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Adolf Fredrik (Fritz) Wetterhoff
(July 11, 1878 - December 2, 1922) Finland

Fritz Wetterhoff

Lawyer and historian

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Born in Helsinki into a military and civil servant's family of German descent, who had been living in Finland for several generations, he first studied history at the University of Helsinki, but probably never finished his studies. He trained as a technician in a weaving mill in Aachen, Germany, after which he moved back to Finland to teach in the textile technical college of Hämeenlinna, a small town 100 km north of Helsinki.

Later he studied law at the University of Helsinki and after graduating in 1909, he worked as the public persecutor and mayor of Hämeenlinna. In 1911 the local newspaper denounced Wetterhoff's homosexuality. He then moved to Hlsinki and worked as an attorney. Either because of the scandal surrounding his sexual orientation, or because a new scandal about unclear financial business, he left Finland in 1913 and settled in Berlin, where he met Magnus Hirschfeld.

Wetterhoff's contribution on homosexuality in Finland to Hirschfeld's book is the earliest attempt to write about homosexual history and the current situation of gay men in Finland. He begins by discussing homosexual elements in Scandinavian Viking sagas and constructs a narrative history of the identity of Finnish homosexuals with the folklore and heroes, then continues with a detailed description of male homosexual subculture in Finland up to the 20th century.

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Source: excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, from Antiquity to WWII, Routledge, London, 2001

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