Remembrances of Hanns

Sad news this week as my family’s close friend Hanns Ebensten passed away. Hanns (left, earlier this year at the Key West Literary Seminar) revolutionized the concept of gay travel—in many ways he made a mold that’s now broken, something eminently civilized and literate that’s been replaced by throngs of shirtless men invading exotic places to a disco beat, seeking only pleasure and vodka, blind to the infinite variations and mysteries of the globe. Pleasure and vodka are of course fine things, but Hanns insisted that travel was as much about history, exploration and personal transformation as hedonism. I’ll write something further on him later, but for now please read Nancy Klingener’s excellent piece in Solares Hill.

Something Nancy left out of the article but observed to me: Hanns met his partner Brian on Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, when Brian posed the coded question “Do you like art?”, and Hanns did. Their park pick-up lasted 41 years. As always, Hanns defied conventional wisdom.

Hanns signing books at the 2006 Key West Literary Seminar where the theme was, appropriately, Adventure, Travel and Discovery.

Comments

[Greg Needham]

Nice piece.