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An Angel in Sodom: Henry Gerber and the Birth of the Gay Rights Movement
Henry Gerber was the father of American gay liberation.
Born in 1892 in Germany, Henry Gerber was expelled from school as a boy and lost several jobs as a young man because of his homosexual activities. He emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the army for employment. After his release, he explored Chicago’s gay subculture: cruising Bughouse Square, getting arrested for “disorderly conduct,” and falling in love. He was institutionalized for being gay, branded an “enemy alien” at the end of World War I, and given a choice: to rejoin the army or be imprisoned in a federal penitentiary.
Gerber re-enlisted and was sent to Germany in 1920. In Berlin, he discovered a vibrant gay rights movement, which made him vow to advocate for the rights of gay men at home. He founded the Society for Human Rights, the first legally recognized US gay-rights organization, on December 10, 1924.
When police caught wind of it, he and two members were arrested. He lost his job, went to court three times, and went bankrupt. Released, he moved to New York, disheartened.
Later in life, he joined the DC chapter of the Mattachine Society, a gay-rights advocacy group founded by Harry Hay who had heard of Gerber’s group, leading him to found Mattachine.
An Angel in Sodom is the first and long overdue biography of the founder of the first US gay rights organization.
Born in 1892 in Germany, Henry Gerber was expelled from school as a boy and lost several jobs as a young man because of his homosexual activities. He emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the army for employment. After his release, he explored Chicago’s gay subculture: cruising Bughouse Square, getting arrested for “disorderly conduct,” and falling in love. He was institutionalized for being gay, branded an “enemy alien” at the end of World War I, and given a choice: to rejoin the army or be imprisoned in a federal penitentiary.
Gerber re-enlisted and was sent to Germany in 1920. In Berlin, he discovered a vibrant gay rights movement, which made him vow to advocate for the rights of gay men at home. He founded the Society for Human Rights, the first legally recognized US gay-rights organization, on December 10, 1924.
When police caught wind of it, he and two members were arrested. He lost his job, went to court three times, and went bankrupt. Released, he moved to New York, disheartened.
Later in life, he joined the DC chapter of the Mattachine Society, a gay-rights advocacy group founded by Harry Hay who had heard of Gerber’s group, leading him to found Mattachine.
An Angel in Sodom is the first and long overdue biography of the founder of the first US gay rights organization.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published October 4, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 29, 2022
Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up
The Publisher Says: Henry Gerber was the father of American gay liberation.
Born in 1892 in Germany, Henry Gerber was expelled from school as a boy and lost several jobs as a young man because of his homosexual activities. He emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the army for employment. After his release, he explored Chicago’s gay subculture: cruising Bughouse Square, getting arrested for “disorderly conduct,” and falling in love. He was institutionalized for being gay, branded an “enemy alien” at the end of World War I, and given a choice: to rejoin the army or be imprisoned in a federal penitentiary.
Gerber re-enlisted and was sent to Germany in 1920. In Berlin, he discovered a vibrant gay rights movement, which made him vow to advocate for the rights of gay men at home. He founded the Society for Human Rights, the first legally recognized US gay-rights organization, on December 10, 1924.
When police caught wind of it, he and two members were arrested. He lost his job, went to court three times, and went bankrupt. Released, he moved to New York, disheartened.
Later in life, he joined the DC chapter of the Mattachine Society, a gay-rights advocacy group founded by Harry Hay who had heard of Gerber’s group, leading him to found Mattachine.
An Angel in Sodom is the first and long overdue biography of the founder of the first US gay rights organization.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: A lifelong member of one or another sexual minority, I'm here to tell you that I've never once heard of Henry Gerber. Magnus Hirschfeld, the German sexologist and early campaigner for gay equality, I'm familiar with, I've even seen movies about him; Henry Gerber is terra incognita. And he lived in my own country!
This is why visibility matters, laddies and gentlewomen. This is why we need Jim Elledge and Hugh Ryan and Peter Staley and thousands of others who were there when things changed, whose voices are lifting the stories "They" would prefer to forget exist and are taking every action to be sure do not reach any wider an audience than "They" can prevent.
