The Daily Agenda for Friday, November 14

Jim Burroway

November 14th, 2014

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Gotland, Sweden; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Tromsø, Norway.

Other Events This Weekend: International Gay Rodeo Convention, Denver, CO; Maspalomas Winter Pride, Maspalomas, Gran Canaria; Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, Prague/Brno, Czech Republic.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From The Advocate, April 16, 1981, page 27.

IMG_0625.JPGWe had a wonderful day in Monterey, with most of it spent at the Aquarium on Cannery Row. I could have spent hours staring at the jellyfish displays. They were all beautiful works of art. Here’s a still photo of one of the displays, but still photos really don’t do them justice. I took lots of video, but getting the video edited and uploaded will just have to wait until we get home.

We also spent some time touring the Mission of San Carlos Borromeo in Camel and the Mission of San Juan Bautista. I wanted to take Mom and her husband to see the mission in Soledad, but we ran out of time and daylight. So we settled in for the night at San Luis Obispo. Today, we begin a meandering journey home, through Bakersfield, to Needles, Blythe, Phoenix, then Tucson. Here’s an approximate route. Or we may hit Kingman and Wickenburg instead of Blythe. Either way, the true magic of road trips occur when we toss the maps aside and decide to go down a different road.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
140 YEARS AGO: Adolf Brand: 1874-1945. The German editor, photographer, poet, anarchist and activist was born not quite a century before his time. Beginning in 1896, he published Der Eigene (There is no good English equivalent; Der Eigene is often translated as The Unique, The Special One, or The Self-Owned), the world’s first gay journal. The first issue declared, “This journal is dedicated to eigen people, such people as are proud of their Eigenheit and wish to maintain it at any price.” The phrase “Eigen people” may have meant anarchists, at least at first; Brand’s journal was more of an anarchist journal than a pro-gay one, reflecting Brand’s own anarchist views at the time. But Der Eigene became explicitly homosexual in 1898, and remained so until 1932.

Brand’s brand of gay activism was revolutionary. In contrast to the better known activism of Magnus Hirschfeld (see May 14), Brand angrily rejected the medical model and scientific approach of Germany’s sexologists, saying that their research “took away all beauty from eroticism.” Brand established the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Community of Eigens) in 1903 as a counterweight to Hirschfeld’s Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. It also served a secondary purpose. With Der Eigene under constant threat of prosecution for obscenity — Brand successfully fought off charges in court that same year — Gemeinschaft der Eigenen became a kind of a closed readers’ circle, with Der Eigene becoming a private in-house publication. In 1905, when Der Eigene was officially recognized as an “artistic journal,” it became somewhat less vulnerable to censors and could be circulated more freely.

Brand’s militancy led him to conduct what was perhaps the world’s first “outing” campaign. In 1907, just as the massive Harden-Eulenburg affair was scandalizing the German political establishment (see Feb 12), Brand published a pamphlet accusing German Chancellor Prince Bernhard von Bülow of having a homosexual relationship with Privy Councilor Max Scheefer, which therefore morally obligated the Chancellor to oppose Germany’s Paragraph 175 outlawing homosexual relatinships between men. According to Brand, Bülow and Scheefer were seen kissing at all-male parties hosted by Phillip, Prince of Eulenburg. Bülow sued Brand for criminal libel, and Brand was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

Brand served two years in the German army during World War I, during which he married Elise Behrendt, a nurse who apparently loved him despite his homosexuality. After the war, Der Eigene was overshadowed by other gay publications during the relatively gay-friendly atmosphere of the Weimar era. In many ways, Brand’s brand of activism was out of step with 1920s Germany. Brand’s embrace of pederasty, extramarital bisexuality, and the supposed superiority of “friend-love” as the pinacle of masculinity were rejected in favor of Hirschfeld’s view that homosexuality was an inborn analogue to heterosexuality.

