Revisiting: ‘Great Freedom’ Spotlights a Forgotten Injustice of Queer History
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2025 marks the eightieth anniversary since the Allied Forces of World War II liberated the concentration camps across Nazi-occupied Europe. Eight decades later, societies still contemplate understanding mass genocide within a contemporary context, but such atrocities continue to manifest, just in different patterns and practices than The Holocaust did between 1939 and 1945. Reminders of the horrendous Nazi atrocities that saw the systematic murder of six million Jews, Romani, and other religious, social, and ethnic minorities live on through the commonly known phrase “never again,” yet genocide persists today.
The present zeitgeist –– with a concerning flare of Far-Right Nationalism and Xenophobia in some parts of the world –– inherently brings about recollections of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi supporters, particularly as current global leaders reframe social and political conflict with an “us versus them” mentality. These associations can bring forth a flood of reflections about one of the darkest periods of the post-modern era and how it remanifested in the years directly following. While most powers in the aftermath of World War II were quick to obliterate remembrances of Nazi ideologies, some of their principles were allowed to continue past the party’s demise in the Spring of 1945, notably through such regulations as Paragraph 175 of the Strafgesetzbuch, or German Penal Code.
Taking multiple arrangements of lesser and harsher enforcement between its creation in 1871 and its eradication in 1994, Paragraph 175 effectively made same-sex relations between men illegal in Germany. In its 120-plus year existence, Paragraph 175 ultimately shaped countless men and denied them the autonomy to be their authentic selves, to live out the truth of their souls. The provision of the German Penal Code is little known to most, and its injustices are even less so. For his 2021 feature, Great Freedom (Grosse Freiheit), Austrian filmmaker Sebastian Meise puts the inequity of Paragraph 175 at the center of the narrative, as told through the fictional perspective of a young man whose life was endlessly hindered by its legal power.
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Great Freedom stars the chameleonic Franz Rogowski as Hans Hoffmann, a Queer man living in West Berlin following World War II. Unwilling to ignore his desire for other men, Hans lives his life in and out of prison under the limitations of Paragraph 175, with the film capturing snapshots of his existence between 1945 and 1964 during multiple sentences of his incarceration. Mirroring life beyond the prison walls, Hans and his fellow 175-ers face ostracization while serving their punishments, but over the years, Hans makes an unlikely connection with another inmate. Georg (Viktor Kohl) –– Hans’ first cellmate –– is a convicted murderer, counting the days until he is eligible for parole. When Georg discovers what Hans has been imprisoned for, he spews a diatribe of homophobia and violence that makes it clear where his morals lie. However, upon learning that Hans was previously interned at a Nazi concentration camp for his homosexuality, the tides begin to turn in their relationship, and Georg takes on caring supervision for the much younger Hans. Over the years, their unlikely friendship evolves into a meaningful connection that defies the limitations of their detention and the prejudices society forces upon them.
Emotionally powerful but never heeding to oversentimentality in its depictions of the authentic oppression with which gay men were historically treated in West Berlin after the war, Great Freedom shines a light on a corner of Queer history that few –– even within the LGBTQIA+ community –– have ever learned about. Although popular culture may envision post-war West Berlin as the singular collonade of democracy behind the Iron Curtain, the film challenges this assumption through its emphasis on the fierce surveillance pressed upon suspected or openly gay men in the city, whose autonomy was constantly challenged by an administration that remained faithful to outdated and unjust ideals. While the movie’s central characters are original to Meise’s screenplay (co-written with Thomas Reider), their accounts are directly inspired by the annals of Germany’s past. In the role of Hans, Rogowski profoundly symbolizes the rebellion and resilience denotative of the Queer experience throughout human history, one that time and time again has revolted against the forces intimidating its very existence.
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According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 100,000 men were arrested in Germany under Paragraph 175 between 1949 and 1969, with nearly 60,000 of these arrests leading to convictions. This treatment of gay men differs significantly from other Western cultures, such as the United States and England, where consensual sexual acts between men were decriminalized during the 1960s (although Queer men were still marginalized by legal and social norms). This variance accentuates the problematic carryovers in Germany from the Nazi regime, despite the country’s attempts to shake off the transgressions of its past.
While the original passing of Paragraph 175 in 1871 made same-sex relations between men a criminal offense punishable with imprisonment, the code was slacked by the liberal foundations of the Weimar Republic following World War I, a time when urban centers such as Berlin experienced a blossoming of Queer culture. This loosening of social attitudes was quickly annulled after the Nazi Party took control of Germany, and two years after they gained power, Paragraph 175 was modified in 1935 to allow the regime to target far more gay men than any proceeding administration. Many men convicted under the criminal code were given fixed prison sentences, but as World War II ramped up after 1939, more and more gay men were sent to concentration camps across Central and Eastern Europe, where they were distinguished by the infamous inverted pink triangle affixed to their striped uniforms.
It is crucial to point out that men who had sex with men were not the only LGBTQIA+ community impacted by Paragraph 175. Drag queens and transgender men were also targeted, legally coined by the now-offensive term “transvestites.” Both the Nazis and the following powers in Germany treated gay men and trans folk as asocial threats to the well-being of society, an idea connected to the deeply ingrained and unsettling machismo built into the country’s social fabric during the 20th century. Sexual relations between women were never as severely handled under Paragraph 175, which speaks more to the entrenched misogyny with which the Nazis regarded women as child-rearing breeding stock for the future of Germany, never fit to hold positions of power or authority.
Premiering at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival –– where it was awarded the Queer Palme and the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section –– Great Freedom was a bit of an unfortunate victim to the muted post-COVID landscape of cinema. Nevertheless, Meise’s effort delivers a tremendously impactful movie, importantly underscoring the injustices of Paragraph 175 and a facet of LGBTQIA+ history that should be understood by all and never overlooked, particularly as the community’s rights continue to face threats across the globe in contemporary times.