Transgender people in Nazi Germany
In Nazi Germany, transgender people had a variety of experiences depending on whether they were considered "Aryan" or capable of useful work.[1] Historian Laurie Marhoefer argues that transgender people were a discrete target of Nazi persecution, citing instances of charges for violating Paragraph 183, a law against cross-dressing.[2]
Some male-to-female transvestites were targeted under Paragraph 175 as part of the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany; Germany's transvestite community had a recognized subcategory (referred to by Magnus Hirschfeld as early as the 1920s as "total transvestites" or "extreme transvestites") that would later be recognized more widely in medical literature as transsexual.[3][4]
In 2022, the Regional Court of Cologne ruled that denying that trans people were victims of the Nazis qualifies as "a denial of Nazi crimes".[5]
Background[edit]
Institut für Sexualwissenschaft[edit]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Nunn, Zavier (2022). "Trans Liminality and the Nazi State". Past & Present: gtac018. doi:10.1093/pastj/gtac018.
- ^ "Paper: Trans Identities and "Cross Dressing" in Nazi Germany: Trans People as a Discrete Target of State Violence (134th Annual Meeting (January 3-6, 2020))". aha.confex.com. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
- ^ Sutton, Katie (2012). ""We Too Deserve a Place in the Sun": The Politics of Transvestite Identity in Weimar Germany". German Studies Review. 35 (2): 348 – via JSTOR.
- ^ "Paragraph 175 and the Nazi Campaign against Homosexuality". The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved March 12, 2023.
Not everyone arrested under Paragraph 175 identified as a man. During the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, Germany was home to a developing community of people who identified as 'transvestites.' [...] Initially, this term encompassed people who performed in drag, people who cross-dressed for pleasure, as well as those who today might identify as trans or transgender.
- ^ "Vollbrecht-Tweet darf als Leugnung von NS-Verbrechen bezeichnet werden". Der Spiegel (in German). 2022-11-11. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
Further reading[edit]
- Evans, Jennifer; Mailänder, Elissa (2021). "Cross-dressing, Male Intimacy and the Violence of Transgression in Third Reich Photography". German History. 39 (1): 54–77. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghaa031.
- Herrn, Rainer (2013). "Transvestitismus in der NS-Zeit – Ein Forschungsdesiderat". Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung. 26 (04): 330–371. doi:10.1055/s-0033-1356172.
- Herrn, Rainer (2014). "„In der heutigen Staatsführung kann es nicht angehen, daß sich Männer in Frauenkleidung frei auf der Straße bewegen."". Homosexuelle im Nationalsozialismus (in German). De Gruyter Oldenbourg. ISBN 978-3-486-85750-4.
- Marhoefer, Laurie (2016). "Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State: A Microhistory of a Gestapo Investigation, 1939–1943". The American Historical Review. 121 (4): 1167–1195. doi:10.1093/ahr/121.4.1167.
- "Transgender Experiences in Weimar and Nazi Germany". Museum of Jewish Heritage. June 3, 2022.
- "Everyday Encounters with Fascism: Photo of the Eldorado Club". The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved March 12, 2023.