[4] Die Freundin and other lesbian magazines of that era such as Frauenliebe (Love of Women) represented a part-educational and part-political perspective, and they were assimilated with the local culture.
It was a joint federation of the BfM and Bundes für Ideale Frauenfreundschaft (translated to "Covenant for Women's Friendships").
Certain issues aimed to highlight the political importance of lesbian culture by printing phrases on the cover, such as "this magazine may be publicized everywhere!"
After enactment of the law on the protection of young people from sabotage and trafficking, retailers were no longer allowed to sell lesbian magazines.
The publisher opted for the temporary cessation of the magazine and instead started a new publication called Ledige Frauen, which made it to a total of 26 issues.
[8] Die Freundin focused mainly on lesbian women, but also included inserts and editorial contributions on trans issues.
[8] Through its regular reports, advertisements and events related to the lesbian subculture of Berlin, it functioned similarly to a local newspaper.
[15] At this point, editorial teams were shared between the publications Blättern für Menschenrecht and Freundschaftsblatt, which is why certain articles were reprinted several times over the years, some deliberately abridged.
[20] The layout of the magazine was simple and remained almost the same throughout the entire print run: the cover page came first, followed by the editorial section which didn't have any particular order.
Apart from the very first editions, which began directly with editorial writing, photographs of women (sometimes nude) were often found on the cover page - sometimes at the request of the readership.
The two-column editorial section consisted equally of short stories, news, op-eds, poems, press reviews, and letters to the editor.
In each issue, Die Freundin offered several articles on a variety of subject matters, including but not limited to historical issues relating to the history of lesbians; everyday problems of lesbian women in Germany; and cultural, scientific, or medical articles related to homosexuality.
An important point of reference were articles and opinions oriented to the sexual-scientific authority of the time, Magnus Hirschfeld, and to his scientific-humanitarian committee "Wissenschaftlich-humanitären Komitee" or WhK.
[8] A 1929 text called "The Love of The Third Sex" by Johanna Elberskirchen was shortened and featured in Die Freundin under the title "What Is Homosexuality?"
Hirschfeld was criticized for frequently condemning homosexuality as inferior or abnormal, or misrepresenting gay people in court proceedings, and thus contributing to their stigmatization.
[13] In spite of the participation of men and the broad array of themes, Die Freundin was a medium in which lesbian women found the necessary space to debate and define their sense of self, their roles in society, and their goals.
More or less unanimously, the discussion culminated in allegations that bisexual women were "vicious" and "perverse" which resulted in strongly-worded letters from readers who plead "hands off the bodies who enjoy both sexes for lust!
[22] For example, when the Bund für Menschenrecht set up a transvestite support group called "The Coalition of the Transvestites" (Zusammenschluss der Transvestiten), Lina Es explained its goals in this column;[23] the same year, she wrote about police and the cross-dressers ("Die Transvestiten und die Polizei").
None of the subjects of the women's movement that were being discussed at that time were covered in the magazine, whether it was birth control, abortion, family or divorce law.
Calls for the abolition appeared regularly in editions of the "Bundes für Menschenrecht", partly also without explicit reference to lesbians.
From 1930, a kind of neutrality was necessary, since statistics of the year 1926 had made clear to the BfM that they had members of both left and right parties.
Doris Claus, for example, emphasized the liberating value of the work in her analysis of the novel "Arme Kleine Jett" by Selli Engler, who was featured in Die Freundin in 1930.
This method strengthened the association and its weight in the gay and lesbian movement, especially since the readership was encouraged to visit only those places recommended by BfM.
Lesbians used the codes of their subculture, such as "Miss, 28 years, looking for an educated girlfriend", "Woman wishes sincere friendship with a well-disposed lady" or "Where to meet a girl of higher circles, possibly private?
[8] The intention was unmistakable in advertisements such as: "27-year-old, of good origin, double-orphan, respectable, looking for a wealthy lady companion (also a business owner)."
[8][5] The "Erato Club", which was advertised in Die Freundin, rented dance halls with a capacity of 600 people for their events, giving a sense of how big these meetings were.
The numerous magazines and newspapers devoted to homosexuality (albeit mostly with a masculine emphasis) led to a market for especially lesbian interests.
[16] Angeles Espinaco-Virseda characterized Die Freundin as a "publication in which science, mass culture and subculture overlap", a magazine "which directly addressed women, articulated their longings and offered them new concepts and choices for gender roles, sexuality, and partnerships; and consequently offered a different sense of lesbian identity.
"[21] A reader from Essen wrote: "For years I have searched in vain for a source of entertainment which brings our kind of people closer to each other through the means of word and writing, the sisters make hours of solitude worthwhile when I visit Hildesheim - a small and strictly religious town."
[4] Die Freundin met the same fate as most other gay journals of the time: they "were hardly been paid attention to by major historical research, with the exception of some essays and unpublished dissertations".