lucy Day, called Luciatåg, took place in schools and universities (male-only at the time) in which a boy was chosen to head the procession as the Christkind or an angel wearing a crown of candles and a white robe. By the 17th century this character had become identified as St. Lucy yet was often still played by a boy. Female roles in church processions in medieval Europe are very rare, and female characters were usually played by men or boys (including the Virgin Mary).

Recent Luciatåg have also occasionally had boys playing St. Lucy, often leading to traditionalists objecting to the change of gender, unaware that it is part of the original tradition. In 2017 the “official” St. Lucy in the celebration in the Nordic Museum was portrayed by an openly gay operatic singer called Rickard Söderberg, a regular soloist in St. Lucy Day concerts. Below is a video of part of that concert.

The first record of St. Lucy as a Christmas gift-bringer appears in a journal written by a Lutheran minister in 1764. While he was working as a tutor in a castle in Västergötland the minister was startled to be awoken on St. Lucy’s morning by a girl dressed as a Christkind bringing him breakfast. This was a tradition in some rural areas, and the idea slowly spread across Sweden. The merging of the Christkind with St. Lucy is dated from this event.

The gift-bringing St. Lucy didn’t become a truly national tradition until the 20th century even though the Luciatåg and Lucy Day celebrations had become popular and widespread much earlier.

If you look at the video above again you’ll see the procession of teenagers carrying candles. The boys represent "star boys", a tradition dating back to early medieval church pageants. The girls represent bridesmaids, and give us a clue to the next gender-switching element of the Christkind.

The costumes of both St. Lucy and her bridesmaids are influenced by the lussebrud. This name came to be rendered as Lucy-bride though it is more accurately translated as Light-bride. She was a character in winter solstice celebrations like the Lussinatta. Going back into folk tradition in Europe we find other “brides” – May brides, Spring brides, Summer brides. Their presence provided playful gender reversal roles. Men played the brides, disguised and masked, who danced though the pageants dragging men and women out of the crowds to dance with them.

These traditional male brides link into the Christkind through modern Christmas gift-bringers in eastern and central Europe.

In the ethnic communities of the Sorbs (also called Wends and Lusatians) where Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic meet, there is a bridal Christmas gift-bringer. In German she is called the Bescherkind, meaning “gift child”. In Sorbian she is called Dzěćetko, which means “child”. In Polish she is called Barborka. They are all basically the same character.

One of these characters has a double gender identity. In the Czech Republic, the Sorbian Dzěćetko is called Dzieciątko (also called Ježíšek, Baby Jesus). The Czech Dzieciątko is depicted as the traditional boy Christ Child, while the Sorbian Dzěćetko is depicted as a female bride.

The Polish Barborka is not named after the Christ Child but St. Barbara. She is said to have lived at about the same time as St. Lucy and was also martyred. Skipping ahead to modern times, St. Barbara is a minor Christmas gift-bringer in Limburg in the Netherlands where she was once considered to be the wife of St Nicholas. As with St. Lucy, the Limburg St. Barbara was often played by a man in pre-modern times.

Barbara’s bridal connection comes in an old folk custom based on a legend that she had a cherry tree branch with her in her prison. On the morning that it blossomed Barbara was led away and beheaded. This legend merged with the old winter bride customs in which unmarried girls would break off small cherry branches on St. Barbara’s Day, December 4th, and hope that they will blossom by Christmas. If they did, it was a sign that the girl will marry in the coming year. Similar customs are associated with other saints on other days of the year. Over time this custom became a tradition in which a local girls were selected to portray St. Barbara as a bride with her bridesmaids, travelling around their villages handing out nuts, sweets and biscuits. Thus the main bride became the Christmas gift-bringer Barborka.

This custom was modified in Sorbia where the Christkind was already established as a gift-bringer, and the Barborka merged with the Christkind to become the Bescherkind and Dzěćetko. The cherry branch custom and the Christmas gift-bringing traditions eventually separated, so that today where both customs exist the winter brides are still portrayed by girls while the Christmas gift-bringing brides are often portrayed by men with veiled faces. In the 20th century the Christmas brides have increasingly been portrayed by girls and women, and very often without the veils that were traditionally worn to hide their identity.

