By: Andromeda Pearson

Tracing many of the roots of contemporary, Western queer history will inevitably take you back to Germany. From the queer urban scenes at the time to the scientific advancements made in studies of sexuality and gender identity and the vibrant and dynamic homosexual emancipation movement which formed, the effects of queer German history have rippled out into modern-day terminology, understandings of sex and gender identity, stereotypes, and queer identities. So how did this movement begin?

The origins of the first homosexual movement lie in the early sexological movement of the mid-1800s. Sexology was an intellectual movement which attempted to examine sexuality and gender identity as scientific phenomena. During the mid-1800s there was an ever increasing amount of academic and scientific debates and writings on the nature of homosexuality. Early writings theorized that homosexuality was a degeneracy, a perversion, or a mental illness, however, it was around this time that many writers, academics, and scientists began to come to the conclusion that homosexuality was natural and biological. 

One of these writers was Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, who helped form the concept of sexual identity as an innate human characteristic through his writings and theories. He created the terminology Uranian or Urning to refer to men who loved other men, and Urninden to refer to women who loved other women. This terminology was more widely utilized by homosexuals during the early days of the homosexual emancipation movement as there was little other terminology to choose from, however, it quickly began to fade out of popular use, though was known and understood by many queer individuals up until the end of the Weimar period. Other writers, activists, and scientists of the time who helped contribute to this growing conversation included Johann Ludwig Casper, Claude Francois Lallemande, and Richard von Krafft-Ebbing. The issue that arose with much of the early sexological movement was that many early sexological theories viewed homosexuality as a form of “gender deviance” or even a “third sex.” The linkage of homosexuality with intersexuality or effeminacy these theories created was largely responsible for the development and reinforcement of homosexual men as effeminate, a stereotype which persists today. It was in this landscape that one of the most influential and well-known figures of the homosexual movement, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, emerged and began to develop his own theories on sexuality and gender identity. 

Magnus Hirschfeld was born in 1868 in the German city of Kolberg. In 1887, Hirschfeld began his university studies, soon committing to medicine, and by 1892 he had become a doctor. In 1896 he found himself back in Berlin, about to take up a new medical practice. It isn’t clear when Hirschfeld realized he was a homosexual. He never publicly admitted to it, though his political involvement and long-term partner, Karl Giese, would make it an open secret by the turn of the century. It’s probably safe to assume that he understood his sexuality to an extent by the time he arrived back in Berlin. 

Magnus Hirschfeld was deeply affected by the suicide of one of his new patients. The man, an officer in the German army, had been pressured to get married, but on the eve of his wedding he shot himself in the head. The man bequeathed a number of his personal notes, papers, and drawings, along with a letter stating:

“The thought that you could contribute to [a future] when the German fatherland will think of us in more just terms, sweetens the hour of death.” 

Hirschfeld would be haunted by this loss, referring to it throughout his life as a catalyst which caused him to leave his practice to pursue justice through science, particularly through the field of sexology. 

Many of Hirschfeld’s predecessors viewed homosexuality as being pathological, pointing to it as a sign of mental illness or perversion. This is a view which persisted long past Hirschfeld’s time, with homosexuality still being categorized in the DSM as a psychiatric disorder up until 1974. Hirschfeld, however, proposed that a person could be born with characteristics which did not fit into heterosexual, binary categories.

This letter provoked Hirschfeld to write his first work about homosexuality, entitled Sappho and Socrates: How Can One Explain the Love of Men and Women for People of their Own Sex?. It was published with the help of Max Spohr – the owner of a publishing company in Leipzig who started to explore the market for publishing materials about homosexuality in 1893. The trial of Oscar Wilde, only a year prior, had caused much public discussion and Hirshfeld hoped that interjecting science into the debate would lead to some progress on legal treatment and public attitudes. This first work, Sappho and Socrates, was published under a pseudonym, however, by the following year he was ready to take a more public stance.

On May 15, 1897, Magnus Hirschfeld invited Max Spohr and Eduard Oberg to his home in the middle-class Berlin suburb of Charlottenburg. Together, they wrote the articles of association for the world’s first homosexual organization – the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. The first major product of this committee was the 1899 Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen, or the Yearbook for Sexual Intermediaries, which aimed to spread scientific research to carry out advocacy on behalf of sexual minorities. Appearing in annual editions for more than a quarter of a century, it totalled over 11,000 pages long. Within its pages, it claimed homosexuality to be natural, tracked the existence of homosexual identity throughout history, and mapped its contemporary presence. At first the group met in Hirschfeld’s apartment, but within a few years they had grown enough to justify renting rooms in the Prinz Albrecht, one of the city’s fanciest hotels. It pursued a wide range of activities, from promoting scientific research on homosexuality to combating prevailing social prejudices against it, and working on repealing the country’s sodomy law – Paragraph 175.  Soon the WhK was joined by other individuals and groups wanting to change the country’s attitudes on homosexuality and together they formed a vibrant and dynamic movement. 

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld’s first major individual publication on sexuality and gender identity was published in 1904. Berlins Drittes Geschlecht, or Berlin’s Third Sex, was formed from Hirschfeld’s time going out into society and actively participating in the lives of those he was writing about. It is a foundational text of modern gay and trans identity, and effectively gained the public’s sympathy for queer identities through its appeal to emotion. As Hirschfeld wrote about one Christmastime party he attended: 

“Many think about their shattered hopes, what they could have achieved if old prejudices had not hindered their progress, and others in respectable positions ponder the heavy lie they must live. Many think about their parents who are dead – or for whom they are dead – and all in deepest sorrow think of the woman they loved most of all and who loved them most of all – their mother.” 

Whilst notably concerned with documenting expressions of same-sex attraction, Berlin’s Third Sex also documented the lives of gender non-conforming people, leaving lives contrary to their assigned gender. Hirschfeld saw that the denial of their identity was leading them to depression and even suicide. One of Hirschfeld’s most profound contributions in this text was to acknowledge the existence and validity of transgender individuals.

In 1905 Hirschfeld published a new study entitled Sexual Transitions, which was based on his own observations as a physician on the differences between men and women. This work, filled with clinical photographs and sketches, made the arguments that “taken in very strong scientific terms, one is not able in this sense to speak of man and woman, but on the contrary only of people that are for the most part male or for the most part female.” The book gave visual examples of male bodies with rounded hips and female bodies with small breasts. It further developed Hirschfeld’s idea that we all begin life as one asexual creature, only then to develop various sexual characteristics after being exposed to hormones and physical maturation. Everyone experiences this development in unique ways, however, and consequently we all represent slightly different mixtures of these various sexual characteristics. To put it in other terms, there is no absolute male or absolute female. This is a concept that resembles our understanding of sex today. 

In 1909 Hirschfeld convinced local authorities in Berlin to experiment with “transvestite passes” which provided legal protection for his patients, allowing them to crossdress in public without being arrested for disorderly conduct or being harassed by the police in other ways. While making his case, he discovered that there was some public sympathy for these individuals since several books and newspaper reports had recently reported on the difficulties that they faced. 

