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A Badge of Injury The Pink Triangle as Global Symbol of
Memory 1st Edition SÃ©bastien Tremblay Digital Instant
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Author(s): SÃ©bastien Tremblay
ISBN(s): 9783111066752, 3111066754
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 54.35 MB
Year: 2023
Language: english
Sébastien Tremblay
A Badge of Injury
Transnational Queer Histories
Edited by
Bodie A. Ashton and Sabrina Mittermeier
Volume 2
Sébastien Tremblay
A Badge
of Injury
The Pink Triangle as Global Symbol of Memory

ISBN 978-3-11-106675-2
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-106771-1
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-106831-2
ISSN 2750-6096
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023943020
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Cover image: Memorial wall painting “The UNforgotten” that shows the Auschwitz detainee Walter
Degen by Nils Westergard, Bülowstraße 94 in Berlin-Schöneberg, Photo: Sébastien Tremblay, 2023
Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Throughout this book I have capitalized Pink Triangle when discussing the concept
or the symbol, whereas I use lowercase when discussing the actual badges worn in
the Nazi camps.
Throughout the book, I have used common denominations for North American cit-
ies. I did so for clarity. I would like to invite readers to reflect on the fact that
names such as Montréal, New York or Boston are but one aspect of North Ameri-
can settler-colonialism. Like symbols and pictures, geographical names are indica-
tors and factors of historical change.
For Guy and for TT
Acknowledgements
Like the Pink Triangle, the journey behind this book also took me across many con-
tinents. This story started in Canada before evolving into a dissertation project
financed by the DFG Graduate School, “Global Intellectual History,” at Freie Univer-
sität Berlin before being finally completed in the north of Germany between the
chants of seagulls and the smell of Danish pastries. It seems natural to start by
thanking my primary PhD supervisor, Sebastian Conrad, for his patience, dedica-
tion, continuous support, and for welcoming me into his office every month to go
through my now-legendary lists of questions. His input in these meetings always
helped me decide which paths I should follow in my research. I am equally grateful
for my secondary supervisor, Martin Lücke, who likewise sat down with me and
allowed me to pick his brain on multiple occasions. Thank you for motivating a
quirky French-Canadian scholar to dive into the political meanderings of German
queer history. Going back to the drawing board and rewriting this dissertation into
a book was not always an easy task. I would like to thank Sabrina Mittermeier and
Bodie Ashton for opening the door to their new series on transnational queer his-
tory, as well as Rabea Rittgerodt at De Gruyter for making this episode another
story of kinship. No one should underestimate the power of emojis in professional
emails!
I am similarly thankful for the support of the Ernst-Reuter-Gesellschaft, the
Halle Foundation, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, for their funding of
my research, archival stays, and numerous opportunities to cross the Atlantic mul-
tiple times in order to share my ideas with colleagues on both continents. I would
also like to extend my gratitude to Camilla Bertoni, Sebastian Gottschalk, and Julia
von der Wense for their help in navigating the troubled waters of bureaucracy. I
am additionally thankful to Kristine Schmidt and Peter Rehberg, as well as Birgit
Bosold, Ben Miller, and the team of the Schwules Museum in Berlin, who manage
to keep one of the best queer archives in Europe afloat. I am similarly in debt to
Caitlin McCarthy from the LGBT Community Center National History Archive in
New York City, Nicholas Maniu at the Forum Queeres Archiv München, the person-
nel of the Manuscripts and Archives Division at the New York Public Library, Jake
Newsome and Klaus Müller for their perspective at the US Holocaust Memorial Mu-
seum, and especially Albert Knoll of the archives at the Gedenkstätte Dachau for
going the extra mile as archivist and opening his personal papers to me.
Global historians are trained to understand the value of teamwork and the
potentiality of collaboration. Queers have known for decades the necessity of de-
veloping a broader network for support and inspiration. I was privileged to find
both in the solace of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.
These three years of solidarity, mutual aid, and respect have been sprinkled with
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111067711-202
X Acknowledgements
the fabulous comments and feedback from a rich community of scholars. I am

especially obliged to the weekly criticism of my brilliant writing group: Cecilia
Maas and Luc Wodzicki. At SCRIPTS, I am grateful to Christian Volk, Gülay Çağlar,
Marianne Samaha, Alexandra Paulin-Booth, and Friederike Kuntz. Likewise, I
have been able to surround myself with other scholars working on queer and
gender studies/issues during these years at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute. I am
therefore indebted to the words of encouragement and constructive criticism of
Merlin Bootsmann, Adrian Lehne, Lukas Herde, Andrea Rottmann, Nina Reusch,
Ulrike Schaper, Veronika Springmann, and Lorenz Weinberg.
The last miles of this journey have unexpectedly taken place in the north of
Schleswig-Holstein where I am now happy to evolve. I wrote this book with the Bal-
tic Sea as a soundtrack, inspired by the ground-breaking research of my new col-
leagues. I am grateful to Christiane Reinecke for welcoming me with open arms at
the Europa Universität-Flensburg. It is a joy to discuss and work with her week
after week. This second home in the north has been a fertile ground intellectually. I
thank my colleagues at the Seminar for History and History Didactics the people of
the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Studies, the International Staff Network,
and all of those who have joined me for walks around campus. I especially want to
thank Anna Kompatscher, Sophie Costanza Bleuel, Lara-Sophie Hoeren, Michelle
Witen, Inken Carstensen-Egwuom, Anna Katharina Mangold, Maria Schwab, as
well as Nelo Schmalen and Tamás Jules Fütty.
If this book is my own, it is also anchored in a wonderful and stable network.
Like the Pink Triangle’s journey, my writings are the result of numerous formative
key moments and encounters. I would first like to thank Margrit Pernau of the Max
Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin for believing in me and turning
my incessant questions about conceptual history and memory studies into a produc-
tive and insightful collaboration. Furthermore, I extend my appreciation to Jani Mar-
janen, Pasi Ihalainen, and Martin J. Burke of the History of Concepts group for
thought-provoking sojourns in Finland. I would also like to thank Justin Bengry,
Benno Gammerl, Tara Povey, and John Price for a welcoming extended stay at the
Centre of Queer History at Goldsmith, University of London. It was a delight to ex-
change ideas with you and your students. In the United Kingdom, I thank Mirjam
Brusius, Craig Griffiths, and Anna Hájková for their important research and for
their support and feedback. In North America, I would especially like to thank Chris-
topher Ewing and Jennifer Evans who not only inspired this research but are people
I am now lucky enough to call friends. The same can be said for the time and dedica-
tion given to me by all participants of the 2019 Tokyo Summer School of the Global
History Collaborative, the members of the NYLON Berlin group at the Humboldt Uni-
versität zu Berlin, the Doctoral Lab of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North Ameri-
can Studies, and the Berliner Colloquium zur Geschichte der Sexualität.
Acknowledgements XI
I would like to separately underline the respect and gratitude I have for a
circle of scholars. Lisa Hellman, Lea Börgerling, Michael Facius, Nadja Klop-
progge, Sonja Dolinsek, Pascal Siegrist and Sarah Bellows-Blakely have been like
older academic siblings over the past few years. Scholarship should not only be
seen as the sum of the accumulation and circulation of knowledge, but also the
necessity to offer care to each other during difficult times. This global septet
found the perfect way to go along with the music, gifting me with advice and
feedback beyond all expectation. Similarly and as importantly, I extend my pro-
found thanks to my dear friend Alexandra Holmes who spent hours correcting
much of the French charm out of my prose.
At home on both continents, my story of migration and this scholarship is fi-
nally linked to an extensive chosen family waltzing with me through the hurdles of
life and jumping with me through the hoops of uncertainties and anxiety. My men-
tal health and strengths lay upon the shoulders of this global story of emotional
intelligence and communication, my own community. This cluster goes beyond na-
tional borders and two urban settings. Nonetheless, in Montréal, I would like to
thank Catherine Lefrançois, Gabrielle Provost, Andréann Cossette-Viau, Roxanne
Mallet, Émilie Roberge, Anaïs Michaud, Guillaume Cyr, Vanessa Gauthier Vela, Émi-
lie Gendron, and Florence Payette for following me since the start of this German
chapter and waking up daily to my virtual rants and soothing my qualms. Distance
has nothing on our friendships. In Berlin, I would like to start by thanking my sis-
ters of the ‘Grufti Squad,’ Daniela Turß, Julia Föll, and Sarah Christoph for provid-
ing me with music, love, and comfortable darkness. Laja Destremau and Flora
Petersen, thank you for gifting me with a francophone bubble and a possibility to
grow. Hannah Geiger, Ed Greve, Nora Huberty, Miriam Zimmermann, Janis Hu-
mann, Saleema Adu Smith, Yener Bayramoğlu, Maddalena Arosio, and Minas Hilbig,
thank you for being friends and allies, bringing friendship and politics together, and
making this city my home. To Giulia Mandelli, Barbara Uchdorf, and my dance fam-
ily, thank you for offering me a stage and a studio to dance my worries away and
create something with you every week. To my old family and partners in crime at
the former Café Chaos in Montréal, thank you for convincing me a decade ago dur-
ing a particularly emotional shift at the bar to follow my dreams of writing books,
being a historian, and finally to go back to university. Who would have thought that
this journey would lead me to migrate and learn another language? On this note,
dankeschön to Paule Desormeaux, my first German teacher, who made me fall in
love with the language almost 20 years ago.
XII Acknowledgements
In the middle of this project, I was lucky enough to cross paths with a won-
derful otter who is even more multi-layered than the symbol I’ve spent the last
years seeing everywhere. Tilo Patrick Kochs has not only debated some of the ar-
guments of this book with me over lengthy breakfasts, he has also provided me
with a safe space to write it. I am grateful every single day for his presence by my
side and without his care, this book would not have been written. For all the talk
in A Badge of Injury regarding the potential of the negative for queer collective
memory, Tilo is an example of the importance of queer joy.
Lastly, I would like to finish with a somewhat cliché merci to my mother,
Francine Contant. Scholars, and dare I say especially queer scholars, are often in-
clined to write long articles and monographs about the body and the aspirations
of the working class. What constitutes the working class? What does the working
class want? My mom, a strong woman raising me and my brother on her own, a
nurse exploited under capitalism, has filled my childhood with books and culture.
Through her ceaseless sacrifice she enabled me to finish school and supported
me through university at the expense of her health and her financial well-being.
The completion of this book inside a classist system is not due to my successes
alone, but the resilience of a woman who dared to dream for her children. My
introduction to class struggles and feminism came not during a lecture in my
first year at university, but through the realization that my deeds today have only
been possible due to the labors of one woman. For that, I am in her debt.
Contents
Acknowledgements IX
List of abbreviations XVII
List of figures XIX
Introduction – There and back again: A Pink Triangle’s journey 1

1 The visual history of the Pink Triangle 5
2 Global queer history 6
3 Nazi atrocities and the Pink Triangle 9
4 Queering gay history 11
5 Provincializing queer history 13
6 Memory and victimhood 15
7 Feeling the Pink Triangle 15
8 Searching for the Pink Triangle 20
9 Mapping the Pink Triangle’s journey 23
1 A badge of continuities – Pink radical politics and identification with

the Nazi past 27
1.1 Emancipation on paper 30
1.2 Wearing Pink Triangles, showing Pink Triangles 32
1.3 Remembering the men with the pink triangle 38
1.4 Collectivizing the triangle 46
1.5 The power of images 49
2 A badge of narratives – Pink Triangles, written communication

networks, and the Queer Atlantic 55
2.1 Pink Triangles over the Atlantic: Narrating victimhood in the
press 57
2.2 Writing a play, sharing a myth: Bent and collective memory 63
2.3 A man with a mission: Richard Plant and transatlantic gay
historiography 71
2.4 Pink Triangles against the grain: Lesbian symbolism and
memory 79
2.5 From narratives to the streets 84
XIV Contents
3 A badge of memory – Defining and remembering victimhood in the

queer Atlantic 86
3.1 Americanizing and globalizing the Holocaust 88
3.2 Remembering the injury 95
3.3 Pink Triangle injuries, Pink Triangle warnings 103
4 A badge of inclusion – Carving Pink Triangles into stone and shaping

the queer subject 106
4.1 Of triangles and reliefs 108
4.2 Seeking justice for the community: Working out trauma at the site
of injury 114
4.3 Getting a seat at the table: Transatlantic official Holocaust
memory and queer activism 125
4.4 Same triangles, different triangles: Transatlantic inclusions 132
4.5 The cohesive potential of the triangle 135
5 A badge of exclusion – Pink Triangle frameworks and the limits of

collective memory 137
5.1 The men without the Pink Triangle 139
5.2 The men not just wearing the Pink Triangle 144
5.3 The women with[out] the Pink Triangle? 148
5.4 Memory with or without solidarity 156
6 A badge of universalization – Pink Triangles and the limits of Euro-

American queer suffering 158
6.1 Carving Pink Triangles in Schöneberg 159
6.2 Patent of nobility: The International Lesbian and Gay Association
and the universalization of suffering 165
6.3 Pink Triangles against homophobia: International victimization in
official political memorialization 174
7 A badge of survival – AIDS activism, Pink Triangles, and an aesthetic

of injury 181
7.1 Act up! coalitions, direct action and emancipation 186
7.2 AIDS activism and international knowledge transfers 189
7.3 A queer trivialization of genocide? Dystopian visions of an
epidemic 197
7.4 Still a badge of survival 208
Contents XV
8 A badge of temporalities – European time and asynchronous Pink

Triangle modernities 211
8.1 Looking back at whiteness in the Euro-American world 214
8.2 A badge of European modernity? 218
8.3 A badge of homosynchronism 221
8.4 Different timelines, same triangle 225
9 A badge of visibility – Branding Pink Triangles for emancipation 229

9.1 Branding Pink Triangle bridges: Capitalism 231
9.2 Pictorial agency 236
9.3 The potential of objects 239
Epilogue – The Pink Triangle in homonationalist times 243

10.1 Many Pink Triangles 244
10.2 Memory culture and victimhood in the transatlantic world 246
10.3 A visual history of the Pink Triangle 248
10.4 Global queer history and provincialized gayness 249
10.5 Beyond homonationalist triangles? Beyond the rainbow? 251
Bibliography 257
Index 279
List of abbreviations
ACT UP AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
AHA Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsgemeinschaft e. V (General Working Group for the
Homosexual Community)
AHB Arbeitsgruppe Homosexualität Braunschweig (Working Group Homosexuality
Brunswick )
CBST Congregation Beit/Beth Simchat Torah
CDU Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (Christian Democratic Union of Germany)
CID Comité International de Dachau (International Dachau Committee)
CSU Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern e. V. (Christian Social Union in Bavaria)
FDP Freie Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (Free Democratic Party of Germany)
FRG Federal Republic of Germany
GLF Gay Liberation Front (of Cologne)
GDR German Democratic Republic
HAW Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (Homosexual Action West Berlin)
HOSI Wien/ Homosexuelle Initiative Wien/Linz
HOSI Linz (Homosexual Initiative Vienna/Linz)
HuK Ökumenische Arbeitsgruppe Homosexuelle und Kirche e.V (Ecumenical Working Group
on Homosexuals and the Church)
ILGA International Lesbian and Gay Association
PDS Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (Party of Democratic Socialism)
SA Sturmabteilung (‘Storm Detachment,’ paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party)
SAK Schwule Aktion Köln (Gay Action Cologne)
SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany)
SS Schutzstaffel (‘Protection Squadron,’ paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party)
TBP The Body Politic
USHMM The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
VSG Verein für sexuelle Gleichberechtigung (Association for sexual equality)
VVN Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes (Association of the Persecutees of the Nazi
Regime)
List of figures
Figure 1 The Dachau so-called ‘Triangle Relief’ in 2018. Photo taken by the author 110
Figure 2 The Pink Triangle memorial stone on the so-called ‘Wailling Wall’
of the former concentration camp of Mauthausen in 2019. Photo taken by
the author 116
Figure 3 The Pink Triangle memorial stone in Dachau in 2018. Photo taken by
the author 121
Figure 4 The Pink Triangle monument at Nollendorfplatz in the Berlin borough
of Schöneberg in 2023. Photo taken by the author 157
Figure 5 Two different views of the Pink Triangle monument in Cologne in 2017.
Photos taken by the author 162
Figure 6 “SILENCE = DEATH Poster,” New York Manuscripts and Archives Division,
NYPL Digital Collection, accessed November 1, 2022, http//digitalcollections.
nypl.org/items/510d47e3-3ec0-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99/ 203
Introduction – There and back again: A Pink
Triangle’s journey
While sitting in an MA seminar on the West German history of homosexualities

