back
Usage
40 Pieces of Lesbian History in Vienna
Preface
40 years ago, in 1983, the archive began to be built up in the Association Women's Studies and Female Living.
"The obvious is the passion for a Women's Movement archive, for the documents of our awakening, for making our successes and failures, our provisionalities, side paths, diversity comprehensible. The necessity to explain nevertheless is palpable: that Women's Movement history has been made and lived in recent years and that every leaflet, every poster, every magazine [...] makes it possible to understand. We announce: For the seven skins of the great snake New Women's Movement we are setting up an archive – piece by piece." (G 7, Stichwort, File 1, Info 4 [1983})
On the occasion of the anniversary, the archive presents itself with 40 finds. Are they representative of the STICHWORT archive? No, they are not, that much we can reveal. And yet somehow they are.
Since we changed our name 33 years ago from Archiv der Neuen Frauenbewegung (Archive of the second wave Women’s Movement) to STICHWORT. Archiv der Frauen- und Lesbenbewegung (Archives of the Women's and Lesbians’ Movement), we are sometimes perceived from the outside as an exclusively "lesbian archive". This is not only wrong, but usually not meant in a friendly way. However, lesbian documents are definitely a comparatively small part of the archive's holdings. Within the framework of the 2023 funding priority "Queer History" of the Vienna Anti-Discrimination Office for LGBTIQ Affairs, we have undertaken to highlight this part of the archive and, quite positively, to bring it into the spotlight.
So we set ourselves the task of focusing on the Lesbian Movement. And already we got into trouble, because lesbians are and were everywhere in the Women's Movement, were present everywhere without being named, even long before it became common for a while to say "WomenLesbians". And is there or was there a Lesbian Movement in Austria that could be called that at all? Sometimes lesbianism is "hidden" in the word women, as in women's party, women's bars, relationships with women. The plan was to reveal the lesbian from the general Women's Movement, to make it visible within the lesbian-gay and queer. We asked ourselves again and again, forty times in fact, whether this made sense and whether it could work, and just as often we had something in front of us that we thought was worth presenting as a lesbian find.
Due to the project framework, we focused on Vienna. And even that was difficult, because the activities of a movement are rarely local: Activists from Vienna travelled to German, German-speaking and international meetings and brought back new ideas, informed themselves via German- and English-language media and publications, corresponded internationally; they showed solidarity with lesbian struggles elsewhere and founded transnational initiatives. Practically nothing we tell about started or ended in Vienna alone.
The period to which we turn starts in the mid-1970s and goes up to the year 2022. For almost half of these 47 years, speaking about lesbianism and political action was restricted by legislation. Repeatedly, we come back to paragraphs banning advertising and associations, which were in force until February 1997. It is all the more impressive what has nevertheless taken place, courageously and undauntedly, militant and with fun and pleasure, and what has been moved and won.
The Selection of Finds
We did not aim to do a lesbian political historiography for Vienna. That would not have been possible within the framework of such a small project. Our aim was, as we said, to present special finds from the STICHWORT archive and to tell something about them, about the contexts from which they arose, and to bring them to life again through statements from that time. Although the finds are arranged chronologically, they are not regularly distributed over the period. What is striking is the accumulation in the eighties, especially in the early 1980s, which corresponds to the dynamics of that time: "It was a magical year, 1981/82. Lesbians made signs in abundance, and some stayed." (Hacker, Hanna: Von außen war es rosa. In: Rosa Lila Tip (Hg.): „Weil drauf steht, was drin ist!“ 10 Jahre Lesben- & Schwulenhaus Rosa Lila Villa, Vienna, Self-published, 1992, S. 24)
Some documents have been shown repeatedly, in STICHWORT publications as well as in exhibitions, books and films in recent years. For many who are familiar with the movement, they are likely to be immediately in mind. They are spontaneously recalled at a cue. Other documents, on contrary, have never been shown before and some backgrounds are probably known to only a few.
We have left some things out: In accordance with the principles of our archive and the wishes of our donors, not everything should reach the broader public, which is provided by online publication. So some things are missing in this presentation because they are of an internal nature, others simply because they are missing. Thus this special catalogue is also a catalogue of gaps: Above all, photos, minutes and recordings have simply not yet reached us in the archives, they are still lying in living rooms and attics. The emotions associated with them are still too strong, or they have been forgotten in the meantime. Newer things, on the other hand, are often not (yet) considered ready for the archive or are so ephemeral that they disappeared immediately.
In the course of the project we have talked, phoned and corresponded with many activists representing a wide range of positions – and have opened a door: In the last months of the project work, we received a multitude of small and larger donations from the seventies until today, for which we are infinitely grateful. The new acquisitions helped repeatedly to put the selected find into the right context; some of the items could even still be included in our selection.
Our great thanks go to all the activists of the autonomous Women's and Lesbian Movement in Austria who have placed their treasures in our hands over the last 40 years and who recognise STICHWORT as "their archive", trust us and support us in many ways!
Piece by piece through the archive
The finds can be viewed in chronological order or individually and selectively. The online presentation also gave us the opportunity to use audio documents. Each archive document shown is explained and contextualised in a short essay on the opposite page. We have gradually changed our feminist language in these text parts according to the time of the document so that it accompanies the respective find.
The historical embedding nearly always includes a quotation that is related to the found object. It appears at the end of the accompanying text and is highlighted in italics. We have used either the source itself or a passage from feminist magazines and sometimes an interview. We have kept the spelling in these texts.
We wish all readers – those who want to remember as well as those who were not present (at all events) – exciting and entertaining moments with the 40 finds. But actually there are more than 40 ... see for yourself.
Project supported by MA 13/WAST
|
Intro
List of items PDF in German |
top
back