The 30th of January 1933. Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany bringing
an end to German democracy. Guided by racist and authoritarian ideas,
the Nazis abolish basic freedoms and seek to create a community which would
unite all social classes and regions of Germany behind one Führer. However,
not everyone belongs to this New Germany. Based on anti-homosexuality laws that precede the Nazi era,
thousands of homosexual and transgender people will be arrested and thrown into concentration
camps during Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship. For their sexual orientation and gender identities,
many of them will have to endure immense suffering and pay the ultimate price.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
the nature of human sexuality became an important area of scientific investigation
and debate. Germany was at the forefront of this development, not least because of
debates regarding Paragraph 175 which from 1871 banned sexual relations between men.
Even though there were groups who supported the decriminalization of sexual relations between men
such as the large, moderate-left Social Democratic Party or the more radical Communist Party,
there were also groups who advocated for making this statute stricter. Among them were mainstream
religious organizations as well as various moderate and right-wing political parties
such as the radically right-wing Nazi Party which officially opposed any efforts to decriminalize
sexual relations between men. Wilhelm Frick, a Nazi member of the Reichstag – the parliament of
Nazi Germany, stated in 1927 that “men committing unnatural sexual acts with men must be persecuted
with utmost severity because such vices will lead to the disintegration of the German people.”
Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in January 1933. In the first two
and a half years of the Nazi regime, the government enforced Paragraph 175
similarly to the way it was enforced in the Weimar Republic. At this time,
the Nazis also used other means to target Germany’s gay community, for example,
they closed meeting places, arrested repeat offenders, and shuttered presses.
However, after in 1935 the Nazi regime revised Paragraph 175 and it began prosecuting men in
far greater numbers for violating this statute. The revision broadly expanded the type of acts
subject to punishment and dramatically increased the number of men punished under the statute.
The new version of Paragraph 175 had two additional sections: 175a and 175b.
Section 175a listed four specific behaviors that the Nazis saw as particularly egregious
violations of Paragraph 175. These included: a man coercing another man to have sex; a man initiating
sexual relations with a male subordinate or employee; a man having sexual relations with
a male minor under the age of 21; and a man engaging in prostitution with another man.
The Nazi regime saw men who engaged in these behaviors as particularly harmful,
because they believed that these men were corrupting other men. According to 175a,
these acts could result in a sentence of up to ten years hard labor in a prison. Within the context
of the German criminal justice system, this was a comparatively long and harsh prison sentence.
Among the homosexual men arrested under the Nazi revised paragraph 175 belonged
Harry Pauly, a German theater actor from Berlin who spent most of his time with other actors,
both at the theater and in nightclubs, where gay men gathered. When the Nazis came to power,
some gay men, especially those who were Jewish, were killed by Nazi sympathizers. Harry's friend
"Susi," a drag queen, was stabbed to death. In 1936 Harry was arrested and imprisoned in
a camp at Neusustrum, where he was first placed in solitary confinement and later had to do the
heaviest work in the marshes for 12 hours a day. After 15 months he was released. In 1943,
however, after Harry was turned in by two boys pressured by the Gestapo to denounce gay men,
he was once again sentenced under paragraph 175. This time he was released after only eight months
because his friends in the theater intervened on his behalf. Harry was then drafted into the
army but wherever he went, people knew of his 175 conviction and called him homophobic slurs. Harry
could not stand it and deserted twice. Finally, as punishment, he was sent to a special combat
unit in which almost everyone was killed, yet he was the only one to miraculously survive.
When reforming the statute in 1935, Nazi jurists had a chance to extend Paragraph 175 to women.
However, they chose not to do so because the Nazi leaders saw lesbians as women who had a
responsibility to give birth to racially pure Germans, called “Aryans.” The Nazis
concluded that Aryan lesbians could easily be persuaded or forced to bear children. Their
beliefs drew on widespread attitudes about the differences between male and female sexuality.
Furthermore, women did not typically hold leadership roles in the military, economy,
or national politics. Therefore, the Nazis did not view lesbians
or sexual relations between women as a direct threat to the German state.
However, women who identified as lesbians were sometimes charged under other statutes,
such as the ban on sexual relations with a minor.
By the end of 1936, SS leader and Chief of the German Police Heinrich Himmler
had taken the lead in cracking down on homosexuality, which he called a “public
scourge.” He directed the police forces under his control to enforce Paragraph 175.
Himmler believed that this was necessary for the protection and strengthening of the German people.
In 1936, Himmler established the Reich Central
Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion.
This office was part of the Kripo (Criminal Police) and worked closely
with the Gestapo (political police), and one of its main responsibilities
was to police and track down men suspected of homosexuality.
Under Himmler’s direction, these police forces diligently pursued violations of Paragraph 175.
The Nazis conducted targeted raids on locales popular with gay men and
closely monitored Germany’s gay communities.
Scholars estimate that there were approximately 100,000 arrests for
violations of Paragraph 175 during the Nazi regime and over half of these arrests
-approximately 53,400 - resulted in convictions. However, because some men were arrested,
convicted and thus counted in these statistics more than once, these numbers do not tell us
the total number of individual men arrested and convicted for violating Paragraph 175.
Statistics from the 1930s show that Nazi policies had a significant impact on the
number of men convicted under Paragraph 175. While in 1934, there were 948 convictions for
violating Paragraph 175, in 1938, the number of convictions increased to approximately 8,500.
