The Pk Triangle: From Nazi Label to Symbol of Gay Pri | HISTORY

Contents:

• THE PK TRIANGLE: FROM NAZI LABEL TO SYMBOL OF GAY PRI
• ERNST RöHM, THE HIGHT-RANKG GAY NAZI
• THE NAZIS TOLERATED GAYS. THEN EVERYTHG CHANGED
• GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME - PHOTOGRAPHS
• GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME

THE PK TRIANGLE: FROM NAZI LABEL TO SYMBOL OF GAY PRI

And the fact that was almost impossible to nvict anyone unls he nfsed to such a crime urt meant that police jt kept a watchful eye on gay bars and events, and Germany end up beg home to a vibrant gay muny. Historian Robert Beachy argu that, ironilly, the law spurred scientific tert the study of sexual preferenc, and that rearch tend to enurage a more scientific unrstandg of human sexualy, which further allowed the ia of gay rights to flourish. The efforts only creased after the Night of the Long Kniv, the 1934 purge of Nazi lears who were acced of tryg to overthrow Hler; they clud Storm Troopers lear Ernst Röhm, whom the SS murred, later cg his homosexualy as jtifitn for his murr.

As one of the USHMM’s curators has poted out, even as the Allied powers refully worked to scb Nazism om Germany, they left that part alone — perhaps bee they had anti-gay and anti-sodomy laws of their own. The first reference to pk triangl TIME also appeared that year, a story about gay-rights activists Miami who attached the symbols to their cloth as a show of solidary while prottg a vote to repeal a law protectg gay people om hog discrimatn.

ERNST RöHM, THE HIGHT-RANKG GAY NAZI

In 1979, Mart Sherman’s play Bent, spired by Heger’s memoir, opened on Broadway; the play, one of the characters tras his pk triangle for a yellow star, “which giv him preferential treatment over the homosexuals, ” as TIME’s review put . The activists who formed the anizatn ACT-UP to raise awarens about this public health crisis cid to e the pk triangle as a symbol of their mpaign and allud to s history when they clared, their manifto, that “silence about the opprsn and annihilatn of gay people, then and now, mt be broken as a matter of our survival.

” Three months later, the German parliament voted unanimoly to pardon gay men nvicted of homosexualy durg World War II, awardg €3, 000 to the 5, 000 men still livg, and €1, 500 for each year they were imprisoned. As part of their missn to racially and culturally “purify” Germany, the Nazis arrted thoands of LGBT dividuals, mostly gay men, whom they viewed as Uned Stat Holot Memorial Mm timat 100, 000 gay men were arrted and between 5, 000 and 15, 000 were placed ncentratn mps.

)Corbis/Getty ImagHomosexual prisoners at the ncentratn mp at Sachsenhsen, Germany, wearg pk triangl on their uniforms on December 19, the mps, gay men were treated pecially harshly, by guards and fellow prisoners alike. “There was no solidary for the homosexual prisoners; they belonged to the lowt ste, ” Pierre Seel, a gay Holot survivor, wrote his memoir I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi timated 65 percent of gay men ncentratn mps died between 1933 and 1945. Horac Villalobos/Corbis/Getty ImagMemorial plaqu for homosexuals, Jehovah's Wns and Wehrmacht serters are placed where once stood one of the molished barracks Buchenwald ncentratn mp near Weimar, Germany.

THE NAZIS TOLERATED GAYS. THEN EVERYTHG CHANGED

In 1986, six New York Cy activists created a poster wh the words SILENCE = DEATH and a bright pk upward-facg triangle, meant to ll attentn to the AIDs crisis that was cimatg populatns of gay men across the untry. He was received that day wh meras, bouquets of flowers, and a greetg om the openly gay former mayor of Berl, Kls seven s earlier, Brazda survived a spell Buchenwald, the ncentratn mp to which he was sent havg twice been arrted for vlatg Paragraph 175, the German law prohibg male homosexual activy. Published 2016, Whisnant’s book subverts the notn that the only queer people targeted durg the Third Reich were gay men, suggtg stead that the Nazi party’s broar terpretatn of Paragraph 175 meant that a small portn of terned dividuals were what we today would ll genr-nonnformg or trans.

GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME - PHOTOGRAPHS

What’s more, Whisnant pots out that while lbian women were not necsarily arrted bee of their sexualy, that is neher to say that some lbian women did not end up ncentratn mps, nor that the homophobia of the time didn’t impact them more broadly. ”Nazi-era propaganda, like this 1933 electn poster, often prented an ialized, homoerotic-tged view of ArchiveWhatever illn of acceptance queer members of the Nazi party might have felt the early 1930s vanished the aftermath of a pivotal event lled The Night of the Long Kniv.

Around 15, 000 gay people were sent to ncentratn mps, where some were experimented upon bizarre efforts to fd a “cure” for sexual orientatn, a forhadowg of Amerin psychologil and later fundamentalist efforts to try the same thg.

GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME

Ernst Röhm, for a time arguably the send most powerful Nazi lear, was gay—as were several senr figur his paraary anizatn, the Sturmabteilung (SA) Vllet/Getty ImagBeno Msoli, undated (cir 1930s)In the postwar perd, Michael Kühnen, a proment German neo-Nazi who died of AIDS, noted that homosexuals were “pecially well-sued for our task, bee they do not want ti to wife, children and fay. The Atrian far-right lear Jörg Hair, a married fay man, died a dnk-drivg accint on his way home om a gay bar, while the most famo book by the French Natnal Front supporter Rend Cam is Tricks, a chronicle of his one-night stands wh men.

A ntemporary Amerin figure who has married a macho gay male inty wh ultra-reactnary polics is Jack Donovan, a neo-pagan advote of “anarcho-fascism” and a lear of the Wolv of Vland, a Norse revivalist “tribe” whose members gather forts to smear mud on themselv and sacrifice animals. ” Donovan’s disda for effemacy did not, however, prevent him om jog the self-scribed “faggot” Milo Yiannopoulos a 2016 edn of the right-wg gadfly’s Brebart-hosted podst to discs “their rol as gay provotrs.

O’Meara, thor of The Homo & the Negro, which, acrdg to s publisher, “argu that the Far Right nnot effectively fend Wtern civilizatn unls checks s premis about homosexualy and non-sexual forms of male bondg, which are unrmed not jt by liberals and femists, but also by Juo-Christian ‘fay valu’ advot. Although the figur have occupied, to a il extent, extreme pol on the spectm of gay male inty, om fey to butch, what they have mon is a llo disregard for those whom they nsir their social, physil, tellectual, racial, or cultural ferrs.

Dpe this fairly obv empiril tth, fascism’s flourishg predomantly male is has long led mentators to pos that there is an trsic homoeroticism fascism’s veneratn of masculy and rrpondg disda for femy, even that there is somethg homosexual about fascism self.

” While “left-wg movements have tend to be unisex, and asexual their imagery, ” fascist inography holds a particular allure for gay men, she wrote, as “extreme right-wg movements, however puranil and reprsive the reali they her , have an erotic surface” that ializ the male an erotic attractn to policized masculy exists among only a small portn of right-wgers who happen to be gay. The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hler Terror, a Communist-produced tract that was translated to two dozen languag, alleged that the Dutchman found guilty of burng down the German parliament 1933, Mar van r Lubbe, was gay—a “va, publicy-seekg tool” of “homosexual SA lears.