“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
-Voltaire
Emma Johanna Elisabeth Trosse was the first woman in history, to publish a scientific monograph on homosexuality and redefining natural sexuality. She is credited with a detailed critical analysis on sexuality, especially lesbianism, in the 19th century Germany. She was a school teacher and poet who wrote extensively on multiple and vastly disparate subject matters ranging from homosexuality to internationally acclaimed medical publications on diabetes. Her first recorded work titled "Der Konträrsexualismus in Bezug auf Ehe und Frauenfrage" translated in English as- ‘Homosexuality in relation to marriage and the question of women's rights’ was published in 1895 by Max Spohr in Leipzig, partly anonymously. The same publisher later brought out the writings of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee founded by Magnus Hirschfeld. Therefore, Trosse’s work on one hand, serves as a precursor of that of Hirschfeld’s as well as any significant scientific publication studying homosexuality historically while on the other, remains a lesser known nonetheless radical body of work.
In 1897, "Ein Weib? Psychologisch-biographische Studie über eine Konträrsexuelle"- ‘Female? A psychological-biographical study about someone feeling homosexual’ followed, which was again published incognito and was indexed and banned by the Reich's Court of Leipzig in the very same year, due to the legal contravention of paragraph 184 and for being an ‘obscene document’ and ‘lewd writing’. Emma was also the first woman to produce a reformist brochure on sexual policy- "Ist freie Liebe Sittenlosigkeit?"- ‘Is free love immoral?’ (1897) which was banned by the court in Austria-Hungary, the German Empire and Russia in the same year. She was probably the only woman (accounted) in her time to research and publish sexual reforms about homosexuality and who openly wrote against its pathologization and criminalization. She was the first (before Johanna Elberskirchen and Anna Rüling) to put forward the notion that homosexuality is innate and therefore completely “natural”.
Born on 6 January, 1863 into a middle-class family, Emma Trosse had the privilege and access to education, and was trained to be a teacher and school principal in Hannover. Both her parents were teachers thus, Trosse was reared with values akin to them. She attended school in Bromberg and later studied at the women’s gymnasium. According to a contemporary, Emma was one of the first women to be bestowed a guest status for attending the lectures of the Philosophy department at the Friedrich Wilhelms University of Berlin in the1880s and 1890s, while having to hide behind a curtain during the lectures, as women were barred from higher education back then. The details about her participation in university life and later on possibility of enrolment as a fulltime student remain obscure for the most part except that she began her career working as a teacher at the Gransee public school and then taught at the women's gymnasium in Gnesen as a private tutor. After returning to Hanover, she passed the examination for school principals in Hannover, and began work as the director of the women's gymnasium and boarding school in Würzburg (While on holiday to the Ahr Valley, she became enamored of the area, resigned her position in Würzburg, and began to publish poetry about the local area which is discussed later). In 1893, she opened a girl's boarding school with Hermine Dulsmann, the Baroness von Bardeleben, in Bad Neuenahr.
In 1895, Emma Trosse published one of the first scientific works on homosexuality in history and probably the first ever authored by a woman while advocating for legal protection of homosexuals. She was the first known German woman to address and write scientifically about lesbianism as a diversity instead of aberration in the natural schema. She argued that same-sex attraction and bisexuality were not abnormal or exceptions to natural order and advocated for protection of people's right to sexual freedom. Besides, Trosse’s considerations about people without sexual and erotic interests hint at a nascent conception of asexuality. Her path-breaking work on the spectrum of sexuality and scientific exploration of lesbianism was heavily censored in the 19th century Germany and abroad and sadly, even today remains hugely untold and only marginally translated.
In 1896, Trosse published two articles in english on ancient medical knowledge of the Greeks, Egyptians, medieval medical practices in Norway as well as Europe.
In 1900 Emma married a German doctor, Georg Alexander Constantin Külz, and in 1902 they were blessed with a daughter (Irmgard Külz). She had to give up her job after her marriage because of the then applicable teacher celibacy law in Germany, and worked as a clinician in the family sanatorium (Sanatorium of the Ahrtal- the first local clinic treating diabetic patients) which she and her husband had founded in Bad Neuenahr. She continued writing and publishing poetry and literature on diabetes. Her poems on the themes of nature and love have a transient quality and vividly portray the natural landscape, the villages and towns, the mountains and castles, and time changing over seasons, days and nights. Even to this day in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Emma Trosse is known as a so-called regional poet.
After the death of her husband in 1923 (post returning from the war), Emma continued to run the sanatorium on her own. Ludwig Külz (her husband’s cousin) moved to Bad Neuenahr to take over operation of the clinic, but his morphine addiction impaired his abilities, and Emma struggled with keeping the facility open, until her daughter married the physician, Erwin Quednow, who took over running the clinic. Trosse continued to write and went on to publish medical articles (literature on diabetes) winning her international scholarly acclaim. She took care of five grandkids and started losing her sight with age. By the time of her death she was completely blind. On 23 July 1949 this exceptional German schoolteacher and revolutionary writer breathed her last in Bad Neuenahr. In 2010, the Schwules Museum held an exhibit to honor her pioneering work in sexology. In 2011, the exhibit was shown to honor her in Mannheim. We wish more could be preserved of her exceptional life and works (and other such historically undocumented female voices).
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Piece by-
Pronita Tripathi
Pronita is currently studying English Literature from Delhi University. She is an art enthusiast with a love for writing and reading. She hopes to debunk the multiple stereotypes associated with Humanities Studies and become a worthy English Professor to her future students. She can’t wait to meet them! On most days Pronita chooses sleep over everything else, and on some everything else over sleep.
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