Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Gay Identity in Nazi Germany

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Berlin in the early 1930s was a place of incredible liberation for its queer community. There were over 100 gay clubs, and Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science - the first sexology research centre in the world - developed pioneering gender assignment surgery. Sadly, with the Nazis rising to power, dark days were to come. What was it like for the gay community during this time? How did the Nazis react to a high ranking officer being openly gay and part of this community? And what was the legacy of Magnus Hirschfeld’s work?In today’s episode, Kate is joined by Robert Beachy, historian and author of Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity, to find out. This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. If you're enjoying Betwixt please vote for us at the British Podcast Awards here: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/voting. It would mean the world to us!Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT.Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Lovely bit twixters, it's me, Kate Lister. We are here together once again to listen to this fabulous podcast. I'm so glad that you're here. But before we can get going with it, you know what's coming. We have to make sure that you're okay, I'm okay, we're all okay. This is your fair do's warning.

This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about a range of adulty subjects and you should be an adult too. Now, if you are an adult and you want to keep on listening and you happen to get offended, I'm afraid that one is on you, because fair do's, you were won. Twixters, fancy seeing you here. Do you come here often? Where are we?

Well, it's the early 1930s, and we just so happen to be in the fabulously glamorous surroundings of the Eldorado clone, one of over 100 gay bars in... Berlin's thriving queer scene. And of all of the clubs, this one is the best. Look around us. You'll see artists and authors and celebrities rejoicing in the flamboyant cabaret of the amazing performers here, which includes openly trans people. On one table, we can see Magnus Hirschfeld, the celebrated sexologist whose Institute of Sexual Sciences pioneered gender reassignment surgery and

all manner of research into queer culture and queer life. However, on the other side of the club sits a patron whose very presence is a signifier of the awful things that are to come. Ernst Rom, a leading member of the Nazi party. Rom is an open homosexual. He doesn't try to hide it at all, but he will also go on to lead the Nazi party's thuggish police division, the SA. In just a few years, the Nazi party will rise to full power and will tighten its ugly grip on the whole of German society. The El Dorado and other clubs like it will be forced to close for good.

But what became of the proud queer community in Berlin? What was it like to live in a time of such freedoms, but also such increasing threats? I am ready to find out if you are. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the funny.

Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. And welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal in Society. With me, Kate Lister. If there's one thing history can teach us, it's that whatever civil liberties we may enjoy, there is no guarantee that they're bad. permanent. On today's episode, we are joined by Robert Beechie, historian and author of Gay Berlin, birthplace of a modern identity, to explore a time when Berlin's queer community enjoyed great

liberation that was swiftly followed by even greater persecution. What was it like to be queer in Germany before the Nazis came to power? What was it like to be queer in Germany as they came to power? And of course, what happened to that community once they were in power? But before we get into the episode, I have a little favour to ask you once more, dear, lovely, gorgeous betwixtus, if you haven't done so already, please would you just take a couple of seconds to vote for us for the Listeners Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards? If you follow the link in the show notes, you can just vote there, and I think that we can do it this year with your help. We were shortlisted last year, and we just missed out, and if you go and vote now, you could be the vote that gets us over the finish line. Right. Now that that bit's dealt with, let's do this. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Robert Beechy. How are you doing?

Kate, I'm great. It's very nice to talk to you today, so thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. I've heard that you're in Berlin, which is perfect for today's episode. That's right. I'm spending most of the summer here, so it's a very nice climate actually right now compared to the rest of the world, I think. I bet it is. We've just got... horrible, horrible drizzle over here and then everywhere else it seems to be the temperature of hell itself. But I'm very glad that you are comfortable and happy in Berlin. Yes. Both. We are talking today about, I suppose, predominantly about Berlin, but about what it was like

in Germany before the Nazis came to power and wrecked everything. But that period in German history before the Second World War when it was kind of, I don't want to oversell it, but my view of it is it was this sort of sexually liberal time where people were experimenting with gender fluidity and sexuality and, you know, I've seen cabaret and it was like, is that true? Is that what it was like? I think there are lots of stereotypes and maybe there's something like hype, but I think your description captures the reality. It really was a very, very, very, very, you know, unique time, I believe. What created that? Because it seems so, I suppose it's not that strange that then a group of people would come up and basically be the exact opposite of what was going on. But

what was happening in Germany that created this time of freedom and liberate? What was the lead into this? What was going on? Well, I would be inclined to, as a historian, I always look for context and also what came before. And so historical context. And there was actually an awful lot going on even before the outbreak of the First World War before 1914. And there was already, at least in Berlin, a very vibrant gay and to some extent lesbian subculture. And so after the war, starting in 1918, there really emerges this sort of full-blown and not really even any longer subculture, but a very visible culture. And it has a lot to do, I think, the 1920s in general, culturally, socially, with the demise of this quasi-authoritarian monarchy. And, you know, everything sort of comes crashing down in 1918 at the end of the war.

