Who was Eberhardt Brucks? And what did carnival balls in the 1950s have to do with current queer club culture? neo seefried applied to curate an exhibition on the Schwules Museum’s largest biographical collection at the beginning of 2024, worked his way through countless remains and, in a short space of time, drew a complex and surprising picture of gay life in the 20th century that makes surprising references to today’s queer life issues.

Hello neo, I’m really looking forward to this interview because we’ve very rarely introduced curating people who work with us. So maybe a really stupid question first: how do you actually get into curating?

Oh, there are many ways to curate. Some people just say: I’m curating now! (both laugh). Mine was a normative academic approach with training in the field. I studied “extracurricular art education” in my bachelor’s degree, but then realized that I didn’t just want to do workshops or only work in education, so I did a master’s degree in Zurich called “Curatorial Studies”. So I have an academic degree in curating.

Respect! Your exhibition, which is currently running successfully at Schwules Museum, is “Strategies of Resilience – Insights into the Life of Eberhardt Brucks”. A new experience for us: nobody came to us with the topic, we put the curation out to tender and you won us over with your concept. Were you already familiar with Schwules Museum, perhaps even with Bruck’s biographical collection?

I had known about the Museum for a while, one exhibition there was very formative for me: “HIV Stories – Living Politics” (2019). I was there for a very long time and realized that I have a deep interest in archive material when it comes to queer realities of life. Previously, I was more interested in contemporary queer realities, but now I was able to engage with someone who is no longer alive, someone whose entire life we can look back on. The Open Call was forwarded to me by several people with the words: Hey, that’s the right thing for you! And I was like: Ah yes, ok, then I’ll do it! (laughs).

What are the themes of contemporary queerness that your previous exhibitions have dealt with?

Many points of contact between subculture, nightlife and club culture. But also questions such as: what does it actually mean to be a queer body or a queer person in our time? And what are the everyday struggles involved. I’m also interested in this theme of resilience that is now emerging in the Brucks exhibition, which I perhaps previously referred to more as “resistance” or “points of friction”: the friction and areas of tension between normative society and queer resistance.

Isn’t “resilience” a rather academic term?

Ultra! But since corona, many people have become familiar with the term, and I had the feeling that many people actually already have points of reference for it. And I think that “queer resilience” is negotiated differently in English; we may not yet know “Queere Resilienz” in German. I thought long and hard about whether I should use such an academic term, but to use the word “resistance”, for example, in relation to someone who was part of the Nazi regime – you can’t do that!

Then let’s talk about Eberhardt Brucks, who at some point you only called by his first name…

… Ebi!

…yes, like a good old friend. An artist who gave his apartment to the Schwules Museum in 2008, with an abundance of material that we wanted to exhibit and re-contextualize. Did you know Eberhardt’s story beforehand?

I didn’t know anything about Eberhardt Brucks! And when I give guided tours, it usually turns out that nobody else knows who he is either. But what I found exciting about it: To engage with someone who didn’t create something supposedly great, who wasn’t the great artist. Immersing myself in such a life and digging through the materials.

And how can you imagine rummaging through them? That’s an incredible amount of archive material.

I was lucky that there was an exhibition in 2009 for which the collection had already been prepared. But that was a time when digitization was theoretically already there (both laugh), but what’s really there are folders with lists of where something should be. And since I didn’t have much time, I developed ideas of what I was looking for. Fortunately, there is an archive with employees that I could ask. And then I got the relevant boxes. I also looked in the cellar myself, but there’s everything there, from record players to a whole archive of books, all the photos, the art – I would have been lost on my own, I would never have managed it in such a short time.

There are over 1000 tapes alone that Brucks recorded privately and over 100 8mm films, at least some of which have been digitized. What was the idea behind your digging?

In the beginning, it was about resilience. I’d only been here briefly beforehand and got my first impressions, had a few clues, but ultimately didn’t know whether there was much or little – there were only a few boxes with a few temporalities. I then decided on four themes that have changed, but these are actually the chapters that we find in the exhibition. For example, I wanted to show the love story of Eberhardt and Hansi, so I only looked at their letters, not the work correspondence or the sister’s postcards. I sorted them out and decided something like: the family story is only told in the margins.

Where is the resilience theme in Eberhardt and Hansi’s love story?

I find it extraordinary that they had a ten-year relationship in the 1950s, when homosexuality was still criminalized. They weren’t allowed to live together, they both grew up religiously, there were so many repressive structures that even after two years you could have said: this is far too exhausting, I’m not up for it, it’s enough for me to meet people I have sex with from time to time.

You once said something very interesting about Eberhardt’s passion for collecting, it wasn’t a mess, but so close to it…

…Exactly!

You described collecting as a queer strategy. The tapes that have just been edited for an episode of the RBB podcast “Deep Doku”, for example, were recorded in very private moments, at the breakfast table or on the phone. Do you have any idea why Eberhardt thought at such moments: this absolutely has to be passed down for posterity?

I have the feeling that collecting so many different things was an opportunity for him to record: this is my reality! He couldn’t show it to the outside world. By collecting and accumulating, it became his cosmos in which he could isolate himself. He created a sense of security through abundance. Others looked for communities, for him his stuff was his community (laughs).