Furthermore, in 1910 he coined the term transvestite in his work Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress, while offering the first major empirical study on the subject. During his study, Sexual Transitions, he had befriended a number of cross-dressers and argued that transvestitism was a variation distinct from homosexuality. He insisted that all gender characteristics and sexual variations had their root in biological development. He argued that this manifested itself in four distinct ways – which would become the basis for what is often considered his most important work, The Homosexuality of Men and Women, published in 1914. These manifestations, according to Hirschfeld, were the sex organs, sexual orientation, emotional characteristics, and secondary sexual characteristics such as voice and facial hair. Although we know today that gender is a social concept and is not distinctly naturalistic, as Hirschfeld argued, his theories still hold some ground in our understandings of sex and gender today.

Hirschfeld’s research was just one part of his life at this time. In the early years of the 20th century he found himself increasingly called upon as a witness in trials involving homosexuality. At the time, courts listened increasingly to the reports of psychiatrists and other professionals. Although he was not always able to get acquittals, he was often able to get reduced sentences on these cases. 

While not in court, he was working as chairman of the WhK, one of the main goals of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was to draft and circulate a petition for the repeal of the country’s sodomy law – Paragraph 175, gaining over 900 signatures by the time it was first presented to the Reichstag in 1898. While it found little support in Germany’s parliament, it continued circulating and by 1914 had received signatures from over 3,000 doctors, 750 university professors, and thousands of others. The signatures included such influential figures and prominent Germans of the time such as the scientist Albert Einstein, the writers Herman Hesse and Thomas Mann, poet Rainer Maria Rilfe, famous philosopher Martin Buber, the sexologist Kraft-Ebbing, and several prominent figures of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Though the petition was unsuccessful in overturning the law, it conveyed the magnitude of the rising gay rights movement in Berlin at the time. 

In 1919, with financial assistance from the government and aid from the Foundation for Scientific Sexual Research, Hirschfeld purchased a palatial mansion at the edge of Berlin’s Tiergarten. Working with a colleague, the psychiatrist Arthur Kronfeld, he established a cutting-edge facility for sexual science and medical assistance that by July had become fully operational. The Institute’s stated purpose was to be a place of “research, teaching, healing, and refuge.” In this building he would provide sex education, counseling, health clinics, advice on contraception, and research on gender and sexuality. 

As it had once belonged to a famous Berlin violinist, the villa was furnished in style. The institute was often regarded as an architectural gem, blurring the lines between professional and intimate living spaces. It was described as being “full of life everywhere” and as having a magisterial yet homely atmosphere. Christopher Isherwood, a famous gay British writer, had lunch at the institute and stated that, ““Their furniture was classic, pillared, garlanded, their marble massive, their curtains solemnly sculpted, their engravings grave.” Another visitor was surprised by the decor: “That–a scientific institute? No cold walls, no linoleum on the floors, no uncomfortable chairs and no smell of disinfectants. This is a private house: carpets, pictures on the wall, and nowhere a plate saying “No Entrance”. Seated next to the building was a house that Hirschfeld purchased in 1921 and remodeled so that it connected to the original site and served as the main entrance to the institute. Over the main entrance a sign stood with the inscription (In Latin) “Sacred to Love and Sorrow.”  The Institute for Sexology would gain widespread media attention for its groundbreaking research into sexuality and gender identity and as a provider of medical and psychological services. So much so that in 1928 lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow joined Hirschfeld for lunch at the Institute.

The building was spacious and finely decorated, but it was also full of people going about their business. The institute was staffed by four physicians and their assistants and it became a pioneer in offering sex counseling services, including marriage counseling, psychiatric therapy, sex education programs, and VD testing and treatment. Over the years, Hirschfeld had developed a method of therapy designed to guide queer patients towards self-acceptance and happiness, so naturally many queer individuals visited the clinic. In the first year of operations alone, over 1,800 consultations were given. Additionally, the doctors saw patients suffering from various endocrine dysfunctions, and even offered assistance to drug addicts and alcoholics. In 1920 the clinic carried out its first tests with artificial insemination. The doctors frequently took on legal cases, collecting evidence that would be presented in court and offered lectures on a variety of subjects including, psychoanalysis, sexual pathology, forensic sexology, and the physiology of sexual differences. 

At the Institute for Sexual Science, Magnus Hirschfeld and his associates would perform the first gender-affirming surgeries, housing famous patients such as Dora Richter and Lili Elbe. In 1920, Arthur Kronfeld began the first ever sex-reassignment surgery. Afraid that their twenty-three-year-old patient might commit suicide if it was not done, they performed the first male-to-female sex-reassignment surgery. It was often regarded as a homely place, and five trans women who had difficulty supporting themselves with work after surgery were employed at the institute. 

Rooms in the main building were set aside for use by Hirschfeld and his assistant, collaborator, and longtime lover, Karl Giese. This included Hirschfeld’s large consulting room with a desk and three huge windows that overlooked the balcony. Beside it was a comfortable salon with a grand piano and a statue of Icarus. Space was also allocated for the headquarters of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. 

Above all, the institute was dedicated to expanding knowledge about every aspect of sexuality – biological, sociological, ethnographic, and psychological. Rooms were set aside for laboratories used to carry out scientific research. Its halls would come to house an immense library and archive on sexuality and gender identity, gathered over many years and documenting protocols for male-to-female surgical transition as well as rare documents pertaining to the history of sexuality and gender identity. The institute’s library and archive housed some 20,000 volumes and over 30,000 photographs which attracted scientists from all over the world. For tourists, there was even a museum dedicated to the history and variety of sexuality. The Institute was widely respected and it was much more understood than it is today that the doctors speaking on the part of the patients had much more authority and experience behind their words.

Richard Oswald, an Austrian-Jewish director who had moved to Berlin shortly before the war broke out, started up his own film company in the city and quickly made a name for himself for covering morally or politically sensitive topics. At the beginning of 1919, he approached Hirschfeld with an idea for a film dealing with the topic of homosexuality. The Cinema Law was not yet on the agenda so Different from the Rest (Anders als die Andern) was filmed in the first months of the year and then released on May 24th, 1919. It premiered at the Apollo Theater, one of Berlin’s largest cinema houses. It starred Conrad Viedt, best known for his role as the Nazi officer Major Stasser in the 1942 Hollywood film Casablanca.  Viedt played the violinist, Pall Korner who falls in love with one of his music students, thereby exposing himself to blackmail and eventually committing suicide. The plot of the film offered Magnus Hirschfeld an opportunity to make an appearance in which he lectured the audience on the nature and unfortunate fate of “sexual intermediaries”. In case the audience had missed the message, the film ended with an image of Paragraph 175 being penciled out. It generated an enormous public debate on the topic. After being premiered in Berlin, it was distributed widely in Germany and abroad. After the passing of the 1920 Cinema Law, the review board banned the film from distribution in August – it could still be shown to scientists and other specialists, but was no longer available to the public. By this point it had become an enormous box-office hit and had achieved the critical goal of getting people to talk about the issue. In recent years the film has been recovered and is available to watch in its entirety on YouTube. 

