Abstract
The Adenauer era officially came to an end on October 16, 1963 when Adenauer was pressured to resign. His reputation had been tarnished during the last years of his office by his weak reaction to the building of the Berlin Wall, the infamous Spiegel Affair that raised the issue of state censorship once again, and growing diplomatic problems created by his unwillingness to officially recognize East Germany. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU)-led coalition stayed in power, but now under the leadership of Ludwig Erhard, the new Chancellor of West Germany. Erhard would steer his party successfully through the election year of 1965, winning just short of 50 percent of the votes, but across the country there was mounting evidence that the social and political situation was rapidly changing.1
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Notes
Martin Kitchen, A History of Modern Germany, 1800–2000 (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2006), 341–8.
Hermann Glaser, Kulturgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Zwischen Grundgesetz und Großer Koalition 1949–1967 (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1986), 98–107.
See, for instance, Detlef Grumbach, ed., Die Linke und das Laster: Schwule Emanzipation und linke Vorurteile (Hamburg: Männerschwarm Skript, 1995);
and Harry Oosterhuis, ‘The “Jews” of the Antifascist Left: Homosexuality and the Socialist Resistance to Nazism,’ The Journal of Homosexuality 29 (1995): 227–57.
Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c.1958–c.1974 (Oxford and New York: Oxford, 1998), 13, 498–507.
Steinle, ‘Homophiles Deutschland—West und Ost,’ 207–8; Günter Grau, ‘Ein Leben im Kampf gegen den Paragraphen 175: Zum Wirken des Dresdner Arztes Rudolf Klimmer 1905–1977,’ in 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung: Dokumentation einer Vortragsreihe in der Akademie der Künste, ed. Manfred Herzer (Berlin: Rosa Winkel, 1998), 47–64.
Rudolf Klimmer, Die Homosexualität als biologisch-soziologischen Zeitfrage (Hamburg: Kriminalistik, 1958), 236.
Wolfgang Theis, ‘Anders als du und ich (§175),’ in Vergessene Zukunft, Forgotten Future, ed. Christian Philipp Müller (Munich: Kunstverein München and Edition Artelier, 1992), 56–75.
Hans Giese, ed. Homosexualität oder Politik mit dem §175 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1967), 100, 170.
Willhart Schlegel, Körper und Seele: Eine Konstituionslehre für Ärzte, Juristen, Pädagogen und Theologen (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1957).
Willhart Schlegel, Die Sexualinstinkte des Menschen (Hamburg: Rütten and Loenig, 1962), 164.
Willhart Schlegel, ‘Angeborenes Verhalten und Sittengesetz,’ in Der homosexuelle Nächste, ed. Hans-Joachim Schoeps (Hamburg: Furche, 1963), 223.
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The following history of religious debate draws heavily from Hans Bolewski, ‘Homosexualität als Problem der evangelischen Ethik,’ in Plädoyer für die Abschaffung des §175, ed. Tobias Brocher, Armand Mergen, Hans Bolewski and Herbert Ernst Müller (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966).
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Hans-Joachim Schoeps, ‘Homosexualität und Bibel,’ Zeitschrift für evangelische Ethik 6 (1962), 370–2.
Walther Eichrodt, ‘Homosexualität-Andersartigkeit oder Perversion?’ Reformation 12 (1963), 67–82.
Klaus Bockmühl, ‘Die Diskussion über Homosexualität in theologischer Sicht,’ Evangelische Theologie 24 (1964), 254.
James Cavendish, ‘The Vatican and the Laity: Diverging Paths in Catholic Understanding of Sexuality,’ in Sexuality and the World’s Religions, ed. David Machacek and Melissa Wilcox (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2003), 215.
For a quick introduction to Thielicke, see The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modem Christian Thought, ed. Alister E. McGrath (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), s.v. ‘Helmut Thielicke.’ His autobiography is also available in English translation:
Helmut Thielecke, Notes from a Wayfarer (New York: Paragon House, 1995).
Helmut Thielicke, The Ethics of Sex (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 283.
Helmut Thielicke, ‘Erwägungen der evangelisch-theologischen Ethik zum Problem der Homosexualität und ihrer strafrechtlichen Relevanz,’ in Sexualität und Verbrechen: Beiträge zur Strafrechtsrefrom, ed. Fritz Bauer, Hans Bürger-Prinz, Hans Giese and Herbert Jäger (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1963), 163.