almost a decade ago at Freie Universität Berlin, I took part in a vehement debate
on the uses of a symbol beloved by many members of the queer community in
North America: the Pink Triangle. Originally used by the Nazis to brand non-
heteronormative men – or men deemed to be non-heteronormative – in death
and concentration camps, the Pink Triangle was later recuperated in the long
postwar era for various emancipatory purposes in Europe, North America, and
Australia. Now in a seminar room in the Berlin borough of Dahlem, I could still
picture myself a decade earlier, at the height of puberty, unveiling a poster in my
bedroom with the symbol plastered on its center. The poetry behind the gesture
is not lost on me nowadays, but after years of hiding the poster in my closet, I
was ready to hang it beside my bed.
Uncomfortably deskbound years later, the dismissal of my defence of the
Pink Triangle by my peers similarly marked me out, this time as a migrant and as
a political activist. I was part of a group of about 20 students discussing a text by
James Steakley on the exaggeration of a presupposed Homocaust: the now de-
bunked idea that the Nazi persecutions of queer men had been more important
than the Shoah.1 As one of the only non-German nationals in the room, I was op-
posed by a group of German students who fervently condemned all uses of the
Pink Triangle in queer activist circles, going as far as to consider its recuperation
as a form of trivialization of Nazi atrocities, and even as a relativization of the
genocide of the European Jewry.2
 James D. Steakley, “Selbstkritische Gedanken zur Mythologiserung der Homosexuellenverfol-

gung im Dritten Reich.” In Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle: Verdrängt und Un-
gesühnt, ed. Burkhard Jellonek and Rüdiger Lautmann (Padeborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh,
2002), 55–68. Massimo Consoli coined the term ‘Homocaust’ in 1981 and published his own book
discussing the idea in the 1990s. See: Massimo Consoli, Homocaust (Milan: Kaos, 1991). For more
on the topic see Jake W. Newsome, Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming out in the Shadow of the Holo-
caust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022). In this book I use the term ‘Homocaust’ analyti-
cally to refer a long list of narratives representing the Nazi persecutions of queerness as a
genocide, comparing the regime’s queerphobia with its antisemitism, falsely equating the Shoah
with queerphobic atrocities.
 Throughout this book, I exclusively use the term Holocaust when discussing the Shoah, the
Nazi genocide targeting European Jews. I do so while acknowledging that experts have discussed
the need to understand the complexification of violence behind the Holocaust, and also focus on
other entangled forms of violence of the era. As this book deals with concurring discourses of
2 Introduction – There and back again: A Pink Triangle’s journey
The experience scorched me – I could clearly remember the provocative writ-

ings of queer Jewish men I used to devour during my undergraduate years in
Canada and the Pink Triangle on the walls of the queer organizations I used to
campaign with. These associations had helped me find a place in a heteronorma-
tive world. Surely, I thought, they could not be deserving of all these criticisms? I
remained there aghast, hearing about how “we” North Americans were “in the
wrong.” Yet I also tried somewhat to understand the position of my fellow stu-
dents in Dahlem. I just could not paint the situation to be so black and white.
Assuredly, the history of the Pink Triangle could not be boiled down to a di-
chotomy between so-called good or bad usages of history. I knew that a collective
memory of National Socialism was different on both sides of the Atlantic. Was the
Pink Triangle on the walls of the queer committee at the Cégep du Vieux Mon-
tréal3 the same as the one worn by victims of the Nazis? Was the separation of
national histories of queerness really a useful framework to understand the jour-
ney of a symbol now that it seemed to be so global? And most importantly, how
did this symbol of fascist queerphobia make its way across space and time to be-
come a visual statement of queer identity?
The Pink Triangle appeals to individuals as a statement about the historiciza-
tion of queerness. Compared to the rainbow flag, or other known symbols of
queer history connected to the feeling of pride, the triangle appeals to negative
episodes of history, legitimizing struggles in the present by looking at a past of
injury, of violence, and of suffering. Both the rainbow flag and the Pink Triangle
are symbols of temporality, of a before and after. However, the Triangle does not
necessarily mark the transformation of shame into a proud coming-out narrative.
Instead, it ascertains struggles in the present, looking at the past, imagining the
future.
Although much more prevalent at the end of the twentieth century, the sym-
bol is still used by organizations in the Euro-American world – where it once
dominated – but also on a more extended scale beyond the Atlantic.4
victimhood and memory debates in the second part of the twentieth century, I do this for clarity
to distinguish between the Holocaust and other persecutions and genocides committed by the
Nazis: the Porajmos, queer persecutions, etc. For a recent discussion on the complexification of
violence, see Michael Wildt, “Was heißt: Singularität des Holocaust?,” Zeithistorische Forschun-
gen/Studies in Contemporary History 19, no. 1 (2022): 128–147.
 In the Canadian province of Quebec, a CÉGEP – Collège d’enseignement général et profession-
nel – is a public educational institution where the first level of higher education between high
school and university is provided.
 See for example the official logo of the Australian Queer Archives in Melbourne (AQuA):
“About us,” Australian Queer Archives, accessed January 16, 2023, https://alga.org.au/about-us.
Introduction – There and back again: A Pink Triangle’s journey 3
The use of the Pink Triangle is also still alive and well in the academic world.
During the last weekend of June 2019, as Europe and North America were celebrat-
ing the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in New York, one of the found-
ing myths of queer liberation, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, ‘House of the
Cultures of the World,’ and the Magnus Hirschfeld Gesellschaft, ‘Magnus Hirschfeld
Society,’ were hosting the Archives, Libraries, Museums and Special Collections Con-
ference in Berlin, focusing on the thematic of queer memory and exploring “the po-
tential of generating audiences for queer archives, libraries, museums and special
collections, with a special focus on the arts and artistic interventions.”5
By hosting the conference in the German capital, the conveners were also
putting forward an additional narrative to the events in New York. Indeed, they
were offering a German extension to World Pride; they connected the event with
the centenary of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, ‘Institute for
the Science of Sexuality,’ destroyed by the National Socialists in 1933, which used
to stand on the location of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.6 By linking Stonewall
to Berlin, the conference metanarrative anchored queer activism between the
emancipation of the east coast of the United States in the second part of the twen-
tieth century and the early emancipation of queerness in fin de siècle Berlin and
its destruction by the Nazis. As I show in this book, this entanglement and univer-
salization of German-US American queer history is the basis of most of the histor-
ical awareness expressed by queer activists in the second part of the twentieth
century, a historical narrative bringing its own inclusions and exclusions.7
The conference’s waltz between US American and German queer history was
not the only entanglement between this book, Euro-American queer liberation,
and National Socialism. Between interesting panels, networking, and new promis-
ing research, I was able to sit down and interrogate some of my international col-
leagues walking through the space with a pink triangular brooch secured on their
outfits. Coming from cities such as Copenhagen or Melbourne, many of these
white cis gay men told me how they were wearing it as a badge in order to re-
mind everyone present at the conference of the radical potential of queer history.
Sitting around a table and presenting my analysis of the symbol as a vector of
 See the official press communiqué of the Schwules Museum ‘Gay Museum’ in Berlin: “ALMS
Conference Berlin,” accessed January 16, 2023, https://www.schwulesmuseum.de/presseaktuell/
alms-conference-berlin-2019/?lang=en.
 Rainer Herrn, Der Liebe und dem Leid: Das Institut für Sexualwissenschaft 1919–1933. (Berlin:
Suhrkamp, 2022); Laurie Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emanci-
pation and the Rise of the Nazis. (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2015).
 For a good example of this German–centric history of homosexuality, see Robert Beachy, Gay
Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).
identity for gay men and other members of the queer community in the Euro-
American world, I could not help but search for further explanations for the ubiq-
uity of the Pink Triangle. Were the men talking to me all wearing the same trian-
gle, saying the same thing? Were they using the same triangle as the one forced
upon the men in the camps? Was it possible – is it possible – to disentangle all the
various layers of history and of memory attached to one symbol? All in all, was
the Pink Triangle a vector of historical change or is it its indicator?
A Badge of Injury aims to answer some of these questions. It maps the Pink
Triangle’s transatlantic voyage and identifies the various paths followed by this
symbol at the crossroads of memory studies, queer theory, and a transregional
history of queerness. Thus, it intersects queer temporalities, queer history, and
queer memory. It studies the ways in which the Pink Triangle became a symbol
of historical awareness, but also how its uses conceptualized, framed, and univer-
salized Euro-American forms of queerness. It reflects on the importance of Na-
tional Socialism for queer utopianism. It analyses the Pink Triangle’s dialectical
journey across the Atlantic to demonstrate the link between emancipation and
victimhood. In so doing, it simultaneously sheds light on the way the symbol has
influenced discursive exclusions in the queer present, that is, tensions and power
asymmetries between cis gay men and other members of what is commonly re-
ferred to as the queer community.
What can a study of the key moments of a symbol like the Pink Triangle tell
us about the intersection of temporalities and memory studies? A Badge of Injury
argues that transatlantic entanglements of a queer memory culture of National
Socialism and a circulation of knowledge in the queer transatlantic press forged
modern queer readings of the long postwar era, anchoring queer politics in nar-
ratives of victimhood. Consequently, a dialectical exchange on both continents
paved the way for a visual culture based on tropes of survival. This visual culture
is intrinsically linked to the Pink Triangle, is not necessarily based on historical
facts, and played an important role in constructing the queer subject and its rela-
tionship to the writing of queer history. In other words, A Badge of Injury argues
that by looking at the formation of a collective memory of Nazi persecutions as
they were – and are – remembered in the Euro-American world, it is possible to
identify how the adoption of one dominating historical narrative influenced the
historicization of queerness.
By investigating the functions of the Pink Triangle for queer collective mem-
ory, this book establishes the important and active roles of images in the con-
struction of historical narratives, revealing how social movements are influenced
beyond the textual, and how they use visuals to frame their past, consider their
present, and imagine their future. Simply put, the Pink Triangle started its jour-
ney as an icon, being simultaneously used as an instrument on both sides of the
1 The visual history of the Pink Triangle 5
Atlantic, especially in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the United
States of America. These uses of the icon were accompanied by new understand-
ings of the queer self, pushed internationally, and contributed to the erasure of
other forms of queerness. Studying visuals is therefore not only necessary to iden-
tify historical change, but also to understand how visual concepts manifest and
influence historical change.
1 The visual history of the Pink Triangle
The Pink Triangle is an interesting case study of the possibility of using images and
symbols as third idioms to map the circulation of memory and knowledge. A Badge
of Injury offers a new perspective on queer history by looking at global conceptual
history and by also going beyond the textual. It exposes how looking at visual con-
cepts, in this case the Pink Triangle, historians can synchronically and diachroni-
cally analyze the intellectual history of social movements, mapping transfers of
ideas while drawing from various semantic fields in multiple languages.8
Throughout the various chapters, I demonstrate how images carry numerous
layers that survive over time and how they offer ways to represent a multitude of
narratives.9 Through a plurality of case studies, the three parts of the book show
how political symbols such as the Pink Triangle can represent a particular dis-
course, but also how a symbol’s various layers and significations can be received
 Martin Fuchs, “Reaching out or Nobody Exists in One Context Only Society as Translation.”
Translation Studies 2, no. 1 (2009): 21–40; Dorna Safaian and Susanne Regener, “Lebenswelten als
Protest. Fotografische Praktiken der deutschen und dänischen Schwulenbewegung seit den
1970er Jahren.” Beiträge zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Fotografie 39, no. 154 (2019): 15–24;
Dorna Safaian, “Why Images? The Role of Visual Media in Protest Movement Research”, History |
Sexuality | Law, 13/10/2019, accessed January 16, 2023, https://hsl.hypotheses.org/995.
 Sébastien Tremblay. “Der Rosa Winkel: Vielschichtige Symbolik und Erinnerung in der Schwu-
lenbewegung beiderseits des Atlantiks / The Pink Triangle: Multilayered Symbolism and Memory
in the Queer Atlantic.” In Queer Lives 1900–1950, ed. Karolina Kühn and Mirjam Zadoff (Munich:
Hirmer Verlag, 2023), 328–341. The use of visuals and the history of sexuality has a long tradition.
See for example Katie Sutton, “Sexology’s Photographic Turn: Visualizing Trans Identity in Inter-
war Germany.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 27, no. 3 (2018): 442–479; Jennifer Evans, “See-
ing Subjectivity: Erotic Photography and the Optics of Desire.” American Historical Review 118,
no. 2 (2013), 430–462. On the importance of pornography and erotica for queer history, see Jonas
Nesselbauf, “Was Sie schon immer über Pornographie wissen wollten, aber nie zu fragen wagten:
Eine Annäherung in sechs Schritten.” In Äesthetik(en) der Pornographie: Darstellungen von Sex-
ualitäten im Medienvergleich, ed. Norbert Lennartz and Jonas Nesselbauf (Baden-Baden: Nomos,
2021), 9.
plurally and intersectionally according to context, space, and time. Some have
called this kind of analysis the “agency of images”;10 this book explains how this
is also a form of conceptual interpretation triggered by the senses.11
A Badge of Injury ascertains the necessity of considering and researching vi-
sual concepts to understand discourses existing simultaneously, side-by-side at
the core of historical narratives shared by social movements. For instance, some
German gay historians still pretend that lesbian women are falsifying history by
appealing to the structural Nazi oppression of queers.12 The book argues that the
materiality of images lies at the core of these controversies. Instead of adding
new case studies to the research on other queer experiences of German fascism,
it follows the path of visual intellectual history, deconstructing the claims of re-
cent gay scholarship and gay historiography, and underlining the materiality of
the Pink Triangle – that is to say, the tension between its history and mythology
circulating in activist circles. Moreover, its visual history exposes gay and lesbian
historiographies, showing not only how the Pink Triangle became a symbol of le-
gitimization and memory, but how its adoption influenced the building of ten-
sions inside queer communities. In this regard, A Badge of Injury avoids lionizing
queer liberation and many recuperations of the symbol, yet also refrains from
endlessly discussing the ethics of its usage.13
2 Global queer history
The journey of the Pink Triangle is a transregional story with entanglements on

