Yasmin: This is the first time I’ve had two people sitting right in front of me! Manon and Mio, would you like to introduce yourselves?

Manon: Sure, I’m Manon. I actually come from a background in art education and studied political science before that. I’ve always found working with archives—especially queer archives and “grassroots” archives—fascinating. That’s why I started volunteering in the museum’s visitor services department a few years ago. That’s where I met Mio, and that’s how I ended up getting involved in the archive project.

Yasmin: You just got back from work, right?

Manon: Exactly—I work as a course facilitator for a continuing education program for FLINTA* artists with an office in Lichtenberg.

Mio: And I’m Mio! We’ve actually been working on this project—creating press materials about lesbians—for a really long time; we recently did the math and figured out it’s been four years… My day job is at a foundation. I just cycled here from the office in Mitte. I feel like this habit of biking straight here from work is an ongoing process for Manon and me so we can finish the project. Luckily, we’ve been able to reach an agreement with the staff here at the archive that we can arrive after our day jobs and continue working.

Yasmin: Before we get to the project itself, I’d like to ask how you two found out about the Schwules Museum?

Mio: I lived in Leipzig for a long time, and the Schwules Museum was simply a household name there—that’s how I knew it existed. When I was studying in New York, I got involved with the Lesbian Herstory Archives. After moving to Berlin, I really wanted to continue working with archives, and that’s how I ended up at the Schwules Museum.

Yasmin: What about you, Manon?

Manon: I’m from France and studied in Paris, but I spent my Erasmus year in Berlin. During that time, I visited the museum—and that was 13 years ago! After graduation, I was back in Berlin and would pop in here and there for an exhibition at the museum. In 2020, I worked for the Manifesta art biennial, which took place in Marseille that year. There was an exhibition there featuring the queer archive “Invisible Archives Marseille”—an incredibly cool project by a collective that grew out of one person’s collection. Visiting that person’s apartment was fascinating—it was completely filled with boxes. That’s when I decided that, once I returned to Berlin, I definitely wanted to continue working with archives. My interest was piqued!

Yasmin: But you both started out in the museum service first, right?

Mio: Yes, when I arrived here, I naturally said, “I want to work in the archive!” But managing volunteers there isn’t that easy, so I was initially offered a position in the museum service, which I also thought was nice. Manon, me, and another friend started working three-person shifts relatively quickly, which was a lot of fun—until positions opened up in the archives.

Manon: I didn’t join until later…

Mio: That’s right, you joined a little later.

Manon: When I started, there was no head of archives and collections at the museum.

Mio: The previous director, Peter Rehberg, had already trained me, but you didn’t get to see that. So at first I was on my own…

Yasmin: And so you jumped right into the project?

Mio: Well, first I worked on the “Mix” boxes. It was like a training course (laughs); I sorted materials on religion… And then Peter said, “Okay, Mio, now you’re getting something new!” And then I got the so-called “lesbian box,” which had apparently been organized by someone else years ago. So the box was already somewhat structured, and I got to do the rest. There was just a pile of press materials in there. I spent a year or two sorting through it on my own, which, to be honest, was a bit of a chore.

Yasmin: Can you walk us through exactly what that tedious work looked like?

Mio: Oh boy, Yasmin… (both laugh) There was this structure with six categories, and I sorted every item into them by hand. After that, we grouped each category by decade, which is why we can now say so precisely: “This article is from such-and-such a year!”

 

Manon: I joined the project at some point during this phase.

Mio: It was pretty cool not to be sitting there alone, but to be able to share ideas when we found something especially exciting.

Yasmin: It’s great that you’re here, but that also sounds stressful—taking on a project like this alongside your day job…

Mio: It is, but at times, for example, we were only in the office for four hours a month.

Manon: At some point, we agreed to work in blocks. It always takes so long to get back into the mindset and the logic of the project.

Mio: And last winter, we decided to finish it this year. And now we’re done!

Yasmin: Cool! And the project is now officially called…

Mio: The Representation of Lesbians in German-Language Print Media!

