Homosexual men and women had been ostracized for centuries, persecuted by state and church and threatened with draconian punishments. The death penalty was the common sentence for love between partners of the same, a love that had no name and was referred to as the “silent sin” or “sodomy”.

Paragraph 175 was introduced into criminal law of the German Empire in 1871. Sexual acts between men – no matter what their age and even in the case of full mutual consent – became a punishable offence, lesbian women were exempt from that rule. It was the only paragraph in the whole German criminal law that prosecuted deeds that caused no damage to anyone.
Hopes that the first German democracy in 1919 could bring freedom to homosexuals did not materialize. With the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933 massive prosecution of homosexuals began. In no time at all the whole network of gay and lesbian life in the German Empire collapsed: bars were closed, clubs dissolved and meeting points fell under tightened control of vice squads and the Gestapo. Neighbors, colleagues, friends and even family members felt confirmed in their previously born grudges and prejudices and began to observe homosexual contacts and denounce them to the police. Frequent denunciations facilitated the work of the state prosecutors greatly.

The tightening of criminal law in 1935 paved the way for mass prosecution and conviction of homosexuals. One aim of the NS-state was a drastic increase of the population and another the breeding of an ideal national-socialist human being. Both goals could not be fulfilled by and with homosexual men. That was reason enough to declare them enemies of the state because they would as “demographic duds” accelerate the decline of the state. Millions of men now did not only expose themselves to the accusation of “unnatural acts of indecency” – thus an individual offence -, but their behavior was, in addition, viewed and observed by the Gestapo as acts of subversion. They were threatened with incarceration, internment in a concentration camp and even death. Power hungry NS-officials, like Munich “Gauleiter” Adolf Wagner persecuted homosexuals at all cost as they knew they could distinguish themselves as particularly enthusiastic Nazis because nobody would stop them.

The police force and the SS were trained that homosexuals were enemies of thee state and were to be persecuted with the utmost force. The apprehended men were treated accordingly. The first anti-homosexual mass-raid was carried out at the instigation of the “Gauleiter” of Bavaria. During the night from October 20 to 21, 1934 a hundred-strong police contingent stormed the public toilets and parks that were known meeting places of the community. They took all men they found there to the police headquarters where they were interrogated, intimidated and beaten up for hours. Those who had been notorious before were immediately transferred to the concentration camp in Dachau.

As early as in thee summer of 1933 the first men who had been convicted for violations against § 175 were interned in the concentration camp in Dachau and others. The first homosexual man to be interned in Dachau was Johann Krumm, born in Augsburg on June 1, 1901 who lived at Oberer Graben 23a in Augsburg. On April 24, 1933 he was registered in Dachau. In the following years he continued to be a target of the prosecution of homosexuals. After two further convictions Krumm was interned in the concentration camp Groß-Rosen in the course of the “preventive measures against crime by the police”. In July 1943 he was released. It is not known whether he was ordered to go to the front “on probation” and lived to be freed by Allied troups.

Commanders of concentration camps wanted to discipline and “turn around” homosexuals through tough punishments, exhausting work, reduced food rations and strict surveillance. Later NS-doctors aimed at turning around homosexuals with the help of a variety of medical experiments. They became the victims of various hormonal “therapies”, and in the end they were forced into castration.
In the course of the 12 years of NS-terror about 70,000 men were caught in the clutches of the penal system and convicted according to § 175, about 7,000 of them were taken to a concentration camp on the basis of a “Schutzhaftbefehl” (protective arrest warrant) where they were exposed by having to wear a pink angle as identifying symbol on their clothes. More than 60% of them did not survive their internment, 300 of those killed were interned in Dachau.

The survivors were faced with the shocking realization that after the war and the end of national-socialist rule nothing had changed at all. Homosexual survivors of prison internment remained in prison for years after the liberation of Germany. § 175 remained in force until 1969 – in the more extreme version of NS-times, and the persecution machinery was kept running. The same officers who had persecuted and convicted homosexuals between 1933 and 1945 put more than 5,000 men per year behind bars in the course of the 1950s. A bill in 1962 read: “… the legal system’s task towards male sexuality is to create a dam against the spread of profligate behavior which would prove a severe danger to the natural healthy order of life among the population.” Terms like “natural order of life” are taken up again by new rightwing movements, by groups like “Concerned Parents”, the “Identity Movement” or “The Third Way” – which have connections to the AfD (Alternative for Germany – an official political party) – or even have certain people being members of both. Therefore we do have be concerned about a rollback to ideologies of the past.

Victims of NS persecution who had born the stigma of the pink angle were excluded from the provisions of the federal compensation law and thus nor acknowledged as NS victims. For many years after the end of the war none of the pink angle survivors dared to tell their story, let alone go public with it. Only a few of them were still alive in June 1994 to witness the complete annulment of § 175 (enabled by the reunification of Germany) and even fewer who could rejoice over the general repeal of all verdicts of the NS (in)justice system by the Federal Parliament of Germany in July 2002. As late as in March 2017 the final assurance of compensation for living survivors of victims of § 175 was given by the Federal Government, and a few months later this last category of victims of persecution after the Second World War were rehabilitated and awarded a compensation.

Albert Knoll, memorial site of the concentration camp in Dachau
Translation: Wolfgang Poeppel