many continents and repercussions across the world. Following its journey across
the Atlantic, A Badge of Injury opens a much-needed dialogue between queer his-
tory and global history. Through various case studies, it not only shows how diffi-
 Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007).
 I was inspired by recent research on visual conceptual history: Margrit Pernau and Imke Ra-
jamani, “Emotional Translations: Conceptual History Beyond Language.” History and Theory 55
(February 2016): 46–65.
 Alexander Zinn uses an alarmist tone and denounces as unscientific and ideological the al-
leged dangers of opening categories of analysis. Alexander Zinn, “Gefühlte Wahrheiten: Wie
LGBTI-Aktivismus die Wissenschaftsfreiheit bedroht.” In Wissenschaftsfreiheit: Warum dieses
Grundrecht zunehmend umkämpft ist, ed. Sandra Kostner (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2022), 165–182.
 The focus of this project was not an ethical analysis of the various recuperations of the Pink
Triangle or of the ways comparisons between the Nazi persecution of queerness and other Nazi
atrocities were discussed on both sides of the Atlantic. These would be fascinating conversations
and are beyond the scope of this book.
2 Global queer history 7
cult it is to disentangle the Pink Triangle from its transatlantic voyage but also how
various national actors were part of a transregional conversation on the symbol,
influencing the construction of memory on both sides of the ocean. This back and
forth between local gay and lesbian communities moulded both a cultural memory
of National Socialism and a basis for the imposition of Euro-American narratives
on the world stage, for example, in international organizations.
Consequently, A Badge of Injury underlines the problem of writing national
queer histories without considering a transregional transfer of ideas. Emphasiz-
ing how local or national contexts are still relevant to the interpretation of dis-
courses and symbols, it also maintains that these national contexts cannot be
isolated. The following chapters remind us that it is necessary to go beyond the
nation-state and take broader communication networks into consideration, espe-
cially while writing a queer history establishing the fluidity of identities and
memory. For instance, I emphasize the shared assumptions of transnational AIDS
activism in the FRG and the United States in chapter seven, at the same time ana-
lyzing its diverse national manifestations and the way in which they interacted
with local contexts.
In order to analyze the journeys of an icon and intertwine its key moments, I
have limited the scope of this project to the Euro-American world, to Western Eu-
ropean democracies and the east and west coasts of North America.14 The narra-
tives offered in this book therefore need to be balanced and pitched against other
 With brief excursions on the outskirts of the northern Atlantic in Israel, Uruguay, etc. Atlan-
tic/Euro-American history has a rich historiography. My cartography of the northern parts of the
transatlantic world, that is, connections between North America and Europe as broader cultural
spheres of influence, was inspired by my lecture of: Alison Games, “Beyond the Atlantic: English
Globetrotters and Transoceanic Connections.” The William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 4 (2006):
675–692; Jessie Labov, Transatlantic Central Europe: Contesting Geography and Redefining Culture
Beyond the Nation (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2019); Mireille Rosello and Su-
deep Dasgupta, “Introduction Queer and Europe: An Encounter.” In What’s Queer About Europe?
Productive Encounters and Re–Enchanting Paradigms, ed. Mireille Rosello and Sudeep Dasgupta
(New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2014). Julia Straub, “Introduction: Transatlantic North
American Studies,” in Handbook of Transatlantic North American Studies, ed. Julia Straub (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 2016); Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings
of the Middle Passage.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14, no. 2–3 (2008): 191–215;
Jerry H. Bentley, “One Regional Histories, Global Processes, Cross-Cultural Interactions.” In Inter-
actions: Transregional Perspectives on World History, ed. Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal and
Anand A. Yang ( Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 1–13; Martin W. Lewis and
Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents. A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1997.
less canonical spaces, including the Midwest, the southern parts of the United
States, and the Canadian prairies. The same can be said about Europe, where, as
with North America, I focus on largely populated areas, namely big cities such as
Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt (Main), Munich, Paris, and Amsterdam.15 It is therefore
essential to consider this study as a transregional or translocal examination in a
global perspective and not as a story between nations or a world history of the
Pink Triangle as a symbol. This is partly due to space, but also because these nu-
merous regional foci tend to entwine local, national, and international aspects.
Each national discourse present in this context influenced actors at play, but I
concentrate the inquiry on activist discourses and the circulation of knowledge
produced by grassroots organizations and civil actors, not necessarily on the level
of the state.
My story of the Pink Triangle is still a contribution to global history. Breaking
free from diffusionist models of queer history, A Badge of Injury moves further
from the idea that world history consists of national moments exported to else-
where in the world. Echoing my reflections on the conference in 2019 at Haus der
Kulturen der Welt, it is an answer to German-centrist narratives or North Ameri-
can diffusionist models. It is part of a new endeavor to assess in-betweens and
transregional entanglements, identifying global or transnational moments in his-
tory.16 As many before me have shown, global history is not per se a history writ-
ten on the global scale, but an analysis of entanglements that underlines how
national or regional contexts are not independent from each other but are actu-
ally embedded spaces of contact.17 It is also an inquiry into discussions happening
on the world stage, an investigation of in-betweens and international brokers,
and a focus on connections and disconnections. All these aspects are at the core
of A Badge of Injury.
 As previously mentioned, Australia will need to be added to the equation in a future project
as the Pink Triangle is still widely being used ‘down under.’ Similarly to the whiteness of this
story, I decided to focus on spaces already touched upon to deconstruct the narrative, allowing
me to dig deeper in the material and show the ‘provinciality’ of dominant actors and voices.
 It is following other monographs going in the same directions: Tiffany N. Florvil, Mobilizing
Black Germany. Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement (Champaign,
IL: University of Illinois Press, 2020).
 Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).
3 Nazi atrocities and the Pink Triangle 9
3 Nazi atrocities and the Pink Triangle
The Nazi regime was not always consequent in its view on sexuality yet moved
fast against queer individuals.18 This took many forms, including the execution of
Ernst Röhm, a close ally of Hitler but known to be a queer man.19 The regime also
closed, sacked, and burned the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. The institute’s ar-
chives and papers, the world’s largest collection of work on sexualities at the
time, were burned in 1933 on the Opernplatz (now Bebelpatz) in the center of Ber-
lin under the encouragement of Joseph Goebbels and ecstatic students.
National Socialism’s persecution of non-heteronormativity did not stop at
book burning and destroying renowned research on homosexualities and trans✶
studies. §175 StGB – part of the German penal code that criminalized male non-
heteronormative sexualities – precedes the Nazi Party and finds its origins in the
adoption of Prussian Law by the German Empire following German unification in
1871.20 However, the Nazis’ seizure of power remains an unequivocal milestone in
the history of persecution of male-male sexualities in Germany.
For the Nazis, male-male sexuality was considered on the same level as vene-
real diseases.21 Seen as an affliction, it could be treated; it could be violently
forced out of German men. Consequently, it also meant that the Volksgemein-
schaft, ‘the people’s community,’22 allegedly needed protection from the dangers
of such a so-called infection. Nazi officials modified the law in June 1935, extend-
ing the definition of an act of intercourse or anal sex “contrary to nature” to en-
compass an act of simple lewdness between two men.23 Moreover, this newly
reinforced law considered an attack on “society’s general sense of shame” or the
intention of debauchery as a felony. Queer men were then harassed, surveilled,
and persecuted, based on lists compiled during the Weimar era or following de-
 Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
 Michael Schwartz, “‘Herrschaft der Homosexuellen’: Die Röhm–Skandale 1932 und 1934 als
öffentliche Provokation.” In Homosexuelle, Seilschaften, Verrat, ed. Michael Schwartz (Olden-
bourg: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 160–211.
 Jens Dobler, Wie öffentliche Moral gemacht wird: Die Einführung des § 175 in das Strafgesetzbuch
1871, Queer Lectures 14 (Berlin: Initiative Queer Nations, 2014). Clayton J. Whisnant, Queer Identities
and Politics in Germany: A History 1880–1945 (New York, NY: Harrington Park Press, 2016).
 Herzog, Sex after Fascism, 35.
 This word is inseparable from its Nazi connotation.
 Susanne zur Nieden, “Der homosexuelle Staatsfeind: Zur Radikalisierung eines Feindbildes
im NS.” In Homophobie und Devianz: Weibliche und männliche Homosexualität im Nationalsozia-
lismus, ed. Insa Eschebach, (Berlin: Metropol, 2012), 23–34.
nunciations by their fellow citizens. Thousands of them were deported in concen-

tration camps where they were often branded with a pink triangle stitched on
their uniforms.
In Austria, queer women were also persecuted under a different part of the
penal code.24 If they were not legally persecuted in Germany, the historiography
of the last decades has demonstrated how women desiring women were also
structurally oppressed, living in fear and in hiding, and often labelled as “anti-
social” elements of society.25
Same-sex sexualities were not the only aspect of queerness to be persecuted
by the regime. Recent research has shown how trans✶ men and women were also
the target of Nazi heteropatriarchy.26 It is therefore more accurate to discuss the
persecution of queerness as a whole and not only focus on juridical categories
created by the perpetrators.27 As the history of the Pink Triangle highlights and as
I will attest in this book, this tension between an analysis of the structures of vio-
lence and cases anchored in the perpetrator’s vision is at the center of historio-
graphical debates raging to this day, where certain scholars wrongfully dismiss
lesbian and trans✶ suffering during the era, clinging to §175 StGB as a sort of sine
qua non for victimhood.28
 Johann Karl Kirchknopf, “Die strafrechtliche Verfolgung homosexueller Handlungen in Ös-