And Germany is forced to create a new political system. And this is the beginning of a republic. It's democratic. It involves extension of voting rights to women. And it also includes the elimination of almost all censorship laws. Oh, wow. Wow. Okay.

There's really, really this opportunity to experiment and to more freely sort of express oneself. I mean, aesthetically, culturally, socially. Wow. When were women given the vote? I was quite surprised by how early that was in Germany. Yeah. Let's see. I think it was written into the Weimar Constitution, which was, I think, completed in the summer of 1919. So I think probably by 1920 women were voting. And I mean, of course it corresponds to women's suffrage in a lot of other places, including England, the United States.

So most of Western Europe, except for France. So we have a situation where women are getting the vote. There's more gender equality. It's interesting that you say it was the censorship laws that got removed that really allowed this stuff to flourish. Why do you think that that was the case? It permitted the development of what we might describe today as a queer press. And so this really contributed to a certain degree of visibility. It also helped to sort of further cultivate a sense of community, I think. And the kinds of journals and magazines that were being published then through the 1920s into the early 30s were unique, not just to Germany, but to Berlin, specifically Berlin.

And there really weren't gay, lesbian or as the term would have been sort of used at this point, transvestite journals anywhere else on the planet. And so, you know, by the early 30s when the Nazis came to power, they were depending on how you count somewhere between. 25 and 30 different titles that had been published since about 1919. And these were sold in kiosks. You could find them, you know, on street corners. They were very widely distributed. And in some cases, it was possible to subscribe to them. They could be mailed to you. And so this really played a huge role, I think. And this was possible in large part because of the easing of censorship laws. There was a kind of crackdown that happened at the end of 26, 27. And so at that point, these journals were no longer made available openly in kiosks,

or at least they couldn't be displayed. But up until that point. What were some of the titles of these journals? If I was a young budding lesbian in 1920s, Berlin, what would I go to kiosk and ask for? Frauen libe, for example, which translates roughly as the love of women. Nice. Some of these journals didn't survive for very long. Some of them, you know, went under after, you know, maybe a year or sometimes just a couple of issues.

But there were a few that were published for longer than a decade. So from 1919 into the early 30s. Do any of them survive today? Are there any in museums or did they all get destroyed? Can you go and see them anywhere? Yes, you can see them. In fact, there are complete runs at them available. Wow.

Fortunately, the equivalent of the German, I guess, Library of Congress for, using the American Analog or maybe the British Library in Leipzig collected everything at this point still and just preserved it. And that's where the collection is really based now. That's incredible that that survived the Nazis, isn't it? That that was preserved. Yeah, it is. So tell me about the clubs, because I can see how if you've got print literature out there and you've got journals and then that creates a sense of community and it allows people to have a visibility. And then the next thing, I suppose, is where you go and meet. So tell me about the clubs in Berlin. Sure. Well, here again, I would want to underscore the continuity from,

you know, the late 19th and early 20th century, because there were in fact maybe 10 or a dozen different clubs and cafes that catered almost exclusively to gay men and lesbians before 1914. And a few of those survived into the 1920s. through the period of the First World War. But, you know, this club culture, this same-sex sociality really, really blossom through the 1920s. And, you know, again, there are, you know, different numbers, different statistics, but, you know,

there are estimates that, you know, go as high as 130 different venues. But it's a little complicated then, of course, also to count them all because not all were exclusively queer clubs of, you know, one description or another, but a lot of them were. And they were incredibly diverse. And they were also scattered pretty much throughout most of the city. So increasingly, the new theater district in West Berlin,

so around Wittenbergplatz, Nolandorfplatz, the Kudam, this theater district was referred to through the 20s as the West End. And this is where a lot of the nicer, newer clubs and bar, were established and opened. But there were working class bars in working class neighborhoods. There were dive bars. And there were cafes. There were dance clubs. And of course, I mean, through the first, I don't know, 10 years, 15 years of the 20th century until the outbreak of the war, there were also venues that would then host or sponsor or would be rented, you know, for specific queer events like cross-dresser balls or, you know, sometimes.