Over 400 miles away in the Swiss town of Hallwil there is another isolated case of a female gift-bringing bride named after the male Christ Child – Wienachts-Chindli.

And there we have it – the male Christ Child of Eastern Europe merged with traditional winter solstice brides to become the modern female Christmas gift-bringers St. Lucy, Barborka, Bescherkind and Dzěćetko, characters played by both men and women.

Next Sunday, if I can get the design right, I’ll present a pictorial family tree of all the characters mentioned in this and the previous Advent article. Otherwise, I’ll be writing about more gender switching characters that are encountered during Christmas.

Advent 1: How Jesus Became Santa

For most of this year I’ve been doing research for a board game based on the world’s many Christmas gift-bringers. There are almost 100 characters, past and present, who bring gifts throughout the Christmas season, starting with St. Martin (on November 10th) through to Sagaan Ubgen, a Russian-Mongolian “New Year Wizard” (whose gift day is based on a lunisolar calendar and can be on any date between January 24th and March 3rd).

Santa Claus has been slowly been killing off traditional regional gift-bringers. In a world that encourages diversity I think we should rediscover these disappearing characters. Thankfully, many ethnic and regional Santa alternatives have been emerging since the 1990s.

An area that has been growing, or should I say returning, to the lgbt community is gender diversity. I’ve written many articles on gender variance in history. This is reflected in seasonal gift-bringers such the Three Kings whom historians suggest may have been third-gender. Other gift-bringers have changed gender in the past, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. This Advent I’m looking at the gender-switching representations of Christmas gift-bringers, and I begin with the person after whom the Christian Church and Christmas get their names, Jesus Christ.

The evolution of many gift-bringers makes a labyrinth look like a straight road. The evolution of the baby Jesus into Santa Claus is an example. The baby Jesus is also called the Christ Child – Christkind or Christkindl in German-speaking nations. He didn’t become a Christmas gift-bringer until the 16th century when Martin Luther (1483-1546), founder of the Protestant Reformation, called for the abandonment of Catholicism and anything that hinted at it, including saints. St. Nicholas was the major Christmas gift-bringer across Europe at that time, delivering presents on his feast day of December 6th, as he still does in some countries. Luther encouraged the adoption of the Christkind as a Protestant gift-bringer. At the same time he suggested moving the gift day from December 6th to December 25th.

At first the German Protestant Christkind wasn’t represented in physical form as Santa Claus is today in countless shopping malls. How this changed, switching gender in the process, involved angels and the Nazis.

By the 18th century angels were regularly portrayed in art and churches as young girls or women. Around the same time the Christkind began to be portrayed not as a baby but a toddler or young androgynous infant and had acquired wings so that there was very little difference between the Christkind and a female angel. One of the earliest representations of the Christkind that I can find is the one illustrated below. It appeared in a children’s story and picture book first published in 1848 and is clearly female, though contemporary greetings cards still often depicted Christkind as a young boy.

In 1933 the Nazis decided to promote the city of Nuremberg as “the Treasure Chest of the Reich”. Nuremberg was famous for several things at the time – metal work, and its annual Christmas market. Since the 16th century Nuremberg had been producing angels made out of metal foil as Christmas decorations. They were very popular and were called Rauschgoldenengel – Golden Angels. For Christmas 1933 the Nazis chose a young actress to play a Golden Angel at the Nuremberg Christmas market. They called her the Christkind. This began a tradition of choosing a teenaged girl to portray the Nuremberg Christkind every two years that continues to this day. After World War II Nuremberg influenced other German cities and towns to appoint their own female Christkind.

Outside Germany, even in Catholic nations, the original male baby Christ Child also became the Christmas gift-bringer. He is known under various names, such as Gesù Bambino in Italy, El Niño Diós in South America, and Dzieciatko in Poland.

German migrants in the 18th century took their Christmas customs and female Christkind across the Atlantic.

The generally accepted theory is that Christkind (in its variant form of Christkindl) is the origin of the name Krishkinkle. This later changed to Kris Kringle, a name you probably associate with Santa Claus. How Kris Kringle became another name for Santa Claus is also because of German migrants.

