Transvestite certificate
A colloquial so-called transvestite certificate was a document issued from 1909 up to the presumably 1950s, which allowed the respective owner to wear opposite-sex clothing in public without fear of official or police persecution.
history
Since the beginning of the 20th century, homosexuals and people with a tendency to transvestites have increasingly been drawn to the German capital Berlin . In comparison to the surrounding area or other regions, it was more possible to meet like-minded people here. Although there was pressure to be persecuted in Berlin because of the criminal liability of homosexuality (among men) at the time, it was not as great as in the respective village or small town home, where people often knew each other. This provincial narrowness has remained a motivation for homosexuals and trans * people around the world to move to a big city.
Between July 6, 1919 and May 6, 1933, the Institute for Sexual Science (IfS) existed in Berlin-Tiergarten . It was founded and run by the doctor and sex researcher Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935). In Berlin, the criminal police had been running their own "gay department" for a long time. Now, as a prominent person and member of the SPD , Hirschfeld had good personal contacts with the police officers and was able to gain astonishing liberal attitudes in discussions with them. There were commissioners who, through objective considerations and certainly also conviction, pursued the persecution of “male friends and pederasts” either with little emphasis or even pleaded for the abolition of Section 175. This includes people like: Leopold von Meerscheidt-Hüllessem (1849–1900), Hans von Tresckow (1863–1934) and, according to Jens Dobler, "left-wing sexual reformist", Heinrich Kopp (1871–1941).
The wearing of opposite-sex clothing did not fall under the "homosexual paragraph", but could nonetheless be considered a criminal offense, classified as a sexual act according to Section 183 of the Reich Criminal Code and given up to one year in prison. Since the homosexual department was also responsible for this, the cooperation with the scientists of the sexology institute proved to be advantageous when it came to establishing more liberal approaches.
Magnus Hirschfeld had coined the term " transvestite " in his research and in 1910 he published a study of the "erotic disguise instinct" for the first time worldwide with his publication "The Transvestites". He found that there was no inevitable connection between homosexuality and transvestism. Rather, it identified a mismatch between the physical and mental state of the person concerned. Due to the vital importance that the “dressing” had for the respective wearer, he saw it as his medical task to certify this as necessary. Hirschfeld and Kopp were thus able to achieve a regulation that allowed the persons concerned to issue certain police ID cards after presentation of a medical confirmation of their "transvestism", with which the owner (inside) (inside) during police checks, raids or in court as officially known as "wearing men's clothing" or . “Wearing women's clothing” and were thus protected from arrest and punishment.
Katharina T. , who was born in Berlin in 1885, received such an identity card as early as 1909. In 1912, Bertha / Berthold Buttgereit (1891–1981) from Berlin was the first person born male to receive such a transvestite certificate . In the following year - with broad press coverage - Georg / Gerda von Zobeltitz (1891–1963) also received this document, which up until then had caused official anger due to its provocative nature. However, at the instigation of a relative, her transvestite license was withdrawn again in 1916.
The institute acted as an appraiser for transvestite certificates and other "trans-attestations", which was also a welcome economic component for the IfS in this time, which was marked by the global economic crisis . In 1924 the house charged 150 Reichsmarks for such a court opinion and in 1929 50 RM was charged as a fee for a transvestite certificate. It was also helpful for those affected that the Prussian Ministry of the Interior passed a resolution in 1921, according to which it was possible for the men and women examined to match their first names according to gender or to use gender-neutral names such as Alex, Toni or Gert. However, these changes were made public in the official announcements, which involuntarily revealed those affected . The statements contained the real names, personal details and even the home addresses of the persons concerned. But even after that they were dependent on the understanding of the police and judiciary, on whose approval they were dependent and whose arbitrary control they were at the mercy of. In this respect, transvestites continued to have a precarious status despite these liberalizations.
Transvestite certificates were also issued in other cities, such as Hamburg, Munich, Cologne and Essen. But in Prussia, the largest single state in the German Empire, transvestite certificates were most likely to be widespread. Nevertheless, the issue of these transvestite certificates remained the exception in the German Reich , as another liberal development broke out at almost the same time: The Berlin criminal police published a statement in 1922 in which they forbade arrests solely for wearing clothes that are not gender typical and stated:
"The opinion that is still widespread in the audience that the people in disguise are criminals in disguise [...] is invalid."
Third Reich and post-war Germany
When the National Socialists came to power in 1933 and the Institute for Sexology was destroyed on May 6, 1933, the practice of these transvestite certificates did not end. Anyone who did not reveal homosexual acts or caused public nuisance during National Socialism (e.g. crowds of people) usually remained unmolested as a transvestite. Changes in civil status were also permitted.
The practice of issuing transvestite certificates continued in post-war Germany. For example, Toni (Anton) Simon (1887–1979) received permission from the German authorities to move around in public in women's clothes both before and after the Second World War.
literature
- Magnus Hirschfeld: The Transvestites , Berlin 1925
- Jens Dobler: Between tolerance policy and the fight against crime. Persecution of homosexuals by the Berlin police from 1848 to 1933 , Frankfurt a. M. 2008, ISBN 978-3-86676-041-7 .
- Robert Beachy: The other Berlin. The invention of homosexuality. A German story 1867-1933 , Munich 2015, 978-3-82750-066-3.
- Rainer Herren: Patterns of the sex. Transvestism and Transsexuality in Early Sexology , Giessen 2005, ISBN 978-3-89806-463-7 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A certificate for being (different) information from the German Historical Museum Foundation
- ^ Jens Dobler: Between tolerance policy and the fight against crime. Persecution of homosexuals by the Berlin police from 1848 to 1933 , Frankfurt a. M. 2008, ISBN 978-3-86676-041-7 .
- ↑ Magnus Hirschfeld: Transvestiten , 2nd edition Berlin 1925, pages 192f., 194, 196 ( online at archive.org)
- ↑ Personalities in Berlin 1825 - 2006 Ed. Berlin Senate Department for Labor, Integration and Women State Office for Equal Treatment - Against Discrimination (PDF 1.8 MB)
- ↑ Incarnations of the opposite sex - transvestism and transsexuality viewed historically by Rainer Herr, published on May 8, 2012 on the website of the Federal Agency for Civic Education
- ↑ I THOUGHT WE'RE THE ONLY IN THE WHOLE WORLD Lesbian / trans * / gay after 1945; Contemporary witnesses remember, Schwules Netzwerk NRW , PDF 3.8 MB
- ^ Rainer Herrn, Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung Jf. 26 (2013) 4, pp. 330–37: If trans * people were able to "rebut the suspicion of homosexuality raised against them, criminal prosecution can in no case be proven"
- ↑ Gender change under the Nazi regime , by Ilse Reiter-Zatloukal (2014)
- ↑ Toni Simon's life story in LAMBDA , vol. 32, no. 133, p. 36
- ^ Raimund Wolfert : Scandinavia: laying the foundation stone and consolidation, in: Goodbye to Berlin? 100 years of the gay movement. An exhibition by the Schwules Museum and the Akademie der Künste; May 17 to August 17, 1997, Berlin 1997, p. 236