Reappraising the Queer Falsetto. Magnus Hirschfeld, Sexology, and the Gendered Vocality of Gay “Men”, 1900–1914. VIRUS - Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte der Medizin|VIRUS. Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte der Medizin Band 21. Schwerpunkt: Musik und Medizin

Filling a gap in falsetto history, this article unearths several mentions of male high-voice singing in Berlin’s homosexual subculture before World War I. Using the theories of the physician and liberationist activist Magnus Hirschfeld, a contemporary medical explanation for this phenomenon is discussed, especially with regard to Hirschfeld’s attitudes towards the singers’ gendered and queered bodies. His medical approach, which reinforces the singers’ performative agencies, is brought into conversation with more (post-)modern ideas of queer theory and voice studies, the concepts of embodiment, medicine, and gender providing for interesting points of contact between the two.