Between Persecution and Empowerment: Processes of Negotiation of Homosexual Lifestyles in Tyrol and Vorarlberg during the Interwar Period (working title)
Dissertation project | Duration 2024 – 2028
The criminal prosecution and social exclusion of same-sex and queer relationships came to an end in Austria in 2002 with the repeal of the last discriminatory special criminal provision. However, academic debate on the subject is only just beginning.
This doctoral thesis examines criminal proceedings for ‘unnatural sexual acts’ - so called 'Unzucht wider die Natur' - (Section 129b) that took place in the 1930s at the regional courts of Innsbruck and Feldkirch. These proceedings were directed against individuals suspected of engaging in same-sex sexual acts. The analysis thus focuses on a region where traditional gender relations had long gone virtually unchallenged and which was marked by economic crises, political upheavals and cultural transformations.
Against this backdrop, the question arises as to the prosecution practices of the criminal justice authorities at local and regional levels. How do the dynamics of the criminal justice system manifest themselves in practice, and what spatial regime is thereby generated? What notions of deviance underlay these practices? And which groups of people were particularly affected by investigations?
In addition to examining specific criminal justice practices, the research project aims to provide insights into the practices, networks and spaces of queer life in both urbanised and rural areas during a period marked by two major turning points, thereby filling a gap in regional historical research.
Contact:
Andreas Fink
Institut für Zeitgeschichte
Universität Innsbruck
Innrain 52d, 6020 Innsbruck
Dissertation supervisor: