story in depth, 1871: Germany Adopts Paragraph 175


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Germany Adopts P. 175

Germany, 1871. When Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, was made Emperor of Germany on January 18, 1871, all of the German kingdoms were united into the Federal State that we know today as Germany. Unfortunately for German homosexuals, in April of the same year, the new German Empire created a constitution and penal code based on a Prussian model, including Paragraph 143, the law that made sexual contact between members of the same sex punishable by one to four years in prison. Paragraph 143 was adopted unchanged and became Paragraph 175, the law that Nazis used 60 years later to justify the slaughter of homosexuals.

The Collapse of German Liberalism

Karl Ulrichs and others dedicated to the cause of homosexual emancipation were crestfallen when the Prussian laws were imposed on all the German states. Five of the German states absorbed into the German empire in 1871 -- including Hannover where Ulrichs was born -- boasted liberal penal codes that were modeled on the enlightenment principle that men have the right to act as they choose so long as they don't harm anyone else.

The first sweeping legal reform of a German legal code began in Bavaria at the turn of the 19th Century. A first draft in 1802 was a failure, so King Maximilian I appointed one of its most vociferous critics, Anselm Feuerbach, to try to do better. Feuerbach was just the man for the job. A lawyer with philosophical training, he considered himself an Enlightenment thinker and intended to create a legal system comparable to the Napoleonic Code. Because he felt that morality and law must be separated, he eliminated all penalties for consensual adult sex (except, strangely, adultery) from the new Penal Code. His work was a success: The code was adopted in 1813.

Over time, other progressive German kingdoms including Hannover, Oldenburg, Thuringia, Wurttemberg, Braunschweig and Saxony rewrote their legal codes following the Bavarian example. All of this apparent progress collapsed in 1871 when the more conservative Prussian code was imposed on the German states.

In the hands of the Nazis, Paragraph 175 became more than an instrument for the prosecution of homosexuals: it turned into a designation that inspired terror. Homosexuals incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps, the inmates forced to wear pink triangles, were known by their slang name: the 175ers.

Paragraph 175 remained on the German law books until 1969.

Sources and Further Reading

For the penalties specified by P. 143/175, see Ulrichs, 1994. On the formation of the German Empire, see Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910-1911, "Germany" and "Prussia". On Feuerbach and the Bavarian Code of 1813, see Hull, 1996. On homosexual life in the concentration camps, see Heger, 1980. For the history of antisemitism and homophobia that led to Nazi efforts to exterminate homosexuals, see Haeberle, 1990.

Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1910-1911. "Germany" and "Prussia".

Haeberle, Erwin J., 1990. "Swastika, Pink Triangle and Yellow Star: The Destruction of Sexology and the Persecution of Homosexuals in Nazi Germany" in Durberman, Vicinus, and Chauncey, eds., 1990, Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. New York: Meridian.

Heger, Heinz, 1980. The Men With the Pink Triangle: The True, Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps. Boston: Alyson. Reprinted 1994.

Hull, Isabel V., 1996. Sexuality, State and Civil Society in Germany: 1700-1815. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Kennedy, Hubert, 1988. Ulrichs: The Life and Work of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Boston: Alyson.

Moeller, Robert G., 1994. "The Homosexual Man is a Man',the Homosexual Woman Is a 'Woman:' Sex, Society, and the Law in Postwar West Germany". Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 4 No. 3.

Steakley, James, 1988. "Sodomy in Enlightenment Prussia: From Execution to Suicide". Journal of Homosexuality Vol. 16 Nos. 1 & 2.

Ullrichs, Karl Heinrich, 1994 [originally various dates circa mid 19th Century], trans. Michael Lombardi-Nash. The Riddle of Man-Manly Love: The Pioneering Work on Male Homosexuality. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus.