"Unfortunately, I have come to love you dearly."
Persecuted as a homosexual under National Socialism

This teaching material for upper secondary school was developed in a cooperation between QWIEN – Center for Queer History in Vienna – and the OeAD program ERINNERN:AT. The aim was to develop learning materials for the first time that would enable teachers to deal with a long-forgotten and underrepresented group of victims of the Nazi regime in the classroom: those persecuted as homosexuals during the Nazi era.

The learning materials are based on eleven life stories of people from all nine federal states who were persecuted as homosexuals during the Nazi era, as well as the story of a perpetrator who was largely responsible for their persecution and arrest in Vienna. They enable low-threshold processing in the classroom. The biographical sketches range from life before 1938 to persecution (and murder) and life after 1945. The learning material is also dedicated to the (late) remembrance of the victims of Nazi crimes.

Each biography is supplemented with a didactically prepared worksheet, which can be used to deepen the biographies, analyze additional sources and derive lifeworld and contemporary references.

The learning material can be used at upper secondary level.
Learning age: From 14 years old

A teaching unit

The accompanying teacher’s guide presents two suggestions for lesson planning for one teaching unit each. Here, all or a selection of the biographies are combined.

The following learning objectives are pursued:

• Getting to know a group of victims of National Socialism that has received little attention to date
• Examination of the Nazi persecution apparatus, with a focus on the criminal police and judiciary
• Analysis and evaluation of continuities of persecution after 1945
  Examination of the late and sometimes never completed social and legal reappraisal and remembrance
• Source analysis and promotion of a critical historical awareness

The following must be taken into account when dealing with the materials and sources for the lessons:

• Even after the “Anschluss” of Austria to the German Reich, the legal basis in the “Ostmark” was different from that in the former German Reich. Section 129 of the Criminal Code, which had been in force since 1852, remained in force even after March 1938 and made female homosexuality just as punishable as male homosexuality, although the corresponding Section 175 in Germany only punished male “fornication”. Therefore, the specific stories of persecution from Germany are not always transferable to the Austrian context.
• The categories and reasons for persecution were defined by the perpetrators and the Nazi system. The attributions express the Nazi ideology and do not superficially reflect the identities of those affected or actual events.
• Among those persecuted as “homosexual” were men, women, trans* and inter* people. Nevertheless, the persecuting authorities focused primarily on homosexual men. This continued in the perception of the time and the memory after 1945.