PART 1

INTORDUCTION

Weimar cabaret was a feature of late 1920s Germany, which has become known for its high living, vibrant urban life and the popularization of new styles of music and dance. Having previously lived under authoritarian government, where entertainment and social activities were tightly regulated, many Germans thrived on the relaxed social attitudes of Weimar. The influx of American money and the economic revival of the mid to late 1920s encouraged celebration, spending and decadence. Many Germans spent big and partied hard, aware that both the economy and the government were destined to fail. The late Weimar era was one of liberal ideas, new forms of expression and hedonism (pleasure-seeking). Weimar music, dance and entertainment was criticized by radicals on both sides of politics. The late Weimar era was become known for its cabarets: restaurants or nightclubs where patrons sat at tables and were entertained by a procession of singers, dancers and comedians atop a small stage. Cabaret was actually a French invention, dating back to the 1880s. The most famous French cabaret, the Moulin Rouge, was notorious for employing prostitutes and allowing lewd dancing. The German form, Kabarett, was more conservative and low-key. Berlin’s first cabaret nightclub dated back to 1901.

Night Ghost

Music by Rudolf Nelson, lyrics by Friedrich Hollaender (1930)

Translated lyrics:

When the housewife chains the hallway door at night, I’m standing right outside.
Without hurry, I file the chain away, and there I am.

This song made me stop and think. I like the ambiguity it wings with it. It says so much along with the mysterious or as Expressionists arts will describe as “gloomy”. Just the first two sentences say so much by the use of the words “housewives” and “chains”. These words profoundly depict how much under tight protection/security mothers had over their girls. How much they tried to preserve their young, naïve and pure soul. Obviously the “housewives” refer to the mothers of the house whose traditional duty was to be in doors, manage the household chores, satisfy her husband, reproduce and take care of her offsprings. The word “chains” conveys the protection.

However the second line breaks the shackles of the first. The filing away of the chains without any rush make us understand that in spite of all the confinement and protection mothers may have for their daughters, there are predators who will lure their way into the bedrooms and take away or “rob” these girls of their innocence while we (because I am a mother too) go to be thinking that we have our girls well secured in their rooms, under our roofs and barred doors.

Hard to agree to, but I like how the lyrics tell us this somber reality. Hollaender couldn’t have used a better phrase than “Night Ghost” to portray these bedroom robbers who are not interested in ‘shiny jewels’ to satisfy them; this doesn’t appeal to them. The ivory skin of the daughter is what he needs for pleasure and satisfaction.

 

 

Nachtgespenst

Lyrics:

Legt die Hausfrau nachts die Kette hoch, im Korridor, steh ich davor.
Mit der Feile ohne Eile, keck, feil ich se weg. Da liegt der Dreck.

 

Chuck Out the Men by Friedrich Hollaender (1926)

Lyrics:
The battle for emancipation's been raging since history began
Yes, feminists of every nation want to chuck off the chains made by man

This one is my favorite. Women have been battling for emancipation since the days of slavery. Men have the notion that women are their private property. It’s about time they get out of their fairyland and quickly file away these chains themselves to save the embarrassment because women are rapidly “chucking off” these chains independently. . Why women are raging battle for their emancipation?

Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery.

Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these words awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblest and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all his light and glory was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to direct her own destiny--an aim certainly worthy of the great enthusiasm, courage, perseverance, and ceaseless effort of the tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything against a world of prejudice and ignorance.

Emancipation will bring woman economic equality with man; that is, she can choose her own profession and trade; but as her past and present physical training has not equipped her with the necessary strength to compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all her energy, use up her vitality, and strain every nerve in order to reach the market value. In addition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a "home, sweet home" --cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting--after a day's hard work. But still, women want their independence. No matter how much of struggle it can be, women still want to be their own person and have their own rule; not to be ruled.

“Emancipation, as understood by the majority of its adherents and exponents, is of too narrow a scope to permit the boundless love and ecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart, mother, in freedom.” (Emma Goldman's Anarchism and Other Essays)

 

Raus mit den Männern!

(für Claire Waldoff)
Es geht durch die ganze Historie
ein Ruf nach Emanzipation
vom Menschen bis zur Infusorie
überall will das Weib auf den Thron.

 

 

 

 

 

PART 2

SUMMARY OF PARAGRAPH 175 (SOCIETY – HOMOPHOBIA)

By the 1920’s, Berlin had become known as a homosexual Eden, where gay men and lesbians lived relatively open lives. With the coming of power of the Nazi, and this changed. Between 1933 and 1945 100,000 men were arrested and prosecuted for homosexuality under Paragraph 175, the sodomy provision of the German Reich Penal Code dating back to 1871. Paragraph 175 fills a crucial gap in the historical record of Germany, and reveals the lasting consequences of this hidden chapter of the 20^th century history, as told through personal; stories of men and women who lived through it. Their moving testimonies, rendered with evocative images of their lives and times, tell a haunting and compelling story of human resilience in the face of unspeakable cruelty. Intimate in its portrayals, sweeping in its implications, Paragraph 175 raises provocative questions about memory, history and identity.

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HOW DOES PARAGRAPH 175 RELATE TO THE CLASS LECTURE?

Paragraph 175, the German Penal Code enacted in 1871, horrifically declares: ''An unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also be imposed.''

