Frankfurt homosexual trials
The Frankfurt homosexual trials were a series of criminal trials in 1950/1951, in which a wave of persecution against gays culminated in Frankfurt am Main . They marked the end of the judiciary's reluctance to prosecute such crimes after the end of World War II .
Starting position
The gay scene in Frankfurt
With the seizure of power by the Nazis a massive persecution began gays that that caused a visible gay community in Frankfurt completely disappeared. After the end of the Second World War it was rebuilt. Well-known meeting points were the glamorous Kleist casino in Freßgass 6 and the Felsenkeller in Luginsland 1. The Felsenkeller had a license that allowed men to dance together there. The first homosexual association , the “Association for Communicative Lifestyle”, had its headquarters in the Felsenkeller . A gay line was created in the Taunusanlage , where 80 to 100 sex workers offered their services. According to the law, these activities were criminal offenses . The police, who knew these meeting places and the scene, initially tolerated this to a large extent. This led the scene to assume that the relevant criminal provisions were no longer applicable.
Legal situation
The version of § 175 StGB valid in the 1950s came from 1935. At that time, the National Socialists tightened § 175 StGB by extending the criminal offense to all "lewd" acts, which in extreme cases could also be extended to eye contact between men. Section 175a of the Criminal Code, which was also newly inserted in 1935, was still in force and threatened a prison sentence of up to 10 years for “aggravated cases” .
After the war, the Allied Control Council overruled a number of laws and legislative changes from the Nazi era . The regulations of § 175 and 175a remained in force and were incorporated into the Federal German Criminal Code in 1949. In a general clause , the Control Council had decreed that any tightening of criminal law made by the National Socialists should be checked on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they were in accordance with the rule of law. This also applied to Section 175a of the Criminal Code.
Investigations
The wave of persecution was unleashed in Frankfurt by the underage prostitute Otto Blankenstein, the July 16, 1950 in Frankfurt because of 'commercial homosexual prostitution was arrested "and opens against the determining thing 1218th The investigating public prosecutor , Dr. Fritz Thiede, who personally took over the management of the police investigation , ran it with great commitment. During his interrogations, Blankenstein stated 70 suitors with whom he claimed to have had 200 sexual contacts. He supported the investigation in every way and went into his role as a key witness , which was inadmissible under German criminal procedure law at the time. He was such an important source of information for the police and prosecutors that he was taken into special custody and not sent to remand prison . Either he remained in the police prison or he was imprisoned in the Preungesheim correctional facility . The presentation to the judge was also omitted. At times he was questioned every day. Prosecutor Thiede temporarily relocated his office to what was then the police headquarters . The public prosecutor's office justified its considerable investigative effort vis-à-vis the bourgeois public with the protection of minors and later with blackmail . The latter was certainly a pretext because it is never mentioned as a reason for arrest .
Designated by Blankenstein men were summoned, fingerprinted and treated, even photographed. The photos were given to other rascals . This resulted in 173 investigations against 214 people, of whom around 50 were arrested, many of them minors. This resulted in 42 charges. In addition to the investigations initiated by Blankenstein's statements, more were added, so that public prosecutor Thiede finally conducted 240 investigations into a total of 280 people for violations of Section 175 of the Criminal Code, had 100 people arrested and brought 75 charges by the end of the year.
The criminal trials
The trials in the fall of 1950
The first trial opened on October 23, 1950. On October 1, 1950, a new version of the Courts Constitution Act came into force. The Courts Constitution Act also provides the framework for which judge is responsible for a process. The new version of the law was announced in the Federal Law Gazette on September 12, 1950 .
Judge Dr. Kurt Ronimi (born November 16, 1909 in Hanau ; † February 1, 1958), known during the “ Third Reich ” as a hard-hitting public prosecutor in cases under Section 175 StGB, but referred to the previously valid version of the law from 1937 and moved all trials of this series to the chamber of the Frankfurt am Main regional court, which he directed (it was a jury ). According to the legal situation that had been in force since October 1, 1950, this was no longer permissible and the proceedings should have been distributed among different chambers in accordance with the business allocation plan . This violated the principle of the “ legal judge ” according to Article 101, Paragraph 1, Sentence 2 of the Basic Law. This argument was also taken up by contemporary press coverage, but not by the judiciary.
The local press, especially the Frankfurter Neue Presse and the Frankfurter Rundschau, reported extensively on the processes. The reporting was initially benevolent to the law enforcement authorities. This also affected the opinion of the readership. A reader survey was published and there was broad approval of Section 175 of the Criminal Code and the convictions. Due to the clear evidence, the trials ended with convictions in almost all cases.
Changed public discussion
As the number of trials increased, public opinion turned. It became clear that Blankenstein was in fact acting as a key witness . Key witnesses were not permitted under the current legal situation and the public reacted critically to this manipulation. The personality of Blankenstein and thus his credibility as a witness was increasingly discussed. As a result of these discussions, the first appeal proceedings were initiated. In one case, the defense succeeded in the proceedings before the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt to obtain a psychological report on Blankenstein. Thereupon Blankenstein refused to testify and the process ended with an acquittal.
