The Nazis treated many groups they saw as different terribly – and the LGBTI community was no exception. Here, Kim Barrett starts by considering Dr Magnus Hirschfield, who founded the world’s first gay rights organization in the decades prior to the Nazis taking power in Germany, and then looks at how the Nazis treated the LGBTI community.
Students organized by the Nazi Party parade in front of the Institute for Sexual research in Berlin in 1933.
Beneath the paving stones in Bebelplatz in Berlin is an inaccessible, empty library with enough space on its shelves for 20,000 books. At this site at the start of May 1933, those symbolically missing books were burnt by the Nazis. Among them were books by Jewish people, socialist and communist writings, as well as works advocating for women and disabled rights.
The fire also consumed the entire library and archives of the Institute for Sexual Research (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft): the pinnacle of Magnus Hirschfeld’s life’s work.
Dr Magnus Hirschfeld
Dr Magnus Hirschfeld was a prominent gay Jewish man born in Poland in 1868. He founded the world’s first gay rights organization in 1897, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee). He moved to Berlin at the end of the 19th century and, in 1904, he wrote Berlin’s Third Sex (Berlin’s Drittes Geschlecht), a book about LGBTI people. He also co-wrote and appeared in the silent film Different From the Others(Anders als die Andern) released in June 1919. The film was the first to positively portray same-sex relationships but also addresses some of the problems gay men faced: the main character is blackmailed and arrested as a result of his sexuality.
Specific sex acts between men had been illegal since the unification of Germany in 1871, under a provision in the German Criminal Code known as Paragraph 175. Magnus Hirschfeld opposed and campaigned against this law. He believed that same-sex attraction was a natural variation. He considered it a mild form of “sexual intermediary” or “third sex”, which also included cross-dressing, intersex and transgender people. He thought up to 20% of people were “third sex”.
In Weimar-era Berlin, Paragraph 175 was only sporadically enforced and there were bars, clubs and balls where “third sex” people could socialize (mostly) safe from the law. However, the police often arrested people who cross-dressed, although cross-dressing itself was not specifically illegal. Magnus Hirschfeld lobbied the police to stop this practice and, in 1909, “transvestite passes” were created. The police could issue a pass to someone if a doctor believed they would be at risk of harm if they were not allowed to cross-dress.
The Institute for Sexual Research
In July 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Institute for Sexual Research (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) in Berlin, which researched gender and sexuality. It also provided sexual health clinics and offered marriage and sex counseling. In its heyday, the Institute employed over 40 people, many of them “third sex” themselves.
Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term “transsexualism” to refer to people who would now be called transgender. He provided some primitive hormone therapies, which changed people’s bodies to align with their genders.
The Institute also performed some of the first gender reassignment surgeries. Karl Baer was a women’s rights activist, who was probably born intersex but assigned female at birth. In 1906, he medically transitioned with the help of Magnus Hirschfeld. The following year he received an updated birth certificate that designated him as a man, which allowed him to marry his girlfriend. Lili Elbe was a Danish painter, who Magnus Hirschfeld assisted in the removal of her testes in 1930. She died the following year from complications from a uterine transplant.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. In February 1933, three decrees were enacted forcing most of the LGBT-friendly bars and publications in Germany to close. In March 1933, the first Nazi concentration camp was opened.
Kurt Hiller, a gay socialist writer who worked closely with Magnus Hirschfeld, was arrested in Berlin in April 1933 and later sent to a concentration camp. The Institute for Sexual Research was attacked in May 1933 by a Nazi student group assisted by the SA. Its books, journals, images and museum of sexual artifacts were all destroyed in a ceremonial book burning attended by 40,000 people.
Magnus Hirschfeld was lecturing abroad at the time and never returned to Germany. Two years later he died of a heart attack. His peers continued researching the spectrum of sexuality and gender. The Institute for Sex Research in Indiana, USA was opened in 1947 by Alfred Kinsey, the creator of the Kinsey Scale used to describe sexual orientation.
Under Nazi rule
In 1935, Paragraph 175, the law criminalizing sex between men, was extended to include any action between men intended to “excite sexual desire”. Those convicted were sent to prison or to a concentration camp for up to five years.
In the concentration camps, a system of symbols was used to identify groups of people. Men who were attracted to men (as well as people who would likely now identify as transwomen) wore a down-facing pink triangle. This symbol has since been reclaimed in its inverted form by gay men. Women who were attracted to women wore a black triangle used to denote asocial (asozial) people, a group that also included prostitutes, pacifists and mentally ill people.
As well as being forced to perform hard labor (known as “extermination through labor”), some LGBTI people were shot as target practice or given dangerous jobs working with explosives. They were also tortured and “experiments” were performed on them, including castration and implanting testosterone devices in their testes.
The Nazis believed that same-sex attraction could be spread to other people, so anyone wearing a pink triangle was kept separate from other prisoners. It was seen as preferable to execute people rather than house them with the gay men in case they also “turned gay”.
Unlike Jewish people or others targeted by the Nazis because of their race, same-sex attraction or cross-dressing was seen by some Nazis as something to be “cured”. Men arrested under Paragraph 175 could sometimes convince their guards to release them by being observed having sex with women prostitutes.
Towards the end of the war, concentration camp detainees wearing a pink triangle were given minimal military training and sent into battle as cannon fodder. An estimated 60% of prisoners wearing a pink triangle died before their release.
Paragraph 175
At the end of the war, some of the LGBTI people who were freed from the concentration camps were sent to prison to complete their sentences, and many were convicted again later under the same law.
In East Germany, the extended version of Paragraph 175 was removed in 1950 and sex between men was decriminalized in 1957. However, in West Germany, the Nazi-era version of Paragraph 175 remained on the books until 1969.
LGBTI people were not officially considered victims of the Nazis until May 2002 when Nazi-era convictions under Paragraph 175 were pardoned and compensation was offered. In June 2017, everyone ever convicted under Paragraph 175 had their convictions annulled.
Everyone who was sent to a concentration camp because of their sexuality is believed to have now died. The last known person was Rudolf Brazda, who died in 2011 aged 98.
Berlin has now reclaimed its title as one of the most LGBTI-friendly cities in Europe, boasting several gay districts. Its annual Pride march, commemorating the Stonewall Riots in New York, USA, is one of the largest in the world. It also houses a memorial to the gay and lesbian victims of the Nazis.
Kim Barrett is a freelance writer – more information is available here.
