Klaus Berndl / Vera Kruber
Zur Statistik der Strafverfolgung homosexueller Männer in der SBZ und der DDR bis 1959
On the statistics of criminal persecution of homosexual men in the SBZ and GDR until 1959
English abstract
Klaus Berndl and Vera Kruber provide facts to a topic that has been loaded with many assumptions but was not yet backed with much information: the persecution of homosexual men in the Soviet Occupied Zone and the GDR. The authors can offer detailed figures for the years 1946 to 1959 by consulting material from the East German Ministry of Justice.
Berndl and Kruber found that about 130 men were convicted because of homosexual acts in the SOZ (without Berlin) between 1946 to 1949 and about 780 more from 1949 to 1954. Another about 1300 men have been convicted under §§ 175, 175a on the territory of the GDR (including Berlin) in the years 1957 to 1959. A comparison that is made for 1957 to 1959 shows that the persecution rate (for crimes against § 175) in the FRG has been five times higher than in the GDR. For § 175a the ratio is only slightly higher.