Door Wouter Egelmeers
This article was originally published in the first print issue of 2015 of Raffia Magazine.
Sometimes described as the Dutch Magnus Hirschfeld, the psychiatrist or ‘zenuwarts’ Lucien von Römer (1873-1965) was one of the first physicians in the Netherlands whose goal it was to examine the issue of homosexuality from a scientific position. The extent and quality of the research that he conducted during the first decade of the twentieth century – resulting in one of the largest collections of statistical data concerning sexuality in the world at the time – were well-matched with that of his illustrious German colleague Hirschfeld.
Up until the eighteenth century, homosexuality or ‘sodomy’ had been an ‘unmentionable vice’ in the Netherlands. It was generally believed that even knowing about the possibility of homosexuality could cause these ‘unnatural desires’. From the eighteenth century onwards, however, some kind of homosexual self-awareness began to appear as sodomites learned that there were others like them. During the nineteenth century, philanthropists, physicians, biologists, psychiatrists and adherents of new disciplines like forensic medicine and criminal anthropology started creating ‘scientific truths’ about homosexuality, thus changing the still dominant concept of sodomy as an act into the idea that homosexuality is an inextricable part of someone’s personality and identity. Influenced by the natural sciences and Darwinism, doctors and psychiatrists began discussing if homosexuality was either innate or caused by external factors like excessive masturbation or seduction by other homosexuals.
During the 1890s, the German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld started publishing his ideas on the innate nature of homosexuality. He investigated all kinds of sexual ‘abnormalities’, publishing the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen from 1899 onwards and founding the Berlin Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in 1919. He also established the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (WHK) to campaign for the overturn of paragraph 175, the German law that forbade homosexual intercourse, as he thought that homosexuals were a kind of ‘third sex’ and could not do anything about their sexual preferences. The Committee’s slogan, per scientiam ad iustitiam, illustrates Hirschfeld’s assumption that ignorance was the source of all injustice met by homosexuals. He felt that science could relieve this ignorance and contribute to a world in which sexual ‘intermediates’ would no longer be discriminated.
Lucien von Römer matched up to his German counterpart in many aspects. Like Hirschfeld, he was a determined collector of data on homosexuality, as he too was convinced that gaining trustworthy scientific evidence on the inborn nature of diverging sexual types would greatly improve their fate. His theories may sound fairly outdated today and the data he gathered should not be considered objective or unproblematic, but when placed in the context of the history of sexology and processed using the right methods, his work can still prove to be an intriguing source for research on the history of sexuality, homosexuality and the early gay rights movement in the Netherlands.
Ancient gods
Lucien Sophie Albert Marie von Römer was born in Kampen in 1873 as the son of a noble German family that had lived in the Netherlands since the eighteenth century. He studied medicine in Leiden and Amsterdam and after his medical finals in 1903 he studied under Hirschfeld in Berlin as well. He had a keen interest in genealogy, history and philosophy, but was fascinated most by androgyny and homosexuality. From 1902 omwards, Von Römer published essays in Hirschfeld’s Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen dealing with subjects like early modern sodomy trials in the Netherlands and androgynous ancient gods. During the same period he also started collecting data concerning homosexuality in the Dutch population, mainly focusing on ‘sexuelle Zwishenstufen’ or intermediate sexual types. He arguably was the first sexologist who developed and conducted a survey to gain statistical data concerning sexual behaviour, which was allegedly copied by Magnus Hirschfeld for his research in Germany a few years later.
The survey’s goal probably was twofold: apart from estimating the percentage of uranians or homosexuals in the Dutch population by asking questions about masturbation, Von Römer was also able to prove wrong physicians like Caspar von Schrenk-Notzing, Alfred Fuchs and Iwar Bloch, who argued that young boys could acquire homosexuality by masturbating together.
Von Römer sent questionnaires to 600 of his fellow Amsterdam students, asking them about their age, masturbation habits, possible sexual acts with people of the same sex, and sexual orientation. Of the 308 students that returned the questionnaire, 262 admitted to have masturbated at least once in their life, which equals 85 percent. Furthermore, 74 students (20.9%) responded to have engaged in sexual acts with friends of the same sex during puberty, and 48 individuals (15.7%) had “felt the urge to caress or kiss a friend”. A total of 6 students (1.9%) had sexual feelings for men and another 12 (3.8%) stated to have sexual feelings for both sexes. Using this statistical data, Von Römer argued that homosexuality was innate, as about one fifth of his respondents testified to have engaged in sexual acts with people of the same sex, while only a small group stated to have homo- or bisexual feelings.
Sorrow beyond words
Apart from his research, during the first decade of the twentieth century Von Römer also became involved in a number of public debates concerning homosexuality. He tried to establish a Dutch department of the WHK in 1903 and when this effort failed, he served as the committee’s Dutch correspondent. In several pamphlets and publications he promoted Hirschfeld’s theory on homosexuality, building on research conducted by physicians like Hirschfeld and himself. In 1904, for instance, he published the pamphlet Ongekend leed, in which he quoted emotional outcries of his homosexual patients to explain how contemporary attitudes towards homosexuals created great sorrow for them as well as problems ‘beyond words’.
According to his data, three quarters of all homosexuals were deeply unhappy, one in four had thought of committing suicide, and 8 percent had already tried to. Von Römer shrewdly appealed to public opinion by stating that despising and hating homosexuals would only force them to marry and consequently betray and deceive their ignorant wives. “So many people who innocently suffer” did not deserve to be forced to “abstinence, masturbation, prostitution or even death” he argued.
