Transgender, Gender Nonconforming, & Intersex People in Nazi Germany
In the 1920s, the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin was a haven for queer and trans people. This undated photo shows a costume party at the institute. Its founder, Magnus Hirschfeld (second from right, in glasses), can be seen holding hands with his partner, Karl Giese (center). Courtesy of the Magnus-Hirschfeld Gesellschaft
Note on Terminology
People have long used a variety of terms to describe their gender expression and their sexual desires, activities, and identities. The Pink Triangle Legacies Project aims to be intentional in the language we use to describe LGBTQ+ people in the past and present. Throughout our resources, we use the terminology individuals used for themselves whenever possible. When that information is not available, we describe their actions. When referring collectively to LGBTQ+ people, we use the phrase queer and trans. While some use “queer” as an umbrella term that includes gender identity, we choose to name trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people explicitly—especially at a moment when their histories and lives are being targeted and erased. We recognize that some LGBTQ+ people find the term queer offensive because of its use as a slur, and they may never identify as queer. We respect that. In the spirit of transforming the pink triangle from a badge of imprisonment into a symbol of liberation, we join those who have reclaimed the term queer to destigmatize it, take away its power from those who use it as an insult, and fill it instead with respect, affirmation, and self-empowerment. We employ it as an inclusive and expansive term that encompasses gay, lesbian, bi, asexual, pansexual, and additional sexual identities, as well as people whose identities shift over time or who reject fixed categories altogether. If you are uncomfortable using the term queer, we invite you to use LGBTQ+ instead. Above all, we ask that we treat one another’s identities with respect.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazi Party ran on a campaign to restore Germany to its former glory by building a “racially pure” National Community. This national community would only consist of strong, able-bodied men and women of the so-called Germanic Aryan race. The Nazis identified several groups of people who would not be allowed to stay in the German National Community.
First and foremost, the Nazis viewed Jews as their primary enemy. They did not view Jews as people with a different religion or culture. They believed that Jews were a different and inferior race. Ultimately, the Nazis’ antisemitic policies culminated in the genocide of 6 million Jews across Europe. Nazi leadership also argued that other groups posed a deep, racial threat to the German people. These included the Roma and Sinti, as well as people with disabilities. Once in power, the Nazis initiated the mass murder and genocide of 500,000 Roma and 300,000 Germans with disabilities.
The Nazis targeted other groups for their beliefs or actions. This included Soviet prisoners of war, political opponents, trade unionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others. According to Nazi ideology, these groups could be brutally punished and forced to change their behaviors so they could be reintegrated into the National Community. Others still, like Black people, were forced out of Germany, forcibly sterilized, and murdered.
The Nazi regime also made it clear that there would be no place for queer and trans people in the new National Community. They initiated the most violent attack on LGBTQ+ people in recorded history.
There were three primary reasons that the Nazis viewed queer and trans people as threats to the National Community: (1) They claimed that LGBTQ+ people didn’t do their “duty” of having children. In other words, they viewed homosexuality as a threat to the German birthrate. (2) They believed that “the homosexual lifestyle” reversed the “natural” gender roles by turning men feminine and women masculine. (3) They argued that queer and trans people would only be loyal to each other, not to the government.
Nazi leaders did not believe that people were born queer or trans. They believed that engaging in the “homosexual lifestyle” was a choice. Their policies against LGBTQ+ people, therefore, were officially aimed at “curing,” “converting,” or “reeducating” them, not killing them. But, as this essay demonstrates, the Nazis' anti-LGBTQ+ policies were violent and ultimately killed thousands of queer and trans people.
Out of everyone in the LGBTQ+ community, the Nazis viewed queer men to be the most dangerous. This was because men had access to positions of leadership in national politics, the economy, and the military. So, a queer man could “infiltrate” Nazi organizations and do damage in a way that a lesbian woman could not, because those leadership roles were not open to women. As a result, the Nazi regime focused most of its resources and efforts on hunting down and finding queer men. Evidence shows, though, that the Nazis also harassed, tortured, and arrested queer women and gender nonconforming people when they learned about their existence.
This essay focuses on how the Nazis treated transgender, gender nonconforming, and intersex people specifically. Explore our additional thematic essays to learn how the Nazis treated other members of the LGBTQ+ community.
In the early 20th century, physicians and sexologists like Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld in Germany documented gender-diverse people and advocated for their rights. Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin became a pioneering space for trans healthcare, legal reform, and public education. During its first democracy (the period between 1919-1933 known as the Weimar Republic), Germany was a haven for trans individuals like Lili Elbe, who underwent one of the first gender reassignment surgeries. The Institute for Sexual Science even worked with the Berlin Police Department to issue "transvestite certificates" to trans people like Gerd Katter, which acted as a gender-affirming ID. In May 1933, college students who supported the Nazis attacked Hirschfeld’s Institute and destroyed its collection. The world’s first LGBTQ+ archive, consisting of nearly 20,000 books, journals, and rare artifacts, went up in flames during the infamous book burnings in Berlin soon after.
For transgender and gender-nonconforming people, persecution under the Nazi regime was commonplace. Although there was not a single law explicitly targeting trans and gender non-conforming people, the Nazis used several other laws and policies to target and punish people whose gender identity did not conform to the party’s ideals.
For instance, Paragraph 183, the German law against “causing a public disturbance with a lewd act” was used to target trans and gender non-conforming people. The Nazis argued that “cross-dressing” caused a public disturbance. It is important to remember that the regime needed no law at all to send someone to a concentration camp under “protective custody.”
Sometimes, laws that seemingly had no relation to the case at hand were used to charge people. Fritz Kitzing was a gender non-conforming person who was arrested while wearing women’s clothing in 1933. The Nazis convicted them under Paragraph 361, the law against vagrancy. After noting in their files that Kitzing was a “transvestite of the worst kind,” the Nazis transferred them to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Furthermore, as the Nazis did not recognize transgender identities as legitimate, many trans women were arrested under Paragraph 175 as homosexual men and forced to bear the pink triangle in concentration camps. Such was the case with trans woman Liddy Bacroff.
Unfortunately, there is very little research on the fate of intersex people during the Nazi regime. Nazi officials and members of the medical community likely viewed being intersex as a disability or medical problem. Therefore, the regime may have targeted intersex people primarily as people with disabilities. As a result, these people were likely forced to bear the black triangle.
The fate of trans and gender nonconforming people in this period prompts us to reevaluate what we know about the nature of persecution during the Nazi regime. It was ordinary people who played a defining role in the persecution of trans and gender nonconforming people. While a majority of the German citizenry did nothing to question or resist the Nazis’ campaign against homosexuality, a significant portion of the population went further and actively participated in the persecution of this community. Denunciations of queer and trans people by neighbors, coworkers, landlords, strangers, and acquaintances played a significant role in the Nazi government’s ability to identify and persecute the queer and trans community. Germans understood that their voice could activate the power and violence of the Nazi state against people they denounced. Statistics compiled by historian Stefan Micheler reveal that of all the Paragraph 175 cases in Nazi Germany that resulted in a conviction, approximately 30% were the result of civilian denunciations.
For a full overview of the Nazi persecution of queer and trans people, read our introductory essay.
SOURCES
For a list of English-language, peer-reviewed sources used for this essay, visit the Pink Triangle Legacies Project's bibliography. For works in additional languages, visit the Bibliography on Lesbian and Trans Women in Nazi Germany (maintained by Dr. Anna Hájková)
Featured Profiles
The following profiles from our LGBTQ+ Stories from Nazi Germany initiative tell the true stories of trans and gender nonconforming people who lived during the era of the Holocaust.
