A Public Art Project at the Sports Facility at Ebereschenstrasse 15, Munich
Introduction
The artist Philipp Gufler has been working on his quilt series since 2013, and it includes the six pieces now permanently installed at the sports facility at Ebereschenstrasse 15 in Munich. An artist’s book about the first thirty works of the series was published in 2020. The main impetus behind the works in this series is to make queer history visible—meaning, to give visibility to the histories of lesbian, gay, bi- and asexual as well as non-binary, trans- and intersex people. Every quilt is dedicated to a person, a place, or an important moment in queer history. The combination of images and texts, screen-printed onto transparent fabrics, visualizes something that is still missing in history books: experiences and life stories outside of what for a long time was, and partially still is, considered the “norm.”
At the same time, the transparency of the fabrics also embodies the ephemerality of memories and underlines the importance of producing an inclusive kind of historical narrative. The choice of medium is particularly important for the series: at its most essential, a quilt is a piece of fabric that has been pieced together out of different snippets of fabric. In the North American context, it is considered an heirloom object that can be handed down from generation to generation. With his works, Gufler connects to that same idea: continuing history and passing it on.
The quilt format is also associated with the US-based Names Project Foundation, which started working on a quilt for the countless long-ignored victims of the AIDS crisis back in 1987. With his works, Gufler too wants to remind people of those who were long forgotten and give them their deserved place in history. The artist underscores this goal in choosing the measurements of his fabric works. At a size of 180 x 90 cm, they are modeled on the proportions of the human body. The combination of these measurements and the transparency of the material produces visual works that can be read as historical archive turned art, alluding to the precarious situation of queer people and their past.
Introduction by Nicholas Maniu
Texts on the Quilts by Philipp Gufler
- Quilt #39 (Alexander Sacharoff)
- Quilt #40 (Karl Heinrich Ulrichs)
- Quilt #41 (Women’s Resistance Camp Hunsrück)
- Quilt #42 (Guido Vael)
- Quilt #44 (Hof-Atelier Elvira)
- Quilt #45 (Justin Fashanu)
Quilt #39 (Alexander Sacharoff), 2021
A queer icon of the Schwabing bohemian scene stands at the center of Gufler’s three-layered quilt made of red gauze: the Russian dancer, choreographer, and artist Alexander Sacharoff (1886–1963) who mostly performed in “feminine” dress. Sacharoff came to Munich in 1905 to study dance. Alongside Marianna von Werefkin (1860–1938) and Alexej von Jawlensky (1865–1941), he founded the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Artists’ Union Munich), which aimed at developing a new kind of art. Painting, music, dance, theater, and the human body were supposed to merge into a unit.
Sakharoff embodied this synesthetic approach in a particular way. Not only did his dance performances combine different artistic genres, but his androgynous and transvestite appearance also blended social norms of what men and women were supposed to be. A contemporary and fitting term for Sacharoff would probably be non-binary. It is this aspect that possibly explains Jawlensky’s and Werefkin’s fascination with the dancer. They painted and drew many portraits of him. One of the most popular works by Jawlensky shows Sacharoff in a red, high-collared dress with a decorative flower pin (these days, the painting is part of the collection at Lenbachhaus Munich).
His appearance caused a flurry in Munich, a largely conservative city. Gufler cites a document from the time, which states, “A flamboyant apparition who pranced through the streets of Schwabing wearing a coat with the fur on the outside, in female fashion.” Although he was sexually attracted to men, Sacharoff lived in an open marriage with his dance partner Clotilde von Derp (1892–1974) from 1919 onward. Gufler pays tribute to the dancer’s unreserved nature with quotes from contemporaries on the outer fabric layer of the quilt, contrasted by images of Sacharoff in artistic “character” on the other two layers of fabric.
Text by Nicholas Maniu
Quilt #40 (Karl Heinrich Ulrichs), 2021
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895) was a pioneer of the homosexual movement. The East Frisian lawyer stood up for the rights of men with same-sex desires. After he was tried for “gross indecency,” the court barred him from practicing his profession. From then on, Ulrich was threatened with incarceration and mainly worked as a journalist. The measures that were taken against him motivated Ulrichs to take action against such acts of oppression.