terreich im 20. Jahrhundert.” Zeitgeschichte 43, no. 2 (2016): 68–84; Jens Dobler, “Unzucht und
Kuppelei: Lesbenverfolgung im Nationalsozialismus.” In Homophobie und Devianz: Weibliche
und männliche Homosexualität im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Insa Eschebach, (Berlin: Metropol,
2012), 53–62.
 Laurie Marhoefer, “Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State: A Microhistory of a Ge-
stapo Investigation, 1939–1943,” The American Historical Review 121, no. 4 (2016): 1167–1195; Sam-
uel Clowes Huneke, “Heterogeneous Persecution: Lesbianism and the Nazi State,” Central
European History 54 (2021): 297–325.
 Zavier Nunn, “Trans Liminality and the Nazi State,” Past & Present 260, no. 1 (2023):123–157;
“Transgender Experiences in Weimar and Nazi Germany, with Dr. Anna Hájková, Dr. Katie Sut-
ton, Dr. Bodie A. Ashton, and Rabbi Marisa Elana James, Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living
Memorial to the Holocaust”, accessed January 16, 2023, https://mjhnyc.org/events/transgender-ex
periences-in-weimar-and-nazi-germany/.
 As we will see, this is a main bone of contention in recent historiographical debates.
 Alexander Zinn, “Der Hang zu Opfererzählungen. Über Dramatisierung und selektive Wahr-
nehmung in Geschichtsschreibung und Erinnerungskultur zu Homosexuellen während der NS-
Zeit,” Revue d’Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande 53, no. 2 (2021): 331–346.
4 Queering gay history 11
4 Queering gay history
A Badge of Injury not only looks at power asymmetries between communities, but
also within one community. Taking the story of a historically gay symbol and decon-
structing it enables an investigation of the Pink Triangle’s potential to erase other
identities. Exposing the hegemonic aspects of gay remains a fundamentally queer
project; it nuances the idea that gay is a synonym for other non-heteronormative
experiences. This book is correspondingly a contribution to queer theory, mapping
the cultural construction of gay, demonstrating its formation outside of biology as a
socio-cultural and fluid aspect of other structures of desires. It demonstrates the
prevalence of gay power structures in queer circles and how the emphasis put on
aspects of the triangle’s journey contributed to the imposition of a gay framework
on other experiences and realities.
Going beyond binaries of two sexes, two genders, and two possible structures
of desires, this book understands queerness as a web where all aspects of desires
and sexualities, including the hegemony that is heteronormativity, are interrelated
to each other and are fluid. In this sense, the Pink Triangle as a symbol of queer-
ness is entwined in the same web; it can appeal to many categories simultaneously
in one context and exclude others in another moment. It is a fundamental queer
symbol, but it is also in direct or indirect connection to the heteromatrix.29
If some have critically assessed the use of LGBTQIA+30 as a broader um-
brella of categories politically and historically put together, I maintain that its
 A term borrowed from Butler, it defines the norms and framing of heterosexuality as a natu-
ral constant, enclosing human relations, but portrayed, if named at all, outside given structures.
In other words, everyone is deemed heteronormative until proven otherwise. For example, if I
come out as gay, I am automatically put in relation with heterosexuality, and if I decide to hide,
omit or refuse to mention my desire, I will be deemed heteronormative. See Judith Butler, Gender
Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, NY: Routledge, 1990). The uses of the
Pink Triangle by activists in the 1970s – as explored in section 1.4 – is another perfect example of
this matrix.
 Meaning Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans✶, Queer/Questioning, Inter✶ and Asexual / Aromantic. The +
stands for other possibilities beyond the terms usually banded together. In the North American
context, I would have added 2S for Two-spirit, a pan-indigenous term used to include indigenous
conceptions of gender and sexuality beyond the spectrum of settler colonialism. As I am not fo-
cusing on indigenous struggles or activism, I have refrained from performatively including the
2S in the acronym. Readers are encouraged to read about the topic: Evelyn Blackwood, “Native
American Genders and Sexualities: Beyond Anthropological Models and Misrepresentations.” In
Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality, ed. Sue-Ellen Ja-
cobs, Wesley Thomas, and Sabine Lang, (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2005),
284–296.
potential is still relevant and goes beyond a so-called alphabet soup.31 Indeed,
the radical prospect of such an acronym allows us to visually interconnect the
self-consciousness of diverse experiences. It is then possible to almost mathe-
matically rearrange oneself inside a community in multiple possible manners,
permanently constructing oneself as a subject along the way.32
Following this idea of fluidity, the Q in LGBTQIA+ is tendentious; it becomes
an in-between of both gender and sexuality.33 Simply put, the Q is not another
add-on to LGBTQIA+, but a reminder that identity as a concept is not static. Queer
theory provocatively brings us in murky waters between the queering of history,
and the historical recuperation of an insult. Queer is there to disrupt a glossy nar-
rative of gay, lesbian, or homosexual history.
In her suggestion and project to queer German history, Jennifer Evans reminds
us that queer history is not about bringing more people in, but about reviewing the
constructivist aspect of identities.34 Gay history enabled gay historians to find them-
selves in the past, but a queer approach understands the multifaceted potential of
trying to re-imagine the past in the present and traces the processes and disruptions
of identity construction. In other words, queerness allows an interpretation of pri-
mary sources in a time preceding the invention of given categories that are now in
use to define the non-heteronormative. The idea is not to pin down who was gay,
lesbian, homophile, homosexualist, pervert, sodomite, or heretic; nor is it to connect
famous or infamous individuals from the past together. Queer opens the discussion
on the non-heteronormative past, including heteronormative desires, and draws con-
nections between histories of silence, persecutions, sex, identifications, labels, etc.
Consequently, A Badge of Injury uses queer as an analytical concept to iden-
tify non-heteronormative structures of desires and sexualities without having to
pinpoint categories of analysis in the past and while trying to remain fluid.
Throughout the book, I use ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ when quoting sources in their ver-
batim or when the political aspects of gay or lesbian has significance. This is also
 The idea to drop all letters to adopt a “queer identity,” erasing trans✶ or gender non-binary
experiences, has its adepts outside of academia and outside of Germany. See Jonathan Rauch,
“It’s Time to Drop the ‘LGBT’ from ‘LGBTQ’ the Case for a New Term That Describes All Sexual
Minorities,” The Atlantic (January & February 2019).
 For example, presenting oneself as ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ depending on the political context and
fluctuation of one’s statement about sexuality. For a discussion of the dangers of blurring the
lines in a German and political context, see Christopher Ewing and Sébastien Tremblay, “Zünd-
stoffe,” Siegessäule (October 2019): 12.
 The Q in LGBTQIA+ can also stand for questioning, not just queer. The idea of questioning
one’s own sexuality also reflects a fluid understanding of sexualities and desires.
 Jennifer V. Evans, “Why Queer German History?,” German History 34, no. 3 Special Issue:
Queering German History (2016): 371–384.
5 Provincializing queer history 13
a question of historical empathy and the limitations of the archives. For instance,
I cannot be sure how the men branded by the pink triangle in the camps imag-
ined or defined their sexualities. Bisexuality, homosexuality, or heterosexuality
are all historical constructions and so are political identities such as gay or les-
bian. Writing queer history, these concepts are useful to categorize and contextu-
alize. Nevertheless, using analytical concepts allow historians to critically assess
the past and semantically link experiences together. Embracing the fluidity of
queerness, I am using queer to investigate the past without assigning artificial
identities to the historical actors at the center of this study if they remained silent
about their sexualities themselves or in the archive.35 I also use it as a category
beyond usages of the past.
As chapter one will show, this is beneficial for historical analysis when vari-
ous queer individuals defined themselves differently – homophile or gay – but
embraced similar conceptions in their experience of queerness. Using queer ana-
lytically throughout the book is thus the opposite of an anachronism. To put it
differently, individuals attracted to and having sexual intercourse with the oppo-
site sex 300 years ago had no concept of ‘heterosexuality.’ This of course does not
mean that what we consider heterosexual sexual relationships did not take place.
In other words, like queer, heterosexual sex predates the invention of the concept
of heterosexuality, but it does not mean that people in the past cannot be studied
and analyzed under the scope of heterosexuality.36
5 Provincializing queer history
This aim to queer gay history and expose the construction of the category also
goes together with another one of this book’s main leitmotifs: to provincialize
Euro-American gay history.37 Understanding global networks and the transfer of
ideas can help scholars assess power asymmetries between various iterations of
queerness across the world. For instance, in the second part of this book I show
 Elisa Heinrich also uses Intimacy. I understand her use of the concept as a queer impetus for
historians. By making the different components of relationships fluid, intimacy allows historians
to examine connections between activists beyond fixed categories of analysis. Elisa Heinrich,
Intim und respektabel. Homosexualität und Freundinnenschaft in der deutschen Frauenbewegung
um 1900 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2022), 16.
 Heiko Stoff, “Heterosexualität.” In Was ist Homosexualität?, ed. Florian Mildenberger, Jenni-
fer Evans, Martin Lücke, Rüdiger Lautmann and Jakob Pastötter, (Hamburg: Männerschwarm,
2014), 73–104.
 Margrit Pernau, “Provincializing Concepts: The Language of Transnational History.” Compar-
ative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 36, no. 3 (2016): 483–499.
how the adoption of the Pink Triangle is linked to the importance given to Euro-
American narratives in the writing of queer history. By mainly centering queer ori-
gin stories in “the west,” European and North American scholarship has so far re-
produced a very Eurocentric understanding of queer history. I confront these
narratives at face value, uncovering their construction in the Euro-American world.
This focus is both an invitation to rethink Euro-American queer history as just one
aspect of the global history of non-heteronormative sexualities and of queerness,
but also a way to look at Euro-American queer stories horizontally, without essen-
tializing their importance for the rest of the world. By historicizing the Pink Triangle
and its importance for most Euro-American gay narratives, the book marks
Euro-American gay history as one aspect among many, uncovering the power
structures that make this history seem universal. Similarly, the whiteness of this
Euro-American journey can only be understood as a simultaneous erasure or si-
lencing of Black and other racialized narratives of queerness inside and outside the
Euro-American world. To decentralize it, historians need to confront its hyperreal
aspects, its construction. In this book, I underline one facet of this construction.
If queer history intrinsically needs to find its global turn, global history would
benefit from the deconstructive prospective of queer scholarship. Indeed, scholars
like Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori remind us that “unveiling the violence im-
plicit in conceptions of the global requires an investigation of the theoretical foun-
dations of historical discourse and the recovery of other forms of temporality.”38
This is why the disruptive potential of queer is so interesting for this project. By
investigating queerness, it is possible to reinterpret the importance of victimhood
in the creation of gay. By looking at a gay past of injury – in this case National So-
cialism – as it happened or as it was remembered by queer activists in the long
postwar era, it is possible to appreciate how queer activists (re)interpreted their
situation in a heteronormative world. Here I am mainly thinking of the HIV/AIDS
crisis, which I analyze in chapter seven and where connections to National Social-
ism resurfaced on both sides of the Atlantic. The Euro-American space at the centre
of this research was chosen because it is the most discursively powerful one, chiefly
connected to imperialism, the gaygeoisie, and homonationalism; discourses I try to
understand in my own present. In other words, the story at the core of A Badge of
Injury goes beyond the commemoration of the Nazi persecutions of queerness. A
global understanding of queer and a queer understanding of global history allow
us to focus on this mainly cis white gay journey and fill up silences.
 Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori, “Approaches to Global Intellectual History.” In Global In-
tellectual History, ed. Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori (New York, NY: Columbia University
Press, 2013), 19.
6 Memory and victimhood
The following nine chapters focus on the construction of Euro-American queer cis
white male historical awareness, the creation of a queer Euro-American white
collective based in Nazi atrocities, and its potential to exclude other forms of
queerness. As this book highlights, in many cases the importance of the Nazi past
was not always only factual but was also often a fantasy of atrocities that were
not committed in the ways that they were imagined. Indeed, queer non-Jewish
men put forward narratives with the help of the Pink Triangle that reproduced a
latent antisemitic resentment during the second part of the twentieth century.
The idea that other victims of German fascism had stolen the spotlight in the mar-
ketplace of memory evolved out of the idea that gay history had been hidden by
the state and by scholarship. Looking at this cultural trauma and employing con-
cepts such as postmemory, virtual experience, and adopted memory, it is possible
to expose the reasons behind the appeal of Homocaust narratives for queer liber-
ation in the 1970s and 1980s and the universalization of one definition of queer-
ness in North America. This memory eventually led to an identification process
where the queer – often gay – subject reimagined themself as a victim of fascism
even if they had not experienced the camps like the men forced to wear the pink
triangle.
This book is not an ethical analysis of these recuperations or comparisons. In-
stead, by using the Pink Triangle as a prism and by looking at the entanglements of
all these perspectives and discourses about presupposed Homocaust narratives, it
analyses the interrelated aspects of the construction of gay and lesbian identities in
the Euro-American world. In the case of lesbians, the erasure of most of their story
of persecution by some gay historians and activists enabled the partial adoption of
another symbol connected to National Socialism, the Black Triangle, and histori-
cized contemporary dismissals of the scholarship on the persecution of non-male
non-heteronormative individuals during the Nazi dictatorship.
7 Feeling the Pink Triangle
The Pink Triangle is an interesting case study from a semantics vantage point, as
it has been symbolic, iconic, and indexical through its various uses since the
1930s, especially in the 1970s to 1990s in both the FRG and North America, but
also in various other places in the world. It is sometimes worn as a symbol of
memory directly recalling the experience of concentration camp prisoners; as a
badge connecting a present situation to the fate of said prisoners; or even as an
international emblem legitimizing queer narratives that sometimes have some-
thing to do with the Holocaust or sometimes not at all. In this regard, I argue in
this book that the Pink Triangle is an idea, a traveling concept. I not only look at
the textual sources analyzing its multiple meanings, but also go further by narrat-
ing here its history, how it traveled in a pictorial form, and as an image.
It is possible to look at reactions to the use of the Pink Triangle – or the use
in itself – and to understand not only how images affect experiences and bodily
practices, but also commemorations and interpretations of the politics, identity,
and the everyday life of queer activists in the FRG and the east and west coasts of
North America.39 Inspired by a pictorial or iconic turn in the writing of history,
this book confirms that our relation to objects “is a two-way street in which it is
impossible to distinguish where the agency lies.”40
I maintain that images not only have their role to play in our material inter-
pretation of the world, but also that our practices and our memories of said prac-
tices are all entangled.41 Through sensual encounters with the Pink Triangle –
seeing or touching Pink Triangles – we trigger experiences or cultural memories
shared in a community. Scholars have also shown that these memories do not
have to be connected to real experiences shared by the community, noting the
power of so-called virtual experiences.42 The first part of the book will dive into
these debates, demonstrating how postmemories and prosthetic memories can be
transmitted through images and influence our conceptions of the world.43
 Jennifer Milam and Alan Maddox, “Visual and Aural Intellectual Histories: An Introduction,”
Intellectual History Review 27, no. 3 (2017): 285–298.
 Keith Moxey, “Visual Studies and the Iconic Turn,” Journal of Visual Culture 7, no. 2 (2008):
134. For the Pictorial turn: Gottfried Boehm, Wie Bilder Sinn erzeugen: Die Macht des Zeigens (Ber-
lin: Berlin University Press, 2008); Gottfried Boehm and Sebastian Egenhofer, Was ist ein Bild?:
Antworten in Bildern: Gottfried Boehm Zum 70. Geburtstag (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2012). W. J. T
Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1994); W. J. T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and
Media Aesthetics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015); Gerhard Paul, Bilder einer Dikta-
tur: Zur Visual History des “Dritten Reiches” (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2020).
 Jeffrey Escoffier offered an interesting queering of visual culture in 2017, demonstrating how
an analysis of gay porn could offer different narratives on our understanding of the HIV/AIDS
crisis. See Jeffrey Escoffier, “Sex in the Seventies: Gay Porn Cinema as an Archive for the History
of American Sexuality,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 26, no. 1 (2017): 88–113.
 Dominick LaCapra, History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2004).
 Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holo-
caust (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2012); Craig Griffiths touches on this aspect in
the fourth chapter of his book on West German gay liberation. See Craig Griffiths, The Ambiva-
Which experiences can then be conjured by the Pink Triangle? How can mul-
tiple experiences be invoked at the same time but for different members of the
queer community, for activists in the 1970s or in the 2000s, in Germany or in the
United States of America, for those who did not survive the death or concentra-
tion camps of the Nazi regime?
In his analysis of Aby Warburg, Georges Didi-Huberman maintains that the
Hamburger art historian’s idea of Nachleben, ‘survival,’ is crucial to understand
the multiple layers of meanings existing within a particular image.44 These sur-
viving layers, haunting, waiting, floating around visuals, are themselves triggered
depending on who is gazing at them and/or interacting with them.45 Through this
connection between our senses and visuals, it is then possible to confront differ-
ent surviving aspects of the Triangle’s journey at different points in time, syn-
chronically with people sharing the same perspective, but diachronically from
others. As a result of writing this book, my reaction to Pink Triangle memorabilia,
monuments, or mention in historical sources is different from other queer acti-
vists. This is not saying that my understanding is better, but that my vision en-
compasses more surviving layers, interacting with more of them simultaneously.
Contemporary uses of the symbol in monuments conflate the symbol of the
Pink Triangle with other icons, confusing layers of meaning together. The 2017
monument for queer victims of the Nazi regime in the Bavarian capital of Munich
is a good example, ahistorically mixing various symbols together in an iconolog-
ical smorgasbord, pretending to include all members of the queer community
lence of Gay Liberation: Male Homosexual Politics in 1970s West Germany (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2021).
 Georges Didi-Huberman, L’image survivante: Histoire de l’art et temps des fantômes selon Aby
Warburg (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 2002). See also his Remontages du temps subi. L’Œil de
l’histoire (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 2010). The idea to use Didi-Huberman comes from the
work by Milam and Maddox (see ft. 36). Yet, works on iconology and the sedimentation on time
coming from the University of Bielefeld inspired this hybrid of Warburg, Didi-Huberman and Ko-
selleck. See Hubert Locher et al., Reinhart Koselleck und die politische Ikonologie: [Anlässlich der
Tagung “Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006) – Politische Ikonologie” (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag,
2013). Bettina Brandt, “Politik im Bild? Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Begriff und Bild.” In
Politik: Situationen eines Wortgebrauchs im Europa der Neuzeit, ed. Wilibald Steinmetz (Frank-
furt [Main]: Campus, 2007). Bettina Brandt, Britta Hochkirchen, and Thomas Thiel, Reinhart Ko-
selleck und das Bild. Begleitung Broschüre (Herzebrock-Clarholz: Heinrich Eusterhus, 2018);
Cornelia Zumbusch, Wissenschaft in Bildern. Symbol und dialektisches Bild in Aby Warburgs Mne-
mosyne-Atlas und Walter Benjamins Passagen-Werk. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2004).
 The idea of a haunted history or the haunting of images would also be an alternative to Didi-
Huberman’s framework. See also: Ethan Kleinberg, Haunting History: For a Deconstructive Ap-
proach to the Past, Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017);
Margrit Pernau, Emotions and Temporalities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
with a rainbow motif, a Black Triangle, and a Pink Triangle. This mélange is not
the death of meaning, but the creation of others, as bystanders are seeing all
these symbols in relation to each other.
To identify and analyze these different layers and focus almost exclusively on
the Pink Triangle, I am following the steps of Martin Kemp and his work on iconic
pop culture images. As a specialist of Da Vinci’s work and an expert on the Mona
Lisa, Kemp traced not only a visual history but also a conceptual history of iconic
images – Che Guevara, the Cross, the Stars and Stripes, etc.46 By doing so, he not
only looked at the “life histories of each iconic image” but at “the origin and most
notable and curious steps along the course of their ascent.”47 Furthermore, he de-
fines – although half-heartedly – an iconic image “as one that has achieved
wholly exceptional levels of widespread recognizability and has come to carry a
rich series of varied associations for very large numbers of people across time
and cultures, such that it has to a greater or lesser degree transgressed the pa-
rameters of its initial making, function, context, and meaning.”48 Both aspects of
his research apply to the Pink Triangle. In this book, I trace the key moments of
the triangle’s Euro-American multiple lives and include them in the various sur-
viving meanings of the symbol. Only then am I able to connect the ensemble of
these various meanings to the use of the symbol as a marker of collective memory
and identify ways in which these transfers took place between the 1970s and the
2000s.
Concordantly, A Badge of Injury’s methodology takes feelings, bodily senses,
and the potential of change offered by concepts (both visual and textual) into con-
sideration.49 This approach is especially interesting for global history, adding a
new layer to debates about translation beyond language. Indeed, by looking at
visual languages and the transmission of concepts beyond the textual it is possible
to semantically link the feelings and interpretations of various social groups who
would not have understood each other linguistically. However, it also enables an
analysis of power because visuals as a language also operate within hierarchies.
Beyond offering a critical examination of queer discourses regarding the Pink Tri-
angle, collective memory, and collective identity, I show how contextual bodily
 Martin Kemp, Christ to Coke: How an Image Becomes an Icon (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011).
 Kemp, Christ to Coke, 2.
 Kemp, Christ to Coke, 3.
 For a link between conceptual history and memory studies going in the same direction,
please refer to Margrit Pernau and Sébastien Tremblay, “Dealing with an Ocean of Meaningless-
ness: Reinhart Koselleck’s Lava Memories and Conceptual History,” Contribution to the History of
Concepts 15, no. 2 (2020): 7–28.
encounters with Pink Triangles trigger cultural practices and how the symbol
influenced both memory and the construction of the queer subject. I then focus
on the direct power structures systematically affecting the queer subject when it
encounters the symbol and reflects on history and memory. Sara Ahmed has al-
ready shown how the body and its sensual encounters are inescapable for the
queer subject.50
Therefore, A Badge of Injury demonstrates how contextual bodily encounters
with Pink Triangles – as a symbol, as a monument, as an image, etc. – trigger cul-
tural practices and ponders on how the Pink Triangle influences both memory
and the construction of the queer subject. The various chapters focus on the di-
rect power structures shaping the queer subject when it sees, touches, feels or
hear about the symbol and its history. Borrowing the metaphor from a speech by
queer German historian Günter Grau, I see Pink Triangles as possible bridges be-
tween synchronic and diachronic temporalities, bodily encounters, collective
memory, and the construction of the self. I name these links “Pink Triangle
bridges.” Grau stated the following in 1989:
For us, offspring of a group persecuted by the Nazis, the continued stigmatization as crimi-
nals created forms of memories brought upon by historical consciousness. Homosexual
identity was and is inextricably linked to the experience of discrimination and persecution
in our century. [. . .] Remembering history is not just looking backwards but should also be
understood as a bridge to the present. If this insight is not to become an empty phrase, we
must ask: Isn’t the fact that the Nazis wronged homosexuals a reason enough to rid men
who were convicted under paragraph 175 of shame. To counter the fact that they were con-
sidered so-called criminals and allegedly sentenced fairly?51
Pink Triangle bridges are portals opening through sensual and contextual en-
counters of the queer subject with Pink Triangles. It is then possible to pass
through these portals and walk toward an imagined queer past of injury or to-
ward a political utopia. It is also possible for queer activists to connect their
dreams and the future directly with victimhood in the past and therefore walk
upon a bridge connecting past events with an open future, skipping present con-
siderations. Relative to personal knowledge, these bridges can take multiple
forms even if they share the same shores, the queer subject being plural and
their own architects. A Badge of Injury still argues that these architects’ plans re-
 Sara Ahmed, “Happy Objects.” In The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory
J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Ori-
entations, Objects, Others (Durham, NC Duke University Press, 2006). Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,
Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
 “Inauguration Speech by Günter Grau on the 28th of June 1989,” Schwules Museum (Berlin).
Box Nr 196. Gedenkorte der Homosexuellen Verfolgung / Berlin Nollendorfplatz.
main similar as the bridges are built from the same material, the same collective
memory in the Euro-American world. Coming back to the anecdote opening this
book and reflecting on the various layers of the symbol in the Euro-American
world, I could not help but wonder if my fellow students in Dahlem were walking
on different Pink Triangle bridges than me.
8 Searching for the Pink Triangle
Surprisingly, research on the Pink Triangle has so far been a rare sight despite its
importance for the fields of gay, lesbian, and queer history. First, its appearance has
been sporadically dismissed. In the late 1990s, scholarly papers even condemned its
uses in moral and ethical terms.52 At the end of the same decade, other writings on
the commercialization of same-sex desires went in the same direction by portraying
Pink Triangle memorabilia as a “slip to citified consumer fetish,” mentioning its dis-
appearance in favor of the rainbow flag, without mapping its journey nor trying to
understand possible connections between the symbols’ importance as factors and
indicators of historical change.53 In both cases, the Pink Triangle seems to be an
anomaly undeserving of a proper historical inquiry. As the last chapter of this book
will demonstrate, capitalism and Pink Triangle memorabilia played an important
role in the transformation and transmission of queer memory.
As previously mentioned, Jennifer Evans redefined both German History and
German Studies in 2016, forcefully arguing for the necessity of queering German
history. Inviting scholars to approach heteronormative German history through
queer methodologies and queer historians to investigate the potential of German
history to illustrate empirically recent queer scholarship, she set the tone for new
studies, inspiring numerous scholars to publish books tackling queer German his-
tory in the German-speaking world. Her call to action was heard and German
queer history is now going through a very prolific phase to which A Badge of In-
jury is also part. Laurie Marhoefer’s Racism and the Making of Gay Rights, or Ben
Miller and Huw Lemmey’s anthology, Bad Gays similarly offer a more critical
turn, uncovering themes of racism and exclusion that have been missing from
the literature until recently.54 Evans’s own The Queer Art of History tackles the
 R. Almy Elman, “Triangles and Tribulations,” Journal of Homosexuality 30, no. 3 (1996): 1–11.
 Edward Ingebretsen, “Gone Shopping: The Commercialization of Same-Sex Desire,” Interna-
tional Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, no. 4 (1999): 140.
 Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller, Bad Gays: A Homosexual History (London: Verso, 2022.); Laurie
Marhoefer, Racism and the Making of Gay Rights: A Sexologist, His Student, and the Empire of
Queer Love. (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2022).
8 Searching for the Pink Triangle 21
construction of German exclusions and their basis in Vergangenheitsbewältigung,

