Germany to rehabilitate gay men convicted in post-war era

Germany has vowed to rehabilitate and compensate gay men convicted in the post-war era under homophobic laws carried over from the Nazi era.

Federal justice minister Heiko Maas made the announcement after Germany’s anti-discrimination authority presented a report outlining how the criminal code’s notorious “paragraph 175” had ruined lives, destroyed families and impinged on “the core of human dignity” of gay men in post-war Germany. Even after homosexual activity was decriminalised, the convictions remained.

“Paragraph 175 was a shameful special case in German legal history, mere regret is by far not enough, it is time to annul these rulings,” said Christine Lüders, the anti-discrimination authority head.

A study by her authority found that paragraph 175 convictions were in contravention of basic human rights and recommended a collective rehabilitation law to spare affected parties a second public humiliation.

It also recommended a compensation fund to finance research, memorial and education work into the persecution of gay men.

Homosexual acts in Germany were forbidden from 1872, a year after unification. Post-war Germany, east and west, carried over into their statute books a 1935 Nazi-era version of the law that punished homosexual acts among men with prison sentences of up to 10 years.

Despite persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich, West Germany’s constitutional court dismissed a 1957 challenge to the law, citing the “unrestrained sexual needs” of gay men.

In total about 50,000 West German men were convicted under the law from 1949 until 1969, when the law was watered-down; a further 3,500 were convicted until the law was abolished fully in 1994. East Germany abolished the ban on homosexual acts in 1968.

Gay lobby groups estimate that paragraph 175 prosecutions resulted in 140,000 convictions in total. Police carried out regular raids on gay bars and made mass arrests. Men convicted of illegal homosexual acts faced prison sentences, often lost their jobs and homes. Many took their lives.

Mr Maas promised swift action to implement the report’s recommendations but acknowledged Germany would “never be able to eliminate fully these outrages”.  “The old judgments are unjust,” he said, “and have violated in a deep way the core of every convicted person.”

In 2000 the Bundestag apologised for the post-war persecution of gay men. Two years later it voted to negate all paragraph 175 convictions in the Nazi era – but not in post-war Germany.