Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism
Why is it significant?
On the park side of Ebertstraße, half hidden by trees, stands a grey concrete cube, slightly tilted, as if it had been nudged off balance. There is no plaque on its face, only a small square window at about eye height. Go closer, and look in. Inside, a short film is playing on a loop.
Key Facts
| Place | Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism |
|---|---|
| Address | Ebertstraße, 10785 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.51330, 13.37610 |
| Part of Walk | Glass Dome and Golden Angel: Berlin's Reichstag, Tiergarten & Victory Column |
| Generated | Generated |
On the park side of Ebertstraße, half hidden by trees, stands a grey concrete cube, slightly tilted, as if it had been nudged off balance. There is no plaque on its face, only a small square window at about eye height. Go closer, and look in.
Inside, a short film is playing on a loop. Two people kiss. That's all... and that is exactly the point. This is the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism, created by the artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset and unveiled in 2008. A simple act of tenderness, shown in the place where it was once a crime. The film has been changed over the years, and later versions have also shown women kissing.
The law behind the persecution was Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code, which dated back to 1871. In 1935 the Nazis made it far harsher, and the police kept lists of names. Around fifty thousand men were convicted during the Nazi years, and somewhere between five and fifteen thousand were sent to concentration camps, where they were marked with a pink triangle. Many of them did not survive.
Now turn around and look across the road. Those grey stelae are the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and this cube is deliberately cast in the same concrete, like a single block that has wandered away from the field. It is a dialogue between two memorials, and a reminder that persecution came in many shapes. And here is the part people find hardest to believe: West Germany kept the Nazi version of Paragraph 175 on its books until 1969. Men who survived the camps could be prosecuted again under the same law.
The paragraph was only removed completely in 1994, and in 2017 the Bundestag finally quashed the post-war convictions. So the cube speaks about the past and about very recent history at once. From here, walk back into the Tiergarten heading north-west, along the paths towards the long avenue called Straße des 17. Juni, until you see a curved stone colonnade and two tanks.