CIĄGŁOŚĆ MILCZENIA. AKTY UPAMIĘTNIANIA ORGANIZOWANE W RAVENSBRÜCK PRZEZ WSCHODNIOBERLIŃSKĄ GRUPĘ LESBEN IN DER KIRCHE
Continued Silence. The Commemoration of the East Berlin group Lesbians in the Church at Ravensbrück

Author(s): Maria Bühner
Subject(s): Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919), Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Transformation Period (1990 - 2010)
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: lesbian; national socialism; East Germany; German Democratic Republic; lesbian activism; politics of memory; 1980s; commemoration; persecution of homosexuals
Summary/Abstract: The 1980s marked the rise of the gay and lesbian rights movement in the German Democratic Republic. This article discusses attempts to publicly commemorate lesbian victims of Nazi persecution at the memorial site of the Ravensbrück concentration camp in the mid-1980s by the East Berlin-based group Lesben in der Kirche. Their aim was to make lesbians and their history more visible. For the self-proclaimed anti-fascist state, commemorating the victims of Nazi persecution was central to its political identity. Making visible that there were more victims of Nazi persecution than communist resistance fighters was a way for activists to attract public attention. At the same time, it was a strategy for forming a shared collective memory as part of their identity politics, which went hand in hand with an understanding of homosexuality as a political identity.

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