In the mid 19th century a new Christmas gift-bringer emerged in Germany. Originally a character called Herr Winter appearing in a satirical magazine in 1842, he was a bearded old man in a hooded coat carrying a Christmas tree. The princely families of Germany adopted him as a non-religious alternative to the Christkind. They called him the Weihnachtsmann (Holy Night Man). German migrants took him to America, while the German-born British royal family introduced him into the UK where he merged with Father Christmas. If you ever see a 19th century Christmas card with a Father Christmas-like figure carrying a Christmas tree, that’s actually Weihnachtsmann, even if he labelled differently.

In America the secular Weihnachtsmann adopted the Christkind’s new American name, Kris Kringle, thus changing the gift-bringer’s gender back to male. In 1821 an anonymous illustrated poem about “Santeclaus” gave the Dutch colonial Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas) a look similar to Weihnachtsmann-Kris Kringle. It was the famous illustrations of German immigrant Thomas Nast which modified the costume into a more recognisable one we associate with Santa Claus today. In this way Kris Kringle and Santa Claus merged into one. The current image of Santa was finally consolidated by another German immigrant, J. C. Leyendecker. He can be credited with ensuring that Santa Claus is depicted as the jolly fat man with a big white beard and red coat that later artists such as Norman Rockwell and the Coca Cola company copied, effectively finishing the popular practice of depicting Santa coats of other colours.

And there we have it. The Protestant Reformation turned the Christ Child into a Christmas gift-bringer. By merging with representations of angels the Christkind became female and travelled across the Atlantic to meet a fellow immigrant, Weihnachtsmann, to change gender back into Kris Kringle, and finally into Santa Claus. In effect, the Christkind, having been responsible for replacing St. Nicholas (whose name became Santa Claus), eventually merged back into him.

Next Sunday we’ll see how the female Christkind moved north, merged with a Mediterranean saint, and became a male bride.

Game of Gay Thrones 5: Byzantium, England, Scotland, Quito and Thurn und Taxis

Here’s another collection of lgbt pretenders, claimants, usurpers and heirs of some royal thrones. Again, these are listed in chronological order of each claim.

1) Olympius of Ravenna (d.652): self-proclaimed Emperor of Byzantium.

In my previous “Game of Gay Thrones” article I included Eleutherius, a eunuch who proclaimed himself Emperor of Byzantium in 620. A generation later another eunuch called Olympius did the same thing in similar circumstances.

Both Eleutherius and Olympius had been a cubicularius, an imperial court chamberlain, an office usually held by a eunuch. As with his predecessor we don’t know which type of eunuch Olympius was. He may have been a natural eunuch, a castrated eunuch, or intersex.

In 649 Emperor Constans II sent Olympius to Rome to arrest the pope because Constans had not approved the pope’s election. At the same time Olympius was appointed Exarch (the Byzantine-appointed governor) of Ravenna in central Italy. On his arrival in Rome Olympius tried to whip up support from the bishops and citizens but found them firmly behind the pope. Olympius eventually realised he was wasting his time and switched to the pope’s side. He then declared himself Emperor of Byzantium, with the backing of his new papal friend.

Olympius marched south to fight his Byzantine opponents, but he and his army were struck down by a mysterious plague and Olympius died even before he could defend his claim to the throne.

2) Sir Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1545-1567): heir to the thrones of England and Scotland.

ir Henry has several senior titles but is usually known by the one he used as heir to his father the Earl of Lennox. For this claimant I need to show his family tree (below - sorry if its a bit big and goes over the edge). It only includes the royal lines of people who were living in the years Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth I of England ascended to their thrones (1542 and 1547 respectively). The fact that Darnley was created King Consort on his marriage to Mary doesn’t mean he reigned as a king, even though he fought for the right to do so.

Lord Darnley was probably bisexual. A recent fictionalised film about Mary, Queen of Scots, implies Darnley was the lover of her secretary. He wasn’t, though Darnley is believed to have been the lover of a distant older relative.

England during Queen Elizabeth’s reign was dominated by the question of succession. Mary, Queen of Scots, her most well-known heir, was Elizabeth’s closest living heir through Princess Margaret Tudor. The second in line was Princess Margaret’s only other living descendant, Lord Darnley.

