There was a strong urge to ‘cure’ people of being homosexual as far back as the late nineteenth century. Brian surgery, hormone treatment, chemical treatment, conversion therapy and even castration were considered.
It is possible that one my main characters in Schelberg 7 is undergoing a mixture of conversion and chemical treatment and possibly even psychotherapy. Might it even be electric shock treatment though that wasn’t actually generally brought in until the 1960s?
Downton Abbey also addresses this problem in the characters of Thomas Barrow. We are invited not to like him anyway so we may not be all the sympathetic. The detail of what Tom does remains a little vague but he does seek to change himself and this involves some chemical manipulation which doesn’t work. There are some suggestions that he may have been using heroin, which accounts for how ill he looks and may only have alleviated the misery in felt in being gay and not being able to find a fulfilling relationship. He possibly obtained it from a quack. As it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do he may as well embrace his sexuality. This action takes place a few years later
Our Adlehard Braun will also return to wear his homosexuality proudly acknowledged and will have more to occupy him: the resistance to Hitler and the Nazis. He will of course become persecuted for his ‘depravity’ in the dark years between 1933 and 1945.
In 1945 Walter Freeman used ice-pick lobotomy on thousands of patient even though he had no formal surgical training. Himmler’s solution was to intern and murder them.
These days conversion therapy would be regarded as intrusive and as assault.
Homosexuals had to feel unclean and afraid until the present day where we still have some issues. However Adelhard comes to terms with himself long before that. Before the end of the book we shall learn that is not because he remained celibate.
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