Out in East Berlin: Lesbians and Gays in the GDR

Goethe-Institut New York 30 Irving Place, New York City

Unlike the Federal Republic, by 1968 the German Democratic Republic’s penal code had de-criminalized homosexuality. But the “workers’ and farmers’ state” did not exactly welcome its gay and lesbian citizens with open arms; their sexuality was taboo and they were often marginalized from public life. The generation of gay men and women who had seen the war and were now…