A pink triangle has been a symbol for the LGBT community, initially intended as a badge of shame, but later reappropriated as a positive symbol of self-identity. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, it began as one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, distinguishing those imprisoned because they had been identified by authorities as gay men or trans women. In the 1970s, it was revived as a symbol of protest against homophobia, and has since been adopted by the larger LGBT community as a popular symbol of LGBT pride and the LGBT movements and queer liberation movements.
Christopher Street Day (CSD) is an annual European LGBTQ+ celebration and demonstration held in various cities across Europe for the rights of LGBTQ+ people, and against discrimination and exclusion. It is Germany's and Switzerland's counterpart to Gay Pride or Pride Parades. Austria calls their Pride Parade Rainbow Parade. The most prominent CSD events are Berlin Pride, CSD Hamburg, and CSD Cologne in Germany, and CSD Zürich in Switzerland.
LSVD+ – Verband Queere Vielfalt (LSVD+), German for the LSVD+ – Federation Queer Diversity, is the largest non-governmental LGBT rights organisation in Germany. It was founded in 1990 and is part of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA).
The Felix-Rexhausen Award were created 1998 by the Bund Lesbischer und Schwuler JournalistInnen to recognize and honor the mainstream media for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the LGBT community and the issues that affect their lives.
Martin Dannecker is a German sexologist and author.
Hans-Georg Stümke was a German gay activist, author, and historian.
The Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism in Berlin was opened on 27 May 2008.
The Schwules Museum in Berlin, Germany, is a museum and research centre with collections focusing on LGBTQ+ history and culture. It opened in 1985 and it was the first museum in the world dedicated to gay history.
The Frankfurter Engel is a memorial in the city of Frankfurt am Main in southwestern Germany; it is dedicated to homosexual people who were persecuted under Nazi rule, and as well as under Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code during the 1950s and 1960s.
Wolfram Setz was a German historian, editor, translator, and essayist.
The Pink Triangle Park is a triangle-shaped mini-park located in the Castro District of San Francisco, California. The park is less than 4,000 square feet (370 m2) and faces Market Street with 17th Street to its back. The park sits directly above the Castro Street Station of Muni Metro, across from Harvey Milk Plaza. It is the first permanent, free-standing memorial in America dedicated to the thousands of persecuted homosexuals in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust of World War II.
Centrum Schwule Geschichte e. V., abbreviated CSG, is a German "LGBTQ" organization based in Cologne (Köln).
The NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne(German: NS-Dokumentationszentrum der Stadt Köln) was founded by a resolution passed by the Cologne city council on December 13, 1979, and has become the largest regional memorial site in all of Germany for the victims of the Nazis. Since 1988, it has been housed in "EL-DE Haus," the EL-DE building, named for the initials of its owner, Catholic businessman Leopold Dahmen. This building was the headquarters of the Cologne Gestapo between December 1935 and March 1945. In the final months of the war, several hundred people, most of them foreign forced laborers, were murdered in the courtyard of the building. In a bit of historical irony, the EL-DE building remained largely untouched by the ravages of the war.
The Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion was a government bureau central to Nazi Germany's persecution of homosexuals and tasked with enforcing laws which criminalized abortion.
Berlin was the capital city of the German Empire from 1871 to 1945, its eastern part the de facto capital of East Germany from 1949 to 1990, and has been the capital of the unified Federal Republic of Germany since June, 1991. The city has an active LGBTQ community with a long history. Berlin has many LGBTIQ+ friendly districts, though the borough of Schöneberg is widely viewed both locally and by visitors as Berlin's gayborhood. Particularly the boroughs North-West near Nollendorfplatz identifies as Berlin's "Regenbogenkiez", with a certain concentration of gay bars near and along Motzstraße and Fuggerstraße. Many of the decisive events of what has become known as Germany's second LGBT movement take place in the West Berlin boroughs of Charlottenburg, Schöneberg, and Kreuzberg beginning in 1971 with the formation of the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW). Whereas in East Berlin the district of Prenzlauer Berg became synonymous with the East Germany LGBT movement beginning in 1973 with the founding of the HIB. Schöneberg's gayborhood has a lot to offer for locals and tourists alike, and caters to, and is particularly popular with gay men.
The Akademie Waldschlösschen is an education and conference center near Reinhausen in Lower Saxony, between Göttingen and Heiligenstadt.
Ilse Kokula is a German sociologist, educator, author and lesbian activist in the field of lesbian life. She was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The Eldorado was the name of multiple nightclubs and performance venues in Berlin before the Nazi era and World War II. The name of the cabaret Eldorado has become an integral part of the popular iconography of the Weimar Republic. Two of the five locations the club occupied in its history are known to have catered to a gay crowd, although attendees would have included not only gay, lesbian, and bisexual patrons but also those identifying as heterosexual.
Ursula Sillge is a German sociologist and LGBT activist. She organized the first national lesbian gathering in East Germany, and between 1970 and 1990 was one of the main lesbian activists in the country, pressing authorities to recognize the rights and allow visibility of the LGBT community. In 1986, she founded the Sunday Club in Berlin. It was the only secular association representing homosexuals in the 1980s, though it was not officially recognized. The organization became the first legal association to represent the LGBT community in East Germany when it was allowed to register in 1990. Sillge resigned as director of the Sunday Club in 1991 to found the LGBT archive known as the Lila Women's Archives. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, she was able to earn her doctorate. In addition to running the archives, she has published several works about homosexuality and women behind the Iron Curtain.
Vienna, the capital of Austria, has an active LGBTQIA+ community. Vienna is considered Austria's queer capital, with several LGBTQIA+ spaces, organisations and a history of LGBTQIA+ activism going back to the late 19th century.