When Member of Parliament Jonkheer mr. Willem Frederik Rochussen wrote a pamphlet in 1904 warning against the “aggravating and dangerous propaganda” of the WHK – presuming that knowledge of homosexuality could cause people to become homosexual themselves – Von Römer felt that he had to defend himself and the committee. In his reaction to Rochussen’s pamphlet, Het uranisch gezin. Wetenschappelijk onderzoek en conclusiën over homosexualiteit (1905), he published a large amount of the data that he had collected for his dissertation. In the preface of this work, Von Römer expressed his respect for the “Hoog EdelGestrengen Heer Staatsraad W.F. Rochussen”, but also refuted Rochussen’s argumentation by showing the “malicious distortions” in it. He stated that there is “no need to worry: we do not wish to poison the souls of children; we do not want to bring down morality, and preach even worse things.
On the contrary, what we want is: saving future generations from destruction caused by ignorance, from hypocrisy and pitiless cruelty by raising better understanding!”
The rest of the book provides an eloquent argumentation to support Von Römer’s claims, containing an overview of scientific work on homosexuality and statistical data from his own surveys and research by others, concerning the families and hereditary illnesses of homosexuals and bisexuals.
In a final discussion on attempts to ‘cure’ homosexuals using psychotherapy, Von Römer concluded that these efforts are nearly always fruitless. From his research he had drawn the conclusion that uranianism appeared in 2-33% of the population and that there were no more hereditary illnesses in the families of homo- and bisexuals than in ‘normal’ families. Further findings of his studies were that the probability of conceiving a homosexual child increased as parents got older, and that a homosexual child often had already shown signs of the opposite gender from early childhood on. Von Römer’s final conclusion was that “after birth, no circumstances whatsoever are able to change an individual into a lasting Uranian, unless the innate predisposition to homosexuality is present in this person. Circumstances can only be interpreted as ‘auslösendes Moment’, and never as a cause.”
Rejection and emigration
Von Römer’s continuing struggle to improve the future of homosexuals through the dissemination of scientific truths in the first decade of the twentieth century made him the most important and promising Dutch gay rights activist of his time, but this changed abruptly in 1908 when the University of Amsterdam refused his dissertation. His thesis, containing large parts of Het uranisch gezin, essays previously published the Jahrbuch, and new research conducted among a large group of homosexuals, was initially applauded by his promotor, Professor dr. C. Winkler – who described it as being “weit über dem Durchschnittsniveau” – but refused it a few weeks later. The Faculty objected to the previous publication of some chapters of the study, the fact that it was written in German, and some of the theses and figures, which in their opinion might be taken offence at. Von Römer did not agree.
“Vielleicht war es Naivität von mir, aber ich hatte immer geglaubt, dass für die Wisschenschaft keine Grenzen gezogen werden dürften. Giebt [sic] es überhaupt ein einziges Problem, das wisschenschaftlich nicht behandelt werden darf?”
Like many others who stood up for the fate of homosexuals, the ever recurring opposition and adversity that Von Römer had to face made him decide to start over abroad. He joined a ten-month anthropological and botanical discovery journey to the Maoke Mountains of New Guinea. After travelling through Greece as well, he moved to the Dutch Indies, where he committed himself to improving the medical situation of the local population, which apparently even got him the nickname of ‘medical Napoleon’. In 1921, when he was well into his forties, he married the pianist Eugénie Gallois, who was twenty years younger than he. Two years later, she gave birth to their son. He had given up his work for the acceptance of homosexuals during this period of his life. When Magnus Hirschfeld visited him in 1931, he allegedly told him that he hoped that the unpublished manuscript of his dissertation might one day be a precious legacy for his son. Hirschfeld concluded that “‘there in East Java a man sits buried in his books – almost as though he were in exile – when, as a beacon of science and a glory to his country, he should be teaching and working at Leyden, Amsterdam, or some other great university in his native land.”
A voice that remains
In his – still unpublished – dissertation, Von Römer repeatedly refers to the importance and unprecedented scope of his work, somewhat theatrically stating that he submits his brainchild to humanity, “damit es ihr zum Nutzen sein und mitarbeiten möge an dem Glücke des Weltalls!” Three years earlier, he had written in Het uranisch gezin: “One day, you will all listen: even though my voice will be long faded away, many other, will take up these sounds and let them rave on through the world, until the universe will vibrate in the same timbre, in great harmony!” According to Hirschfeld, however, he never got over the rejection of his doctoral thesis. Because of that “his creative strength in our special field was lamed for ever, and his cheerful spirit embittered.” Nevertheless, the fact that Von Römer in 1955, at the age of 82, made the effort to transfer his archive to the Rijksarchief in The Hague while he was still living in Indonesia, points at the possibility that he still thought that this collection contained important information regarding his life or his research. Apparently, he still wanted people to listen to his voice, like he had already declared fifty years before, in 1905.
Wouter Egelmeers (1991) is now a PhD Candidate at KU Leuven after completing the Research Master Historical Studies at Radboud University. This article is an adaptation of a paper for the course Sources of Historical Research of the Research Master.
Literature and sources
Lieshout, M. Van (1988) Het ongekende leed van een tro-pendokter: Lucien von Römer (1973-1965). In H. Hafkamp & M. van Lieshout (Eds.), Pijlers van naamloze liefde: Pioners van de homo-emancipatie (pp. 89-95). Amsterdam: SUA.
Römer, LS.A.M. von (1905) Het uranisch gezin: weten-schappelijk onderzoek en conclusien over homosexualiteit.
Amsterdam: Tierie.
Romer, L.S.A.M. von (1910) Beiträge zur Erkenntnis des Uranismus [unpublished proof]. Leipzig / Amsterdam:
Maas & Van Suchtelen. National Archive, The Hague, Collection 172. Von Römer Family, 1700-1928, inventory number 46.
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