Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (* 28 August 1825, Westerfeld, East Friesia; † 14 July 1895, L’Aquila, Italy), German lawyer, early lone fighter of the homosexual movement.

Ulrichs was no late bloomer. At the age of 22 he had reached the stage of being ready to accept the homosexuality he had felt since puberty. He was then busy working on his dissertation about the Peace of Westphalia. He composed it in Latin, the ancient tongue of which he had a perfect command. But where the desire came from that distracted him from his studies was all Greek to him. Was it “passive animal magnetism” as he initially suspected? Or did science rather than mysticism have the answers? The lawyer developed his own theory: since in nature sexual attraction always ran back and forth between the female and male poles, a male homosexual must have a female soul in a male body.

Ulrichs initially adopted the expression coined by other authors of the “third sex”. Since at the time he had not yet met any lesbian women, he suspected the existence of a “fourth sex” (a female homosexual with a male soul in a female body), but then developed his own terminology, which appeared more appropriate to him. “Uranians” or “urnings” were men who loved men, the “Dionysians” or “Dionings” what we today call heteros. And the lesbians whom he fortunately later got to know received the designations “urness” and “uranianess”.

Ulrichs’ urnian desire was put on record in 1854. He was investigated because he was rumoured “to indulge in unnatural lust with other men”. The previous Hildesheim assistant judge settled down in Burgdorf as a lawyer but the investigations also became known there. He lost his licence to practice law and from then on worked as a secretary, foreign languages teacher and journalist. The free work gave him the time to develop his theories about homosexuality. The career setback boosted his motivation to become politically active too.

The first of twelve publications “Research into the mystery of male-male love” was published in 1864. He appeared openly as uranian and formulated his demands. This included the establishment of a uranian association and the creation of “uranian marriage”. A utopia that of course only became reality with the introduction of registered life partnerships in 2001. His agenda also included the abolition of the penal laws against homosexual actions, which he advocated in 1867 at the German Lawyers Conference in Munich. He was shouted down by his colleagues.

Ulrichs decided to go into Italian exile in 1880, where he spent the remainder of his life. The attitude towards homosexuals had deteriorated in the newly established German Reich. His ideas remained ineffective. Initially in Naples, later in L’Aquila, he worked as the publisher of a magazine for the preservation of the Latin language. His project to publish a regularly appearing publication for his target group failed in 1870. Only the title page exists of the magazine “Uranus. Articles on research into the natural mystery of uranism and discussion of the moral and social interests of uranians”. In the absence of any subscribers, no issue was published.

The former Einemstraße in Berlin was renamed Karl-Heinrich-Ulrichs-Straße on 17 December 2013. It runs from Nollendorfplatz in Schöneberg to Tiergarten.