The Pink Triangle

This chapter is about how the memory of persecution decisively shaped 1970s homosexual politics. First, the chapter explores the ‘rediscovery’ of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, explaining how the model of the Holocaust was sometimes appropriated as part of this process. The chapter then shows how memory of this persecution, combined with the experience of contemporary discrimination, produced a profound alienation on the part of left-wing gay men from the West German state. Following an analysis of how the pink triangle became a transnational symbol, this chapter evaluates discourses of victimhood in gay liberation. Though the pink triangle was reclaimed from its origins as a badge of shame in the concentration camps, it never became an unequivocal symbol of pride. Finally, the chapter explores how, in the late 1970s, activists of all stripes, the commercial gay press, and the first openly gay parliamentary candidates coalesced around making the history of past persecution a central plank in their efforts to insert themselves into the West German mainstream.

Introduction

This introduction briefly places the 1970s into a longer history of homosexual emancipation in Germany, before moving onto the different ways historians have conceptualized gay liberation. The chapter calls into question the significance of the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969. For West Germans, the partial decriminalization of male homosexuality that same year was more important. Even so, 1969 was not a clear-cut turning-point. This introduction sets out the book’s central lens of analysis, ambivalence—the simultaneous attachment to conflicting feelings and attitudes. Drawing on queer, sociological, and psychoanalytic theory, the introduction advances three axes of ambivalence: pride/shame, normal/different, and hope/fear. This framework allows us to explore the tensions and complexities of the 1970s, as well as appreciate continuities in homosexual politics. Gay liberation was never simply the result of the more radical or the more confrontational outlook winning out over the forces of respectability and moderation.

Conclusion

This conclusion takes stock of homosexual politics—ways of thinking, feeling, and talking about homosexuality—at the end of the 1970s. The partial decriminalization of sex between men in 1969 offered West German homosexuals a precarious foothold in society. A decade on, that foothold had become somewhat more secure. Yet, as the possibility of public recognition and integration into society became more tangible, the ambivalence engendered by this prospect became all the more pronounced. This conclusion shows that three trends gradually came together at the end of the decade: a focus on ‘self-help’, the language of human rights, and a greater engagement with the parliamentary system. The chapter also discusses the first ‘gay pride’ events in Germany, which were organized in 1979 to commemorate the Stonewall Riots, which took place in New York City a decade earlier. It argues, nevertheless, that gay liberation should not be analysed or remembered only through the prism of pride. Instead, the ambivalence of gay liberation takes centre stage.

‘It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse’

This chapter explores the complex transition from ‘homophile’ to ‘gay’ politics in the early 1970s, particularly focusing on conflicts over Rosa von Praunheim’s film, It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, but the Society in Which He Lives—screened on national television in January 1973. The chapter demonstrates that homosexual politics, especially in this early period of gay liberation, between 1969 and 1973, were exceedingly fraught, and cannot be reduced to a simple story of generational conflict between ‘reformist’ or ‘integrationist’ homophiles versus ‘leftist’ or ‘radical’ gays. These debates were not just about what homosexuals thought and felt about wider society, but were informed by what that society thought and felt about them. Through the case study of the furore over Praunheim’s film, this chapter therefore also reveals the ambivalence of the wider public and the liberal media to the early claims of gay liberation.

The West German Gay World after Homosexual Law Reform

This chapter shows that sexual conservatism remained influential in West Germany, even after the partial decriminalization of male homosexuality in 1969. To give just one example, a court upholding the dismissal of an openly gay teacher in 1975 could cite the significance of ‘unwritten laws of honour, convention and decency’. By exploring the stubbornness of homophobic prejudice, especially the view that homosexuality was a danger to youth, this chapter highlights the limits of liberalization in West Germany, thereby interrogating an influential strand of historiography which has portrayed the Federal Republic as a success story of democratization and liberalization. At the same time, this chapter also explores the shifting contours of queer life in the 1970s, focusing on the emergence of the commercial gay press in 1970, and the diversification (and internationalization) of the gay scene—those various locations where same-sex desiring men met each other for the purposes of leisure, sociability and sex.

Thinking and Feeling Homosexuality

This chapter puts ambivalence over sex and self-presentation centre-stage, by focusing first on debates over drag and gender transgression, and then on the equivocal position of sex and desire in homosexual politics. While some activists embraced effeminacy for personal and for political reasons, drag was not always compatible with the model of masculinity favoured by many other activists, who sometimes accused Tunten (‘queens’) of endangering the chance of left-wing support. Turning to how sex featured in gay activism, the chapter shows how a shared antipathy to the gay scene, and sites of sexual activity, resembled an important point of connection between gay action groups and more ‘moderate’ homosexual organizations. The final third of the chapter historicizes the emotional politics of gay liberation. After identifying the gay scene as a major culprit for psychological distress in queer life, activists set about imagining alternatives. In this concluding section, the rise of consciousness-raising and self-help groups, and of the first telephone crisis helplines, is set against changing psychological attitudes towards homosexuality.

Gay Liberation, ‘1968’, and the Alternative Left

This chapter explores the ambivalent relationship between gay liberation and ‘1968’. First, the chapter delves into the sexual politics of the West German student movement, before analysing the subsequent links between homosexual politics, second-wave feminism, and the 1970s alternative left. This alternative left provided not just ideological influences but also a space for gay liberation. The chapter therefore explores not just the political connections but also the textual and spatial context of this alternative left. Gay activists were often less preoccupied by the Öffentlichkeit, the wider public sphere, than by the left-alternative Gegenöffentlichkeit, the counter-public, with its sprawling network of independently produced papers and zines, alongside its alternative spaces: bars, bookshops, housing, and theatre collectives. After exploring the hitherto little acknowledged queer participation in this counter-public, the chapter examines the efforts of gay activists to gain recognition from sought-after leftist partners, which culminated in gays characterizing themselves as victims of fascism.