First homosexual movement
The first homosexual movement thrived in Germany from the late nineteenth century until 1933. The movement began in Germany because of a confluence of factors, including the criminalization of sex between men (Paragraph 175) and the country's relatively lax censorship. German writers in the mid-nineteenth century coined the word homosexual and criticized its criminalization. In 1897, Magnus Hirschfeld founded the world's first homosexual organization, the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, whose aim was to use science to improve public tolerance of homosexuality and repeal Paragraph 175. During the German Empire, the movement was restricted to an educated elite, but it greatly expanded in the aftermath of World War I and the German Revolution.
Reduced censorship and the growth of homosexual subcultures in German cities helped the movement to flourish during the Weimar Republic. Between 1919 and 1933, the first publicly sold, mass-market periodicals intended for a gay, lesbian, or transvestite readership were published, although they faced censorship lawsuits and bans on public sale after the 1926 Trash and Smut Law. The first mass organizations for homosexuals, the German Friendship Society and the League for Human Rights, were founded in the aftermath of the war. These organizations emphasized human rights and respectability politics, and they excluded prostitutes and effeminate homosexual men, who were considered harmful to the movement's public image. The homosexual movement had limited success with the general public, because many Germans believed that homosexuality could be spread as a communicable disease.
The movement began to wane in 1929 with the Great Depression, an increasingly hostile political climate, and the failure of the movement's main goal, the repeal of Paragraph 175. It effectively ended within a few months of the Nazi takeover in early 1933, and the relative tolerance of the Weimar era was followed by the most severe persecution of homosexual men in history. The Weimar Republic has held enduring interest for many LGBT people as a brief interlude in which gay men, lesbians, and transvestites took advantage of unprecedented freedoms. The movement had a strong influence on later LGBT movements.
Homosexuals have faced persecution throughout German history.[1] The 1532 Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, the first penal code of the Holy Roman Empire, called for the execution of homosexuals by burning at the stake. It is unclear how much laws against homosexuality were enforced prior to the modern era. In some parts of Germany, homosexuality was decriminalized or punishment lessened from death to imprisonment as a result of the Napoleonic wars. After the unification of Germany in 1871, Prussian law was adopted by the German Empire, including Paragraph 175 that criminalized sex between men.[2][3] The law was difficult to enforce because it required proof that the accused had participated in penetrative sex with another man, although case law was inconsistent about exactly which acts were illegal.[4][5]