The publisher's synopsis above does a good recap of the outlines of the story being told here. I can add to it a few ideas I came away from the read sure I'd felt because I read Gerber's story: Some of us are born cranky and contrarian, prickly and often unpleasant to interact with. That was Josef Dettlef, as he was when he came to Chicago in 1913. He never changed...very few of us do.
The Germany he grew up in, not a privileged childhood by any means but not starving either, had a nascent gay-rights movement (follow the Hirschfeld link above) and was flirting with an unthinkable thought: Transgender people should be treated as the gender they identify, not simply in accordance to the sex organs the genetic lottery assigned them. The ethos, then, in young Dettlef's life wasn't like the one he found when he emigrated to Chicago (with a younger sister in tow) to find his future in Amerika. To be sure, Dettlef wasn't about to stop having sex with other men. Like every city everywhere ever, Chicago had such people in it who were amenable (often, for a price, the most surprising people become amenable to sex outside the ordinary) to handsome young Josef's advances.
What happens next is no surprise to any twenty-first century US citizen: entrapment and arrest, a stay in a mental institution being "cured". But young Josef, in World War One America, had a skill the US Armed Forces needed...he spoke fluent German. He was offered a fresh start if he'd go forth and sin no more, while working for a forces newspaper. What a mistake, a glorious, beautiful error of judgment that exposed Henry (as he now was) to organized, science-based, and well-led gay rights groups. A model, then, for Henry's future plans in Chicago where he returned in 1923.
I will say that, knowing what is to come, I felt desperately sad as Henry's legally constituted Society for Human Rights met its inevitable end at the hands of our very own Federal Government. Such a woke organization, what? Henry's energies being vast, he continued to work for the betterment of QUILTBAG people everywhere through multiple channels, including encouraging Robert Scully to finish A SCARLET PANSY, and during times when the risks were mortal. (One of his organizations, "Contacts," was one my own gay uncle belonged to in the 1930s!) It was part of Henry Gerber's life-long quest to make himself normal...not by changing himself, but by changing society.
What made this book so delightful to read was an accident of history. Henry Gerber would've faded into dust by now, dying as he did in 1972 before the American Psychiatric Association struck homosexuality off its list of mental disorders, but for a lovely surprise. His friend Manuel boyFrank started, and maintained, a correspondence with Henry Gerber that ranged over the rest of each of their lives. Since he kept all Henry's letters, we have the words of the man himself to tell us of his efforts, his feelings about them, and his life-long loneliness. (Cranky, spiky people often end up alone.)
That accident has delivered the twenty-first century a trove of real-life, real-time even, materials that aren't mediated in the way of most historical figures' life stories. There is, and make no mistake it is in this book!, a paper trail of some breadth behind Henry Gerber. It alone would give us none of the richness and texture of Author Jim Elledge's book. While that is greatly to the credit of the story-teller's art, it also tends to lead him into speculative reconstructions of things not necessarily on the source material's pages. This isn't a crime, however, and while I myownself would prefer not to have that much of it, the picture of Henry Gerber's life is deep and beautifully colored. It acts as a strong base and as a wide frame around gay life a century ago, when we weren't supposed to be here among you at all.
***PLEASE NOTE there are hyperlinks galore at the review as posted on my blog. Too many to port over, I'm afraid!
The Publisher Says: Henry Gerber was the father of American gay liberation.
Born in 1892 in Germany, Henry Gerber was expelled from school as a boy and lost several jobs as a young man because of his homosexual activities. He emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the army for employment. After his release, he explored Chicago’s gay subculture: cruising Bughouse Square, getting arrested for “disorderly conduct,” and falling in love. He was institutionalized for being gay, branded an “enemy alien” at the end of World War I, and given a choice: to rejoin the army or be imprisoned in a federal penitentiary.
Gerber re-enlisted and was sent to Germany in 1920. In Berlin, he discovered a vibrant gay rights movement, which made him vow to advocate for the rights of gay men at home. He founded the Society for Human Rights, the first legally recognized US gay-rights organization, on December 10, 1924.
When police caught wind of it, he and two members were arrested. He lost his job, went to court three times, and went bankrupt. Released, he moved to New York, disheartened.
Later in life, he joined the DC chapter of the Mattachine Society, a gay-rights advocacy group founded by Harry Hay who had heard of Gerber’s group, leading him to found Mattachine.
