24 Facts About Henry Gerber

Henry Gerber was an early homosexual rights activist in the United States.

Henry Gerber has been repeatedly recognized for his contributions to the LGBT movement.

Henry Gerber was born Heinrich Joseph Dittmar on June 29,1892, in the city of Passau in Bavaria.

Henry Gerber changed his name to "Henry Gerber" upon emigrating to the United States in 1913.

In 1917, Henry Gerber was briefly committed to a mental institution because of his homosexuality.

Henry Gerber chose the Army and he was assigned to work as a printer and proofreader with the Allied Army of Occupation in Coblenz.

Henry Gerber traveled to Berlin, which supported a thriving gay subculture, on several occasions and subscribed to at least one homophile magazine.

Henry Gerber absorbed Hirschfeld's ideas, including the notion that homosexual men were naturally effeminate.

Henry Gerber called his group the Society for Human Rights and took on the role of secretary.

Henry Gerber filed an application for a charter as a non-profit organization with the state of Illinois.

Henry Gerber created the first known American gay-interest publication, called Friendship and Freedom, as the SHR newsletter.

Henry Gerber lost his post office job for "conduct unbecoming a postal worker" and Weninger paid a $10 fine for "disorderly conduct".

SHR was destroyed and Henry Gerber was left embittered that none of the wealthy gays of Chicago came to his aid for a cause designed to advance the common good.

In 1927, Henry Gerber travelled to New York City, where a friend from his Army days introduced him to a colonel.

Henry Gerber was posted to Fort Jay on Governors Island and his post-war talents as a proofreader and editor likely put to use by the Army Recruiting Bureau in the production of their magazines and recruiting publications.

Henry Gerber continued writing articles for a variety of magazines, including one called Chanticleer, in which he sometimes made the case for homosexual rights.

Almost a decade later, in 1962, ONE published a full-length article, written by Henry Gerber, providing a detailed history of SHR.

Henry Gerber spent the last decades of his life as a resident of the Soldiers' and Airmen's Home.

Henry Gerber was 80 years old when he died at the home on December 31,1972.

Henry Gerber was buried in the adjoining United States Soldiers' and Airmen's Home National Cemetery.

Henry Gerber was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1992.

The Henry Gerber House, located at 1710 N Crilly Court, Chicago, contains the apartment in which Gerber lived when he founded SHR.

Henry Gerber serves as a direct link between the LGBT-related activism of the Weimar Republic and the American homophile movement of the 1950s.

Henry Gerber soon discovered the cruising scene in Pershing Square, where he met Champ Simmons, who had been a lover of one of Gerber's SHR compatriots.