Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was born in Aurich in East Frisia in 1825 and grew up in the Hanover region. He studied law in Göttingen and in 1846/1847 spent a year in Berlin, whose reputation as a place for homosexuals was certainly known to him when he chose Berlin. After completing his studies, he joined the civil service in Hanover. However, his career came to an end in 1854 when his employer, the Ministry of Justice, was informed that “… the court assessor Ulrichs was engaging in unnatural lust with other men.”

Ulrichs did not violate any laws, as the Hanoverian penal code did not criminalize same-sex love. There was, however, a paragraph that combined unnatural lust and causing a public nuisance and made it a punishable crime. The rumors about his immoral private lifestyle were enough to make him resign.

Ulrichs now became a journalist and wrote articles for the Allgemeine Zeitung from Augsburg from 1862. The newly built railroad lines in Germany made it possible to distribute newspapers nationwide. He wrote a series of articles on same-sex love and the effects of the sodomy laws. He wrote newsletters, to which he received many grateful responses from other like-minded people who until then had thought they were the only ones. He also felt the need to explain to his family that he was born to love men. In a letter he writes “Men who love men represent a third sex, characterized by a feminine nature trapped in the physical body of a man…. It is unfair to expect him to live a life of celibacy. Sexual gratification is a God-given right.” Ulrichs wrote this to his family in the 19th century. It is remarkable how Ulrich’s family never explicitly disowned or rejected him, and even continued to support him, despite the revelation of his sexual preferences, which was radical and disturbing for the time.

In April 1864, he published his first work under a pseudonym. He introduces the term “Urninge”, derived from the Greek god Uranus, who symbolizes same-sex eroticism as the only father of Aphrodite. He thus gives men who love men their first identity-forming name. In a later work, Ulrichs introduces the term “Urninden” as a term for lesbians.

The core thesis of his writings is that Uranian love is innate or natural, caused neither by illness nor by willful perversion, and as such its practice could not be criminalized. It can be said that Karl Heinrich Ulrich also invented queer identity in his writings by being the first to formulate that sexuality is a part of you, not just an act. He saw homosexuality as an identity. He thus laid the foundations for homosexual communities to exist at all. And it is only through these communities that a demand for sexual freedom rights is possible. His publications were successful and the debate on the legal treatment of same-sex love was set in motion. Lawyers, doctors and scientists took notice.

In 1866, Prussia defeated Austria in the Second War of German Unification, indicating that Prussia could lead the way to German unification. The prospect of an imminent German unification also prompted the German Jurists’ Conference to meet in Munich on August 29, 1867, as the country also needed uniform laws, which was discussed there. The Jurists’ Conference was the stage for Ulrich’s public outing, out of the pseudonym to demand impunity and social acceptance.

He begins his speech but is met with loud protests, he interrupts the speech, then continues, but he will not finish his speech as he is often interrupted by shouts of protest. Ulrich’s demands are not supported by the Jurists’ Conference. But the world’s first public outing is accomplished, the speech is published, the seed is sown, the word is out, the discourse is initiated.

As Prussia led the unification of Germany, its penal code also influenced the German Empire, which was soon to be founded in 1871. In 1868, Bismarck commissioned the preparation of a penal code, whereupon a commission was appointed to assess the sodomy laws. In March 1869, the commission presents an expert opinion in which it speaks out against sodomy laws.

However, Berlin’s public opinion in 1869 was influenced by two crimes related to homosexuality. The murder in Invalidenpark of a raped and mutilated baker’s apprentice (1867) and a terrible abuse of a young boy by a man (1869) are both often discussed in the yellow press. The public cannot tell the difference between homosexuals, pedophiles, sex offenders and sadists.

The government ignored the commission’s recommendation and included the sodomy paragraph in the new penal code, referring to the “people’s sense of justice”. The sodomy paragraph ended up in the code as paragraph 175 and criminalized sexual acts between men. When the German Empire was founded in January 1871, this also ensured that Paragraph 175 was incorporated into the law of the German Empire.

In 1880, Ulrichs undertook a trip to Italy and was to spend the rest of his life in Italy, where he died in 1895 at the age of 74. He failed to achieve his major goal of preventing sodomy laws, but his theories inspired scientists to research and helped others to understand their sexual urges. He was essential in creating a community of like-minded homosexual people.