El innombrable

by Kurt Hiller, Vicente Abella Aranda (Translator)

Kurt Hiller (1885-1972), filósofo y poeta, fue uno de los referentes del expresionismo alemán.
En 1909 fundó junto a Karl Kraus, Jakob van Hoddis o Erwin Loewenson, entre otros, la asociación literaria Der Neue Club (El nuevo club) que dio vida a un programa de actividades poéticas conocido como Cabaret neopatético.
Siempre pendiente de la realidad social y política, escribió en múltiples publicaciones sobre la situación de esta desde los años previos a la Primera Guerra Mundial hasta finalizada la Segunda Guerra Mundial. La mayoría de sus trabajos giran en torno al socialismo, la responsabilidad de los intelectuales, los derechos de la comunidad homosexual y el pacifismo.
A veces contradictorio, siempre fue un pensador incómodo tanto para compañeros de activismo como para editores.
Como socialista, judío, pacifista, intelectual y homosexual aunó y exacerbó los odios nazis, en especial el de Joseph Goebbels. Entre 1933 y 1934 sufrió varias detenciones en los campos de concentración de Columbia, Brandemburgo y Oranienburg donde le torturaron.

Escritos en las dos primeras décadas del siglo XX, tanto La hermandad innombrable como El innombrable, ambos contenidos en este libro, suponen un reflejo bello e insólito del amor homosexual de su tiempo.
Aunque el autor publicó algunos de sus poemas en la Alemania weimariana, a menudo los firmó con el anagrama Keith Llurr.
Hasta su huida del nazismo, Hiller no llevó a cabo la edición de sus poemas. El ejemplar de El innombrable de la que parte nuestro trabajo es una copia del autor fechada en 1938 en Pekín.

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

Hiller came from a middle-class Jewish background. communist, he was deeply influenced by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, despising the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel, which made him quite unpopular with Marxists.

Hiller was also an influential writer in the early German gay rights movement in the first two decades of the 20th century. Hiller was elected as vice-chairman of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in 1929. In 1929 he took over as chairman from fellow gay activist Magnus Hirschfeld. Like Hirschfeld, he had affairs with men but did not publicly identify himself as homosexual.

He is remembered, too, for his book §175: Schmach des Jahrhunderts (Paragraph 175: Outrage of the Century) published in 1922. Hiller maintained that if homosexuals wanted change, they would have to effect it themselves. Hiller was arrested by the Gestapo in March 1933 following the Nazi seizure of power and was severely beaten before his release in August 1933. He spent nine months in prisons and in the earliest concentration camps, being transferred to Columbia-Hauss, Brandenburg and Oranienburg concentration camp. He was released in April 1934.

He fled to Prague immediately after his release, and met his partner Walter D. Schultz [de] (a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany) there while in exile. He later left Prague for London in 1938. In 1955, he returned to West Germany, shortly after which he tried and failed to reestablish the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. In the 1960s, he began formulating another attempt to petition against Paragraph 175, but did not complete it. He lived and wrote in Hamburg until his death in 1972. As a renowned and prominent gay activist from the beginning of the century to his death he was connected with many other activists of the first homosexual movement such as Magnus Hirschfeld, Eva Siewert and many more.