An Angel in Sodom is the first and long overdue biography of the founder of the first US gay rights organization.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: A lifelong member of one or another sexual minority, I'm here to tell you that I've never once heard of Henry Gerber. Magnus Hirschfeld, the German sexologist and early campaigner for gay equality, I'm familiar with, I've even seen movies about him; Henry Gerber is terra incognita. And he lived in my own country!
This is why visibility matters, laddies and gentlewomen. This is why we need Jim Elledge and Hugh Ryan and Peter Staley and thousands of others who were there when things changed, whose voices are lifting the stories "They" would prefer to forget exist and are taking every action to be sure do not reach any wider an audience than "They" can prevent.
The publisher's synopsis above does a good recap of the outlines of the story being told here. I can add to it a few ideas I came away from the read sure I'd felt because I read Gerber's story: Some of us are born cranky and contrarian, prickly and often unpleasant to interact with. That was Josef Dettlef, as he was when he came to Chicago in 1913. He never changed...very few of us do.
The Germany he grew up in, not a privileged childhood by any means but not starving either, had a nascent gay-rights movement (follow the Hirschfeld link above) and was flirting with an unthinkable thought: Transgender people should be treated as the gender they identify, not simply in accordance to the sex organs the genetic lottery assigned them. The ethos, then, in young Dettlef's life wasn't like the one he found when he emigrated to Chicago (with a younger sister in tow) to find his future in Amerika. To be sure, Dettlef wasn't about to stop having sex with other men. Like every city everywhere ever, Chicago had such people in it who were amenable (often, for a price, the most surprising people become amenable to sex outside the ordinary) to handsome young Josef's advances.
What happens next is no surprise to any twenty-first century US citizen: entrapment and arrest, a stay in a mental institution being "cured". But young Josef, in World War One America, had a skill the US Armed Forces needed...he spoke fluent German. He was offered a fresh start if he'd go forth and sin no more, while working for a forces newspaper. What a mistake, a glorious, beautiful error of judgment that exposed Henry (as he now was) to organized, science-based, and well-led gay rights groups. A model, then, for Henry's future plans in Chicago where he returned in 1923.
I will say that, knowing what is to come, I felt desperately sad as Henry's legally constituted Society for Human Rights met its inevitable end at the hands of our very own Federal Government. Such a woke organization, what? Henry's energies being vast, he continued to work for the betterment of QUILTBAG people everywhere through multiple channels, including encouraging Robert Scully to finish A SCARLET PANSY, and during times when the risks were mortal. (One of his organizations, "Contacts," was one my own gay uncle belonged to in the 1930s!) It was part of Henry Gerber's life-long quest to make himself normal...not by changing himself, but by changing society.
What made this book so delightful to read was an accident of history. Henry Gerber would've faded into dust by now, dying as he did in 1972 before the American Psychiatric Association struck homosexuality off its list of mental disorders, but for a lovely surprise. His friend Manuel boyFrank started, and maintained, a correspondence with Henry Gerber that ranged over the rest of each of their lives. Since he kept all Henry's letters, we have the words of the man himself to tell us of his efforts, his feelings about them, and his life-long loneliness. (Cranky, spiky people often end up alone.)
That accident has delivered the twenty-first century a trove of real-life, real-time even, materials that aren't mediated in the way of most historical figures' life stories. There is, and make no mistake it is in this book!, a paper trail of some breadth behind Henry Gerber. It alone would give us none of the richness and texture of Author Jim Elledge's book. While that is greatly to the credit of the story-teller's art, it also tends to lead him into speculative reconstructions of things not necessarily on the source material's pages. This isn't a crime, however, and while I myownself would prefer not to have that much of it, the picture of Henry Gerber's life is deep and beautifully colored. It acts as a strong base and as a wide frame around gay life a century ago, when we weren't supposed to be here among you at all.
***PLEASE NOTE there are hyperlinks galore at the review as posted on my blog. Too many to port over, I'm afraid!
July 11, 2023
on the one hand this is a well written and researched biography but on the other hand it’s about a guy who appears to be a snobby, racist, biphobic misogynistic asshole 🤷♀️
Read
November 9, 2022"In 'An Angel in Sodom: Henry Gerber and the Birth of the Gay Rights Movement,' Jim Elledge, a veteran chronicler of gay Chicago, makes the case that we should consider Henry Gerber not an asterisk, but a forefather of the gay-rights movement—one who would influence later generations of activists. In telling Gerber’s story, An Angel in Sodom offers a rare glimpse into a 1920s and ’30s queer world about which we still know precious little. After Gerber, the movement didn’t disappear—it just went underground." — Michael Waters
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...
