Karl Maria Kertbeny
Károly Mária Kertbeny (also Karl Maria Kertbeny or Karl Maria Benkert), (1824-1882), was a Hungarian memoirist during the mid-19th century.Quoth Andrew Wilkholm:
"Karl Maria Kertbeny was a Hungarian writer who is remembered today mostly for coining the term 'homosexual' as a replacement for the pejorative term 'pederast' that was used in the German and French speaking world of his time. Though he claimed not to be homosexual himself, Kertbeny said that his sense of justice made him cry out against sodomy prosecutions. Kertbeny argued that homosexuality is an inborn disposition, so laws like Paragraph 175 that punish it are unjust.
"Kertbeny's writing career produced many books, but almost nothing of literary merit." ÃÂ However a Hungarian writer and literary historian, Lajos Hatvany, referred to him in this way: "this moody, fluttering, imperfect writer is one of the best and undeservedly forgotten Hungarian memoir writers".