Hirschfeld continued to be active in trying to use scientific research for legal reform. In September 1921, he organized a major sexological conference in Berlin. The First International Congress for Sex Reform on the Basis of Sexual Science brought together prominent doctors and academics from all around the world. The congress would be repeated in 1928 at Copenhagen at which Hirschfeld helped establish the World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR) and he would share a position on the executive board. The program advocated for the liberalization of marriage laws, free access to contraception, repeal of laws against homosexuality, and toleration of nonmarital sexual relationships. Worth noting is that the organization’s claim to be a world organization was quite exaggerated as there were very few members who did not herald from Germany or England.  By the early 1930s it held over 190,000 members who would lay the groundwork for international cooperation among activists interested in sexual issues.

As previously mentioned, Hirschfeld coined the term transvestite in 1910. And in 1923 he coined the term “transsexual” in his work Die Intersexuelle Konstitution, or The Intersexual Constitution, however this terminology would not enter wider use until his American colleague Harry Benjamin’s use of it in his work The Transssexual Phenomenon, published in 1966 and the word “transsexual” then came to primarily indicate those who accessed medical transition: using hormones and/or surgery to change their physical appearance to match that of the gender they identified as, however, Hirschfeld had a different understanding of this terminology which was lost in translation. As Katie Sutton observes, “This term was understood in a Hirschfeldian sense as going beyond cross-dressing to encompass other aspects of gender identity that would today be understood under the banner of ‘transgender.’” Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld actually understood and intended for the terms  “transvestite” and “transsexual” to cover a broad range of trans identities including those who transitioned medically, socially, and people who changed their gender expression some but not all of the time. He believed trans people to be acting “in accordance with their nature,” rather than against it, and that people may be born with a nature contrary to their assigned gender. He believed that in cases where the desire to live as the opposite sex was strong, that science should provide a means of transition. One soldier Hirschfeld had been working with described wearing women’s clothing as the chance “to be a human being at least for a moment.” Although his understanding of trans identities is still outdated in terms of our understandings of these today, his definitions and terminology more closely resemble our understanding of transness today and it would take many decades for modern sexological work and understandings, such as the work of Harry Benjamin, to catch up to the concepts and terminology which Hirshfeld established in the early 1900s.  

An important and rather controversial topic to cover involving Hirschfeld’s work is that eugenics was a recurring theme in Hirschfeld’s work in the 1920s. These days, eugenics is connected with the worst kinds of racism and cannot be discussed without thinking of Nazi style-breeding or forced sterilization. The prevalence of it within the homosexual emancipation movement could easily be read as laying the scientific and ethical groundwork for Nazi brutality. And it’s true that while still enlightened progressives by the standard of their age, Hirschfeld and his coworkers were still trapped with a eugenic and biological framework. As Paul Windling states, “eugenics did not necessarily point the way to Nazi racism” but it is still inherently “authoritarian in that it offered the state and profession unlimited power to eradicate disease and improve the health of future generations.” The idea that humanity could take charge of its evolution through an application of science and medicine was not entirely uncommon at the time. Hirschfeld’s interest in eugenics was very typical of middle-class doctors, sexologists, and participants in the broader sex reform movement. For their part, many sex reformers saw eugenics as intricately caught up in the reforms they hoped to make, largely advocating for free access to birth control, legalized abortion, widely available sex education, and sometimes, when necessary, sterilization. Hirschfeld was a firm believer in the power of modern scientific research and medical intervention to make life better, and eugenics seemed to make a lot of sense from this perspective. Unlike some sexologists, he did not see homosexuality as a sign of degeneracy and so eugenic methods were not needed to weed out this natural variation of biology. His brand of eugenics had very little in common with that practiced by the Nazis. He resisted the calls of some physicians for state-operated marriage bureaus that would investigate the moral, social, and family background of individuals before they were wed, which he thought to be too intrusive. As Larie Marhoefer writes, “Historians have concluded, rightly, that ideas about degeneration and support for eugenics within the homosexual emancipation movement did not pave the way for Nazi programs.” and that “sex reform and social medicine underwent a definitive and irrevocable break in 1933”, evidenced by the destruction of everything Hirschfeld worked for after the Nazi takeover. So, while eugenics was a recurring theme in Hirschfeld’s work in the 1920s, it did not lay the groundwork for the Nazi’s brand of eugenics and the inhumane programs they created during the span of their regime. While still an aspect of his work worthy of criticism, due to its authoritarian nature, it’s important to acknowledge that his brand of eugenics is not highly linked to the popular understanding of it today that has been so ingrained with the mark of Nazism on history and the use of this field of study to carry out racist and inhumane programs. 

A dark shadow was on the horizon of Hirschfeld’s life and work as the Nazi Party began to gain popularity and power. We’ll discuss the Nazi rise to power, suppression, and persecution of queer people in more detail in a future video, this section of the video will merely focus on the way in which this affected Hirschfeld’s life and work. On May 6, 1933 the Nazis seized and ransacked Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. Hitler youth, students, and soldiers participated in the destruction and, in the first and largest of Nazi book burnings, they burned the institute’s library and later its archive of over 20,000 books, several of which were rare documents which helped provide a historiography of sexuality and of gender non-conforming people. This event would be recorded and photographed, being exhibited as one of the oppressive events of the Nazi regime, and the infamous photo of this event is frequently included in history books, though it has often been decontextualized and it is not acknowledged that these photos exhibit an institute that is often regarded as the world’s first trans clinic and that was monumental in advancing scientific research and public understanding of sexuality and gender identity. 

After the attack on the Institute, the Nazis continued their persecution of queerness by expanding and enforcing legislation that criminalized homosexuality. Fortunately, Magnus Hirschfeld had been away on an international speaking tour at the time of the attack. Karl Giese, Hirschfeld’s partner, joined Hirschfeld and his protege, Li Shiu Tong, in Paris. Hirschfeld continued his life’s work and they had hopes of rebuilding the institute, but these were never successful as Magnus Hirschfeld died of a sudden stroke in 1935, just weeks before Paragraph 175 was redrafted to prohibit all forms of perceived homosexual contact in Germany.

Despite the destruction of much of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld’s life’s work in the raid on the Institute and subsequent Nazi book burning, Hirschfeld has still left a monumental impression on the history of understandings of sexuality and gender identity and the lives of queer individuals. His work would provide the basis for modern understandings of sexuality and gender identity, and although these understandings would take many decades to match and then surpass Hirschfeld’s understandings of these, his work still provided the first steps in the foundation of our understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality today.

One figure who emerged within both the women’s movement and the homosexual movement was Johanna Elberskirchen, who became the first female member of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, or WhK. She was a good example of the emerging concept of the “New Woman” which was becoming a topic of much public discussion and political debate in Germany and abroad at the end of the century. While in Bonn, Elberskirchen wrote several books on women’s emancipation and its relationship to socialism and sexual issues. Her work to cause the biggest stir was The Love of the Third Sex which was published by Max Spohr’s press in 1904. It argued that the existence of homosexuality in many different cultures across the world and at every point in human history suggested that it was a fully naturally occurring phenomenon. 

Prior to the term “third sex” being used to refer to homosexuals, it had primarily been used in relation to the emerging concept of the “New Woman.” So where did this concept of the “New Woman” emerge from? Beginning in the 1880s, a number of women moved to Zurich to attend the university there. A number of authors and journalists who were hostile to these women’s ambitions started publishing pieces which branded them as asexual hermaphrodites. These students were portrayed as unattractive, cigarette-smoking radicals, and their rejection of marriage in favor of study branded them as social outsiders.

