Between World Wars, Gay Culture Flourished In Berl : NPR

Contents:

• STANFORD SCHOLAR EXPLOR THE HISTORY OF GAY RIGHTS GERMANY
• BETWEEN WORLD WARS, GAY CULTURE FLOURISHED IN BERL
• GAY RIGHTS

STANFORD SCHOLAR EXPLOR THE HISTORY OF GAY RIGHTS GERMANY

The adoptn of the LGBTI Incln Strategy is the rult of staed advocy om German civil society groups sce 2012, spearhead by the Lbian and Gay Feratn Germany (Der Lben- und Schwulenverband Dtschland, LSVD), the Hirschfeld-Eddy Foundatn, and the Yogyakarta-Alliance.

As a member of the Equal Rights Coaln, the Global Equaly Fund, and the UN LGBTI Core Group, Germany plays an important role advotg for lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, and tersex (LGBTI) rights beyond s borrs.

BETWEEN WORLD WARS, GAY CULTURE FLOURISHED IN BERL

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. 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.

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.

GAY RIGHTS

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.

“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.

The Nazis ma more severe and imprisoned 10, 000 gay men (and some lbians, although they were not vered by Paragraph 175) ncentratn mps, where they were marked wh the pk triangle—and a majory died. 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. REUTERS/Marton Mon/File Photo Acquire Licensg RightsBUDAPEST, July 14 (Rters) - The embassi of the Uned Stat, Germany and 36 other untri urged Hungary's ernment to protect the rights of LGBT people and scrap laws that discrimate agast them a statement ahead of Budapt's Pri march on Mister Viktor Orban's ernment promot a strongly Christian-nservative agenda and passed a law 2021 banng the "display and promotn of homosexualy" among unr-18s, spe cricism om rights groups and the European a jot statement, the embassi and about 10 cultural stutns cludg the Brish Council, the Estonian Instute and Instut Français said they supported Saturday's event which is expected to draw thoands to downtown Budapt.

More specifilly, 's about gay Berl, the gay subculture that flourished Berl the era between World War I and the rise of the Nazis, when there were nightclubs and barets that tered to a gay clientele, gay-themed theater and films and gay-oriented publitns that were sold at ksks.

They advertised all sorts of events, different kds of venu and they also attracted advertisers who were really appealg to a gay and lbian nstuency, and that's also really startlg, I We asked you to suggt a performer, a sger, that we uld listen to to give some sense of the mic people were listeng to then at perhaps some of the gay clubs.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)CLAIRE WALDOFF: (Sgg German) That was Claire Waldoff, a song picked for by Robert Beachy, the thor of the new book "Gay Berl, " which is about the gay subculture Berl the 1920s and early '30s, jt before the Nazi rise to was the law regardg homosexualy the '20s and early '30s Berl? So was actually ma more dranian unr the Nazis 1935, and that remaed the law of the land Wt Germany until was fally reformed, startg the very-late So if homosexual acts were illegal Berl the '20s and early '30s, how did a gay subculture manage to flourish? And, of urse, people had nsensual sexual relatns private, so the law was difficult to what he fally end up dog - he cid that would be easier to simply observe and monor and, sence, keep tabs on spected homosexuals - spected vlators of the law - than to actually try to persecute them or prevent them om breakg the law.

And what this meant practice was that the police partment, startg the late-1880s, simply tolerated all kds of different, you uld say, public acmodatns, bars, f; eventually, large transvte balls, where obv homosexuals, or, at least, obvly spected homosexuals, uld ngregate and there was a kd of homoerotic aternizatn, you uld say, that was allowed Berl by the late 1880s, and this permted the growth of a whole work of different kds of bars and rtrants. It was somethg that really didn't exist the same way any other European Somethg really unual about how this law was enforced was that a partment lled the Department of Blackmail and Homosexualy was created to enforce the law. And so blackmail beme a huge the same police missner and then his succsors and really the entire police partment, regnized that the bigger problem was not homosexual nduct, but the way which the law self actually allowed for the practice of blackmail.

And the two, then, were always closely I thk a lot of the people that the Department of Blackmail and Homosexualy went after were prostut bee the partment, though I terpreted, didn't really want to go after, like, the middle class. And the assumptn, too, I thk, was that prostut who make money the sex tra were also willg to make money through blackmailg the people they were - who were payg them to have that leads to, like, a whole other chapter the story, which was that there was a lot of prostutn, male prostut, gay Berl at the time.

" And 's about how a gay subculture flourished Berl the 1920s and early '30s up until the rise of the Nazi we were talkg about the law - the anti-gay law Berl - which ma gay sex illegal.

So there were actually lots and lots of, we uld say, gay Nazi sympathizers who joed the SA, who joed the party, who were members of the movement, so to speak, and who also believed that bee of this figurehead, they would never actually be this was more or ls the se for the first year and a half until the summer of 1934. And so women were also, you know, of urse targeted and nsired absolutely send-class So what's the timatn of how many gay people were imprisoned durg the Third Reich, and how many died ncentratn mps and prisons?

And of urse, the late '70s to the '80s, the timat were much, much higher but they've sort of been pegged down as people have done more rearch and done some actual archival work to tablish those Durg the 1920s and the early 1930s, there were movements to try to liberalize the anti-gay law or to elimate the anti-gay law. And his theori had this credible cultural fluence, and a lot of people - people like Thomas Mann wrote, jt passg, how pervasive the ias about the Mannerbund actually anyway, what out of is this ia that there are actually really, really sort of virile, natnalist and, as you put , proto-fascist dividuals who also happen to be homosexual.