Not everyone arrested under Paragraph 175 identified as a man. During the German
Empire and the Weimar Republic, Germany was home to a developing community of
people who identified as “transvestites.” Magnus Hirschfeld, a German physician and sexologist,
coined the term “transvestite” in 1910. Initially,
this term encompassed people who performed in drag, people who cross-dressed for pleasure,
as well as those who today might identify as trans or transgender. While today, in English,
the term “transvestite” is outdated and offensive, it was widely used at the time.
Some self-identified transvestites were arrested under Paragraph 175.
These were people who were assigned male sex at birth, but identified—and often
dressed and lived—as women. When they engaged in sexual relations with men,
the Nazi regime saw this as male-male sex. But many transvestites did not see themselves as
“homosexual” and did not consider their sexual relations with men as male-male
sex. Nonetheless, they were punished according to the regime’s definition.
Most men arrested under Paragraph 175 were given fixed prison sentences. There were,
however, some men sent to concentration camps for indefinite terms. Scholars estimate that
this group numbered between 5,000 and 15,000 men. The Gestapo and the Kripo
both had the power to send men accused of homosexuality to concentration camps.
These men were considered repeat offenders and had multiple convictions for violating Paragraph
175. Nazi leaders, including Himmler, believed that these men were particularly dangerous
because they believed that these homosexual men could and would seduce heterosexual men
which in their opinion would decrease the German birth rate and weaken the nation.
The Nazis classified prisoners in concentration camps into groups according to the reason for
their imprisonment. By 1938, these groups were identified with various colored badges
worn on camp uniforms. Many men imprisoned for allegedly violating Paragraph 175 had to wear
a pink triangle. This badge identified them as “homosexual” according to the
prisoner classification system. Sometimes these prisoners were called “175ers.”
Pink triangle prisoners suffered enormous abuse in concentration camps. They often
found themselves near the bottom of the camp hierarchy, where they were subject to abuse
from other prisoners and from the SS guards. Josef Kohout, an Austrian pink triangle
prisoner later testified: “A homosexual was never
permitted to have a position of responsibility, we couldn’t even speak with other prisoners – we
were told we might try to seduce them. We were forbidden to approach within five
metres of other blocks and anyone caught doing so was whipped on the 'horse’ and
received at least 15 to 20 lashes. We were to remain the damnedest of the damned, the camp’s
‘shitty queers’, condemned to liquidation.” He continued: “In the morning we had to cart
snow from the left side of the road to the right side and in the afternoon, we had to cart the same
snow back to the left. We didn’t have barrows or shovels but had to use our hands, our bare hands.
Twenty turns shovelling snow, then 20 carrying it away and all at the double.”
Another man arrested by the Nazis for his homosexuality was a Frenchman Pierre Seel.
After being arrested in May 1941, he and other homosexual men were taken to a police station
where they were beaten. Seel later recalled “ At first we managed to endure the suffering,
but ultimately it became impossible. The machinery of violence accelerated. Outraged
by our resistance, the SS began pulling out the fingernails of some of the prisoners.”
Seel added that in their fury the Germans raped poor men with a piece of broken wood.
The SS then took Pierre and his boyfriend Jo to a lesser-known concentration camp Schirmeck,
about 30 miles from Strasbourg. On the first day there, Seel witnessed a public execution.
The victim was stripped naked and had a metal bucket placed on his head to
amplify his screams before the SS sicced their ferocious German Shepherds on him.
The guard dogs first bit into his groin and thighs and then devoured him right in
front of the other prisoners. The victim was Jo, Pierre’s 18 years old boyfriend.
Nonetheless, a few well-educated men imprisoned as homosexuals managed to secure jobs within the camp
administration. Holding such a position helped many of these prisoners survive. In general,
however, research suggests that “homosexual” prisoners had a very low chance of survival.
The Nazis even attempted to treat homosexuality. This was
the reason why a Danish doctor Carl Værnet visited Buchenwald concentration camp at
least six times between June and December 1944. To test his hormone “cures” for homosexuality,
he operated on 17 male inmates. They were forced to undergo an operation that involved
the insertion of an artificial gland. Two of these “patients” later died from
infections caused by the horrible sanitary conditions in Buchenwald.
When Vaernet addressed his final report to Heinrich Himmler on the 10th of February 1945,
he described his hormone research and alleged results without even mentioning
his experiments in Buchenwald which suggests that his research was probably deemed – even
by him – either a failure; or at the very least not sufficiently credible to merit a mention.
The criminalization of sexual relations between men in Germany did not end with the defeat of Nazi
Germany in 1945. After World War II, Germany was remade by the Allied Powers and it became
two countries in 1949. These countries were on opposite sides of the Cold War.
The Federal Republic of Germany - West Germany - had a liberal-democratic constitution and
was aligned with the United States. The German Democratic Republic - East
Germany - was a communist state and aligned with the Soviet Union.
East Germany stopped enforcing Paragraph 175 in 1957 and fully abolished it in 1968.
West Germany continued to use the 1935 Nazi version of Paragraph 175. At first, West German
authorities vigorously enforced the statute, and between 1949 and 1969, 100,000 men were arrested
under Paragraph 175 and approximately 59,000 of them were ultimately convicted. Some of
these men received prison sentences which were, however, typically much shorter than during the
Nazi-era and in some cases lasted days or weeks. Other men did not serve time, but
instead had to pay a fine. In 1969, West Germany finally deemphasized enforcement of the statute.
It was only in 1994 when Paragraph 175 was dropped from the German criminal code after
East and West Germany had reunited as the Federal Republic of Germany.
There were many teras shed for all those who suffered for their
sexual orientations and gender identities.
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