You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (June 2014)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
This is a list of events in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQ+) history in Germany.
Magnus Hirschfeld was a Jewish German physician and sexologist, whose citizenship was later revoked by the Nazi Government
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the 20th century before 1949.
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.
The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The name is variously translated as Institute for Sexual Research, Institute of Sexology, Institute for Sexology or Institute for the Science of Sexuality. The Institute was a non-profit foundation situated in Tiergarten, Berlin. It was the first sexology research center in the world.
Terms used to describe homosexuality have gone through many changes since the emergence of the first terms in the mid-19th century. In English, some terms in widespread use have been sodomite, Achillean, Sapphic, Uranian, homophile, lesbian, gay, effeminate, queer, homoaffective, and same-gender attracted. Some of these words are specific to women, some to men, and some can be used of either. Gay people may also be identified under the umbrella term LGBT.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Germany rank among the highest in the world and have evolved significantly over the course of the last decades. During the 1920s and the early 1930s, lesbian and gay people in Berlin were generally tolerated by society and many bars and clubs specifically pertaining to gay men were opened. Although same-sex sexual activity between men was already made illegal under Paragraph 175 by the German Empire in 1871, Nazi Germany extended these laws during World War II, which resulted in the persecution and deaths of thousands of homosexual citizens. The Nazi extensions were repealed in 1960 and same-sex sexual activity between men was decriminalized in both East and West Germany in 1968 and 1969, respectively.
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. The story was co-written by Richard 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.
The connection between left-leaning ideologies and LGBT rights struggles has a long and mixed history. The status of LGBT people in socialist states have varied throughout history.
The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was founded by Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin in May 1897, to campaign for social recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and against their legal persecution. It was the first LGBT rights organization in history. The motto of the organization was "Per scientiam ad justitiam", and the committee included representatives from various professions. The committee's membership peaked at about 700 people. In 1929, Kurt Hiller took over as chairman of the group from Hirschfeld. At its peak, the WhK had branches in approximately 25 cities in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.
Ernst Otto Burchard was a German physician, sexologist, and gay rights advocate and author. Burchard, who was gay, testified as an expert witness in several court cases involving prosecutions on grounds of Paragraph 175, which criminalized homosexual practices.
The Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism in Berlin was opened on 27 May 2008.
This is a list of important events relating to the LGBT community from 1801 to 1900. The earliest published studies of lesbian activity were written in the early 19th century.
Die Freundin was a popular Weimar-era German lesbian magazine published from 1924 to 1933. Founded in 1924, it was the world's first lesbian magazine, closely followed by Frauenliebe and Die BIF. The magazine was published from Berlin, the capital of Germany, by the Bund für Menschenrecht, run by gay activist and publisher Friedrich Radszuweit. The Bund was an organization for homosexuals which had a membership of 48,000 in the 1920s.
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 LGBT 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). Where as 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. Berlin's large LGBT events such as the Lesbian and Gay City Festival, East Berlin Leather and Fetish Week, Folsom Europe, and CSD center around Schöneberg, with related events taking place city-wide during these events. Nevertheless, with roughly 180 years of LGBTIQ+ history, and a very large community made up of members with very varied biographies, it is hard to find a place in Berlin completely without LGBT culture past or present. Berlin's present-day neighborhoods with a certain concentration of LGBTIQ+ oriented culture vary somewhat in terms of history, demography, and where the emphasis in each neighborhoods' queer culture falls along the LGBTIQ+ spectrum. Over the course of its nearly two centuries of queer history (herstory), definitions not with standing, Berlin's LGBTIQ+ culture has never ceased to change, not only in appearance and self-understanding, but also in where the centers of queer culture were located in the city. What is true about Berlin's "LGBT culture in Berlin" at one point in time, in a given place and from a given perspective, is almost certainly different the next.
The following is a timeline of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) journalism history.
The following is a timeline of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) history in the 20th century.
Gesetze der Liebe: Aus der Mappe eines Sexualforschers is a 1927 film produced by Magnus Hirschfeld, a sexologist who ran the Berlin Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, Hermann Beck and the Humboldt-Film-Gesellschaft.
The German Democratic Republic, a state in Central Europe that existed from 1949 to 1990 before merging with the Federal Republic of Germany, was dominated by heterosexual norms. However, homosexual East Germans experienced decriminalisation during the 1960s, followed by increasing social acceptance and visibility.
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 what has come to be seen as the culture of the period in German history often referred to as the "Weimar Republic". Two of the five locations the club occupied in its history are known to have catered to a gay crowd, though the phrase gay bar, which could conjure up images of the type of bar that became common after World War II catering first and foremost to gay and lesbian clientele, does not accurately describe what an establishment like Eldorado to a certain extent was, and what similar venues still are to this day.
The first homosexual movement was a socio-political movement which thrived in Germany from the late nineteenth century until 1933. The movement began in Germany because of a confluence of factors, including the criminalization of sex between men and the country's relatively lax censorship. German writers in the mid-nineteenth century coined the word homosexual and criticized its criminalization. In 1897, Magnus Hirschfeld founded the world's first homosexual organization, the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, whose aim was to use science to improve public tolerance of homosexuality and repeal Paragraph 175. During the German Empire, the movement was restricted to an educated elite, but it greatly expanded in the aftermath of World War I and the German Revolution.