Explore the English-language works below to learn more about the history of German LGBTQ+ communities before, during, and after the Holocaust. The following list is not exhaustive and will be periodically updated. If you have a resource to suggest, contact Dr. Newsome. 

Imperial & Weimar Germany (1871-1933)

• Beachy, Robert. Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity.  (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015).
• Lybeck, Marti M. Desiring Emancipation: New Women and Homosexuality in Germany, 1890-1933 (SUNY Press, 2014).
• Marhoefer, Laurie. Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis. (University of Toronto Press, 2015). (Read Dr. Newsome’s review here.) 
• Sutton, Katie. “‘We Too Deserve a Place in the Sun:’ The Politics of Transvestite Identity in Weimar Germany,” German Studies Review Vol. 35, No. 2 (May 2012): 335-354.
• Vendrell, Javier Samper. The Seduction of Youth: Print Culture and Homosexual Rights in the Weimar Republic. (University of Toronto Press, 2020).

Nazi Germany (1933-1945)

Autobiographical Accounts

• Beck, Gad. An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin. Trans. by Allison Brown. (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000).
• Heger, Heinz. The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps. 2nd ed. Trans. by David Fernbach. (Alyson Books, 1994).
• Seel, Pierre. I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. (Basic Books, 1995)
• Schoppmann, Claudia. Days of Masquerade: Life Stories of Lesbians During the Third Reich. Translated by Allison Brown. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. (While not an autobiography, this book contains interviews with lesbians who survived the Holocaust.)

Secondary Scholarship

• Evans, Jennifer and Elissa Mailänder, “Cross-Dressing, Male Intimacy and the Violence of Transgression in Third Reich Photography.” German History (June 2020): 1-24.
• “Forum: Holocaust and the History of Gender and Sexuality.” German History, Vol. 36, Nr. 1 (March 2018): 78-100.
• Fischer, Erica. Aimée and Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943. Translated by Edna McCown. (Harper Collins, 1995).
• Giles, Geoffrey J. “The Persecution of Gay Men and Lesbians during the Third Reich.” In The Routledge History of the Holocaust, edited by Jonathan C. Friedman, 385-396. (Routledge, 2011).
• Grau, Günter and Claudia Schoppman, eds. Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany 1933-45.  Translated by Patrick Camiller. (Cassel, 1995).
• Hájková, Anna. “Introduction: Sexuality, Holocaust, Stigma.” German History special issue. June/July 2020.
• Herzog, Dagmar, ed. Sexuality and German Fascism. (Berghahn Books, 2005).
• Huneke, Samuel Clowes. “The Duplicity of Tolerance: Lesbian Experiences in Nazi Berlin” in The Journal of Contemporary History 54.1 (April 2017): 30-59.
• Marhoefer, Laurie. “Lesbianism, Transvestism, and the Nazi State: A Microhistory of a Gestapo Investigation, 1939-1943,” in The American Historical Review. Nr. 121, Issue 4 (October 2016): 1167-1195.
• Micheler, Stefan and Patricia Szobar, “Homophobic Propaganda and the Denunciation of Same-Sex-Desiring Men under National Socialism.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 11, No. 1/2, Special Issue: Sexuality and German Fascism (Jan. -Apr., 2002): 95-130.
• Nunn, Zavier, “Trans Liminality and the Nazi State,” Past & Present (Sept. 2022),
• Setterington, Ken. Branded by the Pink Triangle. (Second Story Press, 2013).
• Wackerfuss, Andrew. Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality and Community in the Early Nazi Movement. (Harrington Park Press, 2015).

Germany After the Holocaust (1945 – Present)

• Evans, Jennifer. “Harmless kisses and infinite loops: Making space for queer place in twenty-first century Berlin.” In Queer Cities, Queer Cultures: Europe since 1945, edited by Matt Cook and Jennifer V. Evans, 75-94. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.
• Evans, Jennifer. “Decriminalization, Seduction, and ‘Unnatural Desire’ in the German Democratic  Republic.” Feminist Studies 36, no. 3 (October 2010): 553-577.
• Griffiths, Craig. The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation: Male Homosexual Politics in 1970s West Germany. Oxford: Oxord University Press, 2021.
• Herzog, Dagmar. Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 
• Jensen, Erik N.  “The Pink Triangle and Political Consciousness: Gays, Lesbians, and the Memory of Nazi Persecution.”  Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, No. 1/2 , Special Issue:  Sexuality and German Fascism. (Jan. – Apr., 2002): 319-349.
• Kurze, Arnaud. “The Coming Out of Memory: The Holocaust, Homosexuality, and Dealing with the Past.” Kritika Kultura, Issue 33-34 (2020): 761-785.
• McLellan, Josie. “Glad to be Gay behind the Wall: Gay & Lesbian Activism in East Germany,” History Workshop Journal, Issue 74 (Autumn, 2012):  105-130.
• McLellan, Josie. Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
• Moeller, Robert.  “Private Acts, Public Anxieties, and the Fight to Decriminalize Male Homosexuality in West Germany.” Feminist Studies 36, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 528-552.
• Newsome, W. Jake “Liberation Was Only for Others: Breaking the Silence in Germany Surrounding the Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals.” In The Holocaust in History and Memory, Vol. 7 (2014): 53-71.  (PDF)
• Rorholm, Marnie and Kem Gambrell. “The Pink Triangle as an Interruptive Symbol.” Journal of Hate Studies 15, no. 1 (2019): 63-81. (PDF)
• Seifert, Dorthe. “Between Silence and License:  The Representation of the National Socialist Persecution of Homosexuality in Anglo-American Fiction and Film.”  History and Memory 15, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2003):  94-129. 
• Whisnant, Clayton J.  Male Homosexuality in West Germany: Between Persecution and Freedom, 1945-1969. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
• White, Katharine. “East Germany’s Red Woodstock: The 1973 Festival between the “Carnivalesque” and the Everyday,” Central European History 51 (2018): 585-610.
• Wilke, Christiane. “Remembering Complexity? Memorials for Nazi Victims in Berlin.” International Journal of Transitional Justice. 7, no. 1 (March 2013): 136-156.