The hope of emancipation

The earliest homosexual movements emerged in late 19^th century Germany. In 1897, Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (ScientificHumanitarian Committee), which campaigned for the repeal of Paragraph 175, published several newspapers, including Die Freundschaft and Die Freundin, organized conferences, held lectures and circulated petitions, with little success. In France, the magazine Inversions (1924) was quickly censored. During the Roaring Twenties, homosexuals and lesbians gathered at bars, cabarets (the Eldorado in Berlin and Le Monocle in Paris), private salons such as the one hosted by American poet Natalie Barney in Paris and large transvestite balls like Magic-City, also in Paris. Homosexuality also found a place in art (Christian Schad, Jeanne Mammen, etc.), literature (André Gide’s Corydon, 1924, Klaus Mann’s The Pious Dance, 1926, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, 1928, Colette’s These Pleasures, 1932, Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, 1939, etc.) and film (Richard Oswald’s Anders als die Andern, 1919, Leontine Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform, 1931). 

But for most people, discretion remained the rule. Some contracted fake marriages and led double lives. Codes (slang, colors like purple or mauve) were used to identify each other in an overwhelmingly hostile society.

What is paragraph (§) 175?

Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code remained in force from 1871 to 1994. From 1871 to 1935, only “unnatural lewdness”, understood by jurisprudence as “acts resembling coitus”, whether between men or between men and animals, was criminalized. From 1935, “lewdness” in general fell within the scope of the law, broadening its application. Paragraph 175a then criminalized “aggravated” sexual acts between men (“seduction” by an adult of a minor under 21, prostitution, use of force or authority), punishable by up to 10 years of hard labor. The FRG kept the 1935 version until 1969, while the GDR reverted to the 1871 version until 1968. Discrimination based on the age of sexual majority remained in force until 1994.

The Nazi period alone accounted for nearly 40% of convictions, and sentences were harsher on average. However, it should be recalled that the great majority of homosexuals managed to survive this period, even though the regime constantly targeted them.

Ambiguous and contradictory messages

The position of the NSDAP, the Nazi Party, on homosexuality long remained ambiguous. Nazi organizations such as the SA, SS and Hitler Youth glorified friendship between men on the basis of Männerbund—the idea that male bonding is the cornerstone of society. It was well known that SA chief Ernst Röhm was homosexual. The Nazi regime also used homoerotic aesthetics, conspicuous, for example, in Arno Breker and Joseph Thorak’s monumental sculptures or Leni Riefenstahl’s films. From 1934, communist propaganda called homosexuality a “fascist perversion”, a cliché taken up by German exiles that persisted until well after the war (Luchino Visconti’s The Damned, 1969).

Some Nazi leaders, starting with Heinrich Himmler, used radical homophobic rhetoric very early on, condemning homosexuality as one result of race mixing. In 1927 and 1928, the NSDAP opposed the repeal of Paragraph 175. Nazis assaulted Magnus Hirschfeld on several occasions at his rallies in Munich. To them, homosexuals had no social worth. In a context of demographic anxiety and the need to conquer Lebensraum, if homosexuals refused to bend to the will of the German nation (getting married and having children), they had to be brought into line, “cured” and “reeducated”, if not eliminated. 

The plight of the pink triangles in the camps

Men convicted under Paragraph 175 met with varying fates. Most were imprisoned, but a minority was sent to concentration camps before or after serving their sentences in order to be “reeducated” by work. Some, considered “cured”, were then drafted into the Wehrmacht. Others were interned in mental hospitals and sometimes “euthanized”. Those convicted by military tribunals were executed or sent on suicide missions. A rare few were released. However, “exterminating” all homosexuals was never under consideration.

The pink triangles endured inhumane conditions in the camps. They were often assigned to the disciplinary company and the hardest tasks, such as working in the clay quarry at Sachsenhausen. Some were castrated, others subjected to medical experiments. Isolation made matters worse. The pink triangles never accounted for more than 1% of the camps’ total population. They were frequently isolated in separate barracks for fear of “contaminating” the other detainees, who were often hostile to them and lumped them together with the kapos who extorted sexual favors from prisoners. At certain times, they were at the bottom of the camps’ hierarchy, just one notch above the Jews.

The plight of homosexuals in countries allied with, annexed to or occupied by Germany could vary widely. 

Paragraph 175 applied only to citizens of the Reich, Germans and inhabitants of annexed territories. Viewing homosexuality as a form of social decay, the Nazis did not care about its presence, or even considered it beneficial, in peoples deemed “inferior”. 

The situation in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire was highly complex. Paragraph 175 was enforced in the annexed Sudetenland, but in the Protectorate of BohemiaMoravia, created in 1939, German, Austrian, Hungarian or Polish law could apply depending on the area and ethnicity. Austrian and Hungarian laws were more lenient, while Poland did not criminalize homosexuality at all. 

In the Netherlands, Paragraph 175 was introduced in 1940 alongside Section 248(a) of the Dutch Penal Code, which already criminalized homosexual relations with minors, but it was not systematically enforced. Homosexuality was legal in Italy, where some 100 “passive pederasts” were exiled to the Tremiti Islands from 1938 onward. Some had their sentences commuted in 1940; others were evacuated in July 1942. 

Among the Allies, sex between men was a criminal offense in Great Britain, the United States, the USSR (since 1934) and others. Three neutral countries decriminalized homosexual relations between consenting adults: Iceland in 1940, Switzerland in 1942 (except in the army) and Sweden in 1944.

Ignored testimonies, continued repression

In the aftermath of the war, few homosexuals testify to the fate of themselves under the Nazi regime, even if some witnesses, such as Eugen Kogon (L’État SS, 1946), evoke the presence of pink triangles in the camps, and if homophilous magazines, such as Arcadie (1954-1982) in France, mention it occasionally.

In Germany, homosexuals are not only denied the status of “victims of Nazism”, but are still likely to be condemned under §175, which was in effect until 1969 in the FRG and until 1968 in the GDR.

In France, the law of 1942 was not repealed until 1982. The psychiatrization of homosexuality increased, in the West as in the East.

It was not until the 1970s that deportation on the grounds of homosexuality was openly debated under the influence of gay and lesbian liberation movements. Uncertain figures are often exaggerated. The testimony of Heinz Heger (1972), an Austrian pink triangle, dates, as later, in France, that of Pierre Seel (1994). 

With Bent (1979), a play by Martin Sherman brought to the cinema in 1997, homosexual deportation began to be known to the general public. The pink triangle, sometimes inverted, stands out as a referent LGBT identity, used for example by Act Up in the fight against AIDS.

Memorials

Monuments and plaques honoring LGBT victims of Nazi repression include a plaque at the site of the Neuengamme concentration camp, near Hamburg (1985); the Homomonument in Amsterdam (1987); the Berlin Tiergarten Memorial (2008); and a plaque at the Natzweiler-Struthof camp (2010). The Gedenkkugel at Ravensbrück (2015), an associative memorial project specifically dedicated to lesbians, is pending approval.