‘the action of coming to term with the national socialist past,’ a topic at the core
of the second and third part of A Badge of Injury.55 However, Marhoefer’s exami-
nation ends in 1945 and Evans’s study specifically focuses on respectability poli-
tics. This book follows Miller and Lemmey’s invitation to look at uninviting
moments of history, navigating the tumultuous waters of the queer past.56
This book is not a study of Nazi atrocities but is part of a conversation about
the era. It is also a historical intervention on the scholarship of Nazi persecutions
of queerness. It offers a necessary caveat to the dismissal of lesbian persecutions
by some German historians, and it adds a transatlantic focus to a rich discussion
on lesbian erasure, steered by the research of historians such as Anna Hájková in
her research on queer Holocaust history.57 What is more, several other mono-
graphs have appeared in recent years which are adjacent to this book in both geo-
graphic and temporal scope: Craig Griffiths’s The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation,
Samuel Huneke’s States of Liberation, Benno Gammerl’s Anders Fühlen, Andrea
Rottmann’s Queer Lives Across the Wall.58 Consequently, this book is also not the
first to place transnational analysis at the heart of the study of the Pink Triangle in
the second half of the twentieth century. It is similar in topic to Jake W. Newsome’s
brilliant Pink Triangle Legacies, which also uncovers queer collective memories of
National Socialism in the transatlantic world, thus writing about the recuperation
 Jennifer Evans, The Queer Art of History: Queer Kinship after Fascism (Durham, NC: Duke Uni-
versity Press, 2023).
 See also Heather Love’s plea for an investigation of misfits and deviance. Heather Love,
Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2021).
For a critique of lionization see also: Martin Duberman, Has the Gay Movement Failed? (Oakland,
CA: University of California Press, 2018).
 Anna Hájková, Menschen ohne Geschichte sind Staub: Homophobie und Holocaust (Göttingen:
Wallstein Verlag, 2021). See also: Joanna Ostrowska, Joanna Talewicz-Kwiatkowska, and Lutz van
Dijk, Erinnern in Auschwitz. Auch an sexuelle Minderheiten (Berlin: Querverlag, 2020) or the
transatlantic story uncovered by Jonathan Ned Katz: Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve
Adams (Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2021).
 Samuel Clowes Huneke, States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in
Cold War Germany (Toronto, ON: Toronto University Press, 2022); Benno Gammerl, Anders fühlen:
Queeres Leben in der Bundesrepublik. Eine Emotionsgeschichte, (Munich: Hanser, 2021); Andrea
Rottmann, Queer Lives across the Wall: Desire and Danger in Divided Berlin, 1945–1970 (Toronto,
ON: University of Toronto Press, 2023). Beyond these books, see also: Erik N. Jensen, “The Pink
Triangle and Political Consciousness: Gays, Lesbians, and the Memory of Nazi Persecution.” Jour-
nal of the History of Sexuality 11, no. 1 (2002): 319–349 and Régis Schlagdenhauffen, Triangle Rose:
La persécution nazie des homosexuels et sa mémoire (Paris: Autrement, 2011).
of the Pink Triangle as a symbol of emancipation.59 Yet, by underlining its signifi-

cance as a historical concept while avoiding the lionization of historical queer
movements thinking through forms of exclusion, this book is nonetheless a new
contribution. Newsome writes in his introduction that his “is the first book to use a
transnational approach to trace how personal and collective memories about the
fate of queer communities in the Holocaust helped establish historical roots that
nourished the formation of a modern, transatlantic gay identity.”60 A Badge of In-
jury pushes this focus on collective memory in another direction, highlighting how
the Pink Triangle emblematizes the subjugation of many forms of queerness under
one gay identity. Where Newsome’s act of recovery convincingly recounts the con-
struction of the Queer Atlantic based on memory, A Badge of Injury meticulously
deconstructs this narrative by diachronically and synchronically studying power
structures rooted in the uses of the symbol.
In fact, both A Badge of Injury and Pink Triangle Legacies should be read in
parallel. Newsome and I both independently studied different moments of the tri-
angle’s cultural history while being aware of each other’s work and correspond-
ing at various junctures, and both books echo what Jennifer Evans has coined
“queer kinship.”61 For Evans, queer kinship is more than the creation of solidar-
ities, it is also a way to map queerness in the past without obscuring both the
negative aspects of inclusion as well as the exclusions embedded in desires to be-
long. It is also a methodology, a call to queer memory beyond liberalism. In this
book, I see my research of the Pink Triangle as a manifestation of queer kinship.
On the one hand, I reflect on the importance of deconstructing and nuancing nar-
ratives of the queer past, without vindicating historical voices from the past. On
another hand, I wrote this book not against my peers, but as another episode of
the same narrative I aim to deconstruct. To put it differently, I do not think our
writings live in a vacuum outside of the stories we uncover in the archives.
This book is based on broad archival research on both sides of the Atlantic. I
have focused on the analysis of communication networks in the gay and lesbian
communities of Canada, the United States of America, and Germany. With partic-
ular attention to the visual aspects of each periodical, I have examined various
magazines and newspapers from the gay and lesbian press in Toronto, Vancou-
ver, New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Washington DC, Munich, Cologne, and
West Berlin. This study of editorials, articles, and reviews of cultural productions
 Jake Newsome, Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming out in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2022.).
 Newsome, Pink Triangle Legacies, 4.
 Jennifer Evans, The Queer Art of History: Queer Kinship after Fascism (Durham: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 2023), 3–21.
has been limited to the period between the 1970s and the end of the 1990s. I have
then paired this survey with various news articles from the mainstream press ac-
cording to local context, for example pieces in The New York Times for the east
coast of the USA or Süddeutsche Zeitung, ‘South German Journal,’ for the south of
Germany. These investigations have been joined to empirical material of the pri-
vate papers of cis gay US activists and German political groups, as well as the
complete archives of mainly white queer organizations on both continents, in-
cluding but not limited to correspondence, inner regulations, press communiqués,
and minutes. Finally, I have been using zines, leaflets, and posters of prominent
gay and lesbian campaigns from the second part of the twentieth century, online
repositories of interviews conducted by other historians, and various memoirs
and autobiographies written by queer activists and academics. All in all, these pri-
mary sources have allowed me to draw a convincing portrait of both the uses of
and reflections on the Pink Triangle, keeping in mind the intersectional ties and
diversity of the gay and lesbian communities.
9 Mapping the Pink Triangle’s journey
This book is organized thematically and not chronologically, reflecting the many
layers of a symbol and their synchronicity. If the reader is willing to forgive me a
somewhat cheap metaphor, it is useful to imagine for a moment the Pink Triangle
as a sort of aeroplane used for intercontinental flights. This aeroplane as a ma-
chine remains the same, but its pilot can change depending on the context, flying
to both sides of the Atlantic back and forth. The plane was created for one pur-
pose but has since been used for a variety of voyages, hosting different groups of
people, and carrying luggage from one side of the world to the other. Some are
too economically disadvantaged to even fly and do not get to board the plane,
some are afraid of flying, and some enjoy premium memberships that give them
access to privileges. A Badge of Injury is the story of such a passenger carrier. It
follows the Pink Triangle at different moments in time, examining the way it flew
to, from, and around both sides of the ocean, on domestic or international flights.
Each chapter shows how different groups piloting this aircraft took it to different
places, encountered turbulence, sometimes almost crashed, and opened new
travel routes.
Attached on clothing, or printed on posters, the Pink Triangle became the insig-
nia, the logo, the ‘badge’ of a Queer Atlantic; the symbol used by many queer organ-
izations appealing to victimhood in their struggle for human rights. Each chapter
of this book emphasizes one connection between the Pink Triangle and the queer
subject, demonstrating the different ways it was metaphorically or concretely used
as a badge – a portable visual concept of historical change. Thematically arranged,

