Andreas Pretzel
Eros und Widerstand.
Ein Netzwerk der bündischen Jugendbewegung im Exil
Eros and Resistance.
An Exile Network of the German Youth Movement
English abstract
Research on homosexuals in resistance to National Socialism still remains a desideratum. Andreas Pretzel's paper focuses on the fate of those men who participated in the youth movement of Weimar Germany, went into exile during the Third Reich and were actively involved in the resistance network "Deutsche Jugendfront" (German Youth Front) in the Netherlands, in Belgium and Scandinavia.
Drawing on various sources Pretzel reconstructs the exile network, the diverse resistance activities to the NS regime and clarifies the homosexuals' role within that resistance. He focuses on the biographies, the ways of exile and persecution, as well as hints on homoerotic desire and knowledge of homosexual tendencies. These men continue to be largely left out of the historiography on opposition and emigration, even though many of them became victims of the National Socialists' persecution of homosexuals.
Pretzel's concluding remarks on the Post-Nazi-Era show on the one hand, that those emigrants who returned to Germany were left alone and/or among themselves with their memory of their resistance to the NS regime. On the other hand, remarkable attempts to preserve the history of resistance and the camaraderie of the youth movements can be found as well. There were even calls to support the efforts to repeal the NS special law against homosexuals in the 1960s.