Karl Friedrich Jordan
In 1900 a Berlin teacher published the story of his own life as a homosexual – asking readers to examine it without prejudice.
Karl Friedrich Jordan held a doctorate in natural sciences and became a senior teacher and professor at a secondary school in Berlin. Under the pseudonym “Max Katte” he was for many years a member of the board of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, the first organisation for the rights of homosexual people, founded by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1897. The pseudonym alluded to Hans Hermann von Katte, the friend of the young Frederick the Great.
His most important text appeared in 1900 in Hirschfeld’s “Yearbook for Sexual Intermediate Stages”: “From the Life of a Homosexual”. It was about himself. Jordan wrote that he had never felt attracted to a woman, described his schoolboy crushes, his first experience with a classmate and the men he later loved. He also told how two men had blackmailed him for a long time until he was close to suicide – and how he finally reported them to the police, after which they were sentenced to long prison terms. He offered himself as an object of observation, he wrote, and asked that what he said be examined without prejudice. For many readers, such a confession was a lifeline.
Only in 1919, after the founding of the Weimar Republic, did he reveal his real name; appearing openly earlier would have cost him his post. He became deputy chairman of Adolf Brand’s “Gemeinschaft der Eigenen” and campaigned for the abolition of Paragraph 175, giving lectures such as “Why and to what extent is our love justified?”.
Jordan died in Berlin in 1926, nine days before his birthday. No photograph of him is known.