Many of these Germans were anxious about the emerging stereotype and did what they could to maintain respectability as they pursued their studies. They could not entirely help contributing to the stereotype, however, as they had to avoid and guard against the sexual advances of male students and professors. Additionally, wanting to be taken seriously as students and intellectuals, female students consciously created personae which took on more masculine stereotypes in an attempt to receive the respect and seriousness addressed to male students and intellectuals. It was only after the 1900s that the term “third sex” began to be applied to homosexuals regularly. 

It is important to acknowledge, however, the significance of the women’s movement and the emergence of the so-called New Woman around the turn of the century to the development of a lesbian identity. The ramifications of change in gender norms and the relationships between men and women was instrumental in allowing for the foundation of lesbian relationships and identities. Not all feminists or New Women were lesbians, of course, but women who loved other women could feel sufficiently emboldened by these social changes to dare to lead a life independent of traditional values of husband and family. 

The attention that sexology received over the next decade offered a new perspective on the lives, work, and relationships of independent women. By this time there were already small groups of independent women that were fostering high levels of intimacy among their members and offering opportunities for couples to pair off into longer relationships. Some of these women even began experimenting with masculine dress and behavior, such as smoking cigarettes and cutting one’s hair short.

The dynamic interactions between the social ramifications of the women’s movement, sexology, and the homosexual movement were influential in creating the conditions that allowed for the creation of lesbian relationships and identity. As Lillian Faderman observed in her study, Surpassing the Love of Men, that “Love between women could take on a new shape in the late nineteenth century because the feminist movement succeeded both in opening new jobs for women, which would allow them independence, and in creating a support group so that they would not feel isolated and outcast when they claimed their independence.” 

These movements were not entirely disconnected, however. Johanna Elberskirchen is just one example of an activist and writer who blurred the lines between these two movements. These alliances between the women’s movement and the homosexual movement were strengthened by a number of scandals around the turn of the century which created a political atmosphere in which the government seriously considered sharpening the law against homosexuality for a time. To get through this difficult period, homosexual activists built alliances with other movements such as the feminist movement. One example of the ties between these movements is present within the Institute for Sexual Science, discussed in the previous detail, as rooms within the institute were not merely allocated for the advancement of the homosexual movement, but some rooms were also given over to feminist activities. 

In these ways, the feminist and homosexual movements of the early 1900s were largely responsible for the foundation of modern lesbian identity, and the ties between these movements which emerged around the turn of the century would create a dynamic, interactive atmosphere for the activism of the time, that served to embolden both movements. 

In Berlin, lesbians could also be found in some of the bars devoted mostly to gay men. Magnus Hirshfeld remembered seeing lesbian couples frequently in the Bulowkasino. They were also often seen in the larger clubs of the 1920s, such as the Topp and the Eldorado. The Dorian Gray, one of the oldest known gay clubs of Weimar-era Berlin, even had a special night set aside for women. By the turn of the century, there were also a handful of exclusively lesbian bars in the city. These numbers exploded after the first world war, however, and by the mid-1920s there were over fifty of them spread out across Berlin. The atmosphere of these bars were generally refined, with soft lighting and sentimental music playing in the background. One of the most famous was Chez ma Belle Soeur, decorated in Greek style frescoes and furnished with private booths, where couples could take refuge behind curtains. Many of the locals, however, thought this to be mostly a showplace for tourists, and they preferred quieter and more subdued clubs such as the Maly and Jugel. At the Maly and Jugel, thick black curtains blocked the view of the interior from the street, which was decorated with comfortable armchairs to sit on, a tasteful mix of gray and garnet red, and a piano for entertainment. 

Many of the lesbian bars were segregated somewhat by class. There was the exclusive Club Monbijou West, open only by invitation, and the elegant Pyramid, full of artists and celebrities. There were also bars for older patrons, cafes for prostitutes and their customers, and the working class Taverne. Many middle-class women were still quite worried about respectability in the 1920s, so advertisements for lesbian bars often went to great lengths to reassure their readers that they were “restrained and dignified.” 

There were also celebrations to be had for queer women. Lesbians could sometimes be found at male gay balls, and lesbian bars often held their own balls. These events were different from male gay balls in terms of the costuming and in their frequent exclusion of men entirely. The most exclusive ball in the prewar period was a private party, open only to those with an invitation, arranged by a prominent Berlin lady. Normally it took place in the ballroom of one of the city’s grand hotels. Beginning at eight in the evening, couples would arrive dressed as monks, sailors, clowns, Boes, Japanese geishas, bakers, and farmhands. After sitting down to eat at tables lined with flowers, the director, dressed in a “gay, velvet jacket” would greet the guests and give a small speech. After dinner was over, the tables would be put away and the orchestra would begin playing waltzes and other lively dancing music, inviting couples to dance through the night. In a nearby room others would drink, make toasts, and listen to singing. One female participant remarked:

“No bad moods cloud the universal joy, including those of the last woman participants who leave the place at the dawn’s early night into the cold, February morning. It is a place where among people who feel the same way, they could dream for a few hours about being who they are inside.”

In addition to having places to meet, there were also several lesbian publications at the time. Friedrich Radszuweit, founder of the BfM, started his own magazine in early 1923 – The Pages for Human Rights. In 1924 he started new titles to target specific audiences: In September, he established The Girlfriend (Die Freundin), the first magazine to aim specifically at lesbians. There was also an attempt to establish an independent lesbian magazine titled The Pages of Ideal Female Friendship (Blatter Idealer Frauenfreundschaft). The magazine’s founder, Selli Engler, hoped that it would kick start a new organization for women, the Ladies Club or Readers of the Pages of Ideal Female Friendship (Damen BIF Club). Both the magazine and the club proved short-lived but Engler went on to write many pieces for the other lesbian magazines during the rest of the decade. 

In 1928, a magazine addressing lesbians called The Love of Women (Frauenliebe) began coming out and it was soon followed by The Bachelor Girl (Garconne). Both magazines’ press runs were limited, however, due to heightening censorship laws at the time. 

Two prominent figures known by many lesbians across Germany at the time were Claire Waldoff and Lotte Hahm. Claire Waldoff was a prominent cabaret singer in Weimar-era Berlin and a regular at many of Berlin’s lesbian cafes and nightclubs. She got her start in 1908 at the Roland von Berlin, one of the most popular cabarets of the day. By the 1920s her name was widely known, to the point where she sometimes sang at multiple cabarets in a single night. Waldoff met her lifelong love, Olga von Roeder, during the First World War. They were both members of the Pyramid Ladies’ Club, which met regularly in one of the lesbian bars. In such tolerant crowds as these, she was very comfortable talking about her love for her “Olly.” Lotte Hahm was probably the most important lesbian leader in Weimar-era Berlin. Her image appeared frequently in the covers and advertisements of many of the lesbian magazines of the era, and she was generally shown sporting a short haircut and masculine clothing. Hahm was the owner of several lesbian bars in Weimar Germany and she also established a lesbian social club called the Violetta that held some four hundred members by 1926. It sponsored regular balls where women danced together to jazz music. Lotte Hahm saw herself not simply as a lesbian, but also as a transvestite, and in 1929 she helped establish a transvestite group for men and women called d’Eon. It is unclear the extent to which Hahm’s self-identification matches our understanding of trans identities today, however, her identification with and advocacy for transvestite individuals in Germany is just one example of the bonds which formed between the lesbian and transvestite communities of the time. 

