Emi Wolters' letter to the Berlin seamstress Hella Knabe

In November 1936, the Berlin seamstress Hella Knabe published this letter by the artist and author Emi Wolters in her customer newsletter. Knabe sent her newsletter to her customers all over Germany, some of which identified as transvestites. For them she mainly sewed feminine connoted clothing. In 1937, due to the police discovering her newsletter, she was investigated for “distributing pornographic writings”. Because the newsletter was included in the criminal file as “evidence”, Emi Wolters’ texts and those of other customers are still preserved today.

When the NSDAP (Nazi party) came to power in 1933, it attacked the diverse press landscape of the Weimar Republic. Freedom of expression was curtailed, Nazi propaganda and censorship became part of every day life. Queer magazines featuring gender nonconformity like “Die Freundin" (The Girlfriend), “Das Dritte Geschlecht" (The Third Sex) and others were banned. An important queer public sphere and thus a central space for queer community formation and networking had been destroyed. Where there had previously been lively discourse, event advertising and self-help, there now gaped a big hole, contributing to the invisibility of queer people in public and to their isolation and loneliness.