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In 1871, Paragraph 175 was added to Germany’s penal code, criminalizing homosexuality. Large scale efforts to protest the law came from Germany’s gay population in 1897 and were lead by psychologist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who toured the country lecturing on homosexuality and the unjust persecution faced from Germany’s discriminatory laws.
During and after World War I, when the German film censorship board was disbanded, director Richard Oswald began collaborating with several doctors specializing in sexuality, Dr. Hirschfeld among them, to produce a series of educational films. Through a narrative story following the lives of people affected by issues such as sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancy or other areas, these films frankly broached topics were not spoken of and tried to offer realistic guidance free from the mores of the day’s society.
In 1919, Oswald and Hirschfeld began work on a film called Anders als die Andern, or in English, Different From the Others. It exposes the consequences of discrimination by giving the abstract concept of homosexuality a real face: a gay violinist named Paul Körner.
Although not Oswald’s first film to have a gay element (he had, for example, two years prior shot a screen version of The Picture of Dorian Gray), Different From the Others was the first—for the director and for all of cinema—to focus on an entirely sympathetic, openly gay character and to call for tolerance and equality in gay rights. Other notable silent films with prominent gay themes, such as Michael or Sex in Chains, in no way approach its frankness.
In 1920, after public outcry for moral decency in films, with Different From the Others leading as a prime example, censorship was resumed in Germany. The film was banned and most prints of it destroyed. Dr. Hirschfeld retained what was probably the last intact copy in his personal archive. In 1927, he used several scenes from it in a documentary called The Laws of Love, which likewise met banning in Germany. When the Nazis came to power, Paragraph 175 was strengthened and an attempt was made to purge all gay media, and Hirschfeld was forced into exile and his archive was burned. After its destruction, the film was lost entirely for over forty years. In 1982, a partial print was discovered of Hirschfeld’s documentary, containing footage from Different From the Others. Using this fragment, as well as production stills and publicity photos and contemporary literature, the film can be reconstructed to approximately what it was.
Paragraph 175 was not repealed until 1994.
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