Download PDF - Gedenkort für die im Nationalsozialismus ...

control exerted over millions of ‘Aryan’ women in Nazi organisations – allthese factors contributed to the perception that lesbian women did not posea serious threat to the Volksgemeinschaft. This is the reason that theGestapo and the Criminal Investigation Department, in their fight againsthomosexuality, concentrated primarily on gay men, who were declared tobe ‘enemies of the people’. Between 1937 and 1939 alone, the Reich CentralOffice for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion, which was a specialdepartment of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, recorded the names ofsome 95,000 people suspected of being homosexuals. Unfortunately thefiles of this office no longer exist, and we do not know whether women wereamong those registered. Although, as my last example shows, at times theGestapo kept information on lesbians, apparently basing its work on investigationscarried out by the Berlin Police Department in the 1920s. The BerlinPolice kept a ‘lesbian’ file, even though female homosexuality was not officiallya crime.Lesbian women were not systematically persecuted, and with the exceptionof Austria, they were not prosecuted either, but this does not mean thatthey did not live in danger. A number of criminal files show that even inthose cases where women were imprisoned for other offences, includingtheft or fraud, their sexual orientation played a role in court proceedingsand in protective custody.This is shown by the case of Elsa Conrad, the owner of Monbijou, a lesbianclub that opened in 1926 and soon became one of the best-known andmost exclusive establishments of its type in classy West Berlin. In her 1928club guide, Berlins lesbische Frauen (Berlin’s Lesbian Women), the authorRuth Roellig described it as meeting place for ‘the intellectual elite, filmstars, actresses, female singers, artists and scholars.’ But in early March1933, Monbijou was shut down, sharing the fate of many other establishmentsthat were ‘frequented primarily by persons who revel in perverse andindecent sexual acts’. The immediate reason for this action was an orderissued on February 23 by the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. It stated:‘Such businesses can no longer be tolerated. The moral renewal of theGerman people is crucial for Germany’s resurgence.’ 10Elsa Conrad was arrested in fall 1935 after a lodger and an acquaintancereported to the police that she had made several statements that showedher to be an enemy of the state (in her own apartment, it must be added).Her conviction was based on the so-called ‘law against malicious gossip’(Heimtückegesetz) of December 1934, which made allegedly slanderousremarks against the party and state subject to criminal prosecution. But therecords also refer to Elsa Conrad’s ‘lesbian inclinations’, her ‘relations withlesbian women’ and, in particular, her fourteen-year relationship with a certainBertha Stenzel.The accusation made against Elsa Conrad was that she claimed Hitlerwas having an affair with his deputy, Rudolf Hess! In late 1935, she wassentenced to fifteen months’ imprisonment for ‘insulting the Reich government’.In 1937, before she had completed her sentence, Gestapo transferredher to Moringen, the location of the first women’s concentration campin Prussia.During a review of her sentence, Elsa Conrad was told she would bereleased only if she agreed to emigrate to Palestine or to go abroad. (This64