One of Ulrichs’s fundamental ideas was that people with same-sex desires were entitled to self-determination. Their sexual acts were looked down upon by the church and society. They were not supposed to be named, rendering them “silent sins.” In legal texts, they were treated on a par with sodomy. Ulrichs was the first person to develop a positive description for himself: “Uranian,” which alludes to the non-sexual conception of Uranus according to Greek antiquity.
Over the course of the years, Ulrichs developed this concept into a system of intermediary stages between the “Urning” or “Urnian” and the “Dionian,” which, these days, would denote a heterosexual person. A few years later, the Austrian researcher Karl Maria Kertbeny addressed the topic of “male-masculine love” from a medical perspective and termed it “homosexuality” without further engaging with the phenomenon.
In contrast, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs documented his insights in twelve phases. They were published between 1864 and 1879, initially under the pen name Numa Numantius. This can be seen as the first piece of research on non-heterosexual ways of living. Ulrichs’s aim was to win impunity for mutually consensual sexual acts between men at the German Jurisprudence Day in Munich in 1867. His attempt failed due to the thoroughly dismissive attitude of the head of the meeting. From then on, Ulrichs published under his real name.
He built a European-wide network of connections and acquaintanceships with other homosexual men and felt morally obliged to them. The quilt quotes his statement, “The awareness, that in this very moment my comrades in nature look to me from afar. Should I then respond to their trust in me with cowardice?” When the harassment of homosexuals drastically increased after the foundation of the Second German Reich in 1871, Ulrichs resigned and emigrated to Italy in 1880. In L’Aquila, he found support and remained there as a private scholar until his death. Ulrichs is buried in the L’Aquila city cemetery.
The city of Munich honored Ulrichs by naming a square in the Glockenbach quarter after him in 1998. His work remains alive. Recently, the Spanish philosopher and queer theorist Paul B. Preciado has engaged with Ulrichs and his theory.
Text by Albert Knoll
Quilt #41 (Women’s Resistance Camp Hunsrück), 2021
Gufler’s quilt dedicated to the Frauenwiderstandscamp (Women’s Resistance Camp)1 in the German Hunsrück area recalls a memorable and quite risky political protest by the lesbian and women’s rights movement. In reaction to the 1979 NATO double-track decision, which allowed the stationing of ninety-six cruise missiles in the Hunsrück, the Women’s Resistance Camp was held between 1983 and 1993 on a private meadow in Reckershausen.
At times, the camp counted up to two thousand participants. These women did not just oppose the military and the defense industry but saw a direct causal relation to patriarchal structures: war, so they stated, was an immediate expression of male violence and the violent suppression of the female which is perpetuated until this day. Following this doctrine, no men were allowed on the campgrounds. A poster from the camp expresses this thought in all its straightforwardness: “What man calls peace is daily war for women.”
The female activists protested this kind of violence by blocking and occupying military construction sites, as can be seen on the quilt’s middle fabric layer. Gufler highlights the bravery of these women by adding two images, which have been printed on smaller fabric layers: the image of an Amazon by painter Ebba Sakel on the front of the quilt and a photo collage on the back that shows the silhouette of a woman overlaid with barbed wire, who makes the lesbian hand gesture (a vulva). The camp organizers used this motif for a poster. Both this poster and the poster previously mentioned are featured in Gufler’s artist book I Wanna Give You Devotion (2017).
At least in the beginning there was a lot of media coverage about the camp on TV, radio, and in newspapers. Despite legal consequences for some participants, the women’s resistance camp was held annually until 1993. Even though the stationing of the cruise missiles could not be prevented in the end, the camp signified a historically meaningful moment in German (women’s) history.
1) According to contemporary witnesses, a trans woman was also part of the organization team at the beginning of the Women’s Resistance Camp Hunsrück. Whether other trans people were also part of the protests has not yet been fully researched. See also: Christiane Leidinger: Kontroverse Koalitionen im politischen Laboratorium Camp – antimilitaristisch-feministische Bündnisse und Bündnisarbeit als kontingente, soziale Prozesse. In: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft. 3/2011, S. 296.