the book is also divided in three main parts. The first part looks at discourses, nar-
ratives, and memories attached to the symbol in the Euro-American world. The
first chapter – A Badge of Continuities – focuses on the 1970s in the FRG. It investi-
gates activists’ recuperation of the Pink Triangle for political reasons, brandishing
the symbol as a simultaneous affirmation of queerness and an attempt to historicize
both their oppression by the state and their position in society at large. Underlining
contestations inside queer printed media of the era and written communication net-
works as well as introducing many political organizations across the FRG – West
Berlin, Cologne, Wuppertal, Brunswick, etc. – this chapter demonstrates how
the Pink Triangle was already multilayered in the 1970s. Indeed, it was a refer-
ence to a perpetrator category, an appeal to the cohesive potential offered by
victimhood narratives, and a badge of courage for dealing with day-to-day en-
counters with queerphobia.
The second chapter of the book – A Badge of Narratives – examines the influ-
ence of the Pink Triangle beyond the visual, focusing on its mention in written
testimonies and cultural productions. It also underlines the significance of the
symbol for the creation of a collective through the textual, for example through
correspondence and scholarly monographs. The chapter introduces three transat-
lantic Pink Triangle brokers: James D. Steakley, Richard Plant, and Martin Sher-
man, whose writings propelled the international uses of the symbol. Looking at
scholarly monographs, poetry, and theatre as transatlantic spaces of exchange,
the chapter offers a genealogy of the Pink Triangle in gay writings of the 1970s
and 1980s, mapping the creation of gay narratives referring to National Socialism
and the establishment of a collective mythology. The chapter then contextualizes
and debates the power asymmetries between gay and lesbian history, exposing
how these narratives either erased lesbian experiences or pushed some lesbian
activists in the Euro-American world to adapt to gay frameworks of victimhood.
The third chapter – A Badge of Injury – builds on the first two and discusses
the consequences of the symbolic recuperation of victimhood and the construc-
tion of collective narratives in the Euro-American world. I expose how different
uses of the Pink Triangle cemented certain definitions of queerness in the USA
and the FRG. Going beyond a simple evaluation of multiple case studies, the chap-
ter demonstrates how the integration of Nazi atrocities to global memory was
central to the journey of the symbol and how the Pink Triangle’s popularity can
only be understood transregionally.
The second part of the book analyzes the effects of the narratives examined in
the first part. The fourth chapter – A Badge of Inclusion – centres on conceptual his-
tory and memory studies, analysing the inclusive potential of the symbol throughout
the second part of the twentieth century. It emphasises three moments of integra-
tion linked to the Pink Triangle: the integration of the queer community into Ger-
man memory culture and the discourses of Vergangenheitsbewältigung connected to
the case studies discussed in chapter one, the US musealization of a particular defi-
nition of queerness according to the narratives exposed in chapter two, and the in-
clusion of German queer history in world history.
Starting with the story of a Jewish congregation on the east coast of the USA,
the fifth chapter – A Badge of Exclusion – begins with a reflection on groups who
refrained from using the symbol even if some would have expected them to use
it, in this case a group of Jewish queer men and their memorialization of both the
Holocaust and the Nazi persecutions of male-male sexualities. A necessary histo-
riographical intervention, the later parts of the chapter show how the emphasis
on the Pink Triangle ironically silenced other commemorations of Nazi persecu-
tions and structural oppression and erased other experiences, in this case, lesbian
realities. The chapter shows the limits of Pink Triangle narratives, showing the
discursive importance of political symbols and images for social movements and
for cultural memory.
Following on the previous discussion on exclusion, the sixth chapter – A
Badge of Universalization – analyses the ways in which the Pink Triangle univer-
salized one definition of queerness beyond the Euro-American world. It begins by
discussing different Pink Triangle monuments in Italy, the Netherlands, and
Spain to identify Pink Triangle narratives beyond the USA and the FRG. It then
examines the universalization of these narratives and of Euro-American queer
memory to the rest of the world. By emphasizing the creation and symbolic lan-
guage of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association
and its discourse on human rights, I then emphasize international power asym-
metries and hierarchies in the framing of queerness on the world stage, identify-
ing possible reasons for the presence of the Pink Triangle outside of the Euro-
American world.
The seventh chapter – A Badge of Survival – deals with the Pink Triangle and
its aesthetic of survival. From its first recuperation in West Germany to the AIDS
Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), the symbol has been used as a political state-
ment to mark the tenacity of a community outliving persecutions. This genealogy
of survival, from National Socialism to the HIV/AIDS crisis, is intimately con-
nected with transatlantic queer memory but also to the transmission of feelings
and discourses through the power of images. This chapter examines the story of
ACT UP and international AIDS activism, focusing on the multilayered aspects of
the Pink Triangle as a referent to genocide. Once again using the symbol as a
prism, this chapter introduces my notion of Pink Triangle bridges.
I consider the third and last part of the book as a treatise on the power of im-
ages and their role for memory studies. The first of these two essays, chapter
Other documents randomly have
different content
“Brother, by these strings I would desire, in a most kind and
friendly manner, you would be pleased to hear me what I have to
say, as you are not far off.
“Brother, now you told me you have heard of that good
agreement, that has been agreed to, at the treaty at Easton; and
that you have put your hands to it, to strengthen it, so that it may
last for ever. Brother, you have told me, that after you have come to
hear it, you have taken it to heart, and then you sent it to me, and
let me know it. Brother, I would desire you would be pleased to hear
me, and I would tell you, in a most soft, loving and friendly manner,
to go back over the mountain, and to stay there; for, if you will do
that, I will use it for an argument, to argue with other nations of
Indians. Now, brother, you have told me you have made a road clear,
from the sun-set to our first old council fire, at Philadelphia, and
therefore I should fear nothing, and come into that road. Brother,
after these far Indians shall come to hear of that good and wide
road, that you have laid out for us, then they will turn and look at
the road, and see nothing in the way; and that is the reason that
maketh me tell you to go back over the mountain again, and to stay
there; for then the road will be clear, and nothing in the way.”
Then he addressed himself to the Governor of Pennsylvania, as
follows;
“Brother, give good attention to what I am going to say; for I
speak from my heart; and think nothing the less of it, though the
strings be small.[103]
“Brother, I now tell you what I have heard from you is quite
agreeable to my mind; and I love to hear you. I tell you likewise,
that all the chief men of Allegheny are well pleased with what you
have said to us; and all my young men, women and children, that
are able to understand, are well pleased with what you have said to
me.
“Brother, you tell me that all the Governors of the several
provinces have agreed to a well established and everlasting peace
with the Indians; and you likewise tell me, that my uncles, the Six
Nations, and my brethren the Delawares, and several other tribes of
Indians join with you in it, to establish it, so that it may be
everlasting; you likewise tell me, you have all agreed on a treaty of
peace to last for ever; and for these reasons I tell you, I am pleased
with what you have told me.
“Brother, I am heartily pleased to hear that you never let slip the
chain of friendship out of your hands, which our grandfathers had
between them, so that they could agree as brethren and friends in
any thing.
“Brother, as you have been pleased to let me know of that good
and desirable agreement, that you and my uncles and brothers have
agreed to, at the treaty of peace, I now tell you I heartily join and
agree in it, and to it; and now I desire you to go on steadily in that
great and good work, you have taken in hand; and I will do as you
desire me to do; that is, to let the other tribes of Indians know it,
and more especially my uncles, the Six Nations, and the Shawanese,
my grandchildren, and all other nations, settled to the westward.
“Brother, I desire you not to be out of patience, as I have a great
many friends at a great distance; and I shall use my best
endeavours to let them know it as soon as possible; and as soon as I
obtain their answer, shall let you know it.” Then he gave six strings
all white.
In the evening arrived a messenger from Sackung,
Netodwehement, and desired they should make all the haste to
dispatch us, and we should come to Sackung; for, as they did not
know what is become of those three, that went to our camp, they
were afraid the English would keep them, till they heard what was
become of us, their messengers.
29th.—Before day break Beaver and Shingas came, and called us
into their council. They had been all the night together. They said;
“Brethren, now is the day coming, you will set off from here. It is a
good many days since we heard you; and what we have heard is
very pleasing and agreeable to us. It rejoices all our hearts; and all
our young men, women and children, that are capable to
understand, are really very well pleased with what they have heard;
it is so agreeable to us, that we never received such good news
before; we think God has made it so; he pities us, and has mercy on
us. And now, brethren, you desire that I should let it be known to all
other nations; and I shall let them know very soon. Therefore
Shingas cannot go with you. He must go with me, to help me in this
great work; and I shall send nobody, but go myself, to make it
known to all nations.”
Then we thanked them for their care; and wished him good
success on his journey and undertaking: and, as this message had
such a good effect on them, we hoped it would have the same on all
other nations, when they came to hear it. I hoped that all the clouds
would pass away, and the chearful light would shine over all nations;
so I wished them good assistance and help on their journey. Farther,
he said to us;
“Now we desire you to be strong;[104] because I shall make it my
strong argument with other nations; but as we have given credit to
what you have said, hoping it is true, and we agree to it; if it should
prove the contrary, it would make me so ashamed, that I never
could lift up my head, and never undertake to speak any word more
for the interest of the English.”
I told them, “Brethren, you will remember that it was wrote to you
by the general, that you might give credit to what we say; so I am
glad to hear of you, that you give credit; and we assure you, that
what we have told you is the truth; and you will find it so.”
They said further, “Brethren, we let you know, that the French
have used our people kindly, in every respect; they have used them
like gentlemen, especially those that live near them. So they have
treated the chiefs. Now we desire you to be strong; we wish you
would take the same method, and use our people well: for the other
Indians will look upon us;[105] and we do not otherwise know how
to convince them, and to bring them into the English interest,
without your using such means as will convince them. For the
French will still do more to keep them to their interest.”
I told them, “I would take it to heart, and inform the Governor,
and other gentlemen of it; and speak to them in their favour.” Then
they said, “It is so far well, and the road is cleared; but they thought
we should send them another call, when they may come.” I told
them; “We did not know when they would have agreed with the
other nations. Brother, it is you, who must give us the first notice
when you can come; the sooner the better; and so soon as you send
us word, we will prepare for you on the road.” After this we made
ready for our journey.
Ketiushund, a noted Indian, one of the chief counsellors, told us in
secret, “That all the nations had jointly agreed to defend their
hunting place at Alleghenny, and suffer nobody to settle there; and
as these Indians are very much inclined to the English interest, so he
begged us very much to tell the Governor, General, and all other
people not to settle there. And if the English would draw back over
the mountain, they would get all the other nations into their interest;
but if they staid and settled there, all the nations would be against
them; and he was afraid it would be a great war, and never come to
a peace again.”
I promised to inform the Governor, General, and all other people
of it, and repeated my former request to them, not to suffer any
French to settle amongst them. After we had fetched our horses, we
went from Kushkushking, and came at five o’clock to Saccung, in
company with twenty Indians. When we came about half way, we
met a messenger from fort Duquesne, with a belt from Thomas
King,[106] inviting all the chiefs to Saccung. We heard at the same
time, that Mr. Croghn and Henry Montour would be there to day. The
messenger was one of those three, that went to our camp; and it
seemed to rejoice all the company; for some of them were much
troubled in their minds, fearing that the English had kept them, as
prisoners, or killed them. In the evening we arrived at Saccung, on
the Beaver creek. We were well received. The king provided for us.
After a little while we visited Mr. Croghn and his company.
30th.—In the morning the Indians of the town visited us. About
eleven o’clock about forty came together; when we read the
message to them; Mr. Croghn, Henry Montour and Thomas King
being present. They were all well pleased with the message. In the
evening we came together with the chiefs, and explained the
signification of the belts; which lasted till eleven o’clock at night.
December 1st.—After hunting a great while for our horses,
without finding them, we were obliged to give an Indian three
hundred wampum for looking for them. We bought corn for four
hundred and fifty wampum for our horses. The Indians met together
to hear what Mr. Croghn had to say. Thomas King spoke by a belt,
and invited them to come to the general; upon which they all
resolved to go.
In the evening the captains and counsellors came together, I and
Isaac Still being present; they told us, that they had formerly agreed
not to give any credit to any message, sent from the English by
Indians; thinking, if the English would have peace with them, they
would come themselves; “So soon, therefore, as you came, it was as
if the weather changed; and a great cloud passed away, and we
could think again on our ancient friendship with our brethren, the
English. We have thought since that time, more on the English than
ever before, although the French have done all, in their power, to
prejudice our young men against the English. Since you now come
the second time, we think it is God’s work; he pities us, that we
should not all die; and if we should not accept of the peace offered
to us, we think God would forsake us.”
In discourse, they spoke about preaching, and said, “They wished
many times to hear the word of God; but they were always afraid
the English would take that opportunity to bring them into bondage.”
They invited me to come and live amongst them; since I had taken
so much pains in bringing a peace about between them and the
English. I told them, “It might be, that when the peace was firmly
established, I would come to proclaim the peace and love of God to
them.”
In the evening arrived a message, with a string of wampum, to a
noted Indian, Ketiuscund, to come to Wenango, to meet the Unami
chief, Quitahicung there; he said that a French Mohock had killed a
Delaware Indian; and when he was asked why he did it? He said the
French bid him do it.
2d.—Early before we set out, I gave 300 wampums to the
Cayugas, to buy some corn for their horses; they agreed that I
should go before to the general, to acquaint him of their coming.
The Beaver creek being very high, it was almost two o’clock in the
afternoon, before we came over the creek; this land seems to be
very rich. I, with my companion, Kekiuscund’s son, came to Log’s-
town, situated on a hill. On the east end is a great piece of low land,
where the old Logs-town used to stand. In the new Logs-town the
French have built about thirty houses for the Indians. They have a
large corn field on the south side, where the corn stands
ungathered. Then we went further through a large tract of fine land,
along the river side. We came within eight miles of Pittsburg,[107]
where we lodged on a hill, in the open air. It was a cold night; and I
had forgot my blanket, being packed upon Mr. Hays’s horse.
Between Saccung and Pittsburg, all the Shawanos towns are empty
of people.
3d.—We started early, and came to the river by Pittsburg; we
called that they should come over and fetch us; but their boats
having gone adrift, they made a raft of black oak pallisadoes, which
sunk as soon as it came into the water. We were very hungry, and
staid on that island, where I had kept council with the Indians, in the
month of August last; for all I had nothing to live on, I thought
myself a great deal better off now, than at that time, having now
liberty to walk upon the island according to pleasure; and it seemed
as if the dark clouds were dispersed.
While I waited here, I saw the general march off from Pittsburg;
which made me sorry, that I could not have the pleasure of speaking
with him. Towards evening our whole party arrived: upon which they
fired from the fort with twelve great guns; and our Indians saluted
again three times round with their small arms. By accident some of
the Indians found a raft hid in the bushes, and Mr. Hays, coming
last, went over first with two Indians. They sent us but a small
allowance; so that it would not serve each round. I tied my belt a
little closer, being very hungry, and nothing to eat.[108] It snowed,
and we were obliged to sleep without any shelter. In the evening
they threw light balls from the fort; at which the Indians started,
thinking they would fire at them; but seeing it was not aimed at
them, they rejoiced to see them fly so high.
4th.—We got up early, and cleared a place from the snow, cut
some fire wood, and hallooed till we were tired. Towards noon Mr.
Hays came with a raft, and the Indian chiefs went over: he informed
me of Colonel Bouquet’s[109] displeasure with the Indians’ answer to
the general, and his desire that they should alter their mind, in
insisting upon the general’s going back; but the Indians had no
inclination to alter their mind. In the afternoon some provision was
sent over, but a small allowance. When I came over to the fort, the
council with the Indians was almost at an end. I had a discourse
with Colonel Bouquet about the affairs, disposition and resolution of
the Indians.
I drew provision for our journey to fort Ligonier, and baked bread
for our whole company: towards noon the Indians met together in a
conference. First king Beaver addressed himself to the Mohocks,
desiring them to give their brethren an answer about settling at
Pittsburg. The Mohocks said, “They lived at such a distance, that
they could not defend the English there, if any accident should befal
them; but you, cousins, who live close here, must think what to do.”
Then Beaver said by a string:
“What this messenger has brought is very agreeable to us; and as
our uncles have made peace with you, the English, and many other
nations, so we likewise join, and accept of the peace offered to us;
and we have already answered by your messenger, what we have to
say to the general, that he should go back over the mountains; we
have nothing to say to the contrary.”
Neither Mr. Croghn nor Andrew Montour would tell Colonel
Bouquet the Indians’ answer. Then Mr. Croghn, Colonel Armstrong
and Colonel Bouquet went into the tent by themselves, and I went
upon my business. What they have further agreed I do not know;
but when they had done, I called king Beaver, Shingas, and
Kekeuscund, and said,
“Brethren, if you have any alteration to make, in the answer to the
general, concerning leaving this place, you will be pleased to let me
know.” They said, they would alter nothing, “We have told them
three times to leave the place and go back; but they insist upon
staying here; if, therefore, they will be destroyed by the French and
the Indians, we cannot help them.”
Colonel Bouquet set out for Loyalhannon: The Indians got some
liquor between ten and eleven o’clock. One Mohock died; the others
fired guns three times over him; at the last firing one had
accidentally loaded his gun with a double charge: this gun burst to
pieces, and broke his hand clean off; he also got a hard knock on his
breast; and in the morning at nine o’clock he died, and they buried
them in that place, both in one hole.
6th.—It was a cold morning; we swam our horses over the river,
the ice running violently. Mr. Croghn told me that the Indians had
spoke, upon the same string that I had, to Colonel Bouquet, and
altered their mind; and had agreed and desired that 200 men should
stay at the fort. I refused to make any alteration in the answer to
the general, till I myself did hear it of the Indians; at which Mr.
Croghn grew very angry. I told him I had already spoke with the
Indians; he said, it was a d—d lie; and desired Mr. Hays to enquire
of the Indians, and take down in writing what they said. Accordingly
he called them, and asked them, if they had altered their speech, or
spoke to Colonel Bouquet on that string they gave me. Shingas and
the other counsellor said, they had spoken nothing to Colonel
Bouquet on the string they gave me, but what was agreed between
the Indians at Kushkushking. They said, Mr. Croghn and Henry
Montour had not spoke and acted honestly and uprightly; they bid
us not alter the least, and said, “We have told them three times to
go back; but they will not go, insisting upon staying here. Now you
will let the governor, general, and all people know, that our desire is,
that they should go back, till the other nations have joined in the
peace, and then they may come and build a trading house.”
They then repeated what they had said the 5th instant. Then we
took leave of them, and promised to inform the general, governor,
and all other gentle people of their disposition; and so we set out
from Pittsburg, and came within fifteen miles of the breast-work;
where we encamped. It snowed, and we made a little cabbin of
hides.
7th.—Our horses were fainting, having little or no food. We came
that day about twenty miles, to another breast-work; where the
whole army had encamped on a hill; the water being far to fetch.
8th.—Between Pittsburg and fort Ligonier the country is hilly, with
rich bottoms, well timbered, but scantily watered. We arrived at fort
Ligonier in the afternoon, about four o’clock; where we found the
general very sick; and therefore could have no opportunity to speak
with him.
9th.—We waited to see the general; they told us he would march
the next day, and we should go with him. Captain Sinclair wrote us a
return for provisions for four days.
10th.—The general was still sick; so that he could not go on the
journey.
11th.—We longed very much to go farther; and therefore spoke to
Major Halket,[110] and desired him to enquire of the general, if he
intended to speak with us, or, if we might go; as we were in a poor
condition, for want of linen, and other necessaries. He desired us to
bring the Indians’ answer, and our journal to the general. Mr. Hays
read his journal to Major Halket and Governor Glen.[111] They took
memorandums, and went to the general.
12th.—They told us we should stay till the general went.
14th.—The general intended to go; but his horses could not be
found. They thought the Indians had carried them off. They hunted
all day for the horses, but could not find them. I spoke to Colonel
Bouquet about our allowance being so small, that we could hardly
subsist; and that we were without money; and desired him to let us
have some money, that we might buy necessaries. Provisions, and
every thing is exceeding dear. One pound of bread cost a shilling;
one pound of sugar four shillings, a quart of rum seven shillings and
six pence, and so in proportion. Colonel Bouquet laid our matters
before the general; who let me call, and excused himself, that his
distemper had hindered him from speaking with me; and promised
to help me in every thing I should want, and ordered him to give me
some money. He said farther, that I often should call; and when he
was alone he would speak with me.
16th.—Mr. Hays, being a hunting, was so lucky as to find the
general’s horses, and brought them home; for which the general was
very thankful to him.
17th.—Mr. Hays, being desired by Major Halket to go and look for
the other horses, went, but found none.
18th.—The general told me to hold myself ready, to go with him
down the country.
20th.—After we had been out two days, to hunt for our horses, in
the rain, we went again to day, and were informed, they had been
seen in a lost condition; one laying on the hill, and the other
standing; they had been hoppled together; but a person told us, he
had cut the hopples. When we came home we found the horses;
they having made home to the fort.
22d.—It was cold and stormy weather.
23d.—I hunted for our horses, and having found them, we gave
them both to the king’s commissary; they not being able to carry us
farther.
The sergeant Henry Osten, being one of the company that guided
us, as above mentioned, and was that same prisoner, whom the
Shawanos intended to burn alive, came to day to the fort. He was
much rejoiced to see us, and said, “I thank you a thousand times for
my deliverance from the fire; and think it not too much to be at your
service my whole life time.” He gave us intelligence that the Indians
were, as yet, mightily for the English. His master had offered to set
him at liberty, and bring him to Pittsburg if he would promise him
ten gallons of rum; which he did; and he was brought safe to
Pittsburg. Delaware George is still faithful to the English; and was
very helpful to procure his liberty. Isaac Still, Shingas and Beaver are
gone with the message to the nations living further off. When the
French had heard that the garrison, at Pittsburg, consisted only of
200 men, they resolved to go down from Venango, and destroy the
English fort. So soon as the Indians at Kushkushking, heard of their
intention, they sent a message to the French, desiring them to draw
back; for they would have no war in their country. The friendly
Indians have sent out parties with that intention, that if the French
went on, in their march towards the fort, they would catch them,
and bring them to the English. They shewed to Osten the place,
where eight French Indian spies had lain near the fort. By their
marks upon the place they learned that these eight were gone back,
and five more were to come to the same place again. He told us
further, that the Indians had spoke among themselves, that if the
English would join them, they would go to Venango, and destroy the
French there. We hear that the friendly Indians intend to hunt round
the fort, at Pittsburg, and bring the garrison fresh meat. And upon
this intelligence the general sent Captain Wedderholz[112] with fifty
men, to reinforce the garrison at Pittsburg.
25th.—The people in the camp prepared for a Christmas frolick;
but I kept Christmas in the woods by myself.
26th.—To day an express came from Pittsburg to inform the
general, that the French had called all the Indians in their interest
together, and intended to come and destroy them there.
27th.—Towards noon the general set out; which caused a great
joy among the garrison, which had hitherto lain in tents, but now
being a smaller company, could be more comfortably lodged. It
snowed the whole day. We encamped by a beaver dam, under
Laurel Hill.
28th.—We came to Stony Creek, where Mr. Quickfell is stationed.
The general sent Mr. Hays, express, to fort Bedford (Rays Town) and
commanded him to see, if the place for encampment, under the
Allegheny mountain, was prepared; as also to take care that
refreshments should be at hand, at his coming. It was stormy and
snowed all the day.
29th.—On the road I came up with some waggons; and found my
horses with the company; who had taken my horse up, and intended
to carry the same away. We encamped on this side, under the
Allegheny hill.
30th.—Very early I hunted for my horses, but in vain, and
therefore was obliged to carry my saddle bags, and other baggage
on my back. The burden was heavy, the roads bad; which made me
very tired, and came late to Bedford; where I took my old lodging
with Mr. Frazier. They received me kindly, and refreshed me
according to their ability.
31st.—This day we rested, and, contrary to expectation,
preparation was made for moving further to-morrow. Mr. Hays, who
has his lodging with the commander of that place, visited me.
January 1st. 1759.—We set out early. I got my saddle bags upon a
waggon; but my bed and covering I carried upon my back; and
came that day to the crossing of Juniata: where I had poor lodgings,
being obliged to sleep in the open air, the night being very cold.
2d.—We set out early. I wondered very much that the horses, in
these slippery roads, came so well with the waggons over these
steep hills. We came to fort Littleton; where I drew provisions; but
could not find any who had bread, to exchange for flour. I took
lodging in a common house. Mr. Hays arrived late.
3d.—We rose early. I thought to travel the nearest road to
Shippen’s Town, and therefore desired leave of the general to
prosecute my journey to Lancaster, and wait for his excellency
there; but he desired me to follow in his company. It snowed,
freezed, rained, and was stormy the whole day. All were exceeding
glad that the general arrived safe at fort Loudon. There was no room
in the fort for such a great company; I, therefore, and some others
went two miles further, and got lodgings at a plantation.
4th.—I and my company took the upper road; which is three miles
nearer to Shippen’s town, where we arrived this evening. The
slippery roads made me, as a traveller, very tired.
5th.—To day I staid here for the general. Mr. Hays went ten miles
further, to see some of his relations. In the afternoon Israel
Pemberton came from Philadelphia to wait upon the general.[113]
6th.—I came to-day ten miles to Mr. Miller’s, where I lodged,
having no comfortable place in Shippen’s town; all the houses being
crowded with people.
7th.—They made preparation, at Mr. Millers, for the reception of
the general; but he, being so well to-day, resolved to go as far as
Carlisle. I could scarce find any lodging there. Henry Montour was so
kind as to take me in his room.
8th.—I begged the general for leave to go to Lancaster, having
some business, which he at last granted. I went to captain Sinclair
for a horse, who ordered me to go to the chief justice of the town;
who ought to procure one for me, in the province service. According
to this order I went; but the justice told me, that he did not know
how to get any horse; if I would go and look for one, he should be
glad if I found any. But having no mind to run from one to another, I
resolved to walk, as I had done before: and so travelled along, and
came about ten miles that day to a tavern keeper’s, named Chesnut.
9th.—To-day I crossed the Susquahanna over the ice, and came
within thirteen miles of Lancaster. It was slippery and heavy
travelling.
10th.—It rained all the day. I arrived at three o’clock in the
afternoon, in Lancaster; and was quite refreshed, to have the favour
to see my brethren.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Pennsylvania Colonial Records, viii, p. 132; Pennsylvania
Archives, iii, pp. 412-422.
[2] Journal of this journey in Pennsylvania Colonial Records,
viii, pp. 142-145.
[3] Pennsylvania Colonial Records, viii, p. 147.
[4] Pennsylvania Archives, iii, pp. 556, 557.
[5] Pennsylvania Colonial Records, viii, pp. 341, 419, 463, 466,
469, 491; Pennsylvania Archives, iii, pp. 581, 582, 689, 702, 703.
[6] All Indians are excessive fond of rum, and will be drunk
whenever they can get it.—[Charles Thomson?]
[7] Willamegicken (Wellemeghikink), known to the whites as
James, was a prominent brave of the Allegheny Delawares, who
had been employed as a messenger between them and the
Susquehanna tribes of the same race. He had agreed to
accompany Post on this journey, for which the Pennsylvania
Council had voted to supply him with a horse. Pennsylvania
Archives, iii, p. 415; Pennsylvania Colonial Records, viii, p. 148.—
Ed.
