Before 1933, male homosexual acts were illegal in Germany under Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code. The law was not consistently enforced, however, and a thriving gay culture existed in major German cities. After the Nazi takeover in 1933, the first homosexual movement's infrastructure of clubs, organizations, and publications was shut down. After the Röhm purge in 1934, persecuting homosexuals became a priority of the Nazi police state. A 1935 revision of Paragraph 175 made it easier to bring criminal charges for homosexual acts, leading to a large increase in arrests and convictions. Persecution peaked in the years prior to World War II and was extended to areas annexed by Germany, including Austria, the Czech lands, and Alsace–Lorraine.
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.
Magnus T. Hirschfeld was a Jewish German physician and sexologist, whose citizenship was later revoked by the Nazi government. Hirschfeld was educated in philosophy, philology and medicine. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and World League for Sexual Reform. He based his practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg during the Weimar period. Performance Studies and Rhetoric Professor Dustin Goltz characterized the committee as having carried out "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights".
Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made sexual relations between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality as well as forms of prostitution and underage sexual abuse. Overall, around 140,000 men were convicted under the law. The law had always been controversial and inspired the first homosexual movement, which called for its repeal.
This is a selected bibliography and other resources for The Holocaust, including prominent primary sources, historical studies, notable survivor accounts and autobiographies, as well as other documentation and further hypotheses.
Different from the Others is a silent German melodramatic film produced during the Weimar Republic. It was first released in 1919 and stars Conrad Veidt and Reinhold Schünzel. It was directed by Richard Oswald, and the story co-written by Oswald and Magnus Hirschfeld, who also had a small part in the film and partially funded the production through his Institute for Sexual Science. The film was intended as a polemic against the then-current laws under Germany's Paragraph 175, which made homosexuality a criminal offense. It was one of the first sympathetic portrayals of gay men in cinema.
Karl Gorath was a gay man who was arrested in 1938 and imprisoned for homosexuality at Neuengamme and Auschwitz. He was freed in 1945.
Albrecht Becker was a German production designer, photographer, and actor who was imprisoned by the Nazi regime for the charge of homosexuality.
Heinz "Saddi" Dörmer was a German man who was imprisoned by the Nazis for homosexuality under Paragraph 175. He was repeatedly released and rearrested, spending more than ten years in a variety of concentration camps and prisons.
Pierre Seel was a gay Holocaust survivor who was conscripted into the German Army and the only French person to have testified openly about his experience of deportation during World War II due to his homosexuality.
The Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism in Berlin was opened on 27 May 2008.
Josef Kohout was an Austrian Nazi concentration camp survivor, imprisoned for his homosexuality. He is best known for the 1972 book Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel, which was written by his acquaintance Hans Neumann using the pen name Heinz Heger, which is often falsely attributed to Kohout. The book is one of very few first-hand accounts of the treatment of homosexuals in Nazi imprisonment. It has been translated into several languages, and a second edition published in 1994. It was the first testimony from a homosexual survivor of the concentration camps to be translated into English, and is regarded as the best known. Its publication helped to illuminate not just the suffering gay prisoners of the Nazi regime experienced, but the lack of recognition and compensation they received after the war's end.
Jeffrey Friedman is an American filmmaker. In 2021, he and Rob Epstein won a Grammy Award for their work on the documentary film Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
Gerhard "Gad" Beck was an Israeli-German educator, author, activist, resistance member, and survivor of the Holocaust.
The memorial to gay and lesbian victims of National Socialism is a monument in Cologne, Germany, dedicated to the gay and lesbian victims of the Nazis.
This is a list of events in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQ+) history in Germany.
Men, Heroes and Gay Nazis is a 2005 German documentary film directed, written and produced by Rosa von Praunheim. The film focuses on gay men who align themselves with hardcore authoritarian views, white power skinheads, and Nazis.
Annette Eick was a Jewish Lesbian author and poet.
The first homosexual movement was a socio-political confluence in Germany criticizing Paragraph 175, the 1871 criminalization of sex between men. German writers coined the word homosexual, while the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was founded in 1897 by Magnus Hirschfeld to improve public tolerance of homosexuality and repeal Paragraph 175. The movement was restricted to an educated elite during the German Empire, but greatly expanded in the aftermath of World War I and the German Revolution.
In Nazi Germany, transgender people were prosecuted, barred from public life, forcibly detransitioned, and imprisoned and killed in concentration camps. Though some factors, such as whether they were considered "Aryan", heterosexual with regard to their birth sex, or capable of useful work had the potential to mitigate their circumstances, transgender people were largely stripped of legal status by the Nazi state.