Many of the chief attractions within the queer urban scene at the time were the transvestite venues. By far the most famous was the Eldorado, a nightclub whose festive atmosphere attracted not only queer people but artists, authors, celebrities, and tourists wanting to admire a piece of “decadent” Berlin or catch a glimpse of someone famous. The club also created coins with engravings of women dancing with women and men dancing with men which would be used to pay for dances. 

In Hannover, by the mid 1920s, the most popular gay nightclub in the city was the Sleeping Beauty, a transvestite cabaret with entertainment provided by Tilla and Resi.​ The tables each featured a private telephone, as the film Cabaret depicts, that could be used to call men sitting at neighboring tables to ask them to dance.

Lesbian magazines were different in that they self-consciously addressed a second audience; male transvestites, who were not necessarily assumed to be homosexual. ​They printed essays on transvestite issues that discussed both male and female varieties, included letters from male transvestite readers, who asked questions and contributed to ongoing discussions, and for a time, Girlfriend included a special supplement of transvestism, which in 1930 was briefly and unsuccessfully expanded into its own magazine – the Third Sex.​

Queer urban scenes were important as they were, and still are, spaces where queer identities coalesced. Across the gay and lesbian nightclubs, bars, and social organizations of Berlin and other German cities, people interested in queer relationships acquired a sense of belonging and were given an opportunity to perform their identities through the clothes they wore, the language they spoke, the stories they told, the songs they sang, and the people with whom they danced with. ​

The Weimar Republic became famous for its relative openness regarding sexuality. The queer scenes of Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and elsewhere contributed significantly to the country’s reputation for permissiveness. Germany’s gay scenes expanded at a steady pace, offering opportunities to establish relationships, fashion identities, and pursue political projects. For many observers, radical and conservative alike, Berlin’s gay scene epitomized a world in transition. Clubs full of men wearing powder and rouge as well as short-haired women dressed in tuxedos offered images of a world seemingly turned upside down. For much of Berlin’s queer population, this growing scene represented promise.​

During the economic explosion of the 1860s and early 1870s, the police were aware that certain bars and clubs were attracting groups of homosexuals, though not yet exclusively. During this era there were also the first reports of homosexual masquerade balls, initially organized informally among circles of interconnected friends, but formalized into regular events by the end of the century. Around 1880 the first bar to cater entirely to homosexuals opened. It was joined by many others over the next three decades, and there were nearly forty by the beginning of WW1.​

Berlin, in particular, was a hotspot for queer life. By the 1920s Berlin had acquired a spot in a global network of queer cities including Vienna, Paris, Rome, London, and New York. Hirschfeld estimated that between 90 and 100 gay bars could be found in the city by 1923.​ ​

There were larger clubs which offered singing, cabaret, and theater, whereas smaller ones focused more on giving queer people  a chance to mingle among themselves, perhaps providing a piano player to offer entertainment. As Hirschfeld stated:

“Piano players and singers, who are often called by feminine names, are generally popular and, like the waiters, who are often the partners of the owners, are smothered with compliments and friendly words by the guests.”​

Berlin’s various homosexual establishments became famous for the elaborate gay balls they would throw on regular occasions. On some nights, one could find more than one ball being held somewhere in the city. Although admittance tickets could be expensive, the events were still very well attended. The rooms began to fill as the evening approached midnight; some people were in suits or “fancy dress” but many were in costume. After two hours of parading and dancing, the time for coffee came. Long tables were pulled out, and everyone took a seat. Female impersonators danced and sang some humorous songs. And then the evening resumed as before, and everyone stayed until morning. ​

Berlin wasn’t the only queer urban scene in Germany with most major cities having an queer scene. One author described Hamburg as “the German city most troubled by Uranians,” estimating that every fourth man who walked along the main shopping street of the city was gay and another six bisexual. Although over-exaggerated, his statement conveys the queer nightlife present in the city. Some of the clubs in Hamburg included The King of Prussia, the Casino, the Tusculan, the Rhine God Restaurant and Café, and the Three Stars​. In Hannover, some of the clubs included the Ballhof, the Black Cat Café, the National Café, and a bar known on the streets as the “Gay Appetite.” ​In Cologne, clubs included The Dahlhaus Restaurant, the Nettesheim Casino, and the Sleeping Beauty, and in Dusseldorf clubs included the Tivoli, the Dammer,  the Restaurant Arcari, Mombour’s, the Lettmann, and the Little Corn Flower.​

By the end of the nineteenth century, however, most large cities had established homosexual squads (Homodezernate) that began to watch Germany’s gay scenes closely. ​Since at least the mid-nineteenth century, many criminal police units had kept lists of known homosexuals. Today these lists are often colloquially known as “pink lists,” but at the time they were called the pederast lists. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, these lists were formalized into extensive criminal files and rogues’ galleries of known homosexuals, all organized on index cards that included basic personal information and to which were attached pictures and fingerprints. ​

Queer spaces are not only composed of places for people to meet, but also of networks of people who maintain friendships and romantic relationships. ​In the early 20th century, these networks generally took the form of informal circles. They might meet in gay bars, but just as often they would see each other at neighborhood restaurants or at the home of a friend on pre-arranged days. These groups normally were comprised of 10-20 people, but occasionally as many as 60.​ They would gather for dinner or afternoon coffee or tea, hold socials or even dances in their homes, and arrange for summertime picnics and other kinds of group outings. ​Such circles were common in the gay scenes of Berlin and other German cities, though occasionally they would become formalized into clubs or associations​.

Around the turn of the century there was The Platen Society – a literary club made up of homosexual men – and the Lohengrin Club which was centered on a man in the wine business nicknamed “The Queen” who organized musical performances and occasionally theater for his friends. ​Some clubs were, on the face of it, clubs devoted to a particular pastime or interest, such as hiking clubs or patrons of the arts or music but were secretly entirely composed of homosexuals. ​Bowling clubs were an especially prominent feature of Berlin’s working-class lesbians according to Hirschfeld.​

The number of homosexual social clubs exploded after the conclusion of World War One and commonly took on names like the Club of Friends or the League of Friends.​ Friendship clubs were predominantly social societies that organized conversational meetings, dinners, parties, and celebrations, and soon included thousands of participants nationally.​ They generally did not neglect educational or political work, but at the core were centered on a feeling of community. ​By the mid 1920s, every major German city had at least one gay social club. ​

The pioneer of queer publishing in Germany was Karl Schultz. He established a new press in Berlin and published the first issue of Friendship in 1919.​ By its second week, Friendship was running advertisements for local gay and lesbian bars. ​Unfortunately, its publication run stopped in 1923 due to a combination of legal attacks, financial difficulties, and the hyperinflation of the time.

Friendship consciously addressed both gay men and lesbians from all social classes, appeared weekly, offered education, advice, and entertainment, they included short stories, essays, and poems, and readers were invited to write letters, engage in debates, and contribute pieces themselves. They were also given hints at how to find “like-minded” friends.​ This kind of format was common for queer publications of the time. 

