Download PDF - Gedenkort für die im Nationalsozialismus ...

Living in the Shadow of PersecutionLesbian Women under National SocialismClaudia SchoppmannThe memory of the Nazi period seems more alive today than ever, but ourknowledge of the lives of lesbian women in the Third Reich is patchy, evensixty years after the end of the war. For decades, the public took no interestin this subject, partly because lesbians were not among the declared enemiesof the Nazi regime, and partly because, after 1945, there was no radicalchange in attitudes toward homosexuality in either East or West Germany.Discrimination simply continued. In this atmosphere of silence – towhich intensified efforts to criminalise homosexual men in the FederalRepublic of Germany contributed – the women who had lived through theNazi period were not encouraged to talk about their experiences. Furthermore,hardly any files or documents relating to lesbian women have survived.The ones we do have are in disparate locations and have frequentlybeen discovered only by chance. In a situation like this, in which ignoranceand taboos prevail, myths can emerge all the more easily.Despite these difficulties, I would like to examine what it meant to be ‘differentfrom others’ in the Third Reich. What factors shaped the lives of lesbiansafter the National Socialists came into power? How did criminal lawtreat female homosexuality? What consequences did the Nazis’ homophobicideology and politics have for these women?In 1933, when the Nazis cracked down on groups that did not suit theirpolitics or had made enemies in other areas of society, the organisedhomosexual movement was hard hit. Large organisations such as the Bundfür Menschenrechte (Human Rights League) and the internationallyrenowned Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexology) – foundedin 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld – were dissolved or destroyed. Lesbianorganisations and meeting places were closed down or placed under surveillance,and books and magazines that focused on homosexual themeswere banned. What’s more, raids and informants created a climate of fear.‘It was then that people began to wear masks,’ said one Berlin fashiondesigner, who herself was forced to marry her boss, out of fear that shewould lose her job if she refused. ‘People protected themselves instinctively.They kept to themselves and exercised extreme care,’ 1 said ElisabethZimmermann, another historical witness.Although the Nazis began persecuting and stripping the Jewish populationof its rights as early as 1933, they took a different approach with homosexuals,since it was very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish them fromthe heterosexual population. In this way homosexuals differed from theregime’s political opponents and from Jews, whose religious affiliation, or atleast that of their grandparents, could be looked up in the civil registryoffice.Most of the estimated two to three million homosexuals in Germany continuedto be part of the Volksgemeinschaft 2 , and it was generally thoughtthat they could be ‘re-educated’ or ‘improved’. Another difference betweenthe persecution of Jews and that of homosexuals was that the Nazis treat-56