i'm not a details knower but there need to be way more :citations-needed: tossed on that one but my IP is blocked from editing wikipedia for some reason
Queer people were generally excluded from mainstream GDR society on account of socialist ideology, as well as general attitudes toward queer identities. Seen as ‘non-reproductive’, homosexuality was understood to be incompatible with socialism.[citation needed] In the five years following the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany, the GDR Government instituted a program of "moral reform" to build a solid foundation for the new socialist republic in which masculinity and the traditional family were championed, while abortion and homosexuality, seen to contravene "healthy mores of the working people", continued to be prosecuted. Same sex activity was "alternatively viewed as a remnant of bourgeois decadence, a sign of moral weakness, and a threat to the social and political health of the nation." Gays and lesbians in the GDR experienced intense feelings of isolation in this social landscape, with those in rural areas having it even worse than urban residents.
yeah that doesnt need any citations. don't worry about it
In the early years of the regime, advice writers in state media often deemed homosexuality as a perversion, pathology or deviance. This suffocated much queer culture, and the SED generally avoided talking about homosexuality altogether. It was only in 1965 that the central committee declared itself in favour of depiction of sex in literature and culture, yet it must have adhered to the perfect socialist narrative of romance, which undoubtedly excluded any form of non-heterosexual love. As a result, many activists turned to the Church printing press to create works as that did not suffer from this censorship, although some refused to work with the Church due to ideological reasons.
damn thats crazy. where'd you hear that? oh? huh?
Despite the physical separation of Berlin after 1961, the West remained culturally influential in queer material. Rosa von Praunheim’s film "Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt" (It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives) was shown on Western television in 1973 and represented a key moment in the West German gay liberation movement. In the East, such a movement did not exist, but the film proved powerful for many queer East Germans, who remember the film as the first representation of non-heteronormative relations in the media.
damn what would they have done without the free capitalist west
I remember talking about the GDR leading the world on gay and trans rights before it was destroyed in a college class once. People are really resistant to the idea that a socialist country was better on a social freedom like that, no matter how well documented it is.
Do you have any links? I'm really curious. It's always seemed like a huge historical fuck up that in 1921 they were legalizing homosexuality and offering safe, free abortions but then the rest of the 20th century happened.
That all bears discussing, but you're referring to the USSR. The GDR was a separate country and had its own policies. IIRC the GDR stopped enforcing laws against homosexuality in 1957, much earlier than most (all?) other European countries. They also were quite advanced on trans rights until West Germany ruined things in the 1990s.
Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? is a good book if you're looking for an overview of the GDR.
My main source is reading Stasi State or Socialist Paradise, which doesn't shy away from the GDR's shortcomings but importantly contextualizes them. The vast majority of East Germans were never of interest to the Stasi but the story of state surveillance and informers was pushed hard in West German propaganda before and after reunification.