May 21, 2023
I DNF this book I just couldn’t get into it I try till about the 4th chapter but I just couldn’t do it no more. It just didn’t have my interest
October 22, 2022
Utilizing mostly news stories and correspondence, Elledge is able to give an accurate portrait of Henry Gerber as a person of his time, with all of his idiosyncrasies in relationship to his sex life and his view of the gay world. Often, this is not a flattering picture. What is valuable is Elledge's history of the events and environment surrounding Gerber's life-the world, and the cities and states attitudes toward homosexuality.
My thanks to Edelweiss for providing this free ebook in exchange for this review.
My thanks to Edelweiss for providing this free ebook in exchange for this review.
May 12, 2023
Let’s start with applause for the incredible research done by the author, who obviously immersed himself in the life of Henry Gerber, who founded America’s first LGBTQ rights organization, The Society for Human Rights, in Chicago in 1924. Elledge has produced an account so detailed that it is remarkable. That’s also part of the problem. Long stretches of the book are devoted to minutiae such as the contents of never-published letters to the editor written by its protagonist that so that it becomes, after a while, tedious for, as an acquaintance once told Henry, “You are beyond doubt a very temperamental and unstable individual.” We learn in the book that Gerber is a complicated individual — anti-Semitism is one of his least appealing qualities — who can hardly be an unsullied “hero” for today’s movement. But we also develop an admiration for the tenacity of this man who, in far darker times, never gave up his drive to make life better for LGBTQ people. The book comes to life when it situates Gerber’s life and activism within the larger context of the times but sadly it does not do so often enough to make for compelling reading. The author is just too close to the subject. This is good reading for those who are fascinated by LGBTQ history: with a good edit, it could have been fascinating for anyone.
June 25, 2025
I finished An Angel in Sodom. The book was informative, and I learned a lot about Henry Gerber’s role in early gay rights organizing. His work mattered historically.
But I didn’t find him admirable. He came across as racist, elitist, and at times just unsettling. I know people are complicated and that everyone has parts of themselves they don’t share. Still, it's fair to feel uneasy about someone, even when they did something important. You can recognize their contribution without needing to celebrate the person.
I’m glad I read it. But I wouldn’t call him an angel.
But I didn’t find him admirable. He came across as racist, elitist, and at times just unsettling. I know people are complicated and that everyone has parts of themselves they don’t share. Still, it's fair to feel uneasy about someone, even when they did something important. You can recognize their contribution without needing to celebrate the person.
I’m glad I read it. But I wouldn’t call him an angel.
June 11, 2024
This was a terrific read for people who are interested in the early LGTB rights movement. Henry Gerber founded the first Society for Human Rights in 1924 Chicago. It ended in disaster. However, for the next half century, Gerber remained on the periphery of the movement and The author has researched some fascinating details about this period. Although Gerber died and obscurity in 1972, his organizing skills annd heroism are fully appreciated now.
June 25, 2023
Perhaps too slight for the full biography treatment, “An Angel in Sodom” tells the story of an important activist and member of the gay rights movement in America. The reconstruction of Henry Gerber’s correspondence with other gay men of his time was interesting, but I’m not sure it’s enough on its own—particularly since Gerber’s contributions were mostly on an intangible level until the 50s.
April 13, 2023
Thanks to Goodreads and Chicago Review Press for the giveaway copy!
This was a little more academic than I expected, but glad to see an important figure getting an overdue biography. I would recommend this more to researchers than a general audience.
This was a little more academic than I expected, but glad to see an important figure getting an overdue biography. I would recommend this more to researchers than a general audience.
June 2, 2023
This was an interesting biography of an important person in the gay rights movemner. He is not someone I had ever heard of before, but it was really interesting. The writer does a nice job of bringing the reader through the events in his life and highlighting his importance.
November 21, 2024
A bit dense and dry at times but full of good info on the fascinating life of Henry Gerber, who brought gay activism to the US from Germany
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews