With Wittgenstein in a Gay Sauna: The Queer History Europe Tried to Forget

Gay saunas, secret cruising spots, forbidden desire and one of the world’s most influential philosophers. A provocative new book by Czech writer Vratislav Maňák is uncovering the queer history of Central Europe, challenging the idea that homosexuality arrived with Western liberalism. And darling, the history books may need a rather steamy rewrite.

Let’s talk about gay saunas.

Yes, actual gay saunas. The places where men have been meeting, cruising, exploring desire and occasionally discovering that human communication requires considerably fewer words than philosophers might have imagined.

Because while generations of historians have carefully documented Europe’s kings, wars, empires and political revolutions, the history of ordinary queer people has frequently been left somewhere between the footnotes and the things polite society would rather not discuss.

Enter Vratislav Maňák (photo below).

The 38-year-old Czech writer, journalist and literary scholar has written a fascinating book titled With Wittgenstein in a Gay Sauna, exploring the hidden sexual geography of Central Europe and the queer cultures that existed long before contemporary Pride marches, dating apps or rainbow corporate logos.

The book, originally published in Czech as S Wittgensteinem v gay sauně, has attracted renewed international attention following a Guardian feature published on 11 November 2026.

And while the title is gloriously provocative, the ideas beneath it are considerably more serious.

Maňák is asking who gets to write history, whose bodies are considered respectable and why so much of queer existence has been pushed into spaces that society prefers to pretend never existed.

What Is With Wittgenstein in a Gay Sauna About?

Published in Czech and German in 2026, With Wittgenstein in a Gay Sauna combines literary reportage, personal observation, historical research and reflections on sexuality.

Rather than presenting queer history as a conventional sequence of political campaigns and legal milestones, Maňák explores how men have created spaces for desire, intimacy and connection across Central European cities.

His journey moves between Prague, Budapest, Vienna and other locations associated with the region’s complex sexual history, while also reflecting on contemporary queer nightlife.

The book’s title references Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose work explored the relationship between language, thought and the limits of what can be expressed.

Maňák imagines Wittgenstein entering Vienna’s historic Kaiserbründl bathhouse, using the encounter as a literary device to explore the complicated relationship between intellectual life and bodily desire.

To be clear, this imagined scene is not evidence that Wittgenstein visited the sauna. It is a fictional exploration built around a real historical figure whose personal relationships and sexuality have attracted considerable scholarly attention.

The central idea is rather delicious.

What happens when the philosopher who spent his life wrestling with language enters a world where bodies communicate through gestures, attraction and physical proximity?

Suddenly, the vocabulary of desire becomes more complicated than a philosophical textbook.

Or perhaps considerably simpler.

According to the publisher Host’s description of the book, Maňák’s essays examine male homosexuality, bodily experience and the boundaries of masculinity in contemporary Central Europe.

The result is not simply a guide to gay saunas. It is an attempt to recover experiences that have been excluded from conventional historical narratives.

Gay Saunas Were Never Just About Sex

There is a tendency, particularly among people unfamiliar with queer culture, to regard gay saunas and cruising spaces as places defined exclusively by sexual activity.

And yes, darling, sex has generally been a rather important part of the business model.

But historically, such spaces have also served functions that cannot be understood through sexual activity alone.

When same-sex relationships were criminalised, stigmatised or socially dangerous, men frequently had limited opportunities to meet one another openly.

Bathhouses, parks, public toilets, private clubs and other semi-public spaces could provide opportunities for contact that conventional social environments denied them.

Some encounters were anonymous and fleeting. Others developed into relationships, friendships or connections that helped people understand their sexuality.

These spaces were not necessarily safe or welcoming for everyone. They could be subject to police surveillance, harassment, exploitation and inequalities involving class, race or social status.

But they also represented something important: the possibility of expressing desire outside the strict expectations of heterosexual society.

And that is why their history deserves attention.

A cruising spot may not have a commemorative plaque, but it can still tell us something significant about the people who used it and the restrictions they experienced.

In Prague, Maňák revisits locations associated with generations of gay men, including public spaces whose informal queer significance was rarely acknowledged officially.

One particularly revealing example involves the demolition of public toilets near Prague’s State Opera during the 1970s.

According to the Guardian’s reporting, local gay men marked the loss of the location and even collected red tiles as souvenirs.

It is a wonderfully unusual detail.

To somebody unfamiliar with the space, the demolition may have represented nothing more than the removal of an old public convenience.

To the men who had used it, it meant losing part of their social and sexual geography.

And sometimes those forgotten geographies tell us more about a community than the official history of an entire city.

Did You Know That the Word Homosexuality Came From Hungary?

One of the most fascinating historical details in Maňák’s exploration concerns the origins of the word homosexuality itself.

The term was coined in the nineteenth century by Karl Maria Kertbeny, a Hungarian writer, translator and advocate who argued against the criminalisation of same-sex relationships.

Kertbeny introduced the German-language term during the 1860s, helping establish vocabulary that would later become central to modern discussions of sexual orientation.

That history creates an interesting contradiction.

Central Europe is frequently represented in contemporary political debates as a region in which homosexuality arrived from the liberal West, particularly after the collapse of communist governments in 1989.

But the historical record tells a very different story.

Vienna, Budapest and Prague were important centres of intellectual, cultural and sexual debate long before the modern LGBTQ+ movement emerged.

Historian Anita Kurimay, whose research includes the book Queer Budapest, 1873–1961, has documented the city’s historic gay subcultures, including private gathering places and cruising locations.

These histories challenge the suggestion that queer identities and communities are foreign cultural imports.

They were already there.

