Homoseksuaalsuse sõnastamise katsed - Eulenburgi skandaal ja Magnus Hirschfeld XX sajandi alguse Eesti ajakirjanduses
Attempts to find words for homosexualism - The Eulenburg scandal and the lectures of Magnus Hirschfeld in the early 20th century Estonian press

Summary/Abstract: Towards the end of the 19th century Estonian journalism developed a more global grasp, while the traditional educational and instructive texts were increasingly accompanied by foreign news and entertainment. First, the article acquaints the readers with the representations of the Eulenburg scandal in Germany in the Estonian press of the early 20th century, then proceeds to the local Estonian coverage of Magnus Hirschfeld’s lectures held in the late 1920s, who campaigned for the decriminalisation of homosexualism. Both the Eulenburg scandal and Hirschfeld’s visits made Estonian journalists to articulate the homosexual desire and contextualise it for the reader. For both cases, the coverage is ambivalent, providing, on the one hand, a neutral explanation or a pedagogical conceptualisation of homosexuality, yet also revealing homophobia and prejudice. At the same time, however, those early formulations are absolutely significant, introducing (male) homosexuality among the topics debatable in Estonian-language public space.

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