other kinds of dance events. From what you're sounding like here, like there was over 100 clubs, and there was cafes, and there was theatres and other events that were sponsoring what we'd now call queer nights, I suppose. When you said earlier that this was mainstream,

this really sounds like it was mainstream. Was there any kind of resistance to it from more traditionalist factions before the Nazis came along? Or is your sense from your research that it was quite accepted widely across society? Well, Berlin was a very unique, a very special place, I guess, within Imperial Germany and then the Weimar Republic. So I would never argue that Berlin was somehow representative of Germany or that most of Germany sanctioned, I guess, what happened in Berlin or this sort of liberalism, this sexual liberalism or almost liberal teenage.

But I think within the city, there wasn't any real organized resistance. And that also had to do with the relationship between the different elements of the gay rights movement and the Berlin police. And this was a relationship that had been established really by Magnus Hirschfeld at the very end of the 19th century. And this endured through the period of the Weimar Republic, right, down to 1933. The police then were ultimately, you know, pretty tolerant. and they sort of enforced certain rules of decorum. But for the most part, if the different patrons of these venues, these establishments, quote, unquote, behave themselves, the police would never intervene. And so there really weren't any raids.

There were really no attempts to, you know, prevent these different kinds of events from taking place or attempts to close down these different clubs, cafes. You mentioned Magnus Hirschfeld there, and we've got to talk about him. For anyone that's listening to this that hasn't heard that name before that doesn't know who Magnus Hirshfeld was, who was this person and why were they so significant to Berlin at this time and also queer history and trans rights and all kinds of things? Sure. Well, Magnus Hirschfeld was a German Jewish medical doctor, and he studied a couple of German universities and he then eventually established a practice and made his way to Berlin.

And that was in the middle of the 1890s. And it's pretty clear that his interest in sexual minorities had to do with his own, you know, personal life, although he was never openly out. He never, you know, sort of announced to the world that he was himself gay or homosexual. But everyone assumed so. Why do people assume what's the evidence? Is it just kind of like that this was his area of expertise, this was his interest, or is there something more, is there evidence for this? Oh, there's pretty clear evidence. He had a partner.

And they were together for, you know, a period of, I think, close to 15 years, almost until his death in 1935. But in any case, he counseled queer people and he also established what's usually considered the first. gay rights organization in about 1897 in Berlin. And he was the one then that also really worked to forge ties with the Berlin police. And the real motivation was to engage the police to attempt to prevent young male hustlers or prostitutes from blackmailing, sort of middle class gay men. And this was a real problem. And it also exposed a lot of, you know, individuals who were professionals or who were maybe married and had families. And so the police, in fact, developed a strategy of actually allowing gay men and lesbians to meet and to congregate and to establish their own

bars, cafes. This was already by the late 1890s. Again, as long as long as, long as they followed, you know, a certain sort of set of unspoken rules about how they would behave. And so Magnus Hirschfeld was really very much a mediator, we might say, between this community and the police. And he was also a sexologist or, you know, a kind of social scientist who studied human sexuality. And so he started publishing a major scientific journal. Again, he founded this gay rights organization, which, you know, he started. And so, he started publishing a major scientific journal. you know, drew a pretty significant membership. And then he was just an activist, pretty much his entire life and was always advocating, you know, for the rights of sexual minorities and also against the anti-gay law as it existed in Germany.

He had a clinic as well, didn't he? What would you go to his clinic for? Right. Well, he had his own practice where he would meet patients. But then he established the Institute for Sexual Science right after the war in 1919. And this was in a very large villa. And it was right on the, I guess, northwest periphery of the Tehrgan, which is a major park right in the center of Berlin. And he had hoped that this would become some kind of academic institution and might end up being affiliated with one of the universities.