[8] Bethlehem is a Moravian town built in 1741-42, after the
retreat of these people from Georgia. Count Zinzendorf organized
the congregation at this place, and named the settlement (1742).
For the first twenty years a community system prevailed among
the inhabitants, called the “Economy.” Portions of the buildings
erected under that régime are still standing. See “Moravians and
their Festival,” in Outlook, August 1, 1903. In 1752, the brethren
built a large stone house for the accommodation of Indian
visitors, and those who escaped the massacre of 1755 were
domiciled there when Post passed through.—Ed.
[9] These two treaties were made with Teedyuscung: the first
at Easton in July and August, 1757, whereby the neutrality of the
Susquehanna Indians and the Six Nations was secured
(Pennsylvania Colonial Records, vii, pp. 649-714); the second at
Philadelphia in April, 1758 (see Id., viii, pp. 29-56, 87-97).—Ed.
[10] After Braddock’s defeat, the ravaging of the frontiers both
west and north of the settled portions of Pennsylvania became so
serious that the colonial government appointed a commission,
headed by Franklin, to take means to protect the settlers, and
defend the territory. Franklin proceeded into Northumberland
County, and made arrangements to fortify the point on the Lehigh
where Weisport, Carbon County, now stands. But before the
stockade was completed a body of Indians fell upon and seriously
defeated a party of militia from the neighboring Irish settlements,
led by Captain Hayes (January, 1756). The works were pushed
rapidly after this setback, and the fort was named in honor of
William Allen, chief-justice of the province. This post was
garrisoned until after Pontiac’s War, and probably throughout the
Revolution. See Franklin’s Writings (New York, 1887), ii, pp. 449-
454.—Ed.
[11] Teedyuscung, one of the most famous of Delaware chiefs,
was born in Trenton about 1705. When nearly fifty years old, he
was chosen chief of the Susquehanna Delawares, and being
shrewd and cunning played a game of diplomacy between the
Iroquois, the Ohio Indians, and the authorities of Pennsylvania,
by which he managed largely to enhance his own importance,
and to free the Delawares from their submission to the Six
Nations. His headquarters were in the Wyoming Valley, whence
he descended to the Moravian settlements, and even to Easton
and Philadelphia, to secure supplies from the Pennsylvania
authorities. In 1756 a truce was patched up with this chief at
Easton, after he had bitterly complained of the “Walking
Purchase” of 1737, and the white settlements on the Juniata. His
loyalty to the English was doubtful and wavering, and his
opposition to Post’s journey was probably due to fears that his
own importance as a medium between the Ohio Indians and the
English would be diminished by the former’s success. His cabin at
Wyoming having treacherously been set on fire, during one of his
drunken sleeps, Teedyuscung was burned to death in 1763. The
Iroquois, who were the guilty party, threw the obloquy upon the
Connecticut settlement, whereupon Teedyuscung’s followers
murdered all the band.—Ed.
[12] Wyoming Valley was the bone of contention between the
Connecticut and Pennsylvania colonies, each claiming that it was
within their charter limits. The Connecticut agents succeeded in
securing an Indian title at the Albany conference (1754); but their
first settlement being effaced by an Indian massacre (see
preceding note), their next body of emigrants did not proceed
thither until 1769. Meanwhile, on the strength of the Indian
purchase at Fort Stanwix (1768) the Pennsylvanians had occupied
the valley; and a border warfare began, which lasted until the
Revolution. The massacre of 1778, by the Tories and British
Indians, is a matter of general history.
The Indians of the valley were of many tribes—Oneidas,
Delawares, Shawnees, Munseys, Nanticokes, etc. The Moravian
Christian Indians settled at Wyoming in 1752. After the murder of
Teedyuscung they fled, but returned to found the town of
Wyalusing (1765), where the missionary Zeisberger lived with
them until their removal, three years later to the Ohio.—Ed.
[13] An Indian expression meaning free admission.—[C. T.?]
[14] Post, after leaving Fort Allen, passed through the present
Carbon County, crossed the headwaters of the Schuylkill, and
traversed Northumberland County to Fort Augusta. On the
massacres in that region see Rupp, History of Northumberland,
etc., (Lancaster, 1847), pp. 100-116. Fort Augusta, at the forks of
the Susquehanna, was built in 1756, at the request of the Indians
settled there under the chieftainship of Shickalamy. It was not a
mere stockade and blockhouse, but a regular fortification,
provided with cannon, and was commanded at first by Colonel
Clapham, succeeded by Colonel James Burd. This stronghold was
garrisoned until after the Revolutionary War; but before that time
settlement had begun to spring up about the fort, and the town
of Sunbury was laid out in 1772.—Ed.
[15] An Indian settlement towards the heads of Susquahanna.
—[C. T.?]
[16] The reference is to Abercrombie’s defeat and retreat from
Fort Ticonderoga in July, 1758.—Ed.
[17] The Indian trail followed by Post, passed up the West
Branch of the Susquehanna, through a region which had earlier
been thickly sprinkled with Indian towns. The Moravian
missionaries had been here as early as 1742, and had been
hospitably received by Madame Montour, whose town was at the
mouth of Loyalsock Creek, opposite the present village of
Montoursville. This was probably Post’s “Wekeponall,” as the path
to Wyoming led northeast from this place. Queenashawakee
(Quenslehague) Creek is in Lycoming County, with the town of
Linden at its mouth.—Ed.
[18] Little hoops on which the Indians stretch and dress the
raw scalps.—[C. T.?]
[19] Big Island is at the mouth of Bald Eagle Creek, in Clinton
County. From that point the trail led up the creek to a point above
Milesburg, Center County, then turned almost due west across
Center and Clearfield counties to Clearfield (Shinglimuhee). This
was the “Chinklacamoos path,” north of the Kittanning trail
followed by Weiser in 1748. The word “Chinklacamoos” is said to
signify “it almost joins,” in allusion to a horseshoe bend at this
place. See Meginness, Otzinachson: A History of the West Branch
Valley (rev. ed., Williamsport, Pa., 1889), p. 272.—Ed.
[20] An Indian Chief, that travelled with him.—[C. T.?]
[21] The money of Pennsylvania, being paper, is chiefly carried
in pocket books.—[C. T.?]
[22] From Chinklacamoos the Indian trail crossed Clearfield,
Jefferson, and Clarion counties, over Little Toby’s Creek (Tobeco),
the Clarion River (big river Tobeco), and east Sandy Creek
(Weshawaucks). That no Indians were met through all this region
is proof of its deserted condition, its former frequenters having
withdrawn to the French sphere of influence.—Ed.
[23] The officer commanding Venango at this time was Jean
Baptiste Boucher Sieur de Niverville, a noted border ranger and
Indian raider. Born in Montreal in 1716, he early acquired an
ascendency over the Abenaki Indians, which was utilized in
leading their parties against the English settlements of New
England. In King George’s War, bands under his command
ravaged New Hampshire and Vermont, and penetrated as far as
Fort Massachusetts in the Berkshire Hills (1748). During the
French and Indian War, he was similarly employed, and after
Braddock’s defeat, conducted a winter campaign of thirty-three
days, in the direction of Fort Cumberland on the Potomac,
bringing off numerous English captives. At Lake George in 1757,
he led the Abenaki auxiliaries, and was present at the massacre
of Fort William Henry. The last that is known of his military
exploits is during the siege of Quebec, when he defended
dangerous outposts with the aid of savage allies.—Ed.
[24] According to the rules of Indian politeness, you must
never go into a town without sending a previous message to
denote your arrival, or, standing at a distance from the town, and
hallooing till some come out, to conduct you in. Otherwise you
are thought as rude as white men.—[C. T.?]
[25] When the people of a town, or of a nation, are addressed,
the Indians always use the singular number.—[C. T.?]
[26] i. e. To confer in a friendly manner.—[C. T.?]
[27] i. e. Call to mind our ancient friendly intercourse.—[C. T.?]
[28] Every Indian town has a large cabbin for the
entertainment of strangers by the public hospitality.—[C. T.?]
[29] That is, the Quakers, for whom the Indians have a
particular regard.—[C. T.?]
[30] Delaware George was an important chief of that tribe, who
had been a disciple of Post’s in his Pennsylvania mission. He
maintained friendly relations with the English until after the
defeat of Braddock. Although closely associated with King Beaver
and Shingas, he seems to have leaned more than they to the
English interest.—Ed.
[31] That is, we look on your coming as a matter of
importance, it engages our attention.—[C. T.?]
[32] At the Easton treaty in the autumn of 1757, Teedyuscung
had promised to “halloo” to all the far Indian tribes, and bring
them to an understanding with the English. In January, 1758, he
reported to the governor that “all the Indian Nations from the Sun
Rise to these beyond the Lakes, as far as the Sun setts, have
heard what has passed between you and me, and are pleased
with it,” and urged him to continue the work of peace.
Teedyuscung was evidently enlarging upon his own importance,
and to this end giving unwarrantable information.—Ed.
[33] These belts and strings are made of shell-beads, called
wampum. The wampum serves, among the Indians, as money; of
it they also make their necklaces, bracelets, and other ornaments.
Belts and strings of it are used in all public negotiations; to each
belt or string there is connected a message, speech, or part of a
speech, to be delivered with a belt by the messenger, or speaker.
These belts also serve for records, being worked with figures,
composed of beads of different colours, to assist the memory.—
[C. T.?]
[34] The peace made with Teedyuscung, was for the
Delawares, &c. on Susquahanna only, and did not include the
Indians on the Ohio; they having no deputies at the treaty. But he
had promised to halloo to them, that is, send messengers to
them, and endeavour to draw them into the peace, which he
accordingly did.—[C. T.?]
[35] A fire, in public affairs, signifies, among the Indians a
council.—[C. T.?]
[36] i. e. This Englishman.—[C. T.?]
[37] By father, they express the French.—[C. T.?]
[38] By I, he here means, I, the Six Nations, of which the
Onondagoes are one of the greatest. This was, therefore, a claim
of the Ohio lands, as belonging to the Six Nations, exclusive of
the Delawares, whom they formerly called women.—[C. T.?]
[39] The Indians smoke in their councils.—[C. T.?]
[40] That is, the sentiments you express, are offensive to the
company.—[C. T.?]
[41] That is, he had changed his offensive sentiments.—[C. T.?]
[42] That is, that they would act vigorously.—[C. T.?]
[43] The French, at the fort.—[C. T.?]
[44] The Six Nations.—[C. T.?]
[45] Kuckquetackton (Koquethagechton) was the Indian name
of the famous Delaware chief Captain White Eyes. About 1776, he
succeeded Netawatwes, of whom he had been chief counsellor, as
head of the nation Heckewelder first met him at this same town,
where Post encountered him in 1772, and says that he strove to
keep the neutrality during both Lord Dunmore’s War and the
Revolution. Finding that impossible, he joined the American cause
(1778), and brought an Indian contingent to the aid of General
McIntosh at Fort Laurens; dying, however, before the attack was
made on the Sandusky towns. He was always a firm friend of the
Moravians, and though of small stature was one of the best and
bravest of Delaware chiefs.
There were two chiefs known by the name of Killbuck, the
younger of whom was the more famous. His Indian name was
Gelelemend, and he was a grandson of the great chief
Netawatwes. Born near Lehigh Water Gap in the decade 1730-40,
he removed to the Allegheny with the Delawares, and later to the
Muskingum, where was a village called Killbuck’s Town. Like
White Eyes, he was a firm friend of peace and of the whites, and
his life was imperilled because of this advocacy. He joined the
Moravians, and was baptized as William Henry, about 1788. Later
he removed to Pittsburg to secure protection from his enemies,
but died at Goshen in 1811. A lineal descendant of Killbuck is at
present a Moravian missionary in Alaska.—Ed.
[46] That is, go on steadily with this good work of establishing
a peace.—[C. T.?]
[47] Meaning the Cherokees.—[C. T.?]
[48] Some of the first English speech, that the Indians learn
from the traders, is swearing.—[C. T.?]
[49] Heckewelder testifies that Shingas, though a dreaded foe
in battle, was never known to treat prisoners cruelly. See his
Indian Nations, Historical Society of Pennsylvania Memoirs
(Philadelphia, 1876), xii, pp. 269, 270.—Ed.
[50] The Indians, having plenty of land, are no niggards of it.
They sometimes give large tracts to their friends freely; and when
they sell it, they make most generous bargains. But some
fraudulent purchases, in which they were grossly imposed on,
and some violent intrusions, imprudently and wickedly made
without purchase, have rendered them jealous that we intend
finally to take all from them by force. We should endeavour to
recover our credit with them by fair purchases and honest
payments; and then there is no doubt but they will readily sell us,
at reasonable rates, as much, from time to time, as we can
possibly have occasion for.—[C. T.?]
[51] The agreement made with Teedyuscung, that he should
enjoy the Wioming lands, and have houses built there for him and
his people.—[C. T.?]
[52] The army under General Forbes.—[C. T.?]
[53] The Indian traders used to buy the transported Irish, and
other convicts, as servants, to be employed in carrying up the
goods among the Indians. The ill behaviour of these people has
always hurt the character of the English among the Indians.—[C.
T.?]
[54] No spy among his enemies.—[C. T.?]
[55] That is, since we had a friendly intercourse with each
other. The frequent repetition of the word, Brethren, is the effect
of their rules of politeness, which enjoin, in all conversations, a
constant remembrance of the relation subsisting between the
parties, especially where that relation implies any affection, or
respect. It is like the perpetual repetitions among us, of Sir, or,
Madam, or, Your Lordship. In the same manner the Indians at
every sentence repeat, My Father, My Uncle, My Cousin, My
Brother, My Friend, &c.—[C. T.?]
[56] In this speech the Indians carefully guard the honour of
their nation, by frequently intimating, that the peace is sought by
the English: you have talked of peace: you are sorry for the war:
you have digged up the peace, that was buried, &c. Then they
declare their readiness to grant peace, if the English agree to its
being general for all the colonies. The Indian word, that is
translated, be strong, so often repeated, is an expression they
use to spirit up persons, who have undertaken some difficult task,
as to lift, or move, a great weight, or execute a difficult
enterprise; nearly equivalent to our word, courage! courage!—[C.
T.?]
[57] The three tribes of the Delaware nation—the Unamis,
Unalachtgo, and Minsi—were designated by the totems turtle,
turkey, and wolf. The chief of the first of these was the head chief
of the nation, being chosen and installed with great ceremony
and rejoicing. See Heckewelder, Indian Nations, pp. 51, 53.—Ed.
[58] Meaning General Forbes’s army.—[C. T.?]
[59] i. e. Just ready to enter our country.—[C. T.?]
[60] Two of the prisoners mention their pleasure at seeing Post,
and the fact that the Indians forbade them to communicate with
him. See “Narrative of Marie le Roy and Barbara Leininger,”
Pennsylvania Archives, 2nd series (Harrisburg, 1878), vii, pp. 401-
412.—Ed.
[61] He was sent to collect the Indians together, to attack
General Forbes’s army, once more, on their march.—[C. T.?]
[62] The creek, here called “Antigoc” was probably Venango or
the French Creek, which the Delawares designated as Attigé.—Ed.
[63] The Indian name of this town, in Jefferson County, on the
Mahoning Creek, is usually given as Punxatawny.—Ed.
[64] Probably this was the town called “Calamaweshink” or
“Chinklemoose,” Clearfield.—Ed.
[65] The proprietors of Pennsylvania chose William Denny
lieutenant-governor (1756), because they wished a “military man
with a ready pen.” He had been captain in the British army, and
his experience in Pennsylvania gave opportunity for military
talents. But bound by instructions from his principals, and
hampered by the hostility of the provincial assembly, he made no
headway in his government. Accused of accepting bribes to
betray the proprietors’ interests, he was removed in October,
1759. Returning to England, he was given a high position in the
army, and died about 1766.—Ed.
[66] Captain Bull and Lieutenant Hays were militia officers, the
latter of Northampton County, where was an Irish settlement
between Bethlehem and Fort Allen, known as “Hays’s.” Captain
John Bull commanded at Fort Allen in the summer of 1758. They
both volunteered to undertake this hazardous mission of a visit to
the Ohio Indians. For the instructions given them, see
Pennsylvania Archives, iii, p. 556.—Ed.
[67] Thomas Hickman was an Indian who had taken an English
name, and was much employed by the province of Pennsylvania
as an interpreter. A brutal white man murdered Hickman in the
Tuscarora Valley in 1761.
Totiniontenna was a Cayuga chieftain who with Shickalamy was
deputed by the Six Nations to undertake this embassy to the Ohio
Indians.
The chief here called Shickalamy was the youngest son, of the
famous Oneida of that name, who dwelt so long at the forks of
the Susquehanna, and was friendly to the whites, especially the
Moravians. The elder chief died in 1749, his most famous son
being Logan.
Isaac Still was a Moravian Christian Indian, frequently
employed as a messenger and interpreter.—Ed.
[68] Shamokin was an Indian town at the forks of the
Susquehanna, the abode of Shickalamy, “vice-king” of the Indians
of that region. It was first visited by the whites in 1728. Weiser
built a house at this village by request of the chief, in 1744.
Frequent visits of the Moravians led to the establishment here of
a blacksmith’s shop, and a quasi-mission. Fort Augusta was built
there in 1756; but on the proclamation of war against the
Delawares in the same year, the Indians abandoned the place and
destroyed the settlement.—Ed.
[69] The general here referred to was John Forbes, a
Scotchman who in 1757 was appointed brigadier-general for the
war in America. His first service was at Louisburg. In 1758, he
was appointed to organize the expedition against Fort Duquesne.
After the French, on the approach of Forbes’s army, had
abandoned that stronghold, the general, suffering from a serious
disease, was carried by slow stages to Philadelphia, where he
died in March, 1760. He was a man of iron purpose, and great
strength of character, being popular alike with his soldiers and
Indian allies.—Ed.
[70] A string of wampum beads. Nothing of importance is said,
or proposed without wampum.—[C. T.?]
[71] The Indians, having learned drunkenness of the white
people, do not reckon it among the vices. They all, without
exception, and without shame, practice it when they can get
strong liquor. It does not, among them, hurt the character of the
greatest warrior, the greatest counsellor, or the modestest
matron. It is not so much an offence, as an excuse for other
offences; the injuries they do each other in their drink being
charged, not upon the man, but upon the rum.—[C. T.?]
[72] The Ohio.—[C. T.?]
[73] An Indian trader, John Harris, built a log house on the
Susquehanna in 1705, and later established an inn and a ferry at
the spot called Harris’s Ferry, which was maintained for three-
quarters of a century. His son laid out the present town of
Harrisburg.—Ed.
[74] They were afraid of going where our people were all in
arms, lest some of the indiscreet soldiers might kill them.—[C.
T.?]
[75] Carlisle, the seat of Cumberland County (erected in 1750),
was originally settled by Scotch-Irish immigrants, who in the
decade between 1720 and 1730 formed the “back settlements” of
Pennsylvania. The Indian title was extinguished by a treaty in
1736; but when Fort Lowther was built at this site in 1753, there
were but five houses in the place. Later it became the eastern
terminus of the Pennsylvania highroad, and the centre of an
extensive overland trade.—Ed.
[76] The town of Shippensburg was one of the oldest west of
the Susquehanna, having been laid out in 1749, by Edward
Shippen—later chief-justice of Pennsylvania—on land of which he
was proprietor. It was the site of two frontier forts—Franklin, built
before Braddock’s defeat; and Morris, erected after that disaster.
Shippensburg became an important station on the Pennsylvania
state road; and until the opening of the nineteenth century was
the end of the stage-route from Lancaster westward.—Ed.
[77] Chambers’s Fort was a private stockade erected (1756) on
the Conococheague Creek, by a Scotch-Irishman, Benjamin
Chambers, who for some time had had a mill and settlement
here. The fort was a large stone building, protected by cannon,
and considered one of the strongest defenses in that region. The
government attempted to take possession of the guns in 1757,
lest they should be captured and turned against the other forts;
but the Scotch-Irish settlers stoutly resisted this attempt, and it
was abandoned. The present city of Chambersburg occupies the
site.—Ed.
[78] This should not be confused with the more famous Fort
Loudoun, built the same year (1756) in Tennessee as a check
upon the Cherokees. The Pennsylvania fort was on the road
between Shippensburg and Fort Lyttleton, about a mile east of
the present village of Loudon, Franklin County, being erected by
Armstrong after Braddock’s defeat. This was the scene of the
plundering of the Indian goods, dispatched to the Ohio (1765) for
Croghan’s use on his journey to the Illinois.
The Cherokees were employed by the English as auxiliaries in
this campaign. Their presence had caused much concern among
the Northern Indians, and Post had been sent to Wyoming the
previous spring, with reassuring messages on this account.
Bill Sock was a Conestoga Indian, employed as a messenger to
the Six Nations. He was massacred in the Paxton affair (1763).
See Heckeweldert Narrative, p. 79.—Ed.
[79] A calumet pipe; the signal of peace.—[C. T.?]
[80] Fort Lyttleton was another of the chain of frontier posts
built in 1756 for the protection of the frontiers. It was located at
the place called by the Indian traders “Sugar Cabins,” near the
present McConnellsburg, Fulton County. A garrison was
maintained at this point until after Pontiac’s War, when it
gradually fell into ruins, some relics of its occupation being still
found in the locality.—Ed.
[81] Ray’s town, so named from its first settler (1751), was the
chief rendezvous for Forbes’s army in this campaign, where he
had the stronghold of Fort Bedford built, and whence he made his
final advance against Fort Duquesne. From 1760-63, the fort at
this place was commanded by Captain Lewis Ourry of the Royal
Americans; and its apparent strength saved it from attack by the
Indians of the conspiracy. Bouquet made it the rendezvous in his
advance in 1764. Throughout the Indian wars, Fort Bedford was
the most important station between Carlisle and Fort Pitt. The
town of Bedford was incorporated in 1766.—Ed.
[82] Post’s testimony as to the condition of the new road cut
for the army west from Fort Bedford is interesting. For an account
of the controversy over the building of this road, see Hulbert, Old
Glade Road (Cleveland, 1903), pp. 65-161.
Stony Creek flows northward through the valley between the
Allegheny and Laurel Hill ranges of mountains.—Ed.
[83] The creek called “Rekempalin,” apparently was Pickings
Run in Somerset County—not a large creek, but all streams were
swollen by unusual rains.
Loyal Hanna was an old Indian town situated on the trail
passing west to Shannopin’s Town at the Forks of the Ohio. Upon
the advance of Forbes’s army (1758), this was made the last
station on the road to Fort Duquesne, and a fort was built called
Ligonier. Before the erection of this fort the station was known
simply as the “Camp on Loyal Hanna.”—Ed.
[84] Captain John Haslett was an officer of the Pennsylvania
provincial troops, of which there was in Forbes’s army, a
contingent of two thousand and seven hundred. Probably this
was the same officer who commanded Delaware troops in the
Revolution, and after conspicuous bravery at Long Island was
killed in the battle of Princeton.—Ed.
[85] The camping-place for this night, at the advanced breast-
work, is identified as on the Nine Mile Run, in Unity Township,
Westmoreland County, being still locally known as “Breast-work
Hill.”—Ed.
[86] Lieutenant William Hays, who was later killed on his return
from escorting Post, belonged to the Royal Americans, having
been commissioned December 11, 1756.—Ed.
[87] The Ohio, as it is called by the Sennecas. Alleghenny is the
name of the same river in the Delaware language. Both words
signify the fine, or fair river.—[C. T.?]
[88] The Indian town which Post calls Keckkeknepolin was
usually known as Blackleg’s Town, being situated at the mouth of
Loyalhanna Creek, where it flows into the Kiskiminitas.—Ed.
[89] Heckewelder says that the word “Kiskiminitas” means
“make daylight,” and was due to the impatient exclamation of
some eager warrior encamped on the spot. The town here
mentioned was in Armstrong County, on a creek of the same
name, about seven miles from where it flows into the Allegheny
River.—Ed.
[90] When he parted from Captain Haslett, Post left the regular
westward Indian trail to the Forks of the Ohio. In order to avoid
Fort Duquesne, and to reach the Indian towns beyond the
Allegheny, he followed a northward branch of the same that led
down the Loyalhanna and Kiskiminitas creeks. The Indian town at
the mouth of Kiskiminitas Creek had always been insignificant,
lying between Kittanning on the north, and Shannopin’s Town on
the south.—Ed.
[91] Connequenessing Creek, whose name, according to
Heckewelder, signifies “a long straight course.”—Ed.
[92] Persons appointed by law to manage the Indian trade, for
the public; the private trade, on account of its abuses, being
abolished.—[C. T.?]
[93] Where they boil into sugar the juice of a tree that grows in
those rich lands.—[C. T.?]
[94] Irvine says (Pennsylvania Archives, xi, p. 518) that the
Indians termed all the land along Beaver and Mahoning creeks for
twenty-five miles, Kuskuskies. Old Kuskusking was located
between the mouths of Neshanock and Mahoning creeks on the
Shenango, about where the town of New Castle, Lawrence
County, now stands.—Ed.
[95] Kekeuscung’s name signified “the healer.” He was
accounted a great warrior, and often joined the Six Nations
against the Cherokees. The traditional hostility between the latter
Indians and those around the Allegheny rendered difficult the
attempt to conciliate the Delawares while the Cherokees were in
the English army.
The attack here mentioned on the English camp at Loyalhanna,
was repulsed by Colonel Mercer and the Virginian troops. On their
return they fired by mistake upon their own re-enforcements, and
nearly killed their leader, Washington.—Ed.
[96] An Indian with an English name. An Indian sometimes
changes his name with an Englishman he respects; it is a seal of
friendship, and creates a kind of relation between them.—[C. T.?]
[97] When a prisoner is brought to an Indian town, he runs a
kind of gauntlet thro’ the mob; and every one, even the children,
endeavour to have a stroke at him; but as soon as he can get into
any of their huts, he is under protection, and refreshments are
administered to him.—[C. T.?]
[98] i. e. He has listened to the English messengers.—[C. T.?]
[99] Kicking the string about, and throwing it with a stick, not
touching it with their hands, were marks of dislike of the
message, that accompanied it.—[C. T.?]
[100] The Quakers of Philadelphia, who first set on foot these
negociations of peace; and for whom the Indians have always
had a great regard.—[C. T.?]
Comment by Ed. See on this subject Pennsylvania Archives, iii,
p. 581.
[101] “Sastaghretsy, Anigh Kalicken, Atowateany, Towigh,
Towighroano, Geghdageghroano, Oyaghtanont, Sisaghroano,
Stiaggeghroano, Jenontadynago.”—[C. T.?]
[102] Diamond figures, formed by beads of wampum, of
different colours.—[C. T.?]
[103] Important matters should be accompanied with large
strings, or belts; but sometimes a sufficient quantity of wampum
is not at hand.—[C. T.?]
[104] The word, wishicksey, translated, be strong, is of a very
extensive signification be strong, be steady, pursue to effect what
you have begun, &c.—[C. T.?]
[105] i. e. They will observe how we are dressed.—[C. T.?]
[106] Thomas King was an Oneida Indian, who had taken a
prominent part in the treaty at Easton (October, 1758).—Ed.
[107] It is probable that Croghan brought Post the news of the
change of name from Fort Duquesne to Pittsburg. He apparently
uses the new term with much relish. The day after the English
occupation of Fort Duquesne, General Forbes wrote to Governor
Denny, dating his letter “Fort Duquesne, or now Pittsburg.”—
Pennsylvania Colonial Records, viii, p. 232.—Ed.
[108] As it often happens to the Indians, on their long
marches, in war, and sometimes in their hunting expeditions, to
be without victuals for several days, occasioned by bad weather
and other accidents, they have the custom in such cases; which
Post probably learned of them, viz. girding their bellies tight,
when they have nothing to put in them; and they say it prevents
the pain of hunger.—[C. T.?]
[109] Colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss officer, who had served
with distinction in the armies of Sardinia and Holland, was
engaged to enter the regiment of Royal Americans, and came to
America in 1756. The following year he was in command in South
Carolina; but early in 1758 was summoned north to aid Forbes in
his march through Pennsylvania. Bouquet commanded the
advance, and prepared the road, ordered the stations for reserve
supplies, and by careful management contributed much to the
success of the campaign. Upon Forbes’s retiring, Bouquet was left
in command at Fort Pitt, where he remained fulfilling the arduous
and exacting duties of his frontier service until late in 1762, when
he was relieved by Captain Ecuyer, and returned to Philadelphia.
On the news of the siege of Fort Pitt (1763), Bouquet organized a
relief expedition, which inflicted a severe defeat upon the Indians
at Bushy Run. The following year, the Indian country was
invaded, Bouquet’s expedition to the Muskingum proving a
complete success. Relieved from his Western command, he was
promoted to the rank of brigadier-general and placed in command
of all the troops in the southern British colonies of America. He
died at Pensacola, February, 1766, at the early age of forty-seven.
He was not only a soldier of ability and vigor, but a man of most
attractive and charming character, beloved by superiors and
subordinates. The collection of his letters in the British Museum is
a chief source for the history of the West during this period. See
calendar in Canadian Archives, 1889; extracts in Michigan Pioneer
and Historical Collections, xix, pp. 27-295; also Bouquet’s
Expedition against the Ohio Indians (Cincinnati, 1868).—Ed.
[110] Major Halket was the son of Sir Peter Halket, who was
killed, together with another son, at the battle of Monongahela
(1755). When Major Halket accompanied the detachment sent by
Forbes to bury the bones of the victims of that disaster, he
recognized the skeletons of his father and brother and at the
sight fainted with grief and horror.—Ed.
[111] James Glen had been governor of South Carolina (1744-
55), but was superseded in the latter year by Governor Lyttleton.
His presence at Forbes’s camp is perhaps explained by the fact
that he was interested in the Cherokee Indian trade.—Ed.
[112] Captain Nicholas Wedderholz (Weatherholt) was a militia
officer in command of a German company from Northumberland
County, which was enlisted December 16, 1755, and
“discontinued” in 1760. It is said that every man in his company
was of German descent. During the Indian troubles of 1763,
Weatherholt raised another company, which did not, however, see
active service.—Ed.
[113] Israel Pemberton was a member of a prominent Quaker
family, and a merchant of Philadelphia. Very active in political
affairs, and influential with the Indians because of his Quaker
principles and trade-relations, he was one of the leading
members of the “Friendly Association,” formed to put down war
with the Indians. In 1759 he sent for the association £1,000
worth of goods to be distributed to the Ohio Indians at Pittsburg.
Pemberton, with other leading Quakers, was much disliked by the
borderers, who called him “King Wampum,” and placed his life in
jeopardy during the Paxton riots (1763). Neither did Pemberton
find favor with the “Sons of Liberty,” and the patriot party of the
Revolution. In 1777 he, with two brothers, was banished to
Virginia on the charge of aiding the British enemy.—Ed.
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the fabulous comments and feedback from a rich community of scholars. I am

