Queer Life in Postwar Germany
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Resource scarcity, disease, famine, and homelessness created an environment in which, as historian Clayton Whisnant has written, “legality and crime blurred into one another.” The Allied authorities attempted to ameliorate the worst effects of Germany’s postwar crises through strict price controls and rationing, though many Germans turned to the black market to procure the items necessary for survival.

            There was confusion among judicial courts as to whether Paragraph 175 was going to remain in effect. Between the restructuring of police departments, legal ambiguity, and the everyday crimes of necessity, police did not appear interested in its enforcement. The lax imposition of Paragraph 175 (and other laws used to regulate sexuality) created a climate of relative freedom that queer Germans had not been permitted since before 1933.

            However, perceived sexual and gender deviance still carried risks, necessitating the continued concealment of sexual and romantic encounters. Nazi-era anti-gay sentiments persisted among large swaths of the German populace. Many considered homosexuality to be a corrupting influence that was spread through pedophilic seduction. Others, including government figures, regarded homosexuality as politically dangerous, whether due to the potential for blackmail or the notion that queer people were adept at creating clandestine networks. In several instances, even after Allied troops liberated Nazi prisons and concentration camps, imprisoned gay men were forced to serve out the remainder of their sentence. Even lesbians such as the anti-fascist activist Hilde Radusch experienced harassment and violence at the hands of occupying authorities for such perceived transgressions.

            In cities like Berlin, where one-third of all apartments were uninhabitable or destroyed after the war, privacy was difficult to find. Many people rented accommodations from the fortunate minority who still had homes; others resided in mass bunkers and shelters established by postwar authorities to temporarily house the homeless and refugee populations. Those who still had homes became popular sexual partners for the rare privilege of a private space.

     Even without such spaces, queer Germans found opportunities for intimacy in unexpected venues. The dark, cramped spaces of those same shelters for the homeless offered the plausible deniability and close contact to afford a chance sexual encounter. Train stations, both standing and those in ruins, quickly became favored places, especially for gay men, to meet potential partners (and male sex workers). From there, many took their sexual liaisons to public restrooms or bombed-out buildings that still retained enough structure to provide some privacy. Even as cities were rebuilt and stabilized in the late 1940s, many queer Germans continued to meet and have sex in semi-public spaces, including train stations and public bathrooms—but also parking lots, parks, and forests. Silence was key in each of these settings.

            A few surviving leaders of Weimar-era queer scenes resurfaced to re-establish the subcultures they remembered. A handful of the Weimar-era bars, such as the Eldorado and the Kleist-Kasino, reopened in Berlin following the war. Several organizations emerged almost immediately after the war with the explicit aim of challenging Paragraph 175. Most of these organizations were led by a younger generation of Germans, though a few evoked cultural memories of Weimar-era organizations through their names, such as the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. For a brief period in the early 1950s, these organizations produced magazines that published queer literature, reported on raids, and acted as a space to refine political arguments against Paragraph 175. Unfortunately, many of these organizations were short-lived and would not gain the prominence of their predecessors.

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By the end of the 1940s, the East-West German divide solidified into two distinct political entities. The zones occupied by the U.S., Great Britain, and France became the Federal Republic of Germany, while the U.S.S.R. occupied and continued to control the German Democratic Republic to the east. Following the first federal elections in 1949, Konrad Adenauer became chancellor of West Germany. His administration, which advanced deeply patriarchal, religious, and anti-Communist politics, would signify a broader shift in West Germany toward sexual conservatism.

            Despite previous challenges regarding the law’s merit, the Federal Court of Justice affirmed the continuation of the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 in 1951. Arrests under the anti-gay law spiked in subsequent years. Local police also made use of older repressive practices, such as pink lists (Rosa Listen). These were large galleries of files that contained the names, fingerprints, and pictures of suspected homosexuals, along with private information about them. The Nazi regime had made extensive use of such files in their persecution of gay men, and their continued use in West Germany outraged many queer Germans. Often, police gathered the information used in pink lists either while conducting surveillance of queer establishments or while raiding them.

