Andrea Rottmann’s outstanding and essential book explores the lives of queer Berliners between the end of the Third Reich and the beginnings of the gay and lesbian liberation movements in the early 1970s. Although the past decade has seen a flourishing historiography of postwar German queer history, the many important books that have appeared have tended to focus either on male homosexuality (and the ways that it was criminalized by the state) and/or the later decades of increased visibility and political activism. Rottmann’s study addresses this imbalance by focusing on queer subjectivities in the pre-1970s period, and by foregrounding lesbian and trans histories in particular. In order to do this, she goes beyond the legal framework that has tended to dominate previous accounts, and prioritizes queer voices and archives over state archives (although these are also skillfully deployed).

The book focuses on queer subjectivities—the ways in which queer people understood themselves and made the self through the clothes they wore, the ways they chose to live, the terms of endearment they used for each other, their favored places to spend their time—in short, how they lived and made sense of their lives. “Queer” is helpfully and succinctly defined as “people who found themselves outside the sexual or gender norms of their time,” (6) encompassing both same-sex desiring people and those who were gender nonconforming.

Each chapter focuses on a different space in which queer subjectivities were shaped and expressed. Rottmann is particularly interested in spaces in which “queerness remained potential until it became realized through the presence of queer bodies doing queer things” (15). This allows her to move beyond the familiar spaces of “nightlife and politics” (5) into some more everyday sites. Chapter 1 focuses on homes and homemaking, chapter 2 explores the world of queer bars, chapter 3 takes us into Berlin’s streets and parks, and chapter 4 asks how prisons could be sites of queer self-making. In each case, Rottmann shows how nonnormative gender identity could be cultivated even in the most inauspicious conditions, but also how it could attract unwanted attention and persecution from both members of the public and the authorities.

A real strength of this book is its exploration of working-class queer cultures. Many of those discussed came from working-class backgrounds, worked in manual jobs, and some lived in or close to poverty. Rottmann pays careful attention to the class differences between gay and lesbian bars, and the nuances of class in lesbian butch and fem self-fashioning. The discussion of Bettina Grundmann’s prison file adroitly reveals the complexities and intersections of class, gender and sexual identity, showing how this prisoner was known as “Mr. Grundmann” in their neighborhood. This case also shows the ambivalence and instability of the prison authorities’ position, keeping Grundmann in isolation to prevent romantic contact with other prisoners, but happy to put their girlfriend as their next-of-kin and allow them to smoke a pipe, cut their hair short, and alter their clothes to look more masculine.

This is a big-hearted book, which poignantly evokes the lives, pains, pleasures and desires of its subjects. I was particularly moved by Gerd Katter’s story: a trans man who had been a regular at Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science in the late 1920s. Hirschfeld and colleagues had helped facilitate Katter's transition, and he remembered their warm welcome and support for the rest of his life. Post-1945, Katter found himself living in East Germany and campaigned doggedly, but to no avail, for the recognition of Hirschfeld. Only in the 1980s was he able to connect with like-minded activists in West Berlin. Throughout, Rottmann uses oral histories, photographs, diaries, police files and more to recover embodied histories. In her reconstruction of the day-to-day lives of one devoted couple, Hilde Radausch and Eddy Klopsch, the details sing: the handsome spread they put together to celebrate their tenth anniversary, their otherwise frugal housekeeping, the misery caused by ill-health, and the sexy notes they wrote each other.

The lightness of touch with which Rottmann handles her material should not deceive the reader: this book demonstrates great historical skill. It is no small thing to weave together trans, lesbian, and gay histories, and to move repeatedly from East to West Berlin and back again, without any loss of nuance. Rottmann’s contextualization of the archival sources, and her discussion of their lacunae and limitations, is also a masterclass. This book is the work of a talented and thoughtful scholar. Not only does it make a much-needed and important contribution to the queer histories of postwar Germany, it serves as a model of how to write these in an inclusive, generous and accessible way.