Vom Verbot zur Gleichberechtigung - Hirschfeld-Eddy-Stiftung

06
A Word of Greeting
Day-in-day-out Manfred Bruns does what many only preach, and is often enough considered
disruptive within the context of social and political reality: he often goes on the
offensive. He is not satisfied with what are considered social realities. Hence, this commemorative
publication is dedicated to him.
Manfred Bruns grew up during a time when gay men neither had the opportunity to
orient themselves on their own, to develop their own identities in relation to role models,
to develop successful biographies, nor the opportunity to live out their sexual orientation
without running the risk of prosecution.
The path that this man, who was born in 1934, took was typical for a whole generation
of gay men up until the 1980s: it was characterised by attempts to find his way within the
norms of majority society, by the need to take consideration of others, and by fear.
In 1985, however, Manfred Bruns had the courage to come out publically in mid-life.
It was, at that time, a daring and relatively dangerous step of a high-ranking civil servant,
and it certainly did not make his career in the Office of the Attorney General in
Germany any easier. Here I would like to remind you that the insufferable Kießling affair
had shaken West Germany just one year earlier.
The marked change in the social climate, which also makes it possible for leading politicians
to now acknowledge their sexual identity, would not have been possible without
courageous pioneers like Manfred Bruns.
Manfred Bruns was, in the second half of the 1980s, one of the most important pioneers
of a liberal AIDS policy in the Federal Republic of Germany. Today, the success of this
policy has been confirmed thousand-fold. However, those who consciously experienced
this period still know how hard it was to prevent regressive policies in a form of “plague
hygiene”, propagating exclusion and quarantines under the direction of state authorities,
from taking hold.
Manfred Bruns helped to initiate a second important project and has defended it for over
twenty years against tremendous opposition: putting lesbian and gay life unions on
equal footing with marriages. This is a matter of eliminating discrimination and ensuring
equal civil rights. The efforts of Manfred Bruns and many of his comrades-in-arms
are to thank for the fact that a decade after the ratification of the Life Partnership Act,