Some other queer publications included The Pages for Human Rights (established in 1923), The Girlfriend (Die Freundin) which was established in 1924, The Friendship Paper (Das Freundschaftsblatt) in 1925, The Island (Die Insel)​ The New Friendship in 1928, and The Love of Women (Frauenliebe) and The Bachelor Girl (Garconne) in 1928.  ​There was also an attempt to establish an independent magazine for transvestites entitled The Third Sex (Das Dritte Geschlecht) in the early 1930s, although only four issues of this magazine appeared. ​These publications were widely available and commonly displayed and sold in newsstands alongside popular newspapers and publications of the day.

Queer Literature and Art

 

Romanticism was ever present in the art and literature that appeared in queer publications of the time. ​Many authors saw the countryside as a place for refuge, relaxation, and sexual discovery. ​A large number of the stories in the lesbian press, in particular, used natural settings.​ Most commonly, the characters were presented as fleeing the city, with its noise and monotonous daily routine. Escape from the routine and social conventions of civilization allowed new pleasures to be discovered, new forms of self to be explored, and new kinds of relationships to be established. ​

Tragic endings are common in Romantic literature, and they tended to haunt a large part of fiction dealing with homosexuality from this period. ​Death and suicide were useful for driving home the social criticism intended by the author. ​Tragic conclusions also generate pathos, in many of these worth death highlights the human dimension of simply living with emotions that are not widely shared. ​Additionally, this period saw the rise of sentimentality to Ancient Grecian and Roman times, with many artists taking on inspiration from the classic tragedies of these eras. Homosexual connections to the more permissive sexual freedoms and homoeroticism of Ancient Greece only increased the use of this inspiration in queer literature, popularizing the use of tragic endings. 

One film published in the era was the lesbian film Girls in Uniform (1931). Often, Romantic literature was a critique of the controlling and stifling tendencies of society, central to the most famous lesbian film of the Weimar era, Girls in Uniform (1931). ​The film tells the story of a sensitive young girl who is sent off to a boarding school. The atmosphere is oppressive. Much of the film focuses on the relationship which develops between Manuela and an attractive, sympathetic teacher. She eventually confesses her love for her teacher in front of the entire school. The headmistress cracks down on her and forbids anyone else to talk to her.​ In the original play, Yesterday and Today, performed in Berlin in 1931,  and written by Christa Winsole – who was in the process of coming out as a lesbian – Manuela throws herself down a staircase at the end, killing herself. She is narrowly saved by her school mates in the film version, but the effect of the near suicide can be felt.​ In the play, the teacher was played by Margarete Melzer, described as a “real butch type.”  There are shots of girls lying together in bed, bathed in the dappled light that suggests romance, and another scene lingers on the kisses that the teacher gives to the girls as she wishes them goodnight. Then there is the pronouncement made by the teacher after the suicide attempt, “What you call sins, I call the great spirit of love, which has a thousand forms.” 

Debates About Queer Terminology

Though the word homosexual was widely used by gay men and lesbians by the 1920s it was not clearly loved by everyone. Many hoped for new terminology to be found that emphasized love and relationships and which might make it easier to accept publicly.​ Some used homoerotic as an alternative, others used the terms “Male-male Eros” or “favored love.” ​One possibility was suggested by a popular cabaret tune from 1920 called “The Lavender Song” which used the term “different from the rest,” which had been used by Richard Oswald as the title of his 1919 film and would appear repeatedly in the magazines of the decade.​

The most common alternative to homosexual in the Weimar era, however, was friend. ​

Often used in the names of gay and lesbian clubs as well as by many magazines originating in this era – friend and friendship put the emphasis on the emotional and personal content of the relationship. ​People in the know might be able to infer what kind of relationship was meant by the context, whereas others ignorant of the double-meaning could innocently assume that an ordinary friendship was being mentioned.​

Other options included the sexological terms Uranian, Urning, and Third Sex, but many disfavored these due to their relation to intersexuality, and their strengthening of the stereotype of homosexual men as effeminate.​

Female homosexuals used the female form of friend (Freundin) as well as lesbian (Lesbianer) and occasionally Tribade, though this term was rare by the 1920s. ​Alternatively, they might refer to the Greek poet Sappho. ​Often used were the terms “lad” and “garconne,” implying a masculine appearance and loosely translatable as butch. ​In the literature of the 1920s, masculine lesbians might be described as a “Ben Hur type” and “Don Juans.” Feminine gender roles were less likely to be named, although sometimes the words “Madi” or “Dame” were used. ​Femme lesbians were often explicitly described rather than denoted in the friendship magazines of the day. ​

The SDP did not maintain control of the revolutionary situation for long. In March 1920, right-wing paramilitary units known as the Free Corps (Freikorps) populated with WWI veterans and anticommunist officers, tried to seize power during the Kapp Putsch. The perceived threat of socialism drove conservatives of many kinds into a new party: The German National People’s Party. ​Losing battles on the social and welfare fronts in the early 1920s, conservatives quickly rallied around the fight against so-called immorality. Anxieties about German birth rates, defense of the traditional family, policing of sexual morality and public decency, and the maintenance of laws against abortion and contraception were constant themes in the work done by these groups. ​For conservatives, the prominence of the gay scene and the growing strength of the sex reform movement was just one glaring sign of the decadence and degenerate behavior that democracy, military defeat, and revolution had allowed to run rampant. ​

Hirshfeld had already started to embody these fears for many Germans. For cultural conservatives and right-wing nationalists, he was not only a purveyor of toxic ideas about homosexual emancipation, but also a socialist and a Jew. ​Before a speaking engagement in Hamburg in 1920, German nationalists planted fire and stink bombs near the stage that were designed to go off during the talk. A warning was sent, and the police removed the explosives before anyone was hurt. ​Then, during a lecture in Munich, thugs sent by one of Germany’s largest anti-Semitic leagues tried to break up the proceedings. Security intervened but couldn’t entirely stop the cat calls or violence that erupted outside the hall.​ A year later, having returned to Munich to give a lecture on embryological research, he was attacked by a nationalist gang that spat in his face, beat him up, threw rocks at him, and left him bleeding and unconscious in the street. Hirschfeld was revived in the hospital. He had a fractured skull and a concussion but was still alive. The next day he had the strange experience of reading his obituary in the paper, which had falsely heard that he had died in the encounter. ​

After the Great Depression, the pragmatic alliances that had been at the heart of the Weimar political system began to break down, causing the government to slip towards more authoritarian solutions in the early 1930.​ By the summer of 1932, as the country descended into violence, Chancellor Franz von Papen went to work cracking down on what he considered some of the more “dangerous” aspects of Berlin’s nightlife. ​As part of this effort, Berlin’s police force carried out a series of raids against lesbian and gay bars and police announced that their intention was not to issue dance permits to homosexual nightclubs. ​Business was obviously hurt and some of the best-known establishments, including likely the Eldorado, had closed by the beginning of 1933. ​Then, in the course of 1932, the Nazi Party won large victories in the two parliamentary elections while simultaneously contributing to the breakdown of social order by clashing violently with communists in the country’s major cities. ​The nation’s president, though hesitant to put the country in the hands of Hitler, bowed to the pressure put on him by prominent men around the country and on January 30, 1933, appointed Hitler as chancellor. ​