Manon: What we don’t know for sure is where the collection came from. Individual articles had little slips of paper attached with details like the publication date, so we assume the publishing house’s press office put it together. But as I said, we don’t know for sure.

Mio: The way I figured it, another press archive sorted through it and approached the SMU, hoping it would be interesting for us (laughs)

Yasmin: And that’s exactly how it is! So did you all read every article in this collection?

Manon: Sort of, yeah. After sorting them, we eventually started writing down the titles and our impressions after reading them. That’s the whole point, after all…

Mio: At first, I definitely read more meticulously to get a feel for this “lesbian collection.” We’re also creating a finding aid that documents what’s in the collection. Reading so carefully was definitely helpful there. But recently we realized we probably went a bit overboard (both laugh) with the precision. Now we have this incredibly long document that isn’t strictly necessary, but still…

Manon: Yes, the file is too big for a finding aid, but we ultimately created the finding aid based on it.

Yasmin: And what are the categories you came up with?

Mio: There’s “Non-Lesbian Press,” “Girls’/Youth Magazines,” “Men’s Magazines,” “Women’s/Left-Wing Movement,” “Lesbian Scene/Self-Representation,” and “Reviews/Announcements.”

Yasmin: What’s “non-lesbian press” doing here?

Manon: Unfortunately, that’s actually the bulk of the collection! I estimate about 80% of the collection consists of general press and was simply part of these boxes.

Mio: Those just aren’t self-representations of the scene.

 

Even if they deal with queer topics, they’re articles from mainstream daily newspapers like the *Tagesspiegel* or *Die Zeit*. In contrast to the “non-lesbian press” is the category “lesbian scene/self-representation.”

Manon: We had to add trigger warnings to some parts of the overview.

Yasmin: What’s that all about?

Mio: Even though we can’t claim to be exhaustive, we did make notes while reading whenever we felt discriminatory language was being used. So if something was, for example, racist or transphobic, we stuck a Post-it note on it to warn: “Caution—discriminatory language is used here.” We also include this information in the finding aid to warn researchers, for example.

Yasmin: So are we just talking about language here, or did you also find problematic images?

Mio: Well, for example, there’s the category “Men’s Magazines,” which deals with the portrayal of lesbians in men’s magazines. In some cases, the depictions were truly appalling…

Yasmin: Do you feel like the amount of problematic material has decreased over time? There’s often this idea that we’re becoming more and more progressive and therefore less discriminatory…

Manon: But I also have a few counterexamples. I’ve read a lot of articles about lesbian solidarity with trans women—I found that really fascinating. So we can say that this development isn’t linear. But it does feel like the language has evolved. When I look at the girls’ magazines from past decades, I do think the topic is handled more openly today.

Mio: But it’s also important to note that there was a surge in articles in the ’70s, which skews the picture a bit. I would agree with Manon, though, that there tend to be clusters of topics at different points in time, which are then set aside only to be revisited later.

Yasmin: In contrast to that, do you have a favorite find?

Manon: There were definitely a lot of funny things in there, too. The collection includes so many theories about why people become lesbians in the first place… We can’t help but laugh every time we see them. There were lots of studies on the subject, and the non-lesbian press seemed to think it was pretty funny (laughs)

Mio: Yeah, that finger-length story! It felt like we found a three-line article about it in every small-town newspaper: “Lesbian? Your hand gives it away! Researchers in San Francisco have discovered that finger length XY indicates that you’re a lesbian”

Manon: Yeah, a total of 26 articles in the year 2000.

Yasmin: Crazy! (laughs) Sounds almost like a conspiracy theory…

Manon: In a way, though, it also sounds like it could be a theory from within the community itself (everyone laughs). Otherwise, there were also theories like “the pill makes you lesbian” or “stress makes you lesbian.”

Mio: The “lesbian-inducing pill” was a big topic in 1977: “Pill in early adolescence—lesbian? French professor warns against taking it at a young age”

Yasmin: But why all the negative news…

Manon: It’s all based on fear, that’s clear. Many of these articles are reports by men complaining that they were dumped for a woman. I think these fear-mongering tactics work well in the press.