Text by Nicholas Maniu
Quilt #42 (Guido Vael), 2021
Guido Vael (1947–2020) is a central figure of the gay movement in Germany, especially in Munich. Born in Belgium, Vael moved to the Bavarian capital in 1977 and became politically active at a young age, initially in the VSG (Association for Sexual Equality), one of Germany’s first clubs to advocate for the equality of homosexual men. The VSG also published the magazine Kellerjournal (Basement Journal). After his coming out, Vael found support there. Back then, he did not know that he would switch hometowns forever. In a letter from this period, pictured in the upper left corner of the quilt, he expresses his mixed feelings.
As early as 1980 Vael helped to organize Munich’s first Christopher Street Day (Pride Parade). At the time, the CSD was still a politically motivated demonstration eyed with suspicion. It was not the spectacle with parade, stages, and parties that it is today. Still a little naïve, as he would later say, Vael headed the march without covering his face (and of course a photo landed on the front page of Munich’s Abendzeitung). Today, many celebrate openly and joyously, but forty years ago, being that openly gay was not just rare—it also posed real danger.
Vael became a co-founder of the Munich Aids-Hilfe in 1984. This happened at a time when several well-known Bavarian politicians still wanted to “concentrate” HIV-positive people and those who had AIDS in camps or even regarded gays as a “fringe group that ought to be reduced.”1 The catalogue of measures taken by the Bavarian Secretary of State at the time, Peter Gauweiler, was infamous; Vael and his collaborators fought tirelessly against it and experienced police violence on a daily basis (described in the interview Gufler conducted with Vael in 2013, which is printed on the five fabric layers of the quilt). Guido Vael’s activist work thus served as a basis for many other legal innovations that the queer movement has achieved up to this day.
From 1990 until 1999 Vael was a member of the board of the Deutsche Aidshilfe e.V. umbrella organization and helped to shape education and prevention work around HIV/AIDS throughout Germany. At Sub in Munich, a gay communication- and cultural center, he headed the prevention project for an impressive seventeen years. It was here that he founded the Sittenstrolche (“sex fiends”) who made this topic digestible for many in a playful way without taking an overly moral stance.
Vael was also a co-founder of the voter’s association Rosa Liste (“pink list”), which influences Munich’s city politics up to this day. It seems as if Vael was always present when it came to fighting for gay men’s rights in Munich. Due to his achievements, the city awarded Vael with an honorary silver medal in 2009, known as “Munich Glows,” given by the Lord Mayor at the time, Christian Ude. Vael only accepted the medal reluctantly, since he never saw his activism as something out of the ordinary but rather as his unquestionable duty.
At the age of 72, Vael died, much too young, on January 13, 2020, after a long illness. He is missed, and not only by his long-term partner Willi Giess. Many people who learned about gay pride through him still pay tribute to him at Munich’s West Cemetery.
1) Statement made by Hans Zehetmair, the Bavarian Minister of Culture, on a talk show in 1987
Text by Sabrina Mittermeier
Quilt #44 (Hof-Atelier Elvira), 2021
This facade is a real eye-catcher. The giant ornament screen-printed onto the outer fabric layer of the quilt may at first sight remind the viewer of a wild dragon or a maritime scene with waves and clouds. A closer look, however, reveals no definite motif, and thus the pure ornament leaves a lot of room for the imagination. The architect August Endell created the Art Nouveau building in 1898 for a new photo studio: the Hof-Atelier Elvira (Royal Court Atelier Elvira), founded by Anita Augspurg and Sophia Goudstikker. For twenty years, it was the place to be for Munich’s high society, where authors, nobles, members of the Bavarian royal family, military officials, actors, public servants, and many other figures of public life had their portraits taken. Some of the photographs from the Hof-Atelier Elvira can be seen on the back of the quilt, assembled into a collage by Philipp Gufler.
