Anti gay german law

During the following year alone, the Gestapo arrested more than 8, gay men, quite possibly using a list of names and addresses seized at the Institute for Sexual Research. What happened next shows the whiplash speed with which the progress of a generation can be thrown into reverse.

The total number of Europeans arrested for being LGBTQ under fascism is impossible to know because of the lack of reliable records. As the Gestapo spread throughout Europe, it expanded the hunt. And media entrepreneurs realized there was a middle-class gay and trans readership to whom they could cater.

But a conservative estimate is that there were many tens of thousands to one hundred thousand arrests during the war period alone. DW takes a look back at a history of persecution in West and East Germany. Germany is set to annul the convictions of gay men under a law criminalising homosexuality that was applied zealously in post-WWII West Germany.

Later still, its acting head was arrested. In Vienna, it hauled in every gay man on police lists and questioned them, trying to get them to name others. In these places of horror, men with pink triangles were singled out for particular abuse. The first homosexual publication, Amicus-Briefbund, was founded in , followed by other magazines in the early s.

It was repealed in That was just before the Nazis came to power, magnified the anti-gay law, then sought to annihilate gay and transgender Europeans. When Nazi leader Adolph Hitler needed to justify arresting and murdering former political allies in , he said they were gay.

The less fortunate went to Buchenwald and Dachau. Fascist parties offered Europeans a choice of stability at the price of democracy. The fortunate ones went to jail. In Paris, certain quarters were renowned for open displays of gay and trans nightlife. Germany announced this week that it had provided compensation to nearly people who faced persecution under a Nazi-era law that criminalized homosexuality between men.

John Broich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Even Florence , Italy, had its own gay district, as did many smaller European cities.

In conquered France, Alsace police worked with the Gestapo to arrest at least men and send them to concentration camps. In those camps, gay men were marked with a pink triangle. Under these nightmare conditions, far more LGBTQ people in Europe painstakingly hid their genuine sexuality to avoid suspicion, marrying members of the opposite sex, for example.

Gay and trans people were an obvious target. In the s, the Depression spread economic anxiety, while political fights in European parliaments tended to spill outside into actual street fights between Left and Right. This fanned anti-gay zealotry by the Gestapo, which opened a special anti-gay branch.

Tolerance of minorities was destabilizing, they said. Vienna had about a dozen gay cafes, clubs and bookstores. Still, if they had been prominent members of the gay and trans community before the fascists came to power, as Berlin lesbian club owner Lotte Hahm was, it was too late to hide.

Its lead doctor, Magnus Hirschfeld, also consulted on the Lili Elbe sex change. She was sent to a concentration camp. The story of how close Germany — and much of Europe — came to liberating its LGBTQ people before violently reversing that trend under new authoritarian regimes is an object lesson showing that the history of LGBTQ rights is not a record of constant progress.

When Paragraph of the German Penal Code was abolished 25 years ago, homosexuality ceased to be separately regulated. In the s, Berlin had nearly gay and lesbian bars or cafes. Right after the second world war, some LGBT+-activists tried to establish a new movement, fighting the continuation of Nazi anti-gay laws.

Not only was Paragraph not erased, as a parliamentary committee had recommended just a few years before, it was amended to be more expansive and punitive. The Office of Justice reported that individuals have applied for compensation under a law offering payouts to victims of.

Films began depicting sympathetic gay characters.