The Pennsylvania State University Schreyer Honors College
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THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY THE LIVES OF LESBIAN WOMEN IN BERLIN BEFORE AND BEYOND THE RISE OF THE NAZIS: 1933-1945 AVIVA DOERY SPRING 2017 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for baccalaureate degrees in International Relations and Global and International Studies with honors in History Reviewed and approved* by the following: Tobias Brinkmann Malvin and Leah Bank Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History Thesis Supervisor Eliyana Adler Associate Professor in History and Jewish Studies Thesis Supervisor Michael Milligan Senior Lecturer of History Thesis Adviser * Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College. i ABSTRACT Often times in Holocaust scholarship the lives of lesbian women are overlooked. The purpose of this study is to examine the lives of lesbian women in Berlin before and during the Nazi regime. The first chapter lays the contextual and historical groundwork of LGBT life in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. Subsequent to the rise of the Nazis, the lives of lesbian women changed on an individual and communal level which ultimately led to the destruction of the budding LGBT social scene in Weimar Berlin. Chapter two addresses the experiences of lesbian women in Berlin during the Second World War. It examines the effects of Nazi policy on lesbian women’s personal and professional lives through biographical texts and State Prosecutor Files. The third chapter examines the lives of lesbian women in Nazi concentration camps, more specifically the only all-female camp Ravensbrück. Few lesbian women wrote or talked about their experiences and persecution after the war. Despite the limited source material on this subject, there is still a lot to be learned from the lives of lesbian women in Berlin from 1933-1945. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... iv Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 A History of Gay Berlin and the Sexual Revolution: 1919-1933 .............. 7 Cultural Change and Exploration ..................................................................................... 10 The Scientific and Medicinal Individual .......................................................................... 13 Science Becomes Activism .............................................................................................. 16 Polizei to Gestapo: the Rise of the Nazis ......................................................................... 18 Chapter 2 The Lives of Lesbian Women in Berlin under Nazi Rule ........................... 22 Claudia Schoppmann Days of Masquerade ..................................................................... 24 State Prosecutor Files ....................................................................................................... 29 Life-long Love between Two Dancers ............................................................................. 38 Compare and Contrast ...................................................................................................... 42 Chapter 3 The Experiences of Lesbians in Nazi Concentration Camps ...................... 44 Moringen and Lichtenburg ............................................................................................... 46 Ravensbrück ..................................................................................................................... 48 Outside Perceptions of Lesbian Activity in the Camps .................................................... 54 Lesbian Guards in the Camps .......................................................................................... 58 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 62 Appendix Paragraph 175............................................................................................. 65 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................ 67 Primary Sources ............................................................................................................... 67 Secondary Literature ........................................................................................................ 68 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Suicide note from Metsch claiming only platonic relations with Bartel. USHMM Record Group 14.070M, “General State Prosecutor Office of Berlin Records,” Fond A Rep 538, reel 5771, page 18. .................................................................................................................. 32 Figure 2 Page from the State Prosecutor's File on the conclusions of the case United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Record Group 14.070M, “General State Prosecutor Office of Berlin Records,” Fond A Rep 538, reel 472, pages 421-431. .......................................... 35 Figure 3 Holzmann and Halusa as Pepita and Peter. Boxhammer ## ...................................... 39 Figure 4 Halusa, Holzmann and Liu (from right to left) at Holzmann and Liu's Wedding Celebration ....................................................................................................................... 40 Figure 5 Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Accessed November 18, 2016. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?ModuleId=10005199&MediaId=432 .. 49 Figure 6 The notation of Rosenberg’s entrance (4th from the top) to Ravensbrück on November 30, 1940 with the label “lesbisch”. Schoppmann, 101. .................................................... 51 Figure 7 Picture of Henny Schermann with Dr. Mennecke’s ‘diagnosis’. Schoppmann, 110. 53 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to begin by expressing my profound gratitude to my family and friends for providing me with constant guidance and unfailing support through my many years of study. They continue to push me to reach farther than I think I can stretch and to believe that I can do anything I put my mind to. To Amy, Michael and Rachel- I would not have been able to do this without you, thank you. I wish to express my sincere thanks to my Honors Advisers Dr. Tobias Brinkmann and Dr. Eliyana Adler. They have supported this project and myself since the first page and I am so grateful for their constant reinforcement and guidance. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Dr. Milligan for ensuring that I always had the resources I needed and guiding me through the writing process. I would like to thank the Pennsylvania State University, Schreyer Honors College, Rock Ethics Institute, Jewish Studies Program and History Department for providing me with support to research and present this thesis. Further, I wish to acknowledge the staff at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Ravensbrück National Memorial Archive and the Typography of Terror Archive for aiding me in my research. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the women in this study, whose bravery and courage inspire me every day. 1 Introduction 2 Prior to the rise of the Nazis, Berlin offered an environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons to socialize and discover their identities. Compared to many other cities in Germany, Berlin was a place for people who were ‘different’ and often provided a relatively safer environment than in the countryside. This environment existed in Berlin mainly due to a growing population and lack of a large Catholic community. When the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) came to power in 1933, the Nazis began to target non-political opponents, capitalizing on existing homophobia to arrest and prosecute gay men. The Nazis saw homosexuality as a form of sexual and social ‘deviance’. Homosexuality not only threatened moral standards of Nazi society but also threatened reproduction by “hereditarily fit Aryans.”1 Under Paragraph 175, men labeled as ‘gay’ were sent to concentration camps to “cleanse Aryan society”. Enacted in 1871 and expanded by the Nazis in 1935, Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code stated that, “Unnatural fornication, whether between persons of the male sex or of humans with beasts, is to be punished by imprisonment; a sentence of loss of civil rights may also be passed” (Appendix 1). Under Paragraph 175 50,000 men were convicted and between 10-15,000 men were sent to concentration camps. While Nazi ideology sought to eradicate homosexuality in the Third Reich and ultimately destroy the organized of the LGBT scene in Berlin, Nazi policies differed starkly between men and women. The Nazis were obsessed with reproduction and quickly made the matter political. They believed that a woman would suffer without a child to care for and made it the duty of every ‘able Aryan woman’ to reproduce. This obsession with increasing the population was of higher 1 Claudia Schoppmann, “National Socialist Policies Towards Female Homosexuality“ in Gender Relations in German History: Power, Agency and Experience from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, edited by Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey ( Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 178. 3 importance to the Nazis than imprisoning women based on their sexuality. Marriage and motherhood took priority over sexual deviance.2 As I began to research this topic, I was surprised by the lack of scholarship