Darnley’s Scottish claim is much more complicated. Mary, Queen of Scots’ heir is found way out on the family tree. When she became queen at the age of 6 days old in 1542 Regents were appointed to rule Scotland. The first was James, 2nd Earl of Arran, who was also declared heir to the throne as Mary’s closest bloodline heir (by primogeniture – male-preferred succession). However, Matthew, 4th Earl of Lennox, objected and claimed that Arran’s father was bigamous making the Regent illegitimate and ineligible for the throne. Lennox, as the next closest bloodline heir to Queen Mary, claimed himself to be first in line to the throne, and he had enough support from some of the bishops and nobles to make his claim valid. This made Darnley second in line to the Scottish throne through his father, as well as second in line to the English throne through his mother.

Now, here’s where it gets weird. Queen Mary and Lord Darnley only had one son, who became King James VI of Scotland when his mother abdicated. If we agree that the Arran family were illegitimate, the first person in line of succession to James’s throne would still have been the Earl of Lennox, his own grandfather. With Darnley dead, this made King James second in line to his own throne! Lennox did manage to get as near as he could get to becoming king – for a while he was one of the Regents who governed for his young grandson.

3) Carlos de Montúfar (1780-1816): heir presumptive to the throne of Quinto.

Back in November I wrote about the independence struggle in Ecuador and the role played by Carlos de Montúfar and his father Juan Pio, Marquis de Selve Alegre. When the Marquis was appointed President of the Government of Quinto in 1809 he assumed the title of His Most Serene Highness (HMSH). Historians are of the opinion that the Quinto government intended to form a monarchy with the Marquis becoming HMSH Juan, 1st Prince of Quinto. His sons would have become princes also. The eldest son would have become the heir apparent. However, this son had no children, so Carlos, the second surviving son, would have become second in line of succession – the heir presumptive.

Unfortunately, troops loyal to imperial Spanish rule forced the Quinto government and the de Montúfar family to flee into exile just a few months later.

4) Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis (1926-1990): heir to the sovereign principality of Thurn and Taxis.

Even though Johannes is usually referred to as the 11th Prince of Thurn and Taxis the title refers more to his status as head of the family rather than of the former sovereign principality of the same name. German law does not recognise aristocratic titles. However, like a lot of European ex-royals Johannes still lived like a prince. He was once called he wealthiest man in Germany.

Thurn and Taxis was one of almost two thousand sovereign kingdoms, principalities, duchies, counties, lordships and bishoprics within the Holy Roman Empire. When the Empire was abolished in 1805 the principality of Thurn and Taxis, like the other sovereign states, became a non-sovereign state within the Austrian Empire, and later the German Empire.

Johannes, 11th Prince of Thurn and Taxis, was a colourful character. He was openly bisexual and frequented the gay clubs in Munich. He virtually squandered his wealth away on luxuries and extravagant parties. On his 60th birthday his wife, the equally colourful and homophobic “Punk Princess” Gloria spent $20 million on a party, which included a birthday cake with candles shaped like penises.

I’ll leave you with that image in your mind! The next, and probable final, instalment of “Game of Gay Thrones” will appear in the summer.

80 More Gays Around the World: Part 26) Homes Destroyed, Homes Discovered

Last time on “80 More Gays”: The true gender of 71) Dr. James Barry (c.1795-1865) was a secret known to few in his lifetime, including a South American independence fighter who was a compatriot of 71) Carlos de Montúfar (1780-1816) and Simon Bolivar after whom Bolivia is named, a country which attracted many German settlers and military advisors including, 73) Ernst Röhm (1887-1937) who was assassinated on evidence faked by an SS officer who was himself killed, leading to the Lidice Massacre memorialised by 74) Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950).

The Lidice Massacre, ordered by Hitler in retaliation for the killing of the Protector of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia (the modern Czech Republic), shocked the world. Hitler believed the village of Lidice, 14 miles from Prague, had harboured some of the assassins. He ordered the execution of every man in the village on 10th June 1942. The women were either sent to concentration camps or sent for “Germanisation”, and most of the children were “adopted” by SS officers. Children not accepted for adoption were killed. The village itself was razed to the ground, even the cemetery (the bodies were dug up and burned, the gravestones pulverised). Only one person survived, a man who was in prison for manslaughter. He was released in December 1942 and went home, only to find that the village, his family, friends and fellow villagers, had all gone. No-one had told him of the massacre.

