German sex gay
Gay people
Lesbian, gay and transgender life in Germany began to thrive at the beginning of the 20th century. Berlin in particular was one of the most liberal cities in Europe with a number of lesbian, gay and trans organisations, cafés, bars, publications and cultural events taking place.
Albrecht Becker – imprisoned by the Nazis for being gay
By the 1920s, Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code, which criminalised homosexual acts, was being applied less frequently. Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science led the world in its scientific approach to sexual diversity and acted as an important public centre for Berlin lesbian, homosexual, bisexual and transgender existence. In 1929 the process towards complete decriminalisation had been initiated within the German legislature.
Nazi conceptions of race, gender and eugenics dictated the Nazi regime’s hostile policy on homosexuality. Repression against gay men, lesbians and trans people commenced within days of Hitler becoming Chancellor. On 6 May 1933, the Nazis violently looted and closed The Institute for Sexual Science, burning its extensive collection on the streets. Unknown numbers of German gay men, lesbians and trans
Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Gay Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis
Liberated, licentious, or merely liberal, the sexual freedoms of Germany's Weimar Republic have change into legendary. The house of the world's first gay rights movement, the republic embodied a linear, secular vision of sexual liberation. Immortalized - however misleadingly - in Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and the musical Cabaret, Weimar's freedoms have become a touchstone for the politics of sexual emancipation.
Yet, as Laurie Marhoefer shows in Sex and Weimar Republic, those sexual freedoms were only obtained at the expense of a minority who were deemed sexually disordered. In Weimar Germany, the citizen's right to sexual release came with a duty to hold sexuality private, non-commercial, and respectable.
Sex and the Weimar Republic examines the increase of sexual tolerance through the debates which surrounded "immoral" sexuality: obscenity, male homosexuality, lesbianism, genderqueer identity, heterosexual promiscuity, and prostitution. It follows the sexual politics of a swath of Weimar society ranging from sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld to Nazi stormtrooper Ernst Röhm.
Magnus Hirschfeld and the Institute for Sexual Science
To mark LGBT+ History Month and its theme of medicine, we investigate the life and work of medic Magnus Hirschfeld, a researcher of sexuality and gender in the early twentieth century.
Magnus Hirschfeld (1868 – 1935) was a German Jewish doctor, sexologist and activist who founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (hereafter translated to the Institute for Sexual Science). Hirschfeld was one of the foremost researchers in sexuality and gender in the initial twentieth century.
Hirschfeld was gay but never publicly came out and did not mention his possess orientation in his scientific publications on sexuality. It was, after all, still illegal to be homosexual in Germany during his lifetime.
Nevertheless, he was invested in using science to improve the lives of those in what people now refer to as the Gay (lesbian, gay, attracted to both genders, transgender, queer +) community. He operated under the ethos ‘through science to justice.’ His common professional image was that of a scholar and surgeon who argued against homophobia and other forms of prejudice from a place of scientific principle.
Hirschfeld’s romantic relationships with men w
In Poland, no one writes about the tragic fate of homosexuals during the Nazi era. Nothing has been published about the thousands of Polish homosexuals who became death camp victims. Ordinary embarrassment is the reason that scholars remain silent about Nazism’s homosexual victims.
Germany’s Golden Years The nineteenth century was the first period when voices openly defending homosexuality and refusing to condemn it were heard on a broad scale. The Napoleonic Code of 1804 served as the model for this kind of progress. Under the influence of the French Revolution, Bavaria repealed in 1813 the law that imposed penalties on homosexual unions. The government of Hannover soon followed suit. The German Reich, with Bismarck heading its government, was proclaimed in 1871, following the Franco-Prussian War. Article 175 of the unified legal code stated that “any man who permits indecent relations with another man, or who takes part in such relations, shall be subject to punishment by imprisonment.”
The Berlin physician Magnus Hirschfeld zealously opposed Article 175. In 1897, he founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which campaigned for the repeal