Just a few more quotes because I cannot help myself and I feel this history is so important to know. It absolutely shatters any myth that queer rights can only exist within liberal “democracies”, and had the GDR and the rest of the socialist world continued to exist, I don’t think its unreasonable to believe that these policies would’ve eventually promulgated to other socialist states. Obviously we have the example of Cuba today, but the GDR was one of the most progressive states in the world on queer issues at the time, at least in policy. Culture obviously has significant lag time, but the GDR attempted to correct for this by a massive education campaign.
On 5 March 1985, the executive of the Marriage and Family Section of the East German Society for Social Hygiene, an agency that oversaw the county’s network of marriage and sexual counselling centres, handed down a new decision. Describing homosexuals as “a minority” in need of the heterosexual majority’s “goodwill” for the “assertion and recognition of their legitimate interests,” the board rejected the view that homosexuality is a medical or psychological condition. Instead it recognized homosexuality as a “biopsychic variant of human sexuality.” The board blasted the “one-sided heterosexually oriented environment” in East Germany and the “heterosexually oriented sexual education [that] offers homosexuals no assistance.” It concluded by insisting that, “There is no humane alternative to the full recognition of homosexuals as emancipated and equal citizens.” The hundreds of marriage and sexual counselling centres around the country began to accept gay and lesbian patients for counselling on medical and psychological concerns specific to their sexuality. […]
The regime was also quite aggressive in its response to HIV and AIDS. Unlike in West Germany, the disease spread at a sluggish pace in the East. Not until 1986 was there a single HIV infection in East Berlin, and not until 1987 was there a case of AIDS. The government also worked to educate East Germans about the virus. Working circles and state-sanctioned groups organized jount programming to spread information about the disease. By 20 June 1985, there were five AIDS consulting centres in various cities.
tl;dr: 1990 worst year of my life, nazi successor state ate the only good germany to have ever existed right after it did a bunch of gay shit
I thought this was interesting so I did some random digging around. First I found a lot of frothing at the mouth anti communist stuff about how apparently the KGB/Stasi invented AIDS denialism in the early 80s by claiming it was engineered by the US. TBH there is a window of time when that was not an unreasonable thing to have believed. But there were no relevant leads in there.
I think it does suggest some good questions though as to the extent that the slower start of HIV/AIDS in GDR has to do with attitudes towards LGBTQ people. Have to remember that while HIV/AIDS is considered in the west to be a condition highly associated with MSM, this is not the case globally, and an informed person in early/mid 80s GDR would not assume their population would follow the western trend, to the extent it was even real.
passage from “Not Even the Highest Wall Can Stop AIDS”
In addition to white East German men who identified as gay or bisexual, the other group
most affected by HIV/AIDS in the GDR consisted of students and guest workers from
sub-Saharan Africa.31 In East Germany between 1986 and 1990, there were approximately
200 confirmed cases of HIV in citizens of African countries. Out of the dozen or so who
got sick with AIDS during their stay, many died in East German hospitals.32 News of their
deaths was urgently communicated to the highest levels of the government and the
SED.33 Their encounters with the East German state, moreover, were in many ways shaped
by the ways in which East German efforts to combat AIDS were initially framed as an aspect
of socialist solidarity with Africa and with the rest of the state-socialist world.34 In the mid-
to late 1980s, East German health officials made a concerted effort to help establish and
(they hoped) ultimately lead a Warsaw Pact–based collective effort geared toward AIDS
research and prevention. Socialist countries fighting the epidemic together would mean,
according to Soviet and East German representatives, a strong stance against AIDS-related
discrimination.35 It also meant that Warsaw Pact countries would be able to lobby together
at the WHO for funds to be diverted to AIDS prevention and other programs that were “in
the interest of health care in socialist countries and our friends in the developing world.”36
These were (potentially) meaningful symbolic gestures of socialist solidarity with the
“third world,” but there were practical gestures as well. In some instances, local officials
and school administrators sent letters up the SED chain of command seeking assurances
that foreign students who had tested positive for HIV would be allowed to remain in the
country and receive medical care.37 Correspondence that took place prior to 1987 about for-
eign students and workers who had tested positive for HIV was concerned mostly with the
logistics of providing treatment. When a Zambian student of agricultural sciences at a
regional college in Gera tested positive in 1985 for what were then called LAV/HTLV-III anti-
bodies, for example, the Minister for Health filed a report that mentioned neither the indi-
vidual’s immigration status nor any ongoing contact between the ministry and the Zambian
embassy about the student’s condition. Instead, the student was referred to the Central AIDS
Consultation Center at Charité Hospital in Berlin for further assessment and, potentially,
long-term care.38 Likewise, around the same time, the Ministry of Health issued instructions
regarding the care of foreign AIDS patients in which the ministry’s (official) priorities
included making specialized medical care available as efficiently as possible, guarding
patient privacy, and being sensitive to cultural differences. Any decisions about a patient’s
repatriation, the document stated, would need to be made in consultation with Ministry of
Health representatives and with doctors and administrators at the hospital where the
patient was being treated.39
And also found s short, interesting primary document. AIDS in East Germany, an account of a visit to GDR published in 1988 BMJ. It is comporting with the title of the previous article with the photo, which I also included.
