How the Nazis stroyed the first gay rights movement

Contents:

• STANFORD SCHOLAR EXPLOR THE HISTORY OF GAY RIGHTS GERMANY
• GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME
• GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
• BETWEEN WORLD WARS, GAY CULTURE FLOURISHED IN BERL

STANFORD SCHOLAR EXPLOR THE HISTORY OF GAY RIGHTS GERMANY

That stark cultural and polil change trigued Stanford rearcher Samuel Clow Huneke, a doctoral ndidate history, who began vtigatg how East and Wt Germany alt wh homosexualy om 1945 to 1990.

GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME

“There is an assumptn that the state of gay rights Germany today is somethg that’s mostly due to events mocratic Wt Germany, which had a more vibrant gay culture and a more visible gay rights movement durg the 1970s, ” Huneke said.

While the Wt’s activism died down after 1980, when a group of pro-pedophilia activists dispted a major gay rights event Wt Germany’s pal Bonn durg that year’s feral electn, activists the East ntued to anize, Huneke said. From 1985 until the Berl Wall fell 1989, the East German ernment released a s of pro-gay policy chang, grantg gay people the right to serve the ary, among other eedoms, acrdg to his rearch. Hirschfeld vented the term transvte, zealoly opposed Paragraph 175, and found the Scientific Humanarian Commtee Berl which pneered rearch to transsexualy and stood at the foreont of prott opposg legal discrimatn agast homosexuals.

GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

The Third Reich’s persecutn of homosexuals was immediate and relentls: Natnal Socialists stormed and stroyed Hirschfeld’s Instute for Sexual Rearch Berl, Nazi newspapers lled for the ath penalty for homosexual acts and all active gay anisatns Germany were clared illegal.

BETWEEN WORLD WARS, GAY CULTURE FLOURISHED IN BERL

Acrdg to ttimoni om survivors, persecuted homosexuals were at the bottom of the ncentratn mp hierarchy, receivg particularly btal treatment and equently subjected to horrific medil experiments which ed an excs of male hormon to try and ‘cure’ mat’ homosexualy.

This is not to say that lbians lived enviable liv unr the Third Reich; there are rerds of some lbian ncentratn mp mat and the soc-cultural climate of the Third Reich would not have been an easy one for openly gay women.

When the sculpture was created 1968, homosexuals did not fall to the ‘regnised’ persecuted groups meang they were left out of the sculpture which memorated the sufferg of persecuted mori.

Many homosexuals left ncentratn mps only to be seen as mon crimals upon their return to society; many were repeatedly jailed and died before seeg the liberatn of gays or acknowledgement of and pensatn for their sufferg at the hands of both the Natnal Socialists and the post-war German ernments. Contrary to mon assumptn, was the East German ernment who, spe the strict censorship, rife surveillance amongst cizens and the feared Stasi, were ostensibly more liberal when me to gay rights.

The 2013 documentary film, ‘Out East Berl, ’ told the personal histori of 13 openly gay dividuals unr the GDR ernment and the film expos the ls rosy everyday realy for homosexuals East Germany. The 2017 legalisatn of same-sex marriage Germany had a slightly bter unrtone as the former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, voted agast the legalisatn a move nsistent wh her stance opposn of gay marriage. Repeated vandalism of the ‘Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals’ Berl, ongog difficulti terms of adoptn for gay upl and creas attacks agast gay upl Germany should all serve as a remr of the ntued threat to LGBTQ+ dividuals Germany.

Partly drivg this new era of tolerance were the doctors and scientists who started lookg at homosexualy and “transvtism” (a word of that era that enpassed transgenr people) as a natural characteristic wh which some were born, and not a “rangement. Fally, 1936 SS lear and Chief of the German Police Herich Himmler tablished the Reich Central Office for the Combatg of Homosexualy and Abortn (Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung r Homosexualät und r Abtreibung).