This didn't happen. But it was the first real institute, you know, for the study of sexuality. And it was a very large institution. I mean, a venue, the space itself was very large. It was a very large villa. And then there were some other buildings that he was able to purchase that were, you know, adjacent. And it included, you know, offices for different doctors. It included a museum of sexuality. There were sort of social spaces. And there were even some surgeries. So, there were experimental surgeries that were conducted in this institute through the 1920s at different points and they really experimented and did some of the first what we today call gender affirmation surgeries, you know, in the institute itself. That's wild, isn't it? That was happening there. Did we know who these surgeries were carried out on? Do we know what the results were? Do we know who performed the surgeries? Yeah, there was one particular doctor. There were a couple of different doctors that were working at the Institute. And Herschfeld's finances with the Institute suffered tremendously through the period of the great inflation. I was going to ask how he was financing this. It's not completely clear where the money initially came from. But he was fortunate enough to buy this property, I think, at the very end of the First World War.

and then through the period of the great inflation in Germany, which reached its peak in the fall of 1923, the savings of the German middle classes were just completely wiped out. And the only thing that survived the inflation, so to speak, was maybe gold and silver, but also property. And so he had purchased this property, and this was where the institute was then based. But the inflation really also forced him to sort of reconsider as more grandiose plans. And it wasn't, it wasn't really going to be possible to establish a large research institution with, you know, with significant staff, independent, you know, scientists conducting different sorts of research. And it was a lot more modest what emerged, you know, by the middle of the 1920s, but it was still pretty significant.

So there were different doctors that were on staff at different points. There was one, I guess, he would have described himself as a gynecologist who was probably responsible for most of these surgeries that I was describing, gender affirmation surgeries. And I don't want to exaggerate it. It wasn't that there were a lot of these and they were, in fact, extremely experimental. But there were a handful of individuals, you know, who mostly people we would identify today as trans women who survived the surgeries and ended up leading lives as effectively trans people. I mean, that honestly just blows my mind that this was happening then at that time and that these kind of communities existed so openly.

I don't know why that surprises me, but it does. So the surgery is one thing, and the institute is, it's doing all kinds of amazing things. But a particular interest of mine is the El Dorado Club in Berlin, which just sounds incredible. I've seen photographs, and you can still go online and see photographs of the El Dorado Club today. But tell me about that. Tell me about the El Dorado Club. Well, the El Dorado Club was very special. And I don't think it was exactly or necessarily representative of this queer community,

although it appealed to a lot of people. And the reason I say that is because it became almost a kind of tourist attraction, I'd say. And there were a lot of, we might say, in quotation marks, slumming straits, you know, including a kind of international tourism even. So, you know, it's, it's reputation extended, you know, well beyond Berlin and Germany. So there were actually a couple of El Dorado clubs. The one that, you know, gets all of the attention was opened, I think, around 1929. And it was only open for about three years. It closed by the end of 32. So just before Hitler was appointed Reich's chancellor. But in this period, you know, for these couple of years, it appears to have been, you know,

a pretty raucous place. It attracted lots and lots of cross-dressers. And there were lots of prominent people who would make appearances would show up. And it was in a certain way really a kind of commodified queerness. Or you might describe it almost the way you'd think of a show window into this sort of queer nightlife and this increasingly visible queer culture.

I don't know if subculture is even an appropriate. word to use here. But for example, and this was something that I only learned about recently, there were actually these El Dorado tokens like small aluminum coins that would be sold. And you could then present your token to a cross-dresser and then you would be entitled to dance with that cross-dresser. And the tokens would then be clipped and so that they would then know that it had been used. So you couldn't reuse the token. That's bonkers. So there's this really strange way in which the El Dorado developed this reputation and then

ended up attracting people who, you know, were maybe visiting Berlin on business or, you know, were literary figures or artists. Kind of like Hendo's going to gay clubs today. A little bit. Yes. I think that's fair. I'll be back with Robert after this short break. Hi, it's Dan Snow here from Dan Snow's history hit podcast.

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God, wouldn't you just love to get at a time machine and go, and see what this city was like at this time, because it just sounds so vibrant and free and liberal and exciting. And then, you know, all good things must come to an end. So we're going to have to talk about what happens when the Nazis come to power, because I'm going to assume that their eradication of gay rights and trans rights and queer rights, that they didn't happen overnight, that it was a slow encroachment. But what were the Nazis' attitudes? Let's just cover this one as a start a question. What was their attitude to Berlin at this time and to these clubs? And what were some of their first crackdowns on this culture? Well, the Nazis always, I think it's fair to say,

tended to hate Berlin. I mean, the Nazi movement was based in Munich, in Bavaria. And so Berlin was the capital, of course, but it was also very, very red, so to speak, politically. So the Communist Party was very strong. The Social Democratic Party was very strong in Berlin. And So the Nazis had to work very hard to establish, you know, any sort of foothold in the city, we might say politically, because there was a lot of, there was a lot of opposition. And then, you know, along with this, Berlin's reputation enhanced this Nazi dislike. And Berlin was also in some ways, you know, a very Jewish city. I mean, it had a really large, vibrant Jewish population. And this was also something that the Nazis really disliked and hated.