I think it’s pretty great how you’ve emancipated yourself from obvious narratives: you don’t tell the whole life story, nor do you trace the continuity of persecution from the Nazi era to the post-war period, but rather find surprising connections, for example between Eberhardt’s participation in carnival balls and today’s queer club culture as two forms of “pleasure-positive spaces”…

I think many people find that absurd, I also found it a bit absurd at first, but what I always tried to do in the exhibition is to create a queer temporality: there is a contemporary relevance in all the themes, even in the carnival photos from the 1950s, which are totally absurd to me: Eberhardt is there with artists* and other queers, there are promo vans and you can see bombed-out Berlin in the background. Today, as far as queer rights and cultural work are concerned, we’re already shaky again, but there are certain places that let us breathe, that give us space to recharge our batteries. And for many people in this city, that is club culture, and always has been. You slip into different roles there, like at carnival balls, you are anonymous or are only seen by those you want to be seen by. Of course, that has little to do with contemporary carnival (laughs).

When you talk about becoming visible and remaining protected in the process, we can come back to the exhibition object that you wanted to point out in particular…

Exactly, that’s the position of Genesis Kahveci, photographs entitled “Newfangled”/“Erneuerungssüchtig”, which can be seen in the part of the exhibition that deals with Eberhardt’s Nazi era. I thought that shortly before the federal elections, at a time when the CDU and AFD are making common cause, it is important to present a young trans female artist who talks about precisely this area of tension: I withdraw into my private space because I am afraid of rejection or discrimination in society outside, but I can reclaim my empowerment through my body in my private space. And by bringing this into the exhibition space, she brings it back to a select public. She calls it a “silent revolution”. What annoys me about identity politics is that people say: if you don’t take to the streets, then you’re not political! I want to contradict that with this object and say that there are many nuances of political activism, especially when it comes to the body of trans people, who are currently more endangered than ever.

Exciting! Again about the political impetus, “Raus auf die Straße” and the identity-political idea of the private sphere as a place of shame or cowardice – did you find out whether Eberhardt had any contacts with the gay movement?

He was in Switzerland at the end of the 1940s and had contact with the “Kreis” and also made a few drawings for it. What I found interesting: Eberhardt was actually very reserved, but he appeared there with his real name – nobody else did that at the time! I asked myself: did he feel so safe there? Was he a bit too privileged? Or did he just not care? There were always moments like that in his biography when he said “I don’t give a shit”. In any case, he cultivated these contacts, in long pen friendships, and he did something for the “circle” from time to time, but he never got actively involved.

…or made public statements about it…

…exactly.

You mentioned the Nazi era. There has already been some critical feedback about the fact that photos of someone in a soldier’s uniform are shown in the exhibition.

Eberhardt’s story is a multi-dimensional one. Eberhard was not involved in combat, but was stationed in Berlin due to a disability. It was important to me to show him in uniform because he was part of the system, and he acted within the system. But that doesn’t mean that he couldn’t act subversively at the same time, the two are not mutually exclusive. Again, it’s about nuances: there were indeed Nazis who enjoyed gay sex but were on the right. Eberhardt, on the other hand, made it very clear after the war that he never followed this ideology. I think it’s very important to tell stories like this, because people on the left are often heroized and put on a pedestal, and sometimes people forget that they were all just people, including Eberhardt. I ask myself: why can’t we also tell stories about followers?

It would be absurd to leave out this period in a German biography of someone who was born in 1917.

Totally! I also don’t think we can do that as a queer historical institution! I also don’t think I can afford that as a curatorial position, because what does that look like??

You are now also taking part in our new format, the “flash mobs”, where you can take a closer look at something together instead of a guided tour. How have your experiences been so far?

We had a flash mob on the topic of “masculinities”, which was attended by photographer Florian Hetz, and it was very interesting to see what people are interested in and who speaks and takes up space in such an open discussion forum. There’s a photo of a trans male body and I never thought it would open up so much space in a positive way! There was a younger person who asked: “Why doesn’t he have any private parts?” (both laugh). I then noticed that other young people enlightened the person and knew very well, and then we suddenly created a completely different image of masculinity in the situation. Another flash mob about the love letters resulted in people being totally moved by it. We read out parts of it, I asked who had ever written a love letter themselves, and we found out that it makes no difference to today when queer or straight people share their love with each other. I like that such communal moments arise there.

That sounds great! Did Eberhardt ever get on your nerves?

Yes, he’s a pain in the ass too! (laughs) I actually got on well with him because I could identify with him in many ways, but I think he was sometimes very full of himself. But his quirky and lovable nature made up for that. But what many people got upset about, even when he was still alive, was his claw! Nobody can read that! If a handwriting expert hadn’t transcribed it all in 2009, I wouldn’t have been able to read any of it. Even Hansi always asked him: “Tell me, can’t you write more legibly? I’ve already been asked whether it might not have been a strategy to write in such a way that not everyone could read it. Well, I don’t know if that was a deliberate strategy, but not everyone could definitely read it!

In your own interview podcast “hooking up with…”, you always ask five questions at the beginning, so I’ll pick one more for you and ask you: what’s your favorite animal?

(laughs) Horses at the moment!

Does that change?

Yes, today is also Chinese New Year, and it’s the start of the Year of the Wooden Snake, so maybe I’ll switch to snakes!

Thank you so much, neo, for this lovely flash mob with you!

Interview: Jan Künemund

Photo: Yasmin Künze