As the Nazis crushed trade unions, arrested political enemies, burned books, and dissolved rival political parties in early 1933, the police where busy clearing the streets of “dangerous” characters and shutting down areas of “ill repute”. ​On February 23, 1933, the Prussian Ministry of the Interior issued an order to the Berlin police to shut down any remaining bars in the city “frequented solely or mainly by persons who indulge in unnatural sexual practices.” ​The order was soon circulated to other areas of the Reich. ​In Cologne, the police put pressure on the city’s gay bars, forcing nearly all of them to shut down or to change the “character” of the establishment. ​In Hannover, the police also acted aggressively in carrying out “Operation Clean Reich” which led to nearly all the city’s gay bars shutting their doors within the next year. ​And in Hamburg, the police increased the number of raids against homosexual meeting places. ​

Beginning in March 1933, German police departments began to confiscate any printed material dealing with homosexuality. They rounded up whatever products of the gay publishing industry had survived the heightened censorship laws of the late 1920s and pressured bookstores and newsstands to stop carrying these publications. Even more scientific works like those of Magnus Hirschfeld’s, were included on police and censorship lists. ​

On May 6, 1933, as a part of a large effort to purge the nation of “un-German” books, Nazi students and stormtroopers plundered the extensive library and archive of the Institute for Sexology. ​More that 12,000 books and many more photographs were carried away. The institute was destroyed, along with the offices of the WLSR. Most of the confiscated works of the institute, along with a large bust of Magnus Hirschfeld, were marched down to the now-infamous public book burning at Berlin’s Opernplatz on the night of May 10th. ​Hirschfeld was lucky to have been on a foreign speaking tour at the time and soon settled down in Paris with his long-term partner Karl Giese. They had hopes of restarting the Institute, though these were cut short when Hirshfeld died of sudden heart issues on May 6th, 1935.​

At least a few gay men and lesbians chose to go into exile, especially those with liberal or leftist leanings:​ The Mann family left Germany in 1933. Erika Mann and her partner, the actress Therese Giehse took a similar path. They both entered lavender marriages with British citizens (Erika to the poet W.H. Auden, and Therese to the writer John Hampton) to get British citizenship. Erika had already started writing anti-Nazi pieces in 1933 for her touring cabaret and during the next decade she took an increasingly prominent role in the fight against fascism, eventually as journalist for the BBC.​ Claire Waldoff, went into exile as well. Her career never reached the heights it had in the Weimar Era.

Given the assault on the gay scene and the homosexual movement, it can be surprising to learn that not all homosexuals found their lives greatly changed by the events of 1933. ​At first, the roundup of homosexuals concentrated on the most obvious members and manifestations of the gay scene – transvestites, male prostitutes, and leaders of the movement (who in many cases were also targeted for their socialist and Jewish backgrounds).​ Whatever security queer individuals in Germany had disappeared very quickly in the summer of 1934, after the Night of the Long Knives. ​

Ernst Rohm, leader of the paramilitary unit known as the SA, was gay. Since the mid-1920s there had been much talk about the high-ranking Nazi official who has been spotted in Berlin’s gay clubs and had dealings with male prostitutes in Munich.​ Rohm was charged with breaking Paragraph 175 and underwent trials in 1931 and 1932. At this time, Hitler was reported as rigorously defending Rohm, electing to ignore his sexuality due to his value to the Nazi regime.​ Some gay men felt reassured by Rohm’s presence in the party, but this security disappeared quickly in the summer of 1934, following the Night of the Long Knives. The chief target of this night was Ernst Rohm. The so-called Rohm Putsch was a fabrication of state propaganda, but Hitler was clearly worried about how revered Rohm was within the SA. ​In the days that followed, Hitler justified his ruthless removal of a one-time favorite by pointing to his homosexuality. His well known “unfortunate disposition” had supposedly become central to the “clique” that had formed in the SA. In the report released by the government and published in all the major papers, much was made of the fact that one SA leader, Edmund Heines, had been found in bed with another young man on the morning of his capture. ​

Homohostile propaganda became a recurring motif of the Nazi regime. ​Most importantly, as the country’s many institutions of policing were gradually concentrated under the power of SS chief Heinrich Himmler, homosexuality became a focus of new mechanisms of legal enforcement. With Himmler’s encouragement, the Nazi party used the Rohm Putsch as an opportunity to initiate a more extensive campaign against homosexuals in their own ranks and in the rest of German society.​

On June 28th, 1935, the Nazi government modified Paragraph 175 so that it applied not only to sexual acts that resembled coitus, but also to other sexual acts. Men could be prosecuted under the law “objectively when a general sense of shame is harmed and subjectively when there exists the lustful intention to excite either of the two men or a third party.” The courts also convicted men who masturbated simultaneously, or who simply embraced each other., thus requiring much less proof to convict someone.​ Additionally, Paragraph 175a was added, heightening the level of punishment that could be used in response to homosexuality.​

All homosexual cases began to be turned over to the Gestapo.​ As early as October 1934, a telegram had been sent out by the Gestapo to all police departments in every major German city, ordering them to create a list of all men who had ever been known to be active homosexuals. These lists were collected by the Special Commission for Homosexuality in Berlin, which in 1936, evolved into the “Reich Central for the Fight against Homosexuality and Abortions” and worked in close conjunction with the “Special Bureau II S” of the Gestapo.​ This group gradually took over the job of coordinating a Germany-wide crackdown on homosexual meeting places during 1936. ​In Germany, the number of indictments climbed from 948 in 1934, to 2,106 in 1935, and 5,320 in 1936. These trials were carried out in an expedited fashion, with those accused often having no defense.​ Men who were not jailed or thrown in a concentration camp could still prove vulnerable to the SS in other ways. One man remembers entire private companies being “cleansed” of gay men. Gathering names from men arrested in the raids, the SS would eventually visit the personnel offices of the firms that employed these men and demand that they be fired. ​

With the help of the new version of Paragraph 175 and extensive resources of the SS police state at its disposal, the Nazi regime incarcerated thousands of gay men between 1933 and 1945.​ An unknown number were compulsorily confined in psychiatric institutions. Many others were sentenced to years in prison where it was common practice to send convicted homosexuals to concentration camps using the “protective custody” power granted to Germany’s police by the Nazi state. Some convictions even resulted in some gay men being castrated.​ The police depended upon denunciation made by neighbors, relatives, coworkers, vengeful students or employees, and even angry or jealous boyfriends. Sometimes these came from random passersby who happened to oversee or overhear something they should not have, but there were cases of Hitler Youth or other self-appointed “morality guardians” who took it upon themselves to ensnare homosexuals in the traps they had laid. Once they were identified, the police had an arsenal of methods to produce evidence and even confessions. Often one arrest was turned into many. ​

People who spent time in concentration camps endured some of the worst conditions that people have had to endure. ​New prisoners faced one of the most difficult challenges of adapting to life in concentration camps: ​the perpetual filth and stench​, numerous strict prohibitions, rigid yet senseless routines​, random acts of violence and cruelty and an inability to control any aspect of their lives and more. ​Confronted with these conditions, many simply lost their will to live, which soon resulted in death; others who failed to adapt quickly enough were taken advantage of by other inmates or beaten for not conforming to the rules. Homosexuals were not systematically exterminated as Jewish people were, but that did not make survival easy. ​

