By Lori Cui Class of 2025

Rainbow Berlin: The Rise and Fall of Queer German History

Editor’s Note: The History Fellowship program offers students the opportunity to conduct college-level independent research on a historical topic of their choice, resulting in a substantial academic paper and oral presentation. Through guided discussions, structured support, and access to both on- and off-campus sources, students learn and apply the practices of professional historians.

One evening in 1899, a young, male soldier stood on the doorstep of Magnus Hirschfeld’s medical practice in Magdeburg, Germany. He came to confess that he was an Urning, an old German word for homosexual. At that time, Germany criminalized homosexuality under Paragraph 175 of its Constitution. The soldier faced legal punishment for his sexuality. That night was also the eve of his wedding. Distraught, the soldier wanted to take his own life. Hirschfeld tried to console the soldier, but the soldier nonetheless subsequently killed himself. After his death, the soldier bequeathed his private papers and a letter to Hirschfeld, writing that “the thought that you could contribute to [a future] when the German fatherland will think of us in more just terms, sweetens the hour of death.” The soldier thought of himself to be a “curse” because of his sexuality, and saw no place in the world for him to live under heteronormative standards and pressures. The tragedy became a turning point for Hirschfeld, who set out to combine his medical experience and identity as a homosexual man to become an activist for
homosexual rights and against Paragraph 175.

After modern Germany emerged from Prussia in 1871, Germany adopted Paragraph 175 from the original Prussian Constitution. In 1935, during the Third Reich, the Nazis rewrote the law to be stricter and close potential loopholes. The 1871 version of the law read: “Unnatural sexual acts committed between persons of the male sex, or by humans with animals, is punishable with imprisonment; a loss of civil rights may also be sentenced.” In 1935, the Nazis added three parts to the law . . .

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