I mean, Magnus Hirschfeld was also Jewish. So in terms of the Nazis' attitudes towards sexuality, they did make pretty clear statements already in the second half of the 1920s. And so they were opposed to any change to the anti-gay law. So, you know, they didn't want the law to be liberalized or to be eliminated. They thought that same-sex sexuality should be banned, should be criminalized. And they at this stage already had begun to embrace a kind of pronatalist policy. So a kind of ethos, every sperm is sacred, if you will, at least, you know, every German sperm, maybe.

Every straight German sperm. Every straight German sperm, right? So, but on the other hand, this wasn't exactly a priority for them either. And their movement was profoundly homosocial. I mean, it was, you know, it was these different kinds of organizations of men, the party itself, but then also the different Nazi militias, the Stomop titleing the S.A., which was the older of the two, and then the SS. I have thought that the Nazis were these sort of like hypermasculine, and that's true. They really prided themselves on that. They were hypermasculine. But it's kind of like they were so hyper masculine that they actually went quite camp. To me, there's something quite camp about the Nazis, you know, with their little booties and their little marching and all of

this stuff. I mean, mass genocide aside. But like you was just saying there, that these groups and organizations. This is all men together stuff. So I don't know, maybe I'm reading that wrong, but it just seems like in an effort to be uber, uber manly, it actually went quite weirdly camp. I'm not sure if camp is quite the right word. No, that's not the right word, is it? But I know exactly what you're driving at. I don't entirely disagree. So there's a problem with this kind of a conversation just because of the history of. I'm being really clumsy with it. no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not criticizing in the least. But, you know, there's a history of depicting the Nazis as almost homosexual. Oh, really? Well, sure. That starts, honestly, we can trace

this all the way back to the 1920s, through the 30s, and then especially after 1945, there's a kind of Western popular culture of understanding the Nazis as intrinsically homosexual. I didn't know that, Robert. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. The problem is that this is also profoundly homophobic. I mean, so this was a way to smear the Nazis. I mean, especially in the 50s, 60s into the 70s, you can imagine. So that has made gay historians, queer historians, very, very careful about how they talk about. God, yes. I had no idea. This element of, you know, Nazi culture. That's kind of a caveat, I guess. Yeah, I'm very glad that you brought that up. I didn't know that. Wow. Okay.

So we're going to be very careful about that. We don't want one second to suggest that Naziism is just gay culture gone mad. Right, exactly. It would just be awful. Jesus Christ. No, but they were very kind of like hypermasculine. There were some Nazis, I'm thinking of like, how do I pronounce this? Ernest Rome, who was a high-ranking Nazi and this idea that was so masculine, we're only going to hang out with other men.

Yeah. And that's actually a kind of German ideology. or I don't know, maybe it goes back to the development of a theory of the so-called Menopund or the community of men, which was used to talk about the first German youth movement around 1900, and then it was theorized. And it became part of a kind of right-wing ideology. And for some of these theorists, it was also implicitly homoerotic and even sort of actively homosexual. And I mean, the Nazis tried to distance themselves from that formally through the 20s and into the 30s, of course. But this culture of the menobund, I mean, and it permeated literature and popular

culture. It was really pervasive. It certainly influenced a lot of men who joined the movement in one fashion or another, who joined the party or joined one of the militias. And this man, you mentioned, Dan Sturm, he was involved very early on with the party, and he was also a part of the so-called Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. He participated in that, and when, you know, this fledgling Nazi party tried to overthrow the state in Munich. And he ended up leaving Germany. He went to South America for several years. He was a veteran of the First World War, and Hitler recalled him in the early 1930s and asked him to come back to Germany and then serve as the head of the essay. And this was the oldest and the largest of the two militia groups. And he was a really charismatic guy,

but he was also by this point pretty openly homosexual. I mean, at least he didn't try too hard to hide his affairs. And so one way or another, a lot of the leadership of the essay ended up also being homosexual. And this militia grew dramatically in 1932, 33, and into 1934. And Rome was one of Hitler's closest friends from the beginning of the movement in the early 1920s. And then he was also one of the most powerful men in this new Nazified state as the head of this gigantic militia. The militia had, it's estimated over three million members by, you know, the end of 1933. And of course, probably a lot of people, a lot of listeners to this podcast know the history. I mean, so the SA was effectively, the leadership, we might say, was decapitated, so figuratively and literally.

