File:Germany Gay - Wikimedia Commons

Contents:

• FILE:GERMANY GAY
• THE PK TRIANGLE: FROM NAZI LABEL TO SYMBOL OF GAY PRI
• WHAT EXACTLY IS THE GAY MEN’S PRI FLAG, AND WHAT DO IT MEAN?

FILE:GERMANY GAY

English: SVG remake of Germany flag acrdg to the Natnal Gay Flags of the World. Before the pk triangle beme a worldwi symbol of gay power and pri, was tend as a badge of shame.

In Nazi Germany, a downward-potg pk triangle was sewn onto the shirts of gay men ncentratn mps—to intify and further humanize them. Homosexualy was technilly ma illegal Germany 1871, but was rarely enforced until the Nazi Party took power 1933. 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.

Jt as Jews were forced to intify themselv wh yellow stars, gay men ncentratn mps had to wear a large pk triangle. )At 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 ImagHomosexual prisoners at the ncentratn mp at Sachsenhsen, Germany, wearg pk triangl on their uniforms on December 19, timated 65 percent of gay men ncentratn mps died between 1933 and 1945.

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

Even after World War II, both East and Wt Germany upheld the untry’s anti-gay law, and many gays remaed rcerated until the early 1970s.

)The early 1970s was also when the gay rights movement began to emerge Germany. In 1972, The Men wh the Pk Triangle, the first tobgraphy of a gay ncentratn mp survivor, was published.

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE GAY MEN’S PRI FLAG, AND WHAT DO IT MEAN?

The next year, post-war Germany’s first gay rights anizatn, Homosexuelle Aktn Wtberl (HAW), reclaimed the pk triangle as a symbol of liberatn. 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.

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. Banra gay. Germany Gay.

I was speakg to someone I’m iends wh onle and both of grew up wh a fair amount of German our liv; both of are cur (and me as a gay man) if there is any mon lgbt slang the German language like there is English? One such flag is the Gay Men’s Pri Flag – a flag you might already have seen flown at any number of pri ftivals around the world, om New Orleans to Montreal…and everywhere between!