Gay Liberatn Behd the Iron Curta - Boston Review

Contents:

• STANFORD SCHOLAR EXPLOR THE HISTORY OF GAY RIGHTS GERMANY
• GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME
• STAT OF (GAY) LIBERATN EAST GERMANY AND WT GERMANY
• GAY LIBERATN BEHD THE IRON CURTA
• DOCUMENTARY EXPLOR GAY AND LBIAN OPPRSN EAST GERMANY
• EASTERN EUROPE WAS ONCE A WORLD LEAR ON GAY RIGHTS. THEN RAN OUT OF SPEGOATS

STANFORD SCHOLAR EXPLOR THE HISTORY OF GAY RIGHTS GERMANY

Ls than 80 years after roughly 6, 000 gay men perished Nazi ncentratn mps, Germany has bee one of the untri mostly wily acceptg of lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr (LGBT) people. 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.

“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.

Prev historil rearch has vtigated how gay people fared Germany durg the Weimar perd, the terwar years that ran roughly om 1918 to 1933, and durg Adolf Hler’s Nazi dictatorship. Wt Germany restated former Nazis ernment and kept the same strict Nazi-era sodomy laws, which crimalized any act perceived to be homosexual, cludg kissg and touchg.

GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME

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.

STAT OF (GAY) LIBERATN EAST GERMANY AND WT GERMANY

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. “This history troubl our assumptns about gay liberatn and how mori fare unr certa forms of ernment, as well as our lgerg Cold War expectatns about munist and mocratic regim, ” Huneke said. It is unclear how many of the men publicly or privately intified as gay or were part of gay muni and works that had been tablished Germany before the Nazi rise to power.

In ntrast, the work of gay men that veloped around thor Adolf Brand and his anizatn Gemeschaft r Eigenen (The Communy of Kdred Spirs) took a different approach.

GAY LIBERATN BEHD THE IRON CURTA

Gay newspapers and journals, such as Die Frndschaft (Friendship) and Der Eigene (translated varly, but this ntext implyg “his own man”), ntributed to the growth of gay works. 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). Unverg the histori of gay men durg the Nazi era was difficult for much of the twentieth century bee of ntued prejudice agast same-sex sexualy and the ongog enforcement of Paragraph 175.

A few years later, May 2008, the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted unr Nazism (Denkmal für die im Natnalsozialism verfolgten Homosexuellen) was unveiled nearby Tiergarten park central Berl. This article will analyze the history of LGBTQ people Germany, queer culture and liberatn movements, and the state of LGBTQ people the German LGBTQ HistoryEldorado Club gay bar Berl, 1930sMany of our morn perceptns and studi of homosexualy emerged Germany the 19th century. The German lawyer, Karl Herich Ulrichs, is thought by some to be the world’s first openly gay man and sce 1864, began spreadg pamphlets advotg for gay rights.

DOCUMENTARY EXPLOR GAY AND LBIAN OPPRSN EAST GERMANY

In 1896, the first gay magaze began publitn, Der Eigene (“The Self-Owng”), and a year later, the physician Magn Hirschfeld found the Scientific-Humanarian Commtee, the first LGBTQ rights group history. While the inti had prevly been viewed as a “fetish” or as “symptom of homosexualy, ” Hirschfeld’s work differentiated genr inty om sexual orientatn and proposed a blogil foundatn.

[12] There is ltle rmatn on the experience of trans people Nazi Germany, but Paragraph 183 of the Nazi penal punished “cross-drsg” wh up to one year prison, so they might have had a siar experience to gay men. The Feral Republic of Germany upheld the strict anti-sodomy laws imposed by the Nazis and prosecuted over 100, 000 gay men between 1949 and 1969, of whom 50, 000 were nvicted.

[20] In 1973, Brish gay activist Peter Tatchell wrote support of LGBTQ activists the GDR, sayg:“We have had several letters om gay people the DDR (German abbreviatn for GDR), some om very small towns, all show a remarkable unrstandg of gay liberatn polics, and the begngs of a historil materialist unrstandg of gay opprsn.

EASTERN EUROPE WAS ONCE A WORLD LEAR ON GAY RIGHTS. THEN RAN OUT OF SPEGOATS

At this pot the GDR, however, the age of nsent for homosexual relatnships was higher than that of heterosexual on, as addrsed the new Paragraph 151 (the first time lbians were addrsed by law as well).

[21] It was 1987 that legal equaly would be ensured for homosexual relatnships when the East German Supreme Court set the age of nsent at 14 for all sexual relatns.

The pridg judge nclud that homosexualy was a natural variatn of human sexualy and stated:“Homosexual persons are th not exclud om the socialist society and civil rights are guaranteed to them as to all other cizens. [25]Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and other East German gay rights activists, 1970sOnce aga, there is very limed rmatn about the legal and societal stat of transgenr people Germany at the time.