And there was this event called the Knight of the Long Knives. And Room and his sort of highest ranking lieutenants were all taking a kind of vacation at a in Bavaria at the very end of June. And Hitler had been plotting this basically decapitation of the SA leadership. And together with the SS, they descended on this resort early in the morning and they arrested room and a pretty significant number of people. And they executed a lot of them almost immediately. And within the next two days, the essay as a kind of political force within Nazi Germany had been completely destroyed. I mean, the organization continued to exist, but Room was killed, and a lot of others were killed as well. So now, it would appear that, and this was the pretext in part,

that was given for this sort of bloody action in July after it became known what had happened. The pretext was that Ruhm was gay, that he was a pervert, you know, that the SA leadership was perverted. And there were lots of stories, but that really wasn't the motivation. It had everything to do with a power struggle between Roem as the leader of the SA and then the more traditional army within Germany. I think that makes more sense, doesn't it? Because he's been gay this whole time and not hiding it. Now all of a sudden he's got to that much power.

Now it's an issue. But I suppose that the reason I was surprised to hear you say that there has been like a sort of a weird narrative that the Nazis were all gay somehow is because they were vicious to queer culture. This wasn't something that they. promoted, they closed down the clubs, they rounded up homosexuals and people that they didn't think were traditional enough in their gender presentation, sent them to concentration camps. It's such a state of cognitive dissidents to see that there was this guy Rome who was clearly homosexual and didn't hide it. And yet he was working for a party that did this.

Yes. Like, how does that function? Yeah. Well, there's some really interesting theory. I guess, that historians and maybe historical sociologists have developed about the Nazi state in the last, oh, I don't know, 40 years, 45 years. And one of these is a claim that some of the more radical policies that were developed and introduced by the Nazis had to do with a particular dynamic, a way in which high-ranking Nazis were actually competing for attention. and for power within the state. And this would seem to be a good way to explain the Nazi assault on

sexual minorities. And again, it doesn't start in a significant way, really, until after this so-called night of the long knives, after room is killed. And that didn't happen until the Nazis were already in power for a full year and a half, so in the summer of 1934. And, you know, Rooms' homosexuality was a pretext again for his assassination. And this then became something that Room's nemesis, Heinrich Himmler, who was the head of the SS, could sort of harness as a way to identify a kind of internal enemy within Germany and also expand his own control over what was increasingly a police state. There were some actions that the Nazis took as soon as they came to power.

They closed, you know, the most outrageous clover. The Alderado went then. Yeah, Eldorado had actually already closed by that point. But, you know, there were a dozen or 15 clubs that they forced to close by April, May, 1933. They destroyed Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science. And Hurstfeld had always had a sort of Nazi target on his back because he was Jewish and he was just very vocal. He was a member of the Social Democratic Party. He was clearly a leftist, a socialist.

But there was still a kind of subculture, you know, that survived. And it really wasn't until after Room was assassinated that the Nazis first began to purge their own ranks. I mean, so then they really went after anybody who they suspected of being gay, you know, who was a member of the SS, a member of the SA, or even a party member. And also the leadership of the Hitler Youth Movement, the Hayyut, I guess, in German. And then by 1935, they also introduced a new version of the anti-gay law. and it was much more draconian, and it made it possible then to really begin a more systematic persecution of sexual minorities. And this was all undertaken or really promoted and directed by this one man, Heinrich Himmler. And so returning to what I started to describe this way of understanding the dynamics of the Nazi state,

the attack on sexual minorities might also be, I think, explained this way. It's sometimes referred to as functionalism. And it's almost a kind of political opportunism, I think. Yeah. In some ways, it's driven more by politics than it is by ideology. I could keep you here forever talking to you about this, but I'm not allowed to, and it would be very rude of me to try. But one of the things that I really want to know before we finish today is what must have this been like on the ground for the queer community who had been enjoying relative freedom and visibility and access to health care and rights and all kinds of things. And then suddenly the Nazis take power.