            In the early 1950s, West German police departments (especially in Berlin) justified their surveillance and raids of queer establishments with the explanation that they were seeking out underage male prostitutes. The exact number of “streetwalking boys” (Strichjunge) is difficult to determine, but they were of prominent concern in the minds of law enforcement and the public. In practice, these raids targeted younger-looking queer men and trans* women, and police took the information and fingerprints of all patrons present to add to their pink lists.

            West German police raids of queer institutions rose dramatically in 1954, potentially for several reasons. The Adenauer government’s amnesty policies ensured that many Nazi ex-military officers and bureaucrats reclaimed positions similar to their previous posts—including judges and prosecutors. Furthermore, in places like Berlin, growing numbers of raids could be tied to local politicians attempting to garner support during election cycles.

            Despite the increase in raids, possible legal ramifications, and forced closures, the number of queer establishments continued to increase during the 1950s. Between the early 1950s and 1959, the number of queer bars rose from seven to thirteen in West Berlin, from five to fourteen in Frankfurt, and from four to seventeen in Hamburg. Even smaller cities like Hanover had three bars open at any given time.

            In cities with a sizable bar scene, such as West Berlin and Hamburg, bars could attract clienteles of specific social classes or genders. The presence of these establishments is indicative of a lively queer subculture in these cities and, doubtlessly, they were kept open by the continued patronage of their queer regulars despite harassment from police or the many instances of violence from homophobic youths. It was common for local authorities to revoke licenses or force a bar to close, though closed bars were often quickly replaced by new ones.

            By contrast, the East German government had reverted to the older and relatively lenient version of Paragraph 175 by 1948. It is difficult to estimate the number of men prosecuted in East Germany under this law, but the available evidence shows far fewer convictions than in West Germany. However, the ruling party in the East, the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), used a veneer of family-oriented conservative politics to appeal to East German sensibilities during periods of instability.

            In 1953, unpopular economic reforms led to waves of strikes and labor uprisings. Soviet troops crushed this revolt, but the uprisings left East German authorities feeling vulnerable. In response, the SED used sexually conservative values and an anti-homosexual stance to restabilize the party’s relationship with the public. As historian Samuel Clowes Huneke has noted, the contradictions between East Germany’s projected image of progressivism and its sexual conservatism “led to the seeming paradox of legal liberalization coupled with continuing discrimination and lack of social opportunity.”

            More research is needed to estimate the development of LGBT life in East Germany, but current studies suggest that queer scenes did not develop there to the extent they did in the West. The most robust evidence arises from East Berlin. A handful of queer bars existed there, but they only grew in number and prominence after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Instead, much as in the West, East Berliners cruised in public baths and restrooms, forests, train stations, and what Huneke called “a private universe of house parties [that had]also developed in large cities by the 1960s.” Until the implementation of a hard border between the two halves of the city in 1961, most East Germans ventured West to find communal queer spaces, usually bars. The popularity of these bars among queer East Germans resulted in the surveillance of such establishments not only by the West Berlin police but also by the East German secret police, the Stasi.

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In 1957, the governments of East and West Germany diverged in their enforcement of Paragraph 175. That year, East Germany stopped prosecuting men under the law, with the exception of cases that endangered the regime. This change did not necessarily legalize sex between men. In fact, it became dangerous for gay men to work within the Stasi, the army, or in government positions. The SED feared associations between the regime and homosexuality and therefore prioritized violations of Paragraph 175 that it found damaging to the party’s reputation. SED members could use accusations of homosexuality to purge political rivals from party ranks. But for other queer East Germans, those not in a position of authority, while any perceived sexual or gender deviance posed a threat to their social reputation, it would no longer land you in prison.

            East Germany’s relative leniency stood in sharp contrast to West Berlin. In that same year (1957). the West German Constitutional Courts dealt a serious blow to efforts to abolish Paragraph 175 by re-confirming its constitutionality. In the years that followed, police raids on queer bars reached their height. In 1959, West Berlin police estimated that bars that catered to gay men were subject to two to three raids per month.