The trials have now also attracted nationwide attention. The press, especially Der Spiegel and the Frankfurter Rundschau , expressed skepticism about the purpose and sense of the action. Roger Nash Baldwin , one of the co-founders of the American Civil Liberties Union , expressed his astonishment that "such proceedings against innocent adults in the 20th century are still possible" directly to the Federal Ministry of the Interior , which, however, admitted that it was incompetent be.
Ronimi was "promoted" to the Hanau district court at the turn of the year 1951/52 . There he immediately continued to sentence under Section 175 of the Criminal Code. His successor in Frankfurt, Dr. Brückner, used some work to dissolve the special jurisdiction of the chamber constructed by Ronimi, and had public prosecutor Dr. Thiede cede 60 investigations to colleagues and 60 more set - a very high number, " Thiede zeal even darker appear " left. In Frankfurt the wave of persecution came to an end.
Trial against Blankenstein
The trial against Blankenstein took place on February 15, 1951. The public prosecutor's office and the court did their best to prove that an - unlawful - leniency agreement had not been made. Since Ronimi whole and Thiede were largely eliminated from the event, their possible agreements with Blankenstein no longer protected them. The criminal proceedings were heard in public - the press was also present - which is very unusual in proceedings under the Juvenile Court Act . Blankenstein was sentenced to two and a half years of youth imprisonment, which was quite high. Out of seven months in pre-trial detention, only four were credited to him.
Consequences and reactions
The Frankfurt homosexual trials in the Adenauer era put an end to the restraint of the judiciary in prosecuting such crimes that had been practiced since the end of the Second World War.
A total of six persecuted people committed suicide : a 19-year-old jumped from the Goethe Tower , a dental technician and his friend poisoned themselves with luminous gas . Others fled abroad. Many of the accused were kicked into professional and social conditions.
The psychiatrist Reinhard Redhardt examined some of the homosexuals involved in the trials and made a study on them. This is accompanied by an appendix, which contains individual biographical sketches for some of the examined.
The trials gave rise to the play “ The Right to Yourself ” by Rolf Italiaander , which premiered on April 2, 1952 at the Kammerspiele Hamburg - the first time that homosexuality was discussed on a German stage after the Second World War .
The Frankfurter Engel has been commemorating the persecuted gays near the Frankfurt courthouse since 1994 .
literature
swell
- Elmar Kraushaar: fornication in court . In: Elmar Kraushaar (Ed.): Hundred years of gay. A revue . Berlin 1997. ISBN 3 87134 307 2 , pp. 60-69.
- Reinhard Redhardt : On same-sex male prostitution . In: Studies on Homosexuality = Contributions to Sexual Research 5 (1954), pp. 22–72.
- Dieter Schiefelbein: The legal prosecution of homosexual men begins again in the Federal Republic of Germany. The homosexual trials in Frankfurt am Main 1950/51 . In: Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung 5/1 (1992), pp. 59-73.
- Daniel Speier: The Frankfurt homosexual trials at the beginning of the Adenauer era - a chronological representation . In: Mitteilungen der Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft 61/62 (2018), pp. 47–72.
Literary processing
- HT Riethausen: Judas angel . Frankfurt 2016. ISBN 978-3-944485-12-6
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Editor's note. In: Schiefelbein, p. 59.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, p. 62.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, pp. 60f.
- ↑ On the application of Section 175 of the Criminal Code in the 1950s and the resulting consequences for those affected see: Rüdiger Lautmann: Historische Schuld. The gay paragraph in the early Federal Republic . In: Invertito - Yearbook for the History of Homosexualities 13 (2011), pp. 173-184.
- ↑ According to the legal situation at the time: younger than 21 years.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, pp. 68f, gives a biographical sketch of him up to his conviction.
- ↑ Kraushaar, p. 60; Schiefelbein, p. 63.
- ↑ Kraushaar, p. 60.
- ↑ See: here .
- ^ So Kraushaar, p. 61.
- ↑ So Schiefelbein, p. 63.
- ↑ Kraushaar, p. 61.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, p. 64.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, p. 63.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, p. 63.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, p. 64.
- ↑ Federal Law Gazette 1950 p. 513 .
- ↑ Hanauer Anzeiger v. 7th February 1958.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, p. 64.
- ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau v. November 9, 1950.
- ↑ Kraushaar, p. 61f.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, p. 65.
- ↑ "Homosexuals: A Million Offenses"; in: Der Spiegel from November 29, 1950
- ↑ Kraushaar, p. 62.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, p. 67.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, p. 67.
- ↑ Schiefelbein, p. 65.
- ↑ Kraushaar, p. 63.
- ↑ Biographical information especially in: Redhardt, p. 63f.
- ↑ Kraushaar, p. 68.
- ↑ Kraushaar, p. 62; Schiefelbein, p. 64.
- ↑ Redhardt, p. 22f.
- ↑ Redhardt, Appendix No. 12 (here: "Klaus N.") is the sketch for Otto Blankenstein.
- ↑ Kraushaar, p. 64.