ABSTRACT
A few days after the Reichstag Fire (27 February 1933), the Prussian Minister of the Interior issued three decrees for the combating of public indecency. The first was directed against prostitution and venereal diseases. The second concerned the closure of bars which ‘are misused for the furtherance of public indecency’. Included in this definition were ‘public houses solely or mainly frequented by persons who engage in unnatural sex acts’, and proceedings were to be immediately started to revoke their licence. The third decree prohibited kiosks and magazine stands, in hire libraries and bookshops, from trading in books or other publications which, ‘whether because they include nude illustrations or because of their title or contents, are liable to produce erotic effects in the beholder’ — the penalty being a fine, revocation of the hire agreement or withdrawal of the trading licence. Although neither those affected nor the public at large were initially aware of it, these decrees already betokened a policy that would assume a clearer shape over the following months and years: a policy of arbitrary measures designed to deter and to eradicate through terror, and of coercive measures to cure the ‘scourge’ of homosexuality.
