Queer Pact with the Devil: Queer Artists Collaborating with Nazism in the 1930s & 1940s

Alternate title: Novel of a Career.

Shorter abstract: "The narrative of the queer history of the 20th century usually puts gay men in the position of victims of political oppression who had to fight back for their civil rights. However, during authoritarian regimes during both WWII and the ensuing Eastern part of the Cold War, there were gay men (and women) who chose to sell out their lives and work to oppressive regimes in order to participate in their political power. Despite the fact that we cannot agree with contemporary leftist opposition—or latter conservative opinions—that there was a causal relation between homosexuality and Nazism, there were artists and designers in Central Europe in the 1930s and 1940s who were involved in homosocial and homosexual practices, and who, at the same time, joined Nazi organizations and parties. Using three examples from former Czechoslovakia, this lecture will examine their motivation and the way their artistic/design work was involved in their collaboration."

Dr. Ladislav Zikmund-Lender is an art historian from the Czech republic. In 2016–2017 he received a Fulbright scholarship to be a visiting scholar at the University of California Department of History of Art in Berkeley researching queer visual artists, collectors, and architects (supervisor Whitney Davis). He graduated from art history at Charles University in Prague and Masaryk University in Brno. In 2009–2011 he was a director of a house museum Villa Trmal in Prague (architect Jan Kotěra). In 2011 he co-authored a book Homosexuality in the History of the Czech Culture (chapters on the visual arts). He has received his doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in architecture history with a thesis Structure of the City in the Green (on modern architecture in Hradec Králové) at Masaryk University in Brno. In 2013 he published a book The Museum House in Hradec Králové, 1909-1913, Jan Kotěra followed by a recent 2016 book Jan Kotěra in Hradec Králové. He edited books on 20th-century architecture and interior design (Experimental Housing Estate Invalidovna or Design / Furniture / Interiors in 2014). In 2012 he curated the exhibition What a Material: Queer Art from Central Europe, followed by Spaces of Desire: Is Architecture Sexy (2016) and exhibitions on the architect Jan Kaplický (Jan Kaplický: Story of a Visionary, 2015 and JKOK: The Infinity of Jan Kaplicky, 2016).