For the late-eighteenth-century Kantian arguments and their impact on Revolutionary-era legal reform, see Isabel Hull, Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700–1815 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University, 1996). J. S. Mill does not explicitly address the criminalization of homosexuality, but his argument that legal power can only be used to ‘prevent harm to others,’ not to enforce physical or moral welfare, can easily be applied to homosexuality.
See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett, 1978), 9.
These two approaches to the control of sexuality are delineated in Jeffrey Weeks, Sexuality and its Discontents: Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities (London and New York: Routledge, 1985), 53–6.
Paul Robinson and Markus Dubber, ‘The American Model Penal Code: A Brief Overview,’ New Criminal Law Review 10 (Summer 2007), 319–41; and D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 144.
Church of England Moral Welfare Council, The Problem of Homosexuality: An Interim Report by a Group of Anglican Clergy and Doctors (London: Church Information Board, 1954), 5.
Stephen Engel, Unfinished Revolution: Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2001), 70.
See Ernst Buchholz, ‘Plädoyer im Prozeß gegen Jean Genet’s “Notre Dame des Fleurs,”’ reprinted in Kunst, Recht und Freiheit: Reden und Aufsätze (Munich and Esslingen: Bechtle, 1966).
Dieckhoff, Wer wirft den ersten Stein? Bericht zum Interim Report der Anglikanischen Hochkirche, dem Griffin Report des britischen Regierungsausschusses für die deutschsprachigen Protestanten (Stuttgart: F. Decker, 1961). For more on Dieckhoff, see Karl-Heinz Steinle, Die Geschichte der Kameradschaft die runde, 1950 bis 1969 (Berlin: Rosa Winkel), 18–19.
Herbert Jäger, Strafgesetzgebung und Rechtsgüterschutz bei Sittlichkeitsdelikten (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1957), 38.
Thomas Horstmann and Heike Litzinger, An den Grenzen des Rechts (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2006), 163.
Orlan Lee and T. A. Robertson, ‘Moral Order’ and The Criminal Law: Reform Efforts in the United States and West Germany (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 174, esp. n. 8.
Christoph Krehl, ‘Reforms of the German Criminal Code—Stocktaking and Perspectives—also from a Constitutional Point of View,’ German Law Journal 4 (May 2003), 423.
Edmund White, Genet: A Biography (New York: Vintage, 1993), 210, 214.
Herbert Ernst Müller, ‘Der erwachsene Homosexuelle im deutschen Strafrecht heute-morgen’ in Der homosexuelle Nächste, ed. Hans-Joachim Schoeps (Hamburg: Furche Verlag, 1962), 254.
Alexander Lernet-Holenia, ‘Unverschämtheiten,’ in Weder Krankheit noch Verbrechen: Plädoyer für eine Minderheit, ed. Rolf Italiaander (Hamburg: Gala, 1969), 279.
Wolfgang Abendroth, ‘Objectiv verfassungswidrig,’ in Weder Krankheit noch Verbrechen, ed. Rolf Italiaander (Hamburg: Gala, 1969), 226.
On the New German Cinema, see Kieth Bullivant and C. Jane Rice, ‘Reconstruction and Integration: The Culture of West German Stabilization 1945–1968),’ in German Cultural Studies: An Introduction, ed. Rob Burns (Oxford: Oxford University, 1995), 226.
For a general discussion of Peter Fleischmann and his Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern, see Robert Fischer and Joe Hembus, Der Neue Deutsche Film 1960–1980 (Munich: Goldmann, 1981), 49–52.
Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University, 2003), 211.
Keith Bullivant and C. Jane Rice, ‘Reconstruction and Integration: The Culture of West German Stabilization 1945–1968,’ in German Cultural Studies: An Introduction, ed. Rob Burns (Oxofrd: Oxford University, 1995), 239;
and Torsten Oppelland, ‘Domestic Political Developments I: 1949–69,’ in The Federal Republic of Germany since 1949: Politics, Society, and Economy before and after Unification, ed. Klaus Larres and Panikos Panayi (London and New York: Longman, 1996), 97.
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Whisnant, C.J. (2012). Reforming Paragraph 175. In: Male Homosexuality in West Germany. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137028341_5
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