Love, sexuality and intimacy in exile – historical and current perspectives
Love, sexuality and intimacy in exile – historical and current perspectives

International Conference, Vienna, November 23 – 25, 2025

PROGRAM/ PROGRAMS

Day 1 (23.11.)
Qwien – Center for Queer Culture and History, Ramperstorffergasse 39, 1050 Vienna
18.00
Martha’s Labyrinth
Book Launch with Marc Verschooris
Talk with Andreas Brunner (Qwien)
in cooperation with Qwien

Day 2 (24.11.)
Sky Lounge of the University of Vienna, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, 1090 Vienna

9.00 Arrival and Opening/ Arrival and Opening

9.30-11.00. Panel I: Mixed Couples and Intimacy in situations of crisis
Moderation/ Chair: Tim Corbett
– Michaela Raggam-Blesch (Munich): Criminalized Intimacy of “Mixed Couples” during the Nazi Regime
– Alfons Dür (Buchs SG): “Dieser Brief bristles von Gehässigkeiten gegen den nationalsozialistischen Staat” – Die Geschichte von Heinz Weibezahl und Anni Frischer
– Laurien Vastenhout (Wien): “I Have Failed in Love”: Emotion, Gender, and Marital Intimacy in Wartime Letters

11.00-11.30 Break

11.30 – 13.00 Panel II: Medializations of Queerness, Sexuality and Intimacy
Moderation/ Chair: Aylin Basaran
– Burcu Dogramaci (Munich): Exile, Sexuality and Underground: Rosa von Praunheim and Hubert Fichte in Conversations with Lil Picard
– Christina Wieder (Vienna): Queerness, Intimacy and Exile in Narcisa Hirsch’s Experimental Film
– Lukas Graf (Hildesheim): Queer Intimacy and Historical Truth in Walid Raad’s Hostage: The Bachar Tapes

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch break

14.00-15.00 Panel III: Queering Exile Studies
Moderation/ Chair: Linda Erker
– Sarah Ernst (Los Angeles): “I Was a Double Alien”: A Study of Queer Emigree Histories of the Third Reich
– Monika Boll (Düsseldorf): Recognized as Politically Persecuted, Observed as Homosexual. Fritz Bauer’s years in Danish exile

15.00 -15.30 Break/ Break

15.30-17.00: Panel IV: Geographies of Exile
Moderation/ Chair: Katrin Sippel
– Fábio Alexandre Faria (Lisbon): Love in times of war. Romantic relationships between refugees and Portuguese during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
– Carolina Henriques Pereira (Coimbra): Love and marriage in “exile” in Portugal: refugees and Portuguese during and after the Second World War
– Liyi Wang (Amsterdam): Love, Sexuality, and the Double Family: Gendered Intimacies in Dejima’s Exilic Space

7.00 p.m.
Literaturhaus Wien, Zieglergasse 26A, 1070 Vienna
How can we write a history of love and sexuality in the Holocaust and exile?
Keynote/ lecture by Anna Hájková (Warwick)
In cooperation with the Austrian Exile Library at the Literaturhaus Wien

Day 3 (25.11.)
Sky Lounge of the University of Vienna, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, 1090 Vienna

9.00-10.00 Panel V: Historical and current perspectives: Love in the context of camps and asylum
Moderation/ Chair: Nora Walch
– Gabriele Anderl/Christoph Reinprecht (Vienna): Love and Sexuality in the Context of the Internment of Refugees
– Rieke Schröder (Münster)/Marie Lunau (Roskilde): The Force of Love within Politics of Queer Asylum

10.00-10.30 Break

10.30-12.00 Panel VI: Marriages of convenience: Zur Zweckhaftigkeit der Intimität
Moderator/ Chair: Christina Wieder
– Susanne Bennewitz (Saarbrücken): Marriages without intimacy. The sexual relationship as a legal indication in the “marriage of convenience” discourse of the 1930s
– Irene Messinger (Vienna): Between rescue and risk: Intimate negotiation processes in marriages of convenience during the Nazi era
– Joanna Simonow (Münster): Intimacy, marriage and emigration: Liselotte Löwy’s passage to and exile in India (1938-1955)

12.00-13.00 Lunch break

13.00-14.30: Panel VII: Queerness, Sexuality and Gender in Ego documents
Moderation/ Chair: Andreas Brunner
– Martyna Miernecka (Regensburg): Queer Longing in Anna Iwaszkiewiczowa’s 1920s Diaries
– Tim Corbett (Vienna): Jewish, Austrian – and Straight? On the Invisibility of Queerness in Memoir Corpuses of Jewish Austrian Exiles in the United States
– Pnina Rosenberg (Haifa): Embodied Memory: Gender and Sexuality in Anne Frank’s Diary and Ari Folman and David Polonsky’s Autographic Adaptation

14.30-15.00 Break

15.00-16.00 Panel VIII: Exile and migration literature: forms of expression of (venal) love
Moderation/ Chair: Marianne Windsperger
– Cristina Spinei (Iasi): “Suddenly the universe blazes up in your eyes”. Intensity as a form of expression and experience in Emil Cioran- Wiebke Sievers (Vienna): Prostitution as a survival strategy? Julya Rabinowich’s novel The Earth Eater

16.00 Closing Remarks

Cooperation partners
Austrian Library in Exile at the Literaturhaus Wien
Qwien – Center for Queer Culture and History
Department of Sociology at the University of Vienna

Fördergeber*innen/ Sponsors
Future Fund of the Republic of Austria
National Fund of the Republic of Austria
Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany Vienna
Government of Flanders

Sun, November 23 – Tue, November 25, 2025