Brand’s elevation of manly friendship and the glorification of the nude body has led to accusations that Brand was himself a proto-faschist. Certainly, it’s easy to see parallels between Brand’s promotion of male bonding with the Nazis’ ideals of national manliness, but Brand himself, ever the anarchist, saw the dangers that Nazism posed. He wrote in 1931 that the Nazis “already had the hangman’s rope in their pockets.”

Der Eigene was shut down in 1932 just as the Nazis were coming into power. The police raided his home several times, seizing his books, journals, and photographs. He was never arrested, but he was financially ruined. “I have been plundered of everything,” he wrote to the Sexological Society in London. “I have nothing left to sell and am financially ruined. I no longer know from what I and mine can continue to live. For my whole life’s work is now destroyed. And most of my followers don’t have even the courage to write me a letter, not to mention support my work with any kind of payment.” Brand was forced to sell his home, and he and his wife moved to a one room flat where they were both killed during alllied bombing on February 2, 1945.

[Source: Hubert Kennedy. “Adolf Brand.” GLBTQ.com (undated).]

Aaron Copland: 1900-1990. Born in Brooklyn to Lithuanian Jewish parents, Copland composed some of the most quintessentially American classical music. Appalachian Spring celebrated American pioneers; Billy the Kid set the open prairie to music;  Rodeo sells beef on television (“It’s what’s for dinner”); and Fanfare for the Common Man was, briefly, the theme music for Rick Perry’s ill-fated presidential run, which was ironic that a rabidly anti-gay politician would turn to such patriotic music that was composed by a relatively openly gay man.

Copland’s childhood was a rather typical one for an immigrant family in New York City. His father, who had no musical interest, owned a small department store. It was his mother, brothers and sisters — he was the youngest of five — who were musically inclined. His oldest brother played violin, and a sister gave him his first piano lessons and exposed him to opera. From the age of thirteen, he began formal music lessons. By age fifteen, he decided to become a composer. From 1921 to 1924, Copland went to Paris for further study at the Fontainebleau School of Music. In 1925, he returned to the U.S., and with two Guggenheim Fellowships in 1925 and 1926, he was able to rent a studio apartment where he lived for the next thirty years. He met Alfreid Stieglitz, who introduced him to many of the leading artists of the day: Paul Strand, Ansel Adams, Georgia O’Keefe, and Walker Evans, whose photos inspired Copland’s opera The Tender Land.

Stieglitz’s determination that American artists should reflect “the ideas of American Democracy” had a profound effect on Copland. It also represent a severe challenge. American classical music composers looked to Europe as a model for music composition. All that American had was popular music, folk music and jazz. The challenge for Copland was to show how these so-called “lower” forms of music could be in integral part of classical music. He joined five other like-minded composers to form what was called the “commando unit,” who collaborated in joint concerts to promote their new approach.

Once the depression hit, Copland expanded his horizons again through travels to Europe, Africa and Mexico. When Hitler and Mussolini attacked Spain in 1936, Copland, along with many other artists, were sympathetic to the Spanish Republicans, and many of them had joined the Communist Party. Copland himself didn’t join — he was committed to his refusal to join any party — but he did sympathize with leftist political movements, including his support for the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1936 presidential election, and for Henry A. Wallace’s presidential bid on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948.

This period of political turmoil coincided with some of Copland’s most famous work. In 1939, he completed his first two Hollywood film scores, for Of Mice and Men and Our Town. That same year, he debuted his highly successful ballet Billy the Kid. He followed that with two more acclaimed ballets, Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944), which featured the melody of an old Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts.” A Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man, both debuted in 1942 as American was entering World War II, have become American patriotic standards.

But the McCarthy era of the 1950s proved difficult. A Lincoln Portrait had been on the program for Eisenhower’s 1953 inaugural concert, but it was withdrawn over controversy over Copland’s earlier sympathies with leftist politics. That same year, he was called to testify before Congress, where he insisted that he had never joined the Communist Party. Ignored during the controversy was Copland’s deeply patriotic music, a neglect which outraged many American musicians.