This provision, expanded by the Nazis, remained law in West and East Germany until nearly the end of the 1960's. During the years of the Weimar Republic, between the end of World War I and the rise of Hitler, Paragraph 175 was rarely enforced, and the Berlin of the 1920's was, in the words and images of a film, ''a homosexual Eden.

According to our class readings, “by 1930 the Nazi movement was in full swing and gaining momentum by capitalizing on the chaos and uncertainty unleashed by the worldwide Great Depression in 1929.” This film making era was attracting for English – speaking films and this resulted in extreme paranoia and hysterical attacks from the Nazis and such films were considered “un-German”. “English was considered a corrupt foreign influence, so in part producing the film in an English version was meant to show solidarity with the outside world against the Nazis.”

The leading actress at that time was Marlene Dietrich who was persuaded to do propaganda films for the high Nazi officials. In spite of their begging, she blatantly refused, migrated to America and became a US star. After being labeled a “traitor” by her people in Germany, she became a Nietzsche’s follower and held on to his philosophy of “God is dead.”  However the shocking bi-sexual reality of her life was not known until her death. Such a revelation in such an era, send us back to the “homosexual Eden” and this is where Paragraph 175 shares a relation to our class lecture

Since the creation of the German state in 1871, the penal code included a provision prohibiting sexual acts between men. However, the men were not prosecuted unless there was violence, prostitution, seduction of a minor or proof of “intercourse-like” sex. Such high standards of evidence made convictions rare, and thus granted homoerotically attracted men significant freedom from police interference in the democratic period after World War One. But after the National Socialists came to power in 1933, they worked to “Nazify” every element of the state. Increasing police powers, easing evidentiary requirements, and worsening punishments were important parts of this legal process, known as “coordination” .The increasingly totalitarian climate in Nazi Germany made it easier to punish so-called “asocials,” a purposely vague and arbitrary category of individuals who supposedly threatened the National Socialist theory of a “racial community”. Echoing the homophobia of the time, Nazi officials publicly declared homosexuality to be a sickness and deemed homosexuals as “racial vermin”. Gay men were among the many groups of people subject to worsening treatment in the Third Reich.

The campaign of harsher legal coordination worked its way into the laws regarding homosexual acts. In a June 1935 Supreme Court decision, National Socialist judges removed the criterion “contrary to nature” from paragraph 175. Before the 1935 reform, the combination of the language “against nature” and the German word for indecency in the paragraph 175 came to be interpreted to mean anal sex. As Geoffrey Giles writes, proving intercourse-like sex between men was “devilishly difficult.” Chief Justice of the Leipzig Regional Court and Nazi party member Dr. Gerhard Lorenz pushed for the removal of this specific language, allowing men to be charged for any indecency.

The refusal of post-war lawmakers to eliminate paragraph 175, a law that caused the murder of thousands of gay men, indicates Germany’s failure to learn from its recent, devastating history, the period that gave birth to Nihilism. In the east, gay victims of National Socialism faced strict sanction on speech and organization. In the west, gay victims of National Socialism were not only refused postwar reparations, but were forced to live in fear of police harassment and incarceration. Almost all of the gay survivors of the Holocaust lived in West Germany, East Germany, or Austria, countries where same-sex sexual activities remained prohibited. Because of persisting social stigma and legal prohibition in the post-war era, the personal memories of gay men existed as a sort of estranged contraband. Post-war attitudes and laws that punished homosexuality effectively erased the memory of gay victimization.

The persistence of paragraph 175 had more than symbolic and Moreover, the sheer volume of convictions in the post-war west illustrates that Nazi law and police practices continued after 1945. In one twelve-year span in the postwar period, the number of paragraph 175 convictions almost matches the number in the twelve years of the National Socialist regime. As Jürgen Baumann reports, between 1953 and 1965, German police recorded 98,700 175-ers, of whom 38,000 were found guilty.  This figure comes close to the number of paragraph 175 convictions during the Third Reich, when about 100,000 men were charged with violating 175, of whom about half were convicted. Paragraph 175 convictions never dropped back down to their Weimar-era level, clearly illustrating the effect of Nazi justice conferred through the 1935-version of paragraph 175.

To sum up, despite the Nazi campaign of terror that castrated, incarcerated, and murdered gay men, the end of the Second World War did not mark the end of brutal and homophobic National Socialist policy in Germany. In West Germany, a Third Reich-era law that prohibited homosexual acts remained a part of the penal code until 1969. Rigorous enforcement of the law, paragraph 175, led to a high number of convictions in the postwar history: the focus of our lectures – Post-war Germany and Nihilism and the rise of the Nazi rule.

 

REFRENCES

1.       Emma Goldman's Anarchism and Other Essays. Second Revised Edition. New York & London: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1911. pp. 219-231

 

2.       Geoffrey J. Giles, "Legislating Homophobia in the Third Reich: The Radicalization of Prosecution against Homosexuality by the Legal Profession," Journal of German History 23, no. 3 (2005), 342

 

 

3.       Jürgen Baumann, Paragraph 175: Über die Möglichkeit einfache, die nichtjugendgefährdende und nicht öffentliche Homosexualität unter Erwachsenen straffrei zu lassen (Berlin: , 1968), 63-66.

 

4.        Geoffrey J. Giles, "Legislating Homophobia in the Third Reich: The Radicalization of Prosecution against Homosexuality by the Legal Profession," Journal of German History 23, no. 3 (2005), 342