There were a few survival strategies that people in concentration camps could use, but many homosexuals had a harder time taking advantage of these.​ One strategy was achieving a position of authority within camp, “conforming, not standing out, doing what was ordered to do, and in this way achieving the trust and favor of those who had power.” – Many homosexuals had a harder time taking advantage of this since they were distinguished by a pink triangle. The “175ers” as they were called, also endured mockery and cruelty by the SS guards and other inmates.​ Forming bonds with other prisoners – Rarely afforded any positions of authority and rarely had previous relationships to build on, falling victim to the diversity that existed within the group.​

The practice of isolating homosexual prisoners was introduced first in Dachau, then in the rest of the camp system. ​Isolated in separate barracks, they were often exposed to an escalating “lust to kill” which overcame the SS after 1939.​ They were also often given the most dangerous and exhausting work to be found in camp. ​Others were murdered personally by SS guards who enjoyed playing sadistic games with the prisoners; prisoners were hanged in the washroom in ways that made it look like suicides or were driven to suicide by various threats and torments. Heart attacks and lung inflammations were also induced with repeated “cold water attacks.”​

Additionally, during this period, infamous Nazi medical experiments were carried out on prisoners. This included the hormonal experiments aimed at “curing” homosexuals carried out in 1944 by the endocrinologist Carl Vaernet at Buchenwald, which had terrible consequences for the health of human subjects, experiments in Buchenwald with various treatments for typhus​, and research in Sachsenhausen with opiates and therapies for phosphorus wounds, which largely involved homosexual and Jewish inmates. 

Nazis were more obsessed and concerned with male homosexuals than lesbians:​ Nazis believed that the destruction of the women’s movement, the removal of women from positions of power, and the enrollment of women in party directed organizations would guide women to their “natural” destiny, procreation.​ Lesbians were affected by the dissolution of lesbian organizations, the destruction of the lesbian press, and the closure of lesbian nightclubs, cafes, and other meeting places. While not targeted as heavily for their sexualities, many lesbians’ lives were uprooted.​ 

In the twelve years that they ruled Germany, the Nazis arrested as many as 100,000 homosexuals, of whom around half served some time in prison. Thousands died and countless others had their lives destroyed. ​After the fall of Nazism, memories of the Nazi era persisted for some time and tended to reinforce prejudices about homosexuality well into the 1950s. In their propaganda and through their police persecution, reinforcing public associations between homosexuality and criminality and medical illness.

Many Nazi-era convictions were upheld by postwar courts. ​Those men who tried to register with the West German government as official victims of Nazism were at first all told that as “mere criminals” they did not qualify. ​Even after 1957, when a new law passed that allowed them to register, such severe limits were put on the process that only 14 ended up applying. ​In both East and West Germany, Paragraph 175 would persist. ​Well into the 1950s, Ernst Rohm would still be publicly cited as evidence that gay men were politically unreliable and tended towards conspiracies. Parents would remind their children of the neighborhood men who had disappeared one day as a warning of the fate that awaited homosexuals. ​

Very few of the men who survived the camps went on to tell their stories afterwards. ​The conservative climate of the 1950s was not at all hospitable to this. The main media outlets never discussed such topics, except by the vaguest allusions, until the second half of the 1960s, and even the few homosexual publications which appeared after 1945 rarely did so. A few men may have unburdened themselves to close friends or relatives, but most seemed to have agreed to tacitly leave such unpleasantness behind them. ​The memories of persecution were not entirely gone, however, and they would be revived as part of a larger New Left critique about the sexually repressive nature of life in the capitalist West. Despite these limitations, many queer people were hopeful that the postwar world would once again create the possibility for more tolerance and real legal change. ​

In April, 1949 a twenty-eight-year-old doctor and aspiring sexologist named Hans Giese founded the new Institute for Sexual Research. Unlike Hirschfeld’s Institute, this was a small psychiatric practice housed in his parent’s apartment building.​ He hoped to take the shoes of Hirshfeld, though never reached the heights of his achievement.​

Gay men and lesbians generally hoped for a return to the exciting time of the 1920s, and they were briefly encouraged by the political instability of 1946 and 47. ​However, these hopes were quickly stifled by the return to economic and political stability. Anxieties about marital stability, birth rates, and the mental state of Germans coming out of years of fascism and war paved the way for a sexually conservative culture to take shape across Germany. ​In the gay scene, there were individuals who tried to revive Hirshfeld’s old arguments. But signs were visible that a decade of abuse under National Socialism had taken a toll on the faith that many gay men and lesbians once attached to science. There was little belief about whether medical research could produce legal reform or end prejudice. ​

Many of the organizations of the time were “homophile” organizations – attempting ot win social acceptance through a strategy of respectability.​ The magazines associated with the homophile movement were similar in many ways to those of the 1920s. The Friends, The Island, The Path (Der Weg), The Fellows (Die Gefahrten), The Ring (Der Ring), and The Voice (Vox) all included a mix of essays, romantic stories, poems, pictures, and personal ads. Only Humanitas stood out as something different, being more serious and political. Readers who were old enough to remember the 1920s would have found much to make them nostalgic. Many of these magazines were short-lived, however.​

1969 was an important turning point when it came to gay and lesbian politics. ​Gay student groups emerged in the universities. Young radicals, inspired by student activism and the news of the Stonewall Riots in New York found themselves energized. ​They championed a new gay liberation movement in the 1970s to push for gay pride, fight for gay rights, and build community infrastructure. ​Lesbian activism also reemerged as a powerful political current, although it became much more closely tied with the feminist movement than it ever had been at the turn of the century. ​

In both East and West Germany, the politics of memory became an increasingly important focus for gay and lesbian activists by the 1980s.​ In West Germany, many historians connected with the gay liberation movement began to do work on gay and lesbian history. Understanding the persecution of homosexuals under Nazism became an especially important aspect of this work with the pink triangle increasingly being used by gay liberation activists as an important symbol of collective identity and a reminder of the dangers of remaining silent in the face of oppression. ​Memorials were constructed at the sites of many of the concentration camps in memory of these victims. ​

During the 1990s many radical activists carrying on the legacy of the 1990s began to watch with some concern as the impetus for throughgoing social change began to fade from the movement. ​The politics of respectability began to return to the movement.​ The fight for gay marriage which in Germany had its first steps towards success with the Life Partnership Law of 2001 has been the most visible aspect of this movement. ​A set of criminalizing and pathologizing stereotypes have gradually been replaced by affirmative representations, but in Germany and worldwide there is still much progress to be made. ​

Sources for Further Research: 

• “Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity” – Museum of Jewish Heritage: https://mjhnyc.org/blog/gay-berlin-birthplace-of-a-modern-identity/
• Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity by Robert Beachy
• Branded by the Pink Triangle by Ken Setterington
• “Paragraph 175 and the Nazi Campaign Against Homosexuality” – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/paragraph-175-and-the-nazi-campaign-against-homosexuality
• “Between World Wars, Gay Culture Flourished in Berlin” – Author Interview with Robert Beachy: https://www.npr.org/2014/12/17/371424790/between-world-wars-gay-culture-flourished-in-berlin
• Queer Identities and Politics in Germany: A History 1880-1945 by Clayton J. Whisnant