Hans-Peter Hoogen

Hans-Peter Hoogen (actually Johannes-Peter Hoogen; born July 5, 1947 ) is a German gay activist and innkeeper of the Frankfurt restaurant "Café megalomania". As the first gay activist, Hessian Prime Minister Roland Koch ( CDU ) awarded him the Hessian Order of Merit on ribbon in 2005 .

biography

Hoogen grew up as a Catholic farmer's son on the Lower Rhine . His move to Frankfurt am Main in 1971 marked a personal turning point - he had a girlfriend in the first semesters of his law studies in Münster; in Frankfurt he was quickly only interested in young men.

Homopolitics

In the fall of 1971, he joined the Frankfurt " Red Cell Gay ", which was also known for short as "RotzSchwul". There was little interest in the left student movement in the concerns of homosexuals, and pronounced machoism was more socially acceptable there. Joschka Fischer was, according to Hoogen, "not the most sensible either". The Red Cell found more open ears in the women's movement . “Hessen should become warmer and more feminine” - that was the motto of Hoogen's work for equality.

In parallel to the political conflict, Heines and Hoogens set up a gastronomic business with the “megalomania” that opened in December 1978. The pub is still one of the popular and multiple award-winning restaurants in Frankfurt.

Hoogen also campaigned publicly for the partnership : he kissed his friend Fritz at the time of the registry office of the German Gay Association in August 1992 in front of the Römer town hall in Frankfurt so deeply that the photo of the two went through the republic.

In 1996 he founded “40 plus”, a forum for older gay men, which among other things offers discussion evenings on the subject of aging as a gay man and leisure activities to counteract the loneliness of older gays.

In 2001, Hoogen played a key role in bringing about the city's “Round Table on the Situation of Lesbians and Gays in Frankfurt”. There he was one of the spokesmen for the gay members of the round table and campaigned for the recognition of the interests of older lesbians and gays in work with the elderly. He also conceived steps to take homosexual issues into account in local cultural policy. Hoogen has made a significant contribution to the nationwide discussion of the situation of homosexual people in need of care, and is also committed to the development of new projects and structures in the field of care for the elderly.

Support for AIDS sufferers

In the early 1980s, Hoogen began to campaign politically against the immunodeficiency disease AIDS . Little time passed from the first reports from the US to the first deaths in the Frankfurt scene in which many flight attendants of airlines are traveling. Hoogen lost a number of friends of the same age. "I hardly know gay men of the same age," said Hoogen in a newspaper interview.

He has actively supported the work of AIDS-Hilfe Frankfurt since it was founded in 1985, including five years on the board. Go back to his suggestion

• the Act Up (AIDS Coalition) project to activate self-help forces and to counteract the societal panic of AIDS.
• the AIDS memorial at the Peterskirche in downtown Frankfurt (co-initiator)
• weekly cooking offers for AIDS sufferers in ward 68 in the university clinics in Frankfurt.
• Run for more time , in which more than 2,000 runners have been receiving sponsorship money every year since 1996 in order to use this income to finance special care services that are not covered by health insurances and organizations.

Memorial policy

In 1989, Hoogen and friends co-founded the initiative group memorial homosexual persecution (IMH), which succeeded in setting up the " Frankfurter Engel " by the sculptor Rosemarie Trockel in 1994 and renaming the square between Schäfergasse and Alter Gasse to "Klaus-Mann-Platz" in 1995 has been.

Honors

• Hessian Order of Merit on ribbon

Memberships

• Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany
• 40plus - gays in old age, Frankfurt am Main
• Memorial to the persecution of homosexuals, Frankfurt am Main

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Jannis Plastargias : RotZSchwul. The beginning of a movement (1971–1975). Querverlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89656-238-8 .