The international response was quick and long-lasting. In Stoke-on-Trent, a town just a few miles down the river from where I live, the local doctor and future Member of Parliament began a fund-raising campaign to rebuild Lidice. In other countries towns added Lidice to their names, and various streets and memorials were named after it.

The world’s press covered the massacre extensively, and 74) Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote an article in The New York Times magazine. This inspired her to write a verse play called “Murder of Lidice”.

Before World War II Edna was an active pacifist and in 1919 she wrote “Aria de Capo”, an anti-war play. From 1940 she began writing poems for the Writer’s War Board and openly supported the Allied Forces. This caused her reputation to tarnish a little, at least with the critics who saw Edna’s war writings as too political.

Edna’s writing career began when her mother persuaded her to enter a poetry contest in “The Lyric Year” magazine in 1912. Edna’s poem came fourth though many people, including the contest’s winner, thought it should have come first. The controversy led to Edna’s introduction to New York literary circles and a scholarship to Vassar College.

From then on Edna’s poetry and plays became popular and she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. It was at this time that she entered into a loving, open marriage with Eugen Jan Boissevain (1880-1949) and they lived together until his death. Edna died the following year.

The couple moved into a house in New York, number 75½ Bedford Street (pictured below), said to be the narrowest house in the city, being only 9½ feet wide (3 meters). Its narrowness results from it originally being a carriage entrance between two buildings. Edna and Jan only lived there a year. Many others have occupied the narrow house at various times, including 75) Margaret Mead (1901-1978).

Margaret Mead was a leading anthropologist of her generation. I wrote about a book she and her partner wrote in 1977 called “An Interview with Santa Claus”. This is an example of how she helped to popularise anthropology among the public. Santa Claus? Anthropology? Yes, because Margaret used her knowledge of culture and history to give an explanation for the evolution of this Christmas icon in a way that children could understand without destroying the seasonal magic.

The field of anthropology goes hand in hand with archaeology. Through archaeology ancient communities are revealed and their ways of life are revealed through anthropology. The growth of interest in gender and sexuality in non-Western cultures was pioneered by Margaret Mead. She was a panellist at the first meeting to discuss homosexuality in anthropology called by the American Anthropological Association in 1974. Since then there has been a growth in queer anthropology and queer archaeology.

In April 2013 I chose archaeology for my “Ology of the Month” in a year where I wrote many science-based articles. Have a look at them. I wrote about several queer discoveries and lgbt archaeologists including the discovery of the most northern civilisation near the North Pole by a gay Danish archaeologist. I’ve also written since then about other queer archaeologists and anthropologists and their historic discoveries, like the discovery of a whole new humanoid species and the discovery of Europe’s oldest known urban community. I’ve even written about Lawrence of Arabia’s contribution to archaeology.

One of those 2013 articles for my Ology of the Month was about Mayan cave paintings and their sexual nature. Studies into Mayan gender and culture have been continued by other archaeologists and anthropologists like 76) Chelsea Blackmore.

Next time on “80 More Gays”: From the jungles of Central America and the deserts of South Africa we are guided to the snows of Canada.

Out of Her Tree: Echoes Into the Past

Most of the focus in the lgbt community on Holocaust Memorial Day has often been towards the thousands of gay men imprisoned and killed by the Nazis. It should be remembered that lesbians were also persecuted.

One of the many lesbian victims who were lost in history re-emerged in the 1990s when she became the subject of a book called “Aimée and Jaguar” by Erica Fischer. It was the true story of a lesbian couple who were separated because one of them was a Jew.

Felice Schragenheim and Lilly Wust met in 1942. Felice was a Jewish Resistance fighter and Lilly was the wife of a Nazi soldier. They fell in love and Lilly left her husband. The two women lived together and signed a form of marriage declaration in 1943.

In 1944 Felice was betrayed to the Gestapo and she was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and later transferred to Auschwitz. Felice is thought to have died on the death march from Auschwitz to another camp in December 1944.

