Cemetery creates first lesbian-only burial area (Berlin, Germany)

Germany’s first burial area for lesbians will open on Sunday in Berlin. One of the founders told The Local that the leafy resting spot is for homosexual women to be buried as they lived—with those of the same sex.

“We are the first real generation of emancipated, feminist, open lesbians, and we need somewhere to be buried,” said Dr. Astrid Osterland from Safia, an association for older, mostly gay women.

Hitting back at criticism of the burial area in the Georgen-Parochial-Friedhof, Osterland explained that the project had “absolutely nothing against men”. They are welcome to have their urns here, but women will get first pick of the plots, the 69-year-old said, who has her own spot reserved. …

1854 – 1900 - Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became 1 of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. The Picture of Dorian Gray (his only novel) and “The Importance of Being Earnest” were 2 of his best known works. He had 2 children with his wife, Constance Loyd. According to 1 biographer, Wilde, who had long alluded to “Greek love” in his writings, was "initiated into homosexual sex" by 17 year-old Robert Ross while Wilde’s "marriage had begun to unravel after his wife's 2nd pregnancy, which left him physically repelled". Wilde lived flamboyantly and consorted with male prostitutes. In 1891 he met Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas and thereupon began a homosexual affair with him. Douglas’s father, John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, greatly disapproved and tried to set his son on a normal life path. He publically insulted Wilde accusing him of being a sodomite. In response, Wilde had Queensberry arrested and charged with criminal libel in a private prosecution, as sodomy was then a crime. Queensberry's attorney announced in court that he had located several male prostitutes who were to testify that they had had sex with Wilde. Wilde then dropped the libel charge, on his lawyers' advice, as a conviction was very unlikely if the libel were demonstrated in court to be true. Based on the evidence raised during the case, Wilde was arrested the next day and charged with committing sodomy and "gross indecency", a vague charge which covered all homosexual acts other than sodomy.

Queensberry’s older son, Francis Archibald Douglas, an atheist, served as the private secretary to the Liberal politician, and sitting Prime Minister, Archibald Primrose - 5th Earl of Rosebery. It was widely speculated that Francis may have had a homosexual relationship with Rosebery. It was further suggested that John Douglas had threatened to expose the Prime Minister's supposed proclivities if his government did not vigorously prosecute Oscar Wilde for Wilde's relationship with Francis’ younger brother, Alfred Douglas. Rosebery was, by most accounts, happily married with 4 children until the death of his wife in 1890, though gossip that Rosebery was homosexual or bisexual was widespread. Francis died, unmarried, in 1894 from injuries sustained at a shooting party.

Alfred Douglas's 1892 poem, “Two Loves”, which was used against Wilde at the latter's trial, ends with the famous line that refers to homosexuality as “the love that dare not speak its name”. (Now, it’s “the love that won’t shut the hell up”.) Wilde gave an eloquent but counterproductive explanation of the nature of this love on the witness stand. The trial resulted in a hung jury. The prosecutor opted to retry the case. The final trial was presided over by Mr. Justice Wills. On 5/25/1895, Wilde and Alfred Taylor were convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to 2 years' hard labor. The judge described the sentence, the maximum allowed, as "totally inadequate for a case such as this," and that the case was "the worst case I have ever tried". Wilde's response, "And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?", was drowned out in cries of "Shame" in the courtroom. He served his time 1st at Pentonville, then Wandsworth, then famously in Reading Gaol. Douglas was forced into exile in Europe. The experience broke Wilde’s health. Upon release he moved to Paris, France, where he lived the last 3 years of his life. He went to confession and was reconciled with the Catholic Church before he died destitute. His teen-age seducer, Robert Ross, commissioned a tomb for Wilde’s remains which is in the Père Lachaise Cemetery located on the east side of Paris. Ross’ ashes were interred in Wilde’s tomb in 1950. Lord Alfred Douglas married a woman a few years after Wilde’s death, and they had a son.

Oscar Wilde’s Tomb” in a London studio, 1912.

Sculptor Jacob Epstien with his “Oscar Wilde’s Tomb” in a London studio, 1912.

Oscar Wilde's tomb before 2011. Notice the lipstick "kisses" in the right image.

Oscar Wilde's tomb after 2011. Notice the lipstick "kisses" on the glass panels in the right image.

“Oscar Wilde's tomb”
video run time = 00:01:52 minutes

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The modernist flying demon-angel depicted as a bas-relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitalia. It created a public furor when it was brought to Paris in AUG 1912. The monument remained in situ for almost 2 years, obscured from public view by an enormous tarpaulin, and a gendarme standing beside it. Eager to settle this issue and remove Wilde’s name from the voracious press coverage of (yet another) sex scandal, Robert Ross pressed sculptor Jacob Epstein to allow a bronze cache-sexe in the shape of a butterfly to be affixed to the monument. Outraged, Epstein refused to attend the unveiling. The AUG 1914 ceremony was attended by a strange confluence of outcasts and was presided over by the occult leader Aleister Crowley. Legend has it that weeks later Crowley returned to the grave, removed the butterfly from the monument, and wore it around Paris as a cod-piece. By 1950 the tomb had become increasingly notorious as a place of pilgrimage by the homosexual community. Visitors left the sculpture covered with a layer of accumulated graffiti expressing reverence for Wilde. Giles Robertson, then joint executor of the estate of Robert Ross, noticed “the extraordinarily polished, shiny quality of the angel’s pendulous testicles by comparison with the dull, grainy texture of the rest of the tomb. He realized that their unusual appearance was due to the continual touching, stroking and caressing by the hands of Wilde’s homosexual admirers in worship and reverence to those parts of Oscar Wilde for which they believe he was martyred.”

The tomb remained unadorned by any fig leaf or cod piece until 1961, when vandals chiseled off the genitals altogether. Their current whereabouts remain unknown. In 2000, Leon Johnson, a multimedia artist, installed a silver prosthesis to replace them. Wilde’s tomb has continued to be vandalized by people writing graffiti on it and women kissing the tomb leaving the lipsticked imprints of their lips on it, either as a token of their admiration for Wilde or believing that it would bestow fertility on them. After numerous complaints and appeals from Wilde’s descendants and various associations, Paris authorities in 2011 cleaned up the tomb and, like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, installed a glass barrier to prevent further marks or damage. Admirers still find ways to adorn the monument with kisses. And those who are less agile (or more law abiding) now throw written messages, flowers, and other items of remembrance over the glass barrier.

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