            Most bar owners did not idly permit police to harass them and their patrons. Since the late 1940s, most bars had required guests to ring a bell to be permitted entry. As raids increased, many proprietors challenged their legality, placed physical barriers in front of their doors, or, in one instance, locked the doors of a West Berlin bar to keep police from entering. Other owners placed “Private Party” signs over closed doors to limit surveillance. Bell-and-light systems were standard among queer bars by the mid-1960s, with owners using them to warn patrons of incoming threats and give them an opportunity to flee. Many patrons would not even enter an establishment before checking whether they were being watched.

            Queer Germans had long employed tactics and signals to communicate with potential sexual partners while protecting themselves from harassment and violence. When in public, gay men in particular often communicated through eye contact, subtle gestures, coded language, or walking with exaggerated hip movements. Establishments’ use of bells, warning lights, or misleading signs continued a long tradition of concealment and plausible deniability that was familiar to queer Germans.

            The border between East and West Berlin became impermeable in 1961. Historian Andrea Rottmann has argued that the wall represented queer death for those who previously had crossed into the western side of the city to access their communities. Even so, queer life did not cease in East Germany. The number of queer spaces there increased after 1961, including a handful of gay and lesbian bars along Friedrichstraße in East Berlin, at least one establishment in Potsdam, and in most cities, gay men held gatherings inside private homes.

            Around the same time, the West German conservative fever broke among the younger generations. A decline in Adenauer’s popularity coincided with a marked change of sexual mores known as the Sex Wave (Sex Welle). The character of this movement was explicitly heterosexual and often neglected queer issues altogether, but it was emblematic of a broader liberalization of attitudes. At the same time, an outrage spread among German youth about the amnesty and reinstatement of ex-Nazis, which led to mass political mobilization.

            East Germany modified Paragraph 175 in 1968 and West Germany did so in the following year, in both cases decriminalizing sex between adult men. Less is understood about the events leading to East Germany’s abolition of Paragraph 175. Prevailing theories as to why East Germany decriminalized homosexuality emphasize both the state’s political stability (less need for a scapegoat) and its desire to project a progressive image to the rest of the world. However, both states increased scrutiny for all same-sex relationships between adults and legally underage partners. In the wake of decriminalization, there remained a notable disparity between the ages of consent regarding homosexual and heterosexual relationships: eighteen for same-sex couples and sixteen for opposite-sex couples in the East; 21 for queer couples and fourteen for straight couples in the West.

            Animus toward queer people did not evaporate after decriminalization. However, freedom from criminal prosecution created fertile ground for the emergence of the gay and trans liberation movements of the following decades—in both the West and East. What emerges when one examines queer life in postwar Germany is a climate in which political, legal, and social freedoms periodically increased and then shrank back. There were periods of growing political momentum, social and sexual opportunities, and a tense permissiveness from governing bodies. There were also periods of harsh crackdowns, increased criminalization, and shattered hopes. The notable trend in these events is the resilience and persistence of queer Germans to continue rebuilding queer life despite government ambivalence and repression.

References

Dobler, Jens. Von anderen Ufern: Geschichte der Berliner Lesben und Schwulen in Kreuzberg und Friedrichshain. Bruno Gmünder Verlag, 2003.

Evans, Jennifer. “Decriminalization, Seduction, and ‘Unnatural Desire’ in East Germany.” Feminist Studies 36, no. 3 (Fall 2010).

Huneke, Samuel Clowes. States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany. University of Toronto Press, 2022.

McLellan, Josie. Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Moeller, Robert. “Private Acts, Public Anxieties, and the Fight to Decriminalize Male Homosexuality in West Germany.” Feminist Studies 36, no. 3 (Fall 2010).

Rottmann, Andrea. Queer Lives across the Wall: Desire and Danger in Divided Berlin, 1945–1970. University of Toronto Press, 2023.

Whisnant, Clayton. Male Homosexuality in West Germany: Between Persecution and Freedom, 1945-69. Palgrave MacMillan, 2012.

*          Those designated as “trans” here typically described themselves using the term transvestit, or transvestite. This term often conflated drag personas with identities that would be considered transgender today.