In the meantime Lilly was under constant observation by the Nazi authorities. Despite this she managed to hide three Jewish women in her home. They all survived the war, and in 1995 Lilly was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel, an honour given to non-Jews who risked their own lives to help Jews escape Germany during the war. Lilly died in 2006 and on her gravestone there is also an inscription in memory of Felice Schragenheim.

Felice was arrested because she was a Jew rather than her sexuality, and her ancestry shows a long history of her ancestors’ persecution because of their faith.

Felice’s family on both of her parents’ side fell victim to the Nazis. Her maternal grandmother had been sent to Theresienstadt, the same camp Felice was later sent to. Sadly, her grandmother died there in 1942.

Her father’s cousin, Ludwig Feuchtwanger, had a very close association with Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s. They were actual next-door neighbours. Ludwig’s son, the eminent professor Edgar Feuchtwanger (b.1925) remembers encountering Hitler outside their homes. Ludwig’s brother, Lion Feuchtwanger, became a prominent author and playwright, and wrote anti-Nazi propaganda. Naturally, once Hitler gained power the Feuchtwangers were persecuted and Lion was arrested. He managed to escape disguised as a woman and found asylum in the USA.

The Feuchtwangers, the family of Felice Schragenheim’s paternal grandmother, take their surname from the city of Feuchtwangen in Bavaria. All through the Middle Ages Jews were persecuted in many European cities. In 1555 Feuchtwangen conducted a pogrom (persecution and attacks on an ethnic, usually Jewish, minority) and expelled all remaining Jews. Felice’s ancestors fled to Fürth, a city about 60 kilometers away. There the family took the name of Feuchtwanger. In the middle of the 19th century the family moved to Munich.

Also in Fürth was the Fränkel family who had fled Vienna in 1650. Jakob Löw Feuchtwanger (d.1809) married Hanna Fränkel. The Feuchtwangers and Fränkels intermarried over several generations. The Fränkels were an influential family that extended into Poland and what is now the Czech Republic. Many male members of the family became rabbis.

A son of Jakob and Hanna was Seligmann Aharon Meir Feuchtwanger (1786-1852). He married Fanny Vogele Wassermann (1799-1875). She belonged to a wealthy family. Her father Amschel Elkan Wassermann was the court agent to the Duke of Öettingen-Wallerstein. He founded a bank in 1785 which became a leading German bank before Hitler’s rise to power.

Seligmann and Fanny’s son Jakob (1821-1890) married Auguste Hahn (1824-1896). The Hahns were, like a large number of Felice’s ancestors, from Frankfurt. Frankurt was a major centre of the European Jewish community in medieval times. Being centrally situated on trade routes that crossed the continent it attracted a large number of merchants and traders.

There were around 200 Jews in Frankfurt by 1241. There was no Jewish ghetto at that time and they travelled freely and had certain protections given to them by the emperor. However, in May 1241 unrest over the enforced Christian baptism of some Jewish children led to the citizens conducting one of the many pogroms against the Jews in Frankfurt. It is said that 180 Jews were killed and the handful that survived submitted to baptism.

The community managed to revive, aided by an influx of Jewish families from other parts of Germany escaping similar pogroms. By 1270 the community was once again flourishing. However, persecution continued to affect them, and they were taxed more heavily than the Christian community. More religious unrest led to another pogrom in 1349.

In 1462 the Jews were forcibly relocated into the Judengasse (Jew’s Alley), a street enclosed in a wall with entrance gates. It was the first ghetto in Frankfurt. As time went on and the population grew the ghetto became overcrowded, even though the ghetto limits had been expanded.

Despite the overcrowding and the persecution some Frankfurt Jewish families became some of the most influential in Germany. Many well-known modern families originated in the Judengasse – Oppenheimer, Rothschild, and Goldschmidt, among others. All of them feature in Felice Schragenheim’s ancestry.

In almost every generation of Felice’s ancestry there was anti-semitism. Some of her family bloodlines were affected more than others, but all of them show the resilience of the Jewish community that is echoed through many other families in other countries. Today, on Holocaust Memorial Day, we should remember that persecution of Jews existed before the Nazis. Let us hope that Felice Schragenheim was a member of the last generations of her family to suffer under a regime of hate.