How the Nazis stroyed the first gay rights movement

Contents:

• STANFORD SCHOLAR EXPLOR THE HISTORY OF GAY RIGHTS GERMANY
• GAY LIFE BERL IS STARTG TO ECHO A DARKER ERA
• GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME
• BETWEEN WORLD WARS, GAY CULTURE FLOURISHED IN BERL

STANFORD SCHOLAR EXPLOR THE HISTORY OF GAY RIGHTS GERMANY

“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.

“There’s been a gay bar of some kd at this addrs for more than 100 years, ” Nash, an energetic 54-year-old, explaed to a walkg tour he was leadg as he gtured enthiastilly at a neon sign outsi, which featured ttle wh large nose rgs. But LGBT-rights groups have warned of a parallel rise of vlent homophobia mastream the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party stormed to the Bunstag last year, s policians have lled for homosexuals to be imprisoned, vowed to repeal gay marriage, and nounced those sufferg om HIV. They are also remrs of Germany’s fascist past and, rights groups worry, signs of dangero future clamp-downs on vulnerable is a powerfully queer place—gay culture, polics, activism, clubs, and sex reverberate through the cy.

But “Germany is not the shy, progrsive untry wish to be portrayed as, ” says Katr Hugendubel, the advocy director of the Internatnal Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Associatn Europe (ILGA-Europe), which reprents more than 1, 000 LGBT 1918, when Bull’s precsor first opened, Weimar-era Germany was embarkg on a sndalo . Berl’s reputatn for wild immoraly and s unually liberal law enforcement, by ntrast, helped turn the cy to Europe’s undisputed gay the 1920s, Berl was home to an timated 85, 000 lbians, a thrivg gay-media scene, and around 100 LGBT bars and clubs, where artists and wrers mixed wh cross-drsg ll girls who supposedly spired the Some Like It Hot director Billy Wilr. For the past eight years, he has transported tourists and earnt genr-theory stunts back time to search for the ghosts of their pneerg hero, as part of his popular LGBT walkg tour around Wt Berl’s “gayborhood” of Schö lately, the tour has taken on a different meang.

GAY LIFE BERL IS STARTG TO ECHO A DARKER ERA

Cricized the AfD reprentative Hans-Thomas Tillschneir for a Facebook post that echoed Nazi-era propaganda agast homosexuals by claimg that HIV sufferers were “martyrs of a dishibed, hedonistic, hypersexualized society. ”Read: It’s Time to Drop the ‘LGBT’ From ‘LGBTQ’Given the AfD’s homophobic reputatn, is perhaps surprisg that 39-year-old Alice Weil, s other -lear, is a lbian who liv wh her female partner and children.

” The party even has a vol LGBT group lled “Alternative Homosexuals” that oppos qutned about her ments, Weil has blamed the media for spreadg “propaganda” and sisted to Der Tagspiegel, a German newspaper: “I’m beg creded wh beg volved a supposedly homophobic party, but that's not the realy. 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).

GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME

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. But there is plenty to see today to remember the highs and lows of German LGBTQ+ history, om the Monument to Homosexuals Persecuted unr Natnal Socialism and the Schwul Mm (Gay Mm), both Berl, to the Dtsche Eiche bar and bathhoe Munich, where Freddie Mercury hung out the 1970s. The term “homosexualy, ” while sometim nsired anachronistic the current era, is the most applible and easily translatable term to e when askg this qutn across societi and languag and has been ed other cross-natnal studi, cludg the World Valu Survey.

Dpe major chang laws and norms surroundg the issue of same-sex marriage and the rights of LGBT people around the world, public opn on the acceptance of homosexualy society remas sharply divid by untry, regn and enomic velopment. The study is a follow-up to a 2013 report that found many of the same patterns as seen today, although there has been an crease acceptance of homosexualy across many of the untri surveyed both years. However, while took nearly 15 years for acceptance to rise 13 pots om 2000 to jt before the feral legalizatn of gay marriage June 2015, there was a near equal rise acceptance jt the four years sce legalizatn.

In South Korea, for example, those who classify themselv on the iologil left are more than twice as likely to say homosexualy is acceptable than those on the iologil right (a 39-percentage-pot difference). In Spa, people wh a favorable opn of the Vox party, which recently has begun to oppose some gay rights, are much ls likely to say that homosexualy is acceptable than those who do not support the party.

BETWEEN WORLD WARS, GAY CULTURE FLOURISHED IN BERL

And Poland, supporters of the erng PiS (Law and Jtice), which has explicly targeted gay rights as anathema to tradnal Polish valu, are 23 percentage pots ls likely to say that homosexualy should be accepted by society than those who do not support the erng party.

But even untri like France and Germany where acceptance of homosexualy is high, there are differenc between supporters and non-supporters of key right-wg populist parti such as Natnal Rally France and Alternative for Germany (AfD). In 25 of the 34 untri surveyed, those who say relign is “somewhat, ” “not too” or “not at all” important their liv are more likely to say that homosexualy should be accepted than those who say relign is “very” important. Though the opns of religly unaffiliated people n vary wily, virtually every untry surveyed wh a sufficient number of unaffiliated rponnts, “non” are more acceptg of homosexualy than the affiliated.

The tle of the chapter, “The German Inventn of Homosexualy, ” telegraphs a prcipal argument of the book: although same-sex love is as old as love self, the public disurse around , and the polil movement to w rights for , arose Germany the late neteenth and early twentieth centuri. Beachy, a historian who teach at Yonsei Universy, Seoul, ends his book by notg that Germans hold gay-pri celebratns each June on what is known as Christopher Street Day, honor of the street where the Stonewall prott unfold. By the begng of the twentieth century, a non of gay lerature had emerged (one early advote ed the phrase “Stayg silent is ath, ” nearly a century before aids activists ed the slogan “Silence = Death”); activists were bemoang negative pictns of homosexualy (Thomas Mann’s “Death Venice” was one target); there were bat over the ethics of outg; and a schism opened between an clive, mastream factn and a more rto, anarchistic wg.

The episo suggts the gree to which the German cultural and tellectual tradn, particularly the Romantic age, which stretched om Goethe and Schiller to Schopenher and Wagner, embolned those who me to intify themselv as gay and lbian. ”) Schopenher proceed to expound the dub theory that nature promoted homosexualy olr men as a way of disuragg them om ntug to surprisgly, Karl Herich Ulrichs seized on Schopenher’s cur piece of advocy when he began his mpaign; he quoted the philosopher one of his g-out letters to his relativ.

Magn Hirschfeld, his 1914 book “The Homosexualy of Men and Women, ” noted that the Wagner ftival Bayrth had bee a “favore meetg place” for homosexuals, and quoted a classified ad, om 1894, which a young man had sought a handsome pann for a Tyrolean bicyclg expedn; was signed “Numa 77, general livery, Bayrth. The most revelatory chapter of Beachy’s book ncerns Leopold von Meerscheidt-Hüllsem, a Berl police missner the Wilhelme perd, who, perhaps more than any other figure, enabled “gay Berl” to blossom. ) Hirschfeld, who was born 1868, a year after Ulrichs’s speech Munich, began his radil activi 1896, publishg a pamphlet tled “Sappho and Socrat, ” which told of the suici of a gay man who felt erced to marriage.