The Lives of Older Lesbians: Sexuality, Identity & the Life Course

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The short answer is that when lesbians were arrested, they were arrested as members of other groups: The Nazis believed that German women had a special task to perform: motherhood. According to Nazi logic, lesbians were women and should thus be mothers. They had a responsibility to give birth to racially pure Germans, called “ Aryans .” Another difficulty is that very few lesbians shared testimonies about their experiences during this time. This is partially because the topic of sexual relations between women remained taboo for decades after the Nazi era. I’d come out when I was 17 and been disowned by my parents. I’d moved to London and been in and out relationships and casual flings. She was 40 and had been married for 10 years, with three children under the age of 10. The agency we worked for also represented her husband, an esteemed writer, so I knew I absolutely couldn’t go there. Because there was no single law or policy that applied to sexual relations between women, lesbians had a wide range of experiences in Nazi Germany. These experiences were not solely determined by their sexuality. Rather, other factors shaped lesbians’ lives during the Nazi era. Among them were supposed “racial” identity, political attitudes, social class, and gender norms. Based on these factors as well as others, some lesbians (especially those who were working class) were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. In these instances, they were classified as political prisoners or asocials. Jewish lesbians largely faced Nazi persecution and mass murder as Jews. In most cases, their sexuality was a secondary factor. The Germans and their collaborators murdered an unknown number of Jewish lesbians during World War II. Before the Nazis: Lesbians in the Weimar Republic

There's a slow and persistent burn in Mona Fastvold's The World to Come. The gorgeously spare period piece stars Katherine Waterston ( Alien: Covenant) as Abigail and Vanessa Kirby ( The Crown) as Tallie, two women battling the harsh elements in 19th-century New York State who find solace and a whole lot more in one another. Sexual relations between women were taboo for much of German society. Neighbors, family members, and friends sometimes disapproved of and thus denounced the women involved to the police. It is possible they did not realize that sexual relations between women were not illegal. In some of these cases, the police dismissed the complaints because they had no legal basis.By eliminating gay and lesbian gathering places and presses, the regime effectively dissolved the lesbian communities that had developed during the Weimar Republic. Expanding the Persecution of Men Accused of Homosexuality The Nazis did not create any separate policies that singled out lesbians as a problem for Aryan procreation. Their reasoning drew on widespread attitudes about the differences between male and female sexuality. The Nazis concluded that Aryan lesbians could easily be persuaded or forced to bear children. Lesbian Responses to the Nazi Regime During the Nazi regime, lesbians could not continue to live and socialize as they had during the Weimar Republic. Much of German society saw lesbians as social outsiders, meaning people who did not fit into the mainstream. As such, they had a higher risk of being denounced and then targeted by the Nazi regime. The Nazis did not systematically prosecute or persecute lesbians solely because of their sexuality. Under the Nazi regime, there was no official law or policy prohibiting sexual relations between women. This is unlike the case of gay men.

Her husband reacted surprisingly well too, suggesting that they enrol in therapy to help both of them exit their long-standing relationship. I took this as my cue to make a commitment and said I would move to the suburbs to be with her and her three children, once her husband had moved out. Like this article? Sign up to our newsletter to get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox. The Nazis classified prisoners in concentration camps into groups according to the reason for their imprisonment. By 1938, these groups were identified with various colored badges worn on camp uniforms. Men imprisoned for allegedly violating Paragraph 175 had to wear a pink triangle. The badge identified them as “homosexual” ( homosexuell ) according to the classification system. Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Soon afterwards, Germany’s gay and lesbian communities came under pressure and scrutiny from the new regime. For men accused of homosexuality, this worsened over the course of the 1930s. They faced brutal persecution. Shutting Down Lesbian and Gay Meeting Places The film chronicles Colette's rise to fame as she leaves behind her country upbringing to become the toast of Paris along with her husband, Willy (Dominic West), who spurs her to chronicle her life for his literary factory where only his moniker appears on everything that's published.

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Over the course of the 1930s, Nazi actions targeting male homosexuality became more systematically oppressive. In 1935, the Nazi regime reformed Paragraph 175. The statute now criminalized any and all sexual intimacy between men. The Nazis also increased the severity of the punishment for these crimes. They instructed prosecutors to argue for harsh sentences in court. Judges often complied. During the Weimar Republic , German society experienced complex social, political, and cultural transformations. On the one hand, the Weimar Republic was defined by political turmoil and violence. It was also a time of economic distress. On the other hand, Germans had greater political and social freedoms. The atmosphere gave rise to artistic movements, an expanded press, and increasingly visible alternative cultures.

Yet, denunciations could cause unwanted scrutiny for lesbians. Sometimes a denunciation led the police to discover criminal offenses. For example, it could reveal ties to a resistance organization, friendship with Jews, or subversive political behavior. In those cases, women could be arrested and sent to concentration camps. The Case of Elli Smula and Margarete RosenbergIt's more than a kind of first love. It's a first everything: first friendship, first real companion, intellectual companion. There's a trust from the first moment they look at each other, that this person understands me. And in a way that they've never had before," Waterston tells The Advocate. Whenever Todd Haynes’ unspeakably beautiful Patricia Highsmith adaptation comes to mind, it brings some of the novel’s last words along with it: “It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and hell.” In that light, a spot on a list of the decade’s best films hardly seems like much of a reach. Lesbians responded to these new fears and conditions in different ways. Not all lesbians made the same decisions. Nor did they all have the same choices. For example, Aryan lesbians had far more options than Jewish or Romani lesbians, who—above all — faced persecution for racial reasons. Public discussions of sexuality had occurred in Germany since the late 19th century. However, the social atmosphere during the Weimar Republic created more space for these conversations. There were discussions about homosexuality at the time. 1 Physician and sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld and others organized gay and lesbian “friendship leagues” ( Freundschaftsverbände ), which also included heterosexual members. These groups advocated for the decriminalization of sexual relations between men. In this endeavor, they found allies on the political left and center. Among the supporters were:

Colette, about the trailblazing writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, who engaged in relationships with men, women, and trans-masculine-identifying people circa the Belle Epoque, is queer to its core. In the film directed by Wash Westmoreland, who is gay, Keira Knightley embodies the pansexual bohemian feminist who stepped out of her husband's shadow to become the most famous female French author in the world. Some women engaged in sexual relations with their fellow female prisoners. It is important to note that such relations do not always fit neatly within the category of “lesbianism.” This is because not all women who engaged in same-sex relations were lesbians. Some women developed same-sex relationships and later described them as a source of comfort in the camps. Others even saw them as necessary for survival.

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Hirschfeld and others also sought to educate the public about sexuality. For example, they promoted Hirschfeld’s ideas that homosexuality is inborn and not a vice or perversion. In lesbian prisoners’ paperwork, camp authorities usually listed a racial, political, social, or criminal reason as the primary cause for their arrest. In a few cases, the authorities also noted their sexuality.