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DARKROOMS –

Thomas Reider ( scriptwriter ) and Bernhard Steinmann ( filmmaker ) Reflexions on the movie Great Freedom ( Große Freiheit ), 2021 .

For 123 years , Paragraph 175 banned homosexuality in Germany . Those convicted were sentenced to prison terms of up to ten years . Surveillance , blackmail , denunciation , torture , and murder were daily threats . In Nazi concentration camps , gays were a special category , being made wear the insignia of a pink triangle ( Rosa Winkel in German ). The “ liberation ” by the Allies in 1945 did not bring freedom for homosexuals . The National Socialist ( tightened ) version of Paragraph 175 continued to apply without restriction . Thus , after the end of the war , gay concentration camp prisoners were even transferred directly from the concentration camps to prison , to serve their remaining sentence . “ Pink Lists ” ( Rosa Listen in German ) from the Third Reich continued to be used and helped to track down the “ perverts ”.   The infamous Paragraph 175 gave generations of gay men a name : 175 ! was synonymous with homosexual . The total ban on homosexuality remained in place until 1969 . But it would take another 25 years for Paragraph 175 to completely disappear from the German Civil Code in 1994 . This paragraph did not continue to exist out of oversight but was , over the decades , re-examined , recertified and reconfirmed . During the post-war years , 100,000 men were brought to trial in West Germany alone . Paragraph 175 allowed authorities to intercept and confiscate love letters and submit them to court as evidence and to install cameras behind mirrors , encroaching on the privacy of these men , revealing their intimate lives , and exposing extremely personal details to the public .

Observing Memories Issue 6