BENT: Historical Background

FROM DIRECTOR TIM MOLLEN

Chronology of the Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals

Most of this information comes from Richard Plant’s history The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals. Additional information is from Wikipedia and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

• 1871 - Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany proclaims the Second Reich and his government formally adopts Paragraph 175 of the Prussian Legal Code for the entire Reich. Paragraph 175 makes sexual acts between males punishable. In practice, German courts usually prosecute only those cases involving behavior that resembles “coital acts.”

• Ironically, 19th-century Germany gives birth to the modern world’s first organized gay rights movement. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld established the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in 1897. Over the next 26 years, the committee submits many petitions to the Reichstag (parliament) in an unsuccessful effort to overturn Paragraph 175. Signers included Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and many other German scientists, writers and artists. In BENT, the character Horst recalls being arrested for signing a Hirschfeld petition in Berlin. From 1899-1923, Hirschfeld edits and publishes the annual Yearbook of Intersexual Variants, which includes essays on medical, legal, historical, and anthropological aspects of homosexuality.

• 1921 – Adolph Hitler merges various, small, right-wing groups to form the National Socialist Workers’ (Nazi) Party. The first SA paramilitary units are formed to act as Hitler’s bodyguards. Ernst Roehm, an openly gay army captain and close friend of Hitler, soon becomes head of the SA.

• 1933 – Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany. The burning down of the Reichstag building (by mysterious, unknown plotters) provides the pretext for an emergency decree granting Hitler dictatorial powers. Pornography and homosexual rights groups are banned as the reign of terror begins. Magnus Hirschfeld is fortunate to be out of the country when his Institute of Sexual Research is vandalized, and much of its irreplaceable collection of photos and books are burned in the street. Civil rights are systematically abolished, and Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler oversees the construction and opening of Dachau, the first large-scale, Nazi concentration camp.

• 1934 – On June 24, Hitler and the now-preferred leaders of Himmler’s SS conduct a murderous purge against the SA, which is deemed to be a decadent cabal rife with homosexuals. Between 85 and 300 people are killed, including political opponents not associated with the SA. This event would come to be known as “the Night of the Long Knives.” SA Chief Ernst Roehm, the unofficial “protector” of Germany’s gays, is executed two days later. The opening scene of BENT is set on the morning after the Night of the Long Knives.

• 1935 – Paragraph 175 is amended to outlaw and punish almost any conceivable contact between males that could be deemed suspicious by any other single person. Eventually, it expands even further, to include the mere intention to commit such acts. Local police seek and obtain the help of many German citizens, who supply them with names of suspected homosexuals among their neighbors, family, business associates, and friends. Some gay men find closeted refuge in the German military, which never fully acquiesces to the Nazi authorities.

• 1933 to 1945 – Over 20,000 concentration camps spring up across Germany and its occupied territories. An estimated 6 million Jews (or 78% of the Jews living in occupied Europe) are exterminated. A broader interpretation of the term “Holocaust” includes other groups targeted and killed by the Nazis: Poles, Soviet POW’s and citizens, Roma, Sinti, the mentally and physically disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, political dissenters, clergy, and homosexual men. Using this broader definition raises the death toll to an estimated 17 million.

• 1933 to 1945 – Determining the number of homosexuals persecuted and killed by the Third Reich is difficult, particularly because many of them are identified as members of one or more other groups. Most estimates put the number of German men arrested for violations of Paragraph 175 during the Third Reich at 50,000, and the number who perished in the camps at 5 – 15,000. Non-German gays are not specifically targeted – they are considered to be useful as poisonous agents that undermine their respective races. In the camps, gays are identified with badges in the form of a pink triangle. (In later years, the LGBTQ community co-opts this image and transforms it into a symbol of pride and unity.) In the concentration camps, men with the pink triangle are the lowest rung of the prisoner hierarchy, loathed by guards and fellow inmates alike. Gays are often singled out for the most dangerous work details in the camps, such as the stone quarry depicted in BENT. Some are beaten or murdered by their fellow inmates. Others survive by submitting to homosexual acts with “straight” officers, guards, and prisoners in positions of authority (kapos). In camp “infirmaries,” gay men undergo horrific medical experiments in a supposed effort to develop a “cure” for homosexuality.

• 1945 – Allied troops liberate the concentration camps, but not before countless more victims are hurriedly killed in an effort to complete Hitler’s murderous vision. The end of the war does not mean the end of persecution for gays. Unlike other survivors of the concentration camps, gays in Germany continue to be classified as criminals, and are denied the compensation given by the West German government to members of other victimized groups. In fact, some gays are forced to serve more time in prison; their time in camp is not applied against their sentences. Many hide their orientation and experiences until their deaths, resulting in a scarcity of first-hand accounts by gay survivors.

• 1972 – A German book publisher releases Heinz Heger’s The Men with the Pink Triangle, based on Heger’s interviews of an anonymous, gay survivor of the concentration camps. It is the first published account of its kind.

• 1979 – BENT premieres in London’s West End and on Broadway, introducing the true story of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals to a mass audience.

• 1994 – The last of Germany’s notorious Paragraph 175 laws is finally repealed.