The people existed, the relationships existed and the spaces existed, even when governments and social institutions refused to acknowledge them openly.

What changed over time was not the sudden invention of homosexuality, but the language, legal frameworks and public visibility surrounding it.

Central Europe’s Complicated LGBTQ+ History

The relationship between homosexuality and political power in Central Europe has never followed a simple progressive narrative.

Under state socialism, Hungary and Czechoslovakia decriminalised consensual male homosexual acts in 1961, earlier than England and Wales, where partial decriminalisation came in 1967.

That may surprise readers accustomed to seeing Western Europe as the natural starting point for every major LGBTQ+ rights development.

But legal decriminalisation did not automatically result in social acceptance, freedom from police scrutiny or equality in everyday life.

Gay men could still experience surveillance, restrictions and powerful expectations to conform to traditional gender roles.

Likewise, political changes after 1989 did not produce identical outcomes across the region.

Some countries gradually expanded LGBTQ+ protections, while others experienced political movements that portrayed homosexuality and gender diversity as threats to national identity or traditional family structures.

Hungary provides an especially revealing contemporary example.

As The Gayly Mirror reported following Hungary’s repeal of key anti-LGBTQ+ restrictions in October 2026, the country has recently begun reversing some of the policies introduced during Viktor Orbán’s years in power.

Nevertheless, significant inequalities concerning transgender recognition, same-sex relationships and LGBTQ+ visibility remain.

Maňák’s book invites readers to view these contemporary debates against a much longer historical background.

Queer people did not suddenly appear when governments began debating their rights.

They were already building relationships, creating communities and finding ways to exist long before political institutions recognised them.

From Gay Saunas to the Crisis of Masculinity

One of the most interesting aspects of Maňák’s work is the way it connects the history of queer sexuality with contemporary ideas about masculinity.

The writer has also curated ANDROS: The Male Body in Contemporary Central European Art, an exhibition at Prague’s DOX Centre for Contemporary Art.

Featuring works by approximately 50 artists from across Central Europe, the exhibition explores how the male body has been represented, idealised and questioned through contemporary art.

According to the DOX Centre’s official exhibition description, the project examines the instability of traditional ideas about manhood, including the relationship between masculinity, vulnerability and physical appearance.

The exhibition includes works that challenge conventional ideals of male physical perfection, replacing certainty with ambiguity, fragmented bodies and emotional complexity.

And this is where Maňák’s work becomes particularly relevant to contemporary gay culture.

Because even within LGBTQ+ communities, masculinity can remain an extraordinarily powerful social expectation.

We celebrate certain bodies, certain behaviours and certain performances of manhood while sometimes attaching shame to femininity, vulnerability or sexual roles perceived as less masculine.

As we explored in our TGM Original on bottom shaming and masculinity in gay relationships, gay men can challenge heterosexual expectations while simultaneously reproducing some of the same hierarchies within their own communities.

Maňák approaches related questions from a historical and artistic perspective.

What does it mean to be a man? Who determines which forms of masculinity are acceptable? And why are certain expressions of male desire treated as shameful?

These are not new questions, even if our vocabulary for discussing them continues to evolve.

Queer History Is More Than a Story of Persecution

There is another reason books like With Wittgenstein in a Gay Sauna matter.

Too often, LGBTQ+ history is presented almost exclusively through suffering.

Criminalisation. Imprisonment. Police raids. Medical persecution. The AIDS crisis. Violence and discrimination.

These experiences are essential parts of our collective history, and they must never be forgotten.

But they are not the whole story.

Queer people also laughed, flirted, danced, made friends, had sex, fell in love and found creative ways to enjoy their lives, sometimes under circumstances that made those experiences difficult or dangerous.

Their histories include pleasure as well as persecution, desire as well as discrimination and community as well as isolation.

That is something worth remembering.

LGBTQ+ history should not require queer people to be permanently tragic in order to be considered historically significant.

Our existence has always contained ordinary human experiences, including lust, friendship, humour, intimacy and the occasional extremely questionable romantic decision.

And if we can recognise those experiences as legitimate historical subjects, perhaps we can finally stop treating queer sexuality as something that must be hidden behind euphemisms or moral embarrassment.

When Will With Wittgenstein in a Gay Sauna Be Available in English?

With Wittgenstein in a Gay Sauna was published in Czech and German in 2026.

An English translation is expected in 2027 through Seagull Books, offering a wider international audience the opportunity to discover Maňák’s work.

Readers can explore the original publication through Czech publisher Host.

Meanwhile, the related ANDROS exhibition is open at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague until 24 January 2027.

The exhibition brings together visual art and the wider ideas explored in Maňák’s writing, making it a particularly interesting cultural event for people interested in queer identity, European history and representations of the male body.

The Queer History Europe Tried to Forget Was Always There

Perhaps the most important lesson of Maňák’s book is that queer history cannot be understood solely through the laws governments passed or the punishments they imposed.

It must also be understood through the lives people continued to lead despite those restrictions.

The hidden meeting places, the coded gestures, the friendships formed in unexpected spaces and the desire that refused to disappear simply because society considered it unacceptable.

Those experiences are part of Europe’s history, whether conventional historians chose to record them or not.

And the idea that queer identities somehow arrived in Central Europe as a modern foreign influence becomes rather difficult to defend when you consider just how deeply those histories are woven into the region’s cultural past.

With Wittgenstein in a Gay Sauna reminds us that history is not only written in parliamentary chambers, churches and universities.

Sometimes it was written in a bathhouse, a public park or a dimly lit room where two men found a moment of connection.

Queer Europe was never an invention of the modern age. It was always there. Some people simply preferred not to look.