I know how lucky I am to have been born when I was. I know that where I live – Southern California in general and Palm Springs specifically – gives me advantages others lack or can only dream of. Even now, with Trump and Company leading an all-out war against diversity, looking to rollback decades of social progress with regard to sexual minorities, I’ve “got it good” (which is something my mother used to say). My activism on behalf of my community is focused on providing a backstop so that we don’t backslide on the progress made.
I like living in a world where I can, in these posts, refer to myself as a “renowned homosexual.” It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, as beyond the world of this website and its readers, I am unknown. That’s fine by me; I’m not in it for fame. My “renown,” if you will, is a loud, unapologetic, militant, studied, informed, healthy, positive, and life-affirming rejection of the closet. I came out when I was 16. You might even say I was never in.
So, from time to time it is important for me to remind myself of the struggle others have faced to be themselves. And nothing serves as a greater reminder than the first known depiction of homosexuals on film, Different from the Others.
Thousands of homosexual men were imprisoned under Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code. Enacted in 1871 with the creation of the modern German nation, this law against “unnatural vice between men” would later be relied on by the Nazis as a pretense for rounding up homosexuals and carting them off to Concentration Camps where they were further named and shamed by being forced to wear a pink triangle (like the yellow one used for their fellow Jewish prisoners). After the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich, the law remained on the books in East and West Germany, and homosexual men were arrested and prosecuted and imprisoned because of it; it was not fully repealed until 1994.
Following Stonewall, the inverted pink triangle was reappropriated as a positive symbol of queer identity and pride; it is often used nowadays to protest homophobia.
A similar law in Great Britain was Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, commonly known as the Labouchère Amendment, which made what was termed “gross indecency” a crime in the United Kingdom. In practice, the law was used broadly to prosecute male homosexuals where actual sodomy could not be proven, as in the famous case of Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, known as Bosie. Section 11 was repealed and re-enacted by Section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956, which was in turn repealed by the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially decriminalized male homosexual behavior in England and Wales.
In Germany, Paragraph 175 was challenged as early as 1897 by the German homosexual emancipation movement, the first such initiative in the world. Its leader, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, held that homosexuals constituted a biological “third sex,” a social minority unjustly subjected to discrimination, and he argued the law did far less to prevent the victimless crime of homosexuality than it did to promote the crime of extortion. It was suggested at the time that for each homosexual prosecuted under Paragraph 175, another 100 were victimized by blackmailers.
During World War I, director Richard Oswald began collaborating with Hirschfeld and other sexologists to produce a series of what were called “enlightenment films” aimed at sexual education – PSAs (Public Service Announcements) of their day. They dealt with such issues as venereal disease, prostitution, and abortion, and included commentary by a learned physician.
With the creation of the Weimar Republic (German state) following the war, which lasted from 1918 until Hitler’s election as chancellor in 1933, censorship was temporarily lifted in all German media, opening a window of opportunity for filmmakers. Early in 1919, Hirschfeld and Oswald collaborated on Anders als die Andern (translated from the German as “Different from the Others”) staring Conrad Veidt, who later, along with his Jewish wife, fled Nazi Germany for, first, England, and then emigrated to the United States where he was cast as Major Strasser in Casablanca alongside Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.
(l) Conrad Veidt, (r) Fritz Schulz
Within a year of Different from the Others’ release, German studios had produced an estimated 150 “enlightenment films” with sexual themes. The public backlash they provoked led to the reintroduction of censorship, with Different from the Others at the center of the controversy; it was banned in 1920 and survives today only in fragments. When the Nazis came to power they destroyed most copies of it, calling it “decadent art,” and any remaining copies were lost as a result of Allied bombing of Berlin during World War II.
However, parts of the film had been included in a 1927 release called Laws of Love, in which Dr. Hirschfeld gives lectures about sex and reproduction. It is from those edited-in bits of Laws of Love that Outfest UCLA Legacy Project restored Different from the Others to the extent possible. The Legacy Project is a partnership between Outfest, Los Angeles’ LGBTQ+ film festival, and the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Film and Television Archive, and thanks to them we have a remarkable window into gay life a century ago, and a timely warning about what can be lost if we slide into fascism.