Berlin Garden of Erotic Delights

Set among the glittering clubs and grimy side streets of 1920s Berlin (with detours to Italy and Paris), these charming, witty, and erotic tales capture the trials and triumphs of early twentieth-century gay life without apology or shame. Granand, the pen name for theater director and author Erich Ritter von Busse, lost his battle against bigoted censors but won a shining place in literary history with this pathbreaking volume. Instead of hewing to the villain/victim dichotomy that haunts the representation of LGBTQIA+ life to this day, these stories reveal the complexities of the human heart with verve and compassion.

Granand (1885–1939), the pen name for theater director and author Erwin Ritter von Busse, who premiered the German-language production of James Joyce’s Exiles in Munich in 1919, lost his battle against bigoted censors but won a shining place in literary history with this pathbreaking volume. Forced into exile in Brazil in the 1930s, Granand died with seeing the publication of his small masterpiece.

Michael Gillespie is a translator and scholar who holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Indiana University and teaches global arts and cultures at New York University. His translations include work by the German-Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler that was set to music by André Previn.

Manfred Herzer is the author of Magnus Hirschfeld und seine Zeit [Magnus Hirschfeld and his Times; Berlin & Boston, 2017], in addition to being a founding member of Schwules Museum [Queer Museum] in Berlin, Germany, and editor, from 1987 to 2019, of the German-language journal Capri—Journal for Gay History.