Berlin - Following years of controversy, German dignitaries on Tuesday will dedicate a memorial to the tens of thousands of gays and lesbians who were persecuted and killed in Nazi Germany.

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the series of raids and public book burnings in May 1933 with which the regime of Adolf Hitler began its crusade against homosexuality.

Photos of Nazi stormtroopers hurling books onto bonfires stem largely from the book-burning rally which occurred outside the offices of gay-rights pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science, which was ransacked in May 1933.

But authorities in Germany are going to great lengths to ensure that Tuesday's monument dedication ceremonies remain low-key so as to avert neo-Nazi violence.

Only a hand-picked number of dignitaries, led by Berlin's openly gay Mayor Klaus Wowereit, will be on hand for the ceremonies at Berlin's Tiergarten park, half a block from Brandenburg Gate.

That location - directly across the street from the Jewish Holocaust Memorial - has also been a matter of controversy over the years.

The construction of both monuments was delayed in part by a debate over whether homosexual concentration camp inmates should be included at the Holocaust Memorial.

In the end, it was decided to give gays their own memorial directly across the street.

The monument itself, designed by Danish-Norwegian artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, is a simple grey rectangular stone some four metres tall. In a bid to deter vandalism, the monument is devoid of any sort of ornamentation.

"This is a happy/sad compromise solution," says Albert Eckert, head of the gay holocaust memorial committee. "We are happy because this monument is ready in time for the 75th anniversary of the raids on Magnus Hirschfeld's institute which signalled the beginning of the persecution of gays under Nazism.

"But we are sad because it has taken this long to come this far. Gays imprisoned by the Nazis were still in prison well into the 1950s and '60s because of anti-gay laws which were not repealed until 1969," Eckert says.
"There are still no anti-discrimination laws in Germany, despite the fact that we have a watered-down federal law that allows same-sex couples to register their partnerships, albeit without much in the way of benefits," he adds.

"And neo-Nazi violence is still a very real threat to this day. But at last we have a monument to those who suffered and died under the Nazis," Eckert notes.

"We are also very happy that the dedication nearly coincides with Magnus Hirschfeld's birthday and day of death, since he was born May 14 - and died a broken and bitter man in exile in the south of France on his birthday in 1935," Eckert says.

A Jewish homosexual, Hirschfeld was a medical doctor who dedicated his life to the scientific study of homosexuality and to lobbying the German government to repeal laws outlawing all same-sex behaviour even amongst consenting adults in private.

Hirschfeld spent the majority of his career writing and lecturing around the world on the nature of homosexuality and other "intermediate" sexual types, including cross dressers.

The word "transsexual" was coined by Hirschfeld to describe the phenomenon that he argued was a natural extension of human sexuality.

For his work, the Nazis targeted Hirschfeld as an example of decadent Bolshevistic/Jewish influence infecting the purity of the German people, luring the Aryan race into impure and destructive perversity.

His institute was ransacked and his books were burned in rallies on May 10, 1933.

In another ironic twist, homosexual members of Ernst Roehm's SA Stormtroopers hurled these books to the flames in 1933 - and would themselves face persecution and death when Hitler turned against Roehm only a scant year later during the "Night of Long Knives" in June 1934 when Hitler decided that blatantly homosexual Roehm had become a liability.

"Within a few months of those book burnings 75 years ago this month," says Eckert, "gay men were being rounded up and sent to mental hospitals or concentration camps. Many agreed to 'voluntary' castration after being told that might result in leniency."

But there was no leniency for them.

"We have no idea how many thousands died in concentration camps because many were also Jewish or were Communists. We know that many were left in prison after the war when post-war courts upheld the Nazi jail sentences against them," Eckert says.

"Anyone who was gay was automatically a criminal. This monument is for all of them."