The golden twenties were never so prominent as in Berlin. The city alone featured almost a hundred gay clubs and bars, where men danced with men and women met women without incident. The decadence of the period allowed many to revel in their sexuality. Over 30 homosexual journals were published, including ‘Der Eigene’, (‘The self-owners’) and ‘Die Intel’ (‘The Island’). These journals celebrated the male form and featured writings, poetry, essays and photography. Several lesbian journals were also widely circulated, including ‘Frauenliebe’, meaning ‘female love’, and ‘Die Freundin’, meaning ‘girlfriend’.
Many Zionist youth groups developed catering for various different forums, mainly physical activity based, where young men and youths could bond and spend time together developing as young adults.
Berlin also boasted the ‘Institute for Sexual Science’, responsible for much of the early research into homosexuality, and the first global gay rights organisation: the ‘World League for Sexual Reform’ (WLSR). Responsible for both of these pioneering organisations was the German sexologist, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld,
Quote: "The woman who needs to be liberated most is the woman in every man, and the man who needs to be liberated most is the man in every woman"
Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was a pioneering German sexologist drawn to the study of human sexuality. He strongly believed that sexual orientation was a naturally occurring trait worthy of research rather than social hostility.
His research attracted much controversy, sometimes from the gay community itself. For several years he fought to classify homosexuals as a third sex between man and woman (he later dropped this argument)
Both an open homosexual and Jew, he came under regular attack once the Nazis came into power, once resulting in a fractured skull. Despite this he continued to campaign effortlessly for the repeal of § 175.
The political cartoon shown here depicts Hirschfeld as 'Hero Of The Day' drumming up support for the repeal. The banner reads: 'The foremost champion of the Third Sex'. (Picture reproduced with kind permission courtesy of the USHMM).
In 1919 he founded the Institute for Sexual Science, where he documented thousands of cases of 'sexual inversion' and toured Europe to raise awareness of his findings. Most notably he was responsible for taking the discussion of homosexuality into the halls of government itself.
In 1897 he founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, opposed to oppression of homosexuals, and was also responsible for the World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR), which was the first global gay rights organisation. He became one of three original presidents of the WLSR along with English sex researcher Havelock Ellis and Swiss psychiatrist Auguste Forel.
On May 6th, 1933: The institute for Sexual Science was ransacked and destroyed by Nazi student groups and sympathizers in Berlin. The institute was seen as the main symbol of sexual reform and had long been the target of negative Nazi Propaganda.Hirschfeld himself was away from Berlin on a world speaking tour, which almost certainly saved him from a certain death. He never returned to Berlin and died in Nice, May 14th 1935.
While gay life was relatively well catered for in large urban areas, homosexuality was still not generally approved of. As a result most gay affairs were conducted with discretion and some caution. With the defeat of World War I weighing heavy on the second Reich, people struggled hard to come to terms with the massive losses. In total 1.7 million German soldiers were killed and 4 million were left badly wounded. In the face of massive hyperinflation, which saw the German mark soar from 192 to the US dollar to 4.2 trillion to the dollar, and with huge unemployment rampant, people were hungry to find someone to blame. Soon scapegoats began to emerge; the Jews; Gypsies; Criminals; Homosexuals; anyone who could be held responsible for Germanys defeat.
Radical right-wing political groups gained popularity, among them the National Socialist Party, headed by Adolph Hitler. Hitler was voted into power in 1933 and immediately began enforcing radical laws reducing the rights of Jews and other groups he saw as undesirable to the future of Germany.
Homosexuals were amongst these groups and during the Nazi period gay men were arrested and imprisoned under the German Penal code of 1871, known as Paragraph 175. The code outlawed sexual contact between men and, although already in place prior to 1933, it was rarely acted on. The Nazis soon changed this and actively sought to rid the Third Reich of what they saw as a degenerate threat to the purity of the Aryan race – a German master race.
Nazi documents, seized after the war, put the number of men arrested for homosexuality at approximately 100,000. About half of these were sentenced to serve a prison term and 10,000 to 15,000 were sent to concentration camps. Regarded as degenerates and perverts, homosexuals were given harsh treatment both by guards and other inmates. For gay prisoners the death rate was as high as 60%. This meant that by the end of the war and liberation only about 4,000 survived.
Today many people, gay or otherwise, still remain either uncertain or unaware of the plight of gay people during the holocaust. Obvious victims were the Jews, persecuted and killed in their millions (by the end of the holocaust the official figure for Jewish deaths was six million). But what of the other groups persecuted under the same regime of hatred? In total eleven million people were exterminated by the Nazis.
Known as ‘the contragenics’ , of the Nazi regime, these groups included anti-fascists, the disabled, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, nonconforming clergymen, homosexuals, Freemasons, Polish and Russian prisoners of war and huge numbers of Polish and Hungarian Nationals. The Nazis systematically persecuted all of these groups, but many have remained largely unnoticed as Holocaust victims.