LGBTQ archivist, activist and historian Jean-Nickolaus Tretter died Friday in St. Paul. He was 76.
The University of Minnesota Libraries’ Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies is considered the largest of its kind in the Upper Midwest. According to the library’s website, it includes “approximately 3,500 linear feet of material — including books, periodicals, grey literature, personal and organizational records, zines and pamphlets, artifacts and ephemera, and audiovisual materials.”
“We are incredibly saddened to announce that our founder and namesake Jean-Nickolaus Tretter passed away Dec. 9. He will be greatly missed in our community locally and around the world,” the University of Minnesota library’s website posted on Saturday.
The University of Minnesota Library website called the collection “national and international in scope (featuring materials in approximately 58 languages), but is especially strong in materials documenting the history of LGBTQ people, organizations, and communities in the Upper Midwest, especially the Twin Cities area.”
The website gives the following information about Tretter:
Born in 1946, he grew up in Little Falls and began to sense as a child that he was attracted to men but hid that fact.
The Stonewall Riots of 1969, sparked by a police raid on gay patrons of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, N.Y., led Tretter to come out of the closet. When he returned to Minnesota after serving in Vietnam as a member of the U.S. Navy, “he and his friends organized the first Twin Cities commemoration of the Stonewall Riots in June 1972.”
About the same time, he began to collect gay and lesbian materials “in a piecemeal fashion. He didn’t start out with the grand scheme of amassing an archive; he just gathered the things that mattered to him,” the website stated.
While studying social and cultural anthropology at the University of Minnesota until 1976, he tried to specialize in gay and lesbian anthropology but “couldn’t get the institutional support he needed. He dropped out of the University and began working as a counselor at a Ramsey County residence for youth with multiple disabilities”
As he studied gay and lesbian history on his own, he began to collect the “thousands of books, photos, and documents that ultimately made up his collection.”
In addition to amassing this archive, he also was an activist. He hosted and produced “Night Rivers” on KFAI, the only regularly broadcast gay and lesbian classical music show in the country.
In 1982, he acted as co-chairman of Minnesota’s Gay/Lesbian Olympic Committee.
Tretter said he made a “disturbing discovery” in 1983 while assembling a gay history display at St. Paul’s Landmark Center: “Our gay history was disappearing as fast as we were producing it.”
At that point, he actively began collecting as much as he could. He donated his collection to the University of Minnesota Libraries in 2000 when it became too large to be manageable in his apartment. He oversaw the collection until he retired in 2011 but continued to serve on the advisory board of the collection. He also continued to collect materials for the archive.
In addition to his work assembling the archive, Tretter was a member of the Los Angeles-based International Gay and Lesbian Archives where he served as both a board member and the Upper Midwest representative.
Tretter was often sought out by scholars for information about the collection and his knowledge of the LGBTQ community.
“It’s important we create a historical legacy to pass along to future generations,” Tretter said. “It’s how the Jews endured thousands of years of persecution, because they had a tradition and a history. I would like to have a part in giving gays and lesbians of the future something similar to hold on to.”