And for whatever's going on at the top, Himmler is basically using the persecution of gay people to consolidate his own power base, it sounds like. But what must have that have been like for just the regular people going at the clubs and living their lives to suddenly see this level of oppression come in? Because I think, am I right, there's somewhere between, is it 3 and 15,000 people were executed, sent to the concentration camps for being gay? Those are roughly the estimates, right?

died in concentration. Yeah, actually, actually died in concentration camp, somewhere between five and 15,000. So, and again, I mean, compared to the genocide, the various genocides that were perpetrated, that's a very small number. But it's also important, I guess, to recognize that the Nazis were never really committed to killing all homosexuals. They wanted to eliminate homosexuality. And so, you know, that's a slightly different proposition.

And I think for people on the ground, I think some people could see what was coming. and could anticipate that, you know, very easily. Especially a lot of the activists were leftists. And so they were already persecuted almost immediately if they were, you know, members of the communist or the social democratic parties. You know, some of them landed in early concentration camps were even killed.

But there it had more to do with politics, really, than, you know, sexual identity or even a kind of activism for sexual minorities. I think probably for a lot of people on the ground, it was sort of gradual. And, you know, for the first year and a half, it's not clear that things really changed that dramatically. I mean, so, you know, the press was shut down, of course, and the various rights organizations all closed their doors and burnt their membership lists. But there was a kind of club culture that survived through into 1934, probably in a lot of places into

1935. And I think probably the night of the long knives for at least those who were, you know, sort of politically conscious, and I imagine almost everybody would have had to have been at this point, was really the clear warning that things were going to get much, much worse. And it was possible then, you know, in the wake of that in terms of the different kinds of statements and claims that were being made about Rome, about the essay that the Nazis were targeting sexual minorities. Okay, my final question to you is, what do you think is Magnus Hirschfeld's legacy? Because when we see pictures of the Nazis burning books and burning documents, a lot of them were his, weren't they? They destroyed his work and his research.

So what do you think his legacy has been? Well, there are a couple of organizations based in Berlin, something called the Magnus Hirschfeld-Gazshaft, Magnus Hirschild Association. And they started in the early 1980s, and they're underfunded. but they've built a library. They have probably the largest best collection of, if I can use this word or make it up, Hirschfeldiana. I like that word.

So they've done as much as any institution to sort of recover the memory and legacy of Hershfeld. I would argue that there are some ways in which his legacy survived, even though he was not always given credit. And one of those channels is through the Kinfell. Institute in the United States. So Alfred Kinsey knew about the Institute for Sexual Science, and there's actually a collection of Hirschfeldiana at the Kinsey Archive in Bloomington, Indiana. And so he learned about some of the different kinds of social scientific methods that

Herschfeld was already applying in the early 1900s before the First World War, you know, to study sexual minorities. And so, you know, the idea of trying to, you know, figure out what percentage of the population is maybe gay or lesbian or bisexual or something else, that really is, you know, very established already with Herschfeld in the early 1900s. And Kinsey learned about that from Herschfeld. So I think a lot of Kinsie's work, this sort of positivist study of populations, of sexual minorities. I mean, that's a very Hirschfeldian project. I think Herzfeld plays a huge role in this sort of kinsie project of just figuring out who's

out there, how many people are out there, you know, what did they actually do? You know, that sort of thing. Yeah. Oh, Robert, you have been incredible to talk to today. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Oh, wow. That's a good question.

I always respond to emails sent to my Gmail account. And that's just my initials with the last name, BGRMbechi at gmail.com. I'm also a professor at Jensen University in Seoul, South Korea. And so I think I can be easily Googled and I have a website there. Thank you so much. Sure thing. Well, thank you for these great questions, Kate. It's really fun talking to you.

I really appreciate it. Honestly, I've kept you even longer than I was supposed to just because you have been so fascinating. Thank you so much for talking to me today. Sure thing. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Robert for joining me and if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you want us to explore a subject or perhaps you just fancied saying hello,

you can email us and you can get us at betwixt at historyhit.com. We have got episodes on everything from how fear has shaped history to self-sacrifice in India all coming your way. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith, the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit.

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