Movement and Morality: Mass Media and Queer Travel in 1960s and 1970s West Germany

With the decriminalization of homosexual relations between consenting men of twenty-one and older on September 1st, 1969, the West German magazine market saw a huge boom in the publication of West German gay magazines. Using the three most prominent West German gay magazines, du + ich, Him, and Don, in this paper I will first discuss how a transnational community of readers was formed, based around a German-speaking world. I will then discuss mobility, class and gay sexual experiences, focusing on mass tourism as a new way of theorizing the sexual encounters West Germans sought out both within Europe and in former European colonies. Finally, I argue that as people used travel as a means to escape local or national standards of sexual morality, gay magazines were central to the formation of an ‘emancipated’ gay identity.

Tourism grew rapidly in the postwar period and, aided by the ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s, became a staple in the lives of most West Germans. Illustrated magazines told their readers that travel and tourism reflected a ‘modern’ lifestyle. Foreign destinations were constantly advertised as a place where people could let go of their sexual inhibitions and revel in the sexual offerings of a foreign place where a different and often freer sexual morality reigned. Gay magazines of the 1970s were highly conscious of their readers’ needs for vacation and offered a variety of advice on the best places to go, and the best deals. The editors of du + ich, Him, and Don not only informed their readers of the cheapest flights and best deals, but also of the legal age for same-sex consensual sex in surrounding European countries. Furthermore, they organized vacation trips for themselves, their staff, and their readers to exotic and gay-friendly locations like Thailand, Algeria, Morocco, and Malaysia.