Dead Gay Men And Living Lesbians

This year’s Copenhagen Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Documentary Competition featured Dead Gay Men and Living Lesbians, a provocative new film by the German enfant terrible Rosa von Praunheim, a man that calls himself: „world’s most productive and senior queer filmmaker“. In the film, von Praunheim tries to prove his controversial theory that through political persecution in the Third Reich and the immense loss in the gay community during the rising AIDS-epidemic in the 1980’s, gay men have lost their leading role in Germany’s queer subculture to lesbians.

Though lesbians are not as present in the media and tabloids as homosexual men, they are the ones who create and change Germany’s queer subculture nowadays. Living up to the title, they are very much alive, editing magazines, starting families and fighting for political changes.

The lesbians mark the present and future in queer culture and self-conception. On the other side, von Praunheim shows three gay men, all dead by now, who had to suffer in Germany during World War II and the years following. Walter Schwarze and Albrecht Becker were both detained in concentration camp and prison because of their homosexuality. Schwarze nearly broke under the inhuman and cruel treatment in the camp and suffered lifelong from the memories. Masochist Becker enjoyed his time in prison.

Entertainer Joe Luga on the other side, could escape punishment because of his engagement as a cross-dressing performer for the troupes, but was sentenced to prison twice under the conservative Adenauer-administration in post-war Germany. In contrast to Turkish lesbian DJ Ipec, the editor and publisher of Germany’s first lesbian magazine „L-Mag“ Manuela Kay, Laura and Silke Radosh who have started a family short time ago and actress/singer Maren Kroymann, who starred succesfully in the role as a priest’s wife in television series „Oh Gott, Herr Pfarrer“ before she had her coming-out, the gay men represent the past, while the lesbian point into the future.