Red Germany and Gay Rights

ninebucks

Banned
Say, following WW1, Germany, and not Russia, experiences a revolution and becomes the world's first major socialist nation.

What would Red Germany's position of homosexuality be? What it be in line with the scientific consensus of the time, (that it was a mental disorder), or would they have a less negative view, (there was a significant movement within Germany seeking to normalise homosexuality)?

We've had discussions before about what the consequences of a Communist Germany would be, but what would be the effects specifically in the arena of Gay Rights? Would gays in the capitalist world be seen as a more 'deviant' bunch? Or would a much, much earlier formal acknowledgement of Gay equality be a positive example?
 
black angel

black angel

funny question, over all Communists of the Marx camp see the gay as a capitalist deviance, that being said in OTL in the 1920s Berlin (who's city government was controlled by leftists) was the gay capital of the world, gay bars and clubs, drag queens, male whores and bathhouses, you name it, it was there, in the birthplace of the KPD.
 

Files

I believe the first person to advocate that homosexuality was not a disorder was a German Jew named Magnus Hirschfeld. Not sure of his political leanings, if he was there at the time he might be sponsored by the newly installed revolutionary government.

Also it depends on what sort of communist revolution it is and who comes out more or less on top. If you've got a KPD with Luxembourg and the other left-communists it'll probably be more tolerant.
 
Jape

Jape

In the fluid revolutionary beginning Soviet Russia was all for progressive civil rights, as mentioned Lenin legalised homosexuality and I believe in 1905 the Petersburg Soviet called for it to be legalised as well.

However Stalin went for a more traditional approach, turning away from women's rights in favour of the family etc.

A Red Germany may very well legalise homosexuality and call on women to empower themselves but as things ossicify, the Government might try to appeal to more conservative, traditional ideas. Though if Russia is willing to do it, I think gay Berlin will see it happen, if only for a few years.
 

RGB

I'd say, all the major Russian leftists were somewhat homophobic, Lenin and Trotsky and them included (and Engels too for good measure). They just never really thought it was important enough to really really deal with, and so left it off the original criminal code.

Stalin, however, was not only a former seminarist, he was very conservative in most senses. He asked for the 1937 constitution to bring it back. It proved very useful as a means of persecuting politically inconvenient people in the post-Stalin years - the infamous 121.
 

alphaboi867

Sex between adult men (AFAIK lesbian sex was never actually illegal) get's decriminalized when the new penal code is implimented. That's it for several decades. Other laws are used against "public" expressions of homosexuality. The official view is that it's a (very rare) mental disorder that's to be delt with by doctors, not the courts. There might be a brief period of "Gay Berlin", but when things stabilize gay life goes back underground (but probally remains an open secret in the entertainment industry).\
 
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