The entrepreneurs and life partners Anita Augspurg (1857–1943) and Sophia Goudstikker (1865–1924) were among the first women in Germany who were professionally trained photographers and succeeded in starting a business in their field. As early as 1887, they opened a studio at Von-der-Tann-Strasse 15 on the corner of Königin Strasse, just across the street from the Prinz Carl Palais. They acquired fame beyond Munich circles, which was not simply due to their connections to high royalty and everyone who was important and well-known in Munich. Both were also prominent women’s rights advocates who demanded voting rights for women (in Bavaria women were first granted the vote in 1918). These demands, alongside their progressive appearance, embodied in short haircuts and modern clothing, caused a stir in conservative Munich and were the source of admiration as well as a lot of mockery.
Shortly after construction for the new building was completed, Anita Augspurf left the Hof-Atelier Elvira. She and her new partner, Lida Gustava Heymann, became leading figures of the international women’s rights movement. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Augspurg and Heymann, who had demanded that Hitler be expelled from Germany as early as 1923, did not return to Munich after a holiday and instead continued to live in Switzerland. Their property was confiscated and the evidence of decades of their work was erased.
Sophia Goudstikker, who had been living with the women’s rights activist Ika Freudenberg since 1899, continued the work at Hof-Atelier Elvira on her own with several employees, until she rented it out in 1908 and fully dedicated herself to women’s rights work in Munich. Although she lacked any legal training, she became the director of the Legal Advice Point for Women, which she founded as part of the Munich-based Association for Women’s Interests, which exists to this day. Later on, she even became a defender at the Juvenile and Arbitration Court, where she achieved significant change.
The studio building had already been in need of renovations and continued to deteriorate until it became an eyesore to the National Socialist city administration after 1933. The façade, once famous for its modern design, was considered out of style and was removed following an official order. The building itself was repurposed. During World War II, it was badly damaged in a bombing in 1944. In 1951, the Bavarian state government sold the property to the US government. Today, the building hosts the US consulate general. There is no reminder of its former glory and of the Hof-Atelier Elvira or its female founders.
Text by Linda Strehl
Quilt #45 (Justin Fashanu), 2021
On three different levels, Philipp Gufler’s quilt tells us about the multifaceted life of Justin Fashanu (1961–1998), a player in the British professional soccer league. With his exceptional performance as a young forward for Norwich City, Fashanu seemed to have a great career ahead of him. He was the first black player to receive a transfer payment of one million GBP when he left the club for Nottingham Forest in 1981. This happened during a time in which racist slurs chanted from the bleachers were a player’s daily lot. Fashanu, however, always took a stance against racism and wanted to serve as a role model for the black community.
Under increasing pressure caused by elevated interest in his private life and associated rumors, which resulted not just in racist slurs but increasingly homophobic ones as well, in addition to mockery of his openly Christian faith, all of which came from fans and team members, he no longer performed as expected. His public outing in 1990 in the British newspaper The Sun, which he hoped would put a stop to all rumors, made him the first openly gay soccer professional. But rather than yielding the intended release, press, fans, and family increasingly turned against him. His career did not recover from this. Justin Fashanu committed suicide in 1998. Yet, his death still did not put a stop to sensation-seeking coverage in the press. Through painstaking archival research, Philipp Gufler has collected different press headlines and assembled them on the bottom layer of the quilt.
To this day, Fashanu remains the only player who openly came out as gay during his professional soccer career. On one hand, this made him an icon for black lesbian and gay people in Britain. However, Justin Fashanu was also subject to extreme rejection from the black community, for whom he had considered himself a beacon. Being a religious, gay, black man cast him as an outsider in several ways at once. Gufler alludes to this conflicted situation on the first fabric layer of his quilt. Yet, the situation also shows that Fashanu’s case has brought about resistance to hate speech in the press and leaves hope for change in the future.
The middle layer of the quilt shows Justin Fashanu after his legendary goal against Liverpool, Goal of the Season 1980, possibly the proudest moment of his career. In his celebratory cheer, he gestures toward the sky. The image is surrounded by lines from football chants, which the artist has assembled from different sources. Some of them praise Fashanu, but others are critical, racist, or homophobic. Some words are so painful that the artist could not just let them stand unaltered. He hides them under embroidery to avoid reproducing the hatred voiced in these words.
Text by Christina Spachtholz
Translation by Isabel Bredenbröker; Photos Quilts: Franzi Müller Schmidt, Installation views: Peter Schinzler for QUIVID