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Archive Salon 2: Reading with Peter Bermbach

15. July 2022 20:30

Author Peter Bermbach reads from his book “Vom anderen Ufer: Erinnerungen eines deutschen Journalisten in Paris (From the Other Bank: Memories of a German Journalist in Paris) about French exile. Afterwards, archive and collection manager Peter Rehberg will show photos from Bermbach’s estate – including celebrity photos of Herbert Tobias from Paris in the 1950s and 1960s.

From the Other Bank – Memories of a German Journalist in Paris
The 1950s in Germany were not a good time to discover one’s own homosexuality. All the more formative for Peter Bermbach’s first outbreak in 1952 was a one-and-a-half-year study visit to California, which in Hollywood not least spurred his ambition for a film career of his own. In 1959, a doctorate in Romance languages and literature helped the author to get a position as an editor at the renowned Kindler publishing house in Munich, which he gave up a short time later after a court case under the sign of the shameful paragraph 175 A in order to move his center of life to Paris for good. The literary scene and bohemia of the left bank of the Seine opened up unimagined freedom and professional opportunities.

Peter Bermbach’s estate
Peter Bermbach’s estate contains letters written in the late 1950s during his imprisonment for §175. Bermbach’s bequest is in the Gay Museum archives.

The event is a cooperation with Eisenherz will be held in German spoken language. Place: Prinz Eisenherz Bookstore (Motzstraße 23, 10777 Berlin). Admission: 7€

Photo: Portrait Peter Bermbach (c) Studio Willy Maywald/Schwules Museum