During the 1950s, Copland’s pace in composition fell off as new avant garde musical trends became fashionable in the music world. But he continued to influence other American composers, most principally his friend and student, protégé Leonard Bernstein. By the 1960s, Copland had more or less given up composing and took up conducting. He wasn’t crazy about the idea, but, as he said, “It was exactly as if someone had simply turned off a faucet.” This career change saw him conducting some of American’s great orchestras recording a major part of his canon for posterity. His health deteriorated through the 1980s and he died in 1990 from Alzheimer’s and resipitory failure.

Albrecht Becker, abt 1930.

Albrecht Becker: 1906-2002. Albrecht Becker was an actor and production designer who lived with his parter of ten yeas in Würzburg in Bavaria. In 1935, he came under the notice of the Gestapo when they were investigating another Würzburg resident, Dr. Leopold Obermayer, a Swiss national who was both Jewish and gay. During the course of the Gestapo’s investigation, they found several photos of young men, including Albert Becker, in Obermeyer’s possession. Obermeyer was sent to Mauthausen concentration camp, where he ultimately perished. Becker was also tried under Germany’s notorious Paragraph 175 and sentenced to a three year term in Nürnburg Prison. In 1940, he joined the German army and sent directly to the Eastern front where soldiers weren’t expected to survive.

But survive he did, and he was able to return to Germany and work in the film industry after the war. He became an internationally recognized photographer, production designer and actor for German television. His story is one of six personal histories recounted in the 2000 documentary, Paragraph 175, about the Nazi persecution of gay men. He died in 2002 in Hamburg at the age of 95.

If you know of something that belongs on the Agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

As always, please consider this your open thread for the day.

RobNYNY1957

November 14th, 2014

One of my composition teachers also studied at Fontainebleau, which is to say with Nadia Boulanger. He never referred to her by name, instead just calling her “that vile bitch.

Ben in oakland

November 15th, 2014

Copland was a part of the gay musical establishment on the east coast. Bernstein, Menotti, moross, barber, metropoulos, schippers, Rorem, Pinkham, Thomson, and quite a few others who are escaping my brain at the moment.

I suspect that Copland was very much like Sibelius. In his 60’s, he realized he really didn’t have all that much more to say musically. I find most of his late compositions to be not so very interesting to listen to.

If anyone is really interested, listen to his jazz based compositions, like music for the theatre and the piano concerto. They inhabit a whole different world than his other Americana.

Spunky

November 15th, 2014

More important than anything involving Rick Perry, Fanfare for the Common Man was the theme music for the US Army commercials back in the early 90’s. In fact, that’s where I first heard the piece. Unfortunately, I can’t find any old commercials, but trust me: it’s true!

Anyway, thanks for today’s agenda, Jim.

Leave A Comment

All comments reflect the opinions of commenters only. They are not necessarily those of anyone associated with Box Turtle Bulletin. Comments are subject to our Comments Policy.

(Required)
(Required, never shared)

PLEASE NOTE: All comments are subject to our Comments Policy.

 

Latest Posts

The Things You Learn from the Internet

"The Intel On This Wasn't 100 Percent"

From Fake News To Real Bullets: This Is The New Normal

NC Gov McCrory Throws In The Towel

Colorado Store Manager Verbally Attacks "Faggot That Voted For Hillary" In Front of 4-Year-Old Son

Associated Press Updates "Alt-Right" Usage Guide

A Challenge for Blue Bubble Democrats

Baptist Churches in Dallas, Austin Expelled Over LGBT-Affirming Stance

Featured Reports

What Are Little Boys Made Of?

In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.

Slouching Towards Kampala: Uganda’s Deadly Embrace of Hate

When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

Paul Cameron’s World

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"

The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths

At last, the truth can now be told.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.

Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count

Daniel FettyThe FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.