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April 3, 2007

Elizabeth Heineman to discuss ‘The West German Sex Wave’

GRINNELL, Iowa - Elizabeth D. Heineman has studied gender, war, and memory in Germany, and in the process has written a number of books and articles that examine Germany during and after World War II.

An associate professor of history at the University of Iowa, Heineman will focus on her latest work at a lecture on Tuesday, April 10, 2007, at Grinnell College. She will address "The West German Sex Wave: Buying and Selling Sex in the 1960s" at 4:15 p.m. in the Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center, Room 101.

After publishing an article titled "Sexuality and Nazism: The Doubly Unspeakable?" in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, she began to work more intensely on the history of sexuality. This led to additional research tracing sexual consumer culture in West Germany from the end of the war to the legalization of pornography in 1975.

"This is a struggle over subjecthood: a struggle between people’s attempts to sexualize themselves on the one hand, and on the other hand, their fear that their bodies were being sexualized by others," Heineman said. "West Germany was a major site of this struggle, because West Germany was (and still is) home to the world’s largest erotica firms."

When the 'sex wave' started in the early 1960s, Heineman says, the "sexualized body" was increasingly identified with commerce?not, as in earlier years, with commerce in fashion or cosmetics, but rather with commerce in erotica per se.

"In fact, one often heard complaints that commercial interests were ‘sexualizing’ people, especially young people, to the detriment of those people’s ability to develop and express multifaceted personalities," she said. "This included sexuality, but also intellectual, spiritual, psychological, and other qualities."

Heineman has written on gender, war and memory; welfare states in comparative perspective (fascist, communist, and democratic); the significance of marital status for women, and sexualty and consumption. She is also editing a collection of essays inspired by a conference on sexual violence in conflict zones.

She is currently writing a book on sexual consumer culture in West Germany before pornography was legalized in that country.

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