List of abbreviations XVII

List of figures XIX

Introduction – There and back again: A Pink Triangle’s journey 1

1 A badge of continuities – Pink radical politics and identification with

2 A badge of narratives – Pink Triangles, written communication

3 A badge of memory – Defining and remembering victimhood in the

4 A badge of inclusion – Carving Pink Triangles into stone and shaping

5 A badge of exclusion – Pink Triangle frameworks and the limits of

6 A badge of universalization – Pink Triangles and the limits of Euro-

7 A badge of survival – AIDS activism, Pink Triangles, and an aesthetic

8 A badge of temporalities – European time and asynchronous Pink

9 A badge of visibility – Branding Pink Triangles for emancipation 229

Epilogue – The Pink Triangle in homonationalist times 243

While sitting in an MA seminar on the West German history of homosexualities

 James D. Steakley, “Selbstkritische Gedanken zur Mythologiserung der Homosexuellenverfol-

The experience scorched me – I could clearly remember the provocative writ-

1 The visual history of the Pink Triangle

2 Global queer history

The journey of the Pink Triangle is a transregional story with entanglements on

3 Nazi atrocities and the Pink Triangle

nunciations by their fellow citizens. Thousands of them were deported in concen-

 Johann Karl Kirchknopf, “Die strafrechtliche Verfolgung homosexueller Handlungen in Ös-

4 Queering gay history

5 Provincializing queer history

6 Memory and victimhood

7 Feeling the Pink Triangle

8 Searching for the Pink Triangle

construction of German exclusions and their basis in Vergangenheitsbewältigung,

of the Pink Triangle as a symbol of emancipation.59 Yet, by underlining its signifi-

9 Mapping the Pink Triangle’s journey

as a badge – a portable visual concept of historical change. Thematically arranged,

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

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