Mio: What I thought was cool about the girls’ and teen magazines were the profiles of young people who talk about being queer and going to youth centers, where they find acceptance and support. So there were also empowering things.

Yasmin: What else stuck with you?

Manon: Above all, historical events I hadn’t known about before. For example, the so-called “Itzehoe Trial” against Judy Anderson and Marion Ihns. The trial received an enormous amount of media attention, which turned it into almost a kind of public witch hunt against the two women.

Mio: … what was particularly striking was how the media talked about the two women and the image that emerged of them as a result. Their relationship and the fact that they were lesbians were repeatedly made the focus of the coverage and strongly linked to the crime.

Manon: Or regarding the nature of the relationship: there was talk that one had seduced the other, instead of portraying that one woman had experienced domestic violence, had just left her husband, and wanted to free herself from him. It’s really a creepy story…

 

Mio: I also found the shift from individual stories to structural narratives to be an interesting development. So while the initial focus was on the individual woman “missing tenderness” and “therefore becoming a lesbian,” later reports covered queer communities or how lesbian people are faring in Europe. Gradually, discrimination is also introduced as a category that’s described, and the focus shifts away from the perspective of “Who is this lesbian and why does she exist?”

Yasmin: Wow, somehow I’d imagined the collection differently… More things “by” the community, rather than “about” it. Still, why do you think the collection is so important?

Manon: It’s true that you arrive at the museum with certain expectations. That you’d find things that belong to the community and can’t be found anywhere else. I’d actually like to see more material like that; in that regard, the collection we’ve cataloged doesn’t offer much. Still, I think it’s important to be able to trace the history of how lesbians were and are talked about. It’s also about how they’re viewed from the outside. I think it’s important to document the evolution of this language. There are many insights to be found there—some of them sad—and names pop up that you might or might not have known: places, bars, health centers… And you just can’t find a lot of these items anymore; I find that pretty shocking. I’m from a generation that isn’t used to not being able to find something on the internet… That’s why I think it’s crucial to be able to prove that all of this once existed—especially in case things take a step backward! The Lambda Association, for example, is currently facing funding cuts. From the archives, I know that it’s been around since the ’70s and that they were already publishing reports on lesbian girls back in the ’90s. In those reports, they explain that lesbian girls are particularly unhappy in families that are homophobic. That may sound obvious, but it was an important context for raising awareness at the time. So Lambda has been doing some pretty important work for quite a long time!

Yasmin: What does the final result consist of?

Mio: Very well-organized boxes (laughs) that are going into the archive and can be retrieved upon request, as well as a finding aid. So if a journalist thinks, “Oh dear, Lambda is under extreme threat right now—what was actually going on at Lambda back in the day?” that person can look in our finding aid and see that there’s material from the ’90s and can flip through it.

 

We’ve also sorted the material by town, so anyone who wants to learn more about lesbian history from the perspective of a small local newspaper can do that, too.

Manon: That’s the big difference from before—the material is now easy to find. Now people can actually do research on it!

Yasmin: How much prior knowledge did you bring to this project yourselves?

Manon: Kristine, our advisor at the SMU, would say it’s best to know nothing at all (laughs), so you don’t project your own views onto the material and can maintain a more neutral perspective. Personally, though, I find it much more fun to work on a collection I have a personal connection to. If I weren’t personally affected, I wouldn’t even want to read into it.

Mio: Otherwise, I’d say prior knowledge of history or anything like that isn’t really that important at first, since the motto is: whatever’s in the box is relevant! We did research some things anyway, but not because it was important for cataloging—rather, because we found it fascinating and wanted to know more.

Yasmin: So you were able to learn something, too…

Mio: Definitely—including how cataloging works, how to write a finding aid, and what archival standards are all about.

Manon: And how to work with databases; I don’t think I’ve ever worked with such a large database before. I’ve also gained a lot of respect for the people who do this full-time. It was great to get a glimpse into how archives are professionally managed.

Yasmin: Thank you so much for your work and for this insight into the process behind the project—and congratulations on the launch!