Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

INSTITUTIONS | SPEECHES   215 Institutions Honourable President of the Bavarian State Parliament, Ilse Aigner, Esteemed Director of the Bavarian Memorial Foundation, Karl Freller, Dear Participants, Dear Guests, It is a special honour for me to speak to you today in two capacities. First, as a representative of Nuremberg’s queer community, which proposed this memorial and will provide funding. Second, I feel deeply privileged that, around three years ago, the late Ralph Hoffmann called me to ask if I would help bring this memorial to life. Along with Uschi Unsinn and the Political Working Group of Fliederlich e.V., he was one of the driving forces behind the memorial stone we are unveiling today. I am personally grateful to them. I did not hesitate for a moment. This memorial is very impor- tant to me, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to help create it. Gay men were among the few victim groups of the Nazi regime that continued to be persecuted inWest Germany even after the SecondWorldWar. Sexual relations between men remained criminalised, and Section 175 of the German Criminal Code (StGB) retained the wording imposed under National Socialism. As a result, thousands of gay and bisexual men – particularly in the 1950s and 1960s – were forced to serve lengthy prison sentences, stripped of their careers and subjected to social exclusion and stigmatisation. This injustice persisted in Germany until Section 175 was par- tially reformed in 1969 – though it was not fully repealed until 1994. Bastian Brauwer Chairman of CSD Nuremberg Act of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism  at the Flossenbürg Memorial  26 January 2022 For decades, any form of commemoration for these men –   or even the thought of rehabilitation – was unimaginable.   On the contrary: The same police officers continued to hunt them down, and the same judges upheld the injustice. In the eyes of the young Federal Republic, the victims of   Section 175 were not victims at all – they were offenders who had been rightly convicted and imprisoned. After the 1920s had brought a sense of hope, with queer culture and homosexual communities growing through the emergence of associations, periodicals and rich cultural net- works – and even a near repeal of the unjust Section 175 StGB – this hope was brutally crushed when the Nazis seized power. Following the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933, all homosexual associations were forced to dissolve. The further tightening of Section 175 two years later unleashed a sweeping campaign of persecution against gay and bisexual men across the Reich. At first, they were sentenced to prison or penitentiary terms; later, especially after the start of the SecondWorldWar,   increasing numbers were deported to concentration camps. In the hope of receiving a more lenient sentence, many were coerced into revealing the names of partners or acquaintances. No distinctions were made between family men, youths or single men – and even social status was not enough to protect them from persecution. In the concentration camps, identifiable by the “pink triangle” on their uniforms, they were placed at the very bottom of the prisoner hierarchy. Driven to desperation, some agreed to so-called “voluntary castration”, hoping it might secure their release from the camp and a return to freedom. The inscription found on many memorial stones for the vic- tims of Section 175 StGB – “beaten to death – silenced to death” ©Bavarian State Parliament Photo Archive / R. Poss