Exciting things are happening in our digital archive: So far, you’ve been able to search our poster and book collection there. Now we have added five selected magazines to our digital archive – fully digitized, available for browsing in pdf format and even with full text search.
Dive into lesbian Berlin in the 1920s with the magazine “Die Freundin“, follow the feminist discourses and discussions at the end of the 1970s in the “frauen-info” and the “münchner frauenzeitung” and gain exciting insights into the Munich gay movement and scene of the 1980s and 1990s with the “Kellerjournal” and the “Südwind“.
Want to dig deeper and take a more data-analytic approach to evaluating journal content? Then try this tool for deeper exploration:
Many thanks to the support of our digitization project by the funding program WissensWandel. Digital Program for Libraries and Archives within Neustart Kultur of the German Library Association.
About the digitalized magazines
Die Freundin (1926-1933)
“Die Freundin” (subtitled “Das ideale Freundschaftsblatt”, later “Wochenschrift für ideale Frauenfreundschaft”) was a magazine for lesbian women from 1924 to 1933 in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. It is considered the first lesbian magazine and was first published monthly, then bi-weekly, and later even weekly. The editor was Friedrich Radzuweit (1876-1932), chairman of the League for Human Rights. The content focused on information about lesbian life and meeting places for lesbians, political topics, short stories, serialized novels, and classified ads. Although “Die Freundin” was primarily aimed at a lesbian readership, there were also numerous contributions that dealt with topics such as ‘transvestitism’ or transsexualism. It was discontinued a few weeks after the National Socialists seized power in January 1933: the last issue appeared on March 15, 1933, one week before the Enabling Act. The Forum is in possession of 194 issues of Freundin from 1927 onwards, so the first three years are missing from the inventory, after which the issues of Freundin are almost completely available to the Forum.
frauen-info (1978) and münchner frauenzeitung (1978-1980).
Magazine of the women’s movement from Munich. It appeared monthly under the title “frauen-info” from 4/1978 to 10/1978 and further as “münchner frauenzeitung” from 11/1978 to 11/1980 in Munich. The newspaper was produced by a changing group of women in an editorial collective and was an important organ of the feminist women’s and lesbian movement in Munich.
Kellerjournal (1980-1987)
The “Kellerjournal” was the information magazine of VSG e.V. (Verein für sexuelle Gleichberechtigung e.V.), a central non-commercial office for gay counseling, self-help and encounters. The journal appeared bimonthly between 7/1980 and 5/1987 in Munich, was edited by Guido Vael, among others, and comprised about 20 to 24 pages each. The “Kellerjournal” was named after its editorial office in the cellar of Weißenburger Straße 26 in Munich, a gay meeting place set up by the VSG.
Südwind (1987-1996)
“Südwind – die schwule Zeitschrift in München” was published monthly between 4/1987 and 2/1996. It contained between 24 and 40 pages and was published free of charge by the association Südwind e.V. It is the successor of the “Kellerjournal”.