fulltext BMJ article
AIDS in East Germany
Infection with HIV is rare in the German
Democratic Republic, with only 48 known
carriers and seven cases of AIDS. These
figures were given to British health care
workers on a recent seven day visit to the
country organised by the London-Berlin
(GDR) Commiittee.
Two main factors seem to have limited the
transmission of the virus. Firstly, there
are very few intravenous drug users. The
penalties for dealing in drugs are high and
there is careful scrutiny of border traffic.
The authorities state that “there are almost
no intravenous drug users,” although other
drug misuse occurs. Secondly, in East
Germany imported blood products have not
been used to treat patients with haemophilia.
Of 1300 haemophiliacs tested, only five were
positive for the virus, and they had been
treated abroad.
The homosexual community is substantial
in East Berlin. The old law relating to
homosexuality was abolished in 1957, and
since then homosexuality has been perfectly
legal. At an early stage members of the
National AIDS Committee, including the
director, Professor Jurgen Grosser, resolved
to make contact with homosexuals. It became
apparent that homosexual men from West
Berlin were seeking ‘“clean” partners in
the East, and so the risks of unprotected
intercourse with these men were carefully
explained. So far the AIDS epidemic seems
not to have affected homosexual men in East
Germany to any great extent.
Compulsory AIDS tests are carried out
on three main groups of people—namely,
donors of blood, semen, or transplanted
organs; foreign students; and prisoners.
Nine people positive for the virus have
been identified. among 1-5 million blood
donors, and 500000 tests have been per-
formed for other indications. Compulsory
screening has not reduced the number of
people coming forward to donate blood.
‘There are significant numbers of foreign
students pursuing higher training in East
Germany and compulsory tests and certifica-
tion are required for stays of longer than
three months.
Currently the prison authorities do not
supply condoms for the use of prisoners, and
we were not provided with data on the
prevalence of homosexuality or seropositivity
among the prison population.
Public awareness of the AIDS problem
seems high, and our impression was that a
vigorous and thoughtful education campaign
had been mounted as the result of careful
preparation.
—N J COOLING, Fulbourn
Hospital, Cambridge CB1 SEF
So I think both of those are showing a bigger picture of HIV/AIDS that is more commensurate with the realities in the 80s. The idea of “gay plague” or GRID is a nasty western concept to begin with, and has from the first moment been disputed.
Reading what you posted was very interesting, thank you.
Just a few more quotes because I cannot help myself and I feel this history is so important to know. It absolutely shatters any myth that queer rights can only exist within liberal “democracies”, and had the GDR and the rest of the socialist world continued to exist, I don’t think its unreasonable to believe that these policies would’ve eventually promulgated to other socialist states. Obviously we have the example of Cuba today, but the GDR was one of the most progressive states in the world on queer issues at the time, at least in policy. Culture obviously has significant lag time, but the GDR attempted to correct for this by a massive education campaign.
tl;dr: 1990 worst year of my life, nazi successor state ate the only good germany to have ever existed right after it did a bunch of gay shit
I thought this was interesting so I did some random digging around. First I found a lot of frothing at the mouth anti communist stuff about how apparently the KGB/Stasi invented AIDS denialism in the early 80s by claiming it was engineered by the US. TBH there is a window of time when that was not an unreasonable thing to have believed. But there were no relevant leads in there.
Also found this: Folland J. “Not Even the Highest Wall Can Stop AIDS”: Expertise and Viral Politics at the German-German Border. Central European History. 2023 (paywalled but available on sci-hub; search by DOI). It isn’t as anti-communist as the title suggests. Likely the citations provide some interesting points to jump off for a german reader. The main narrative is not in contradiction to the information you present.
I think it does suggest some good questions though as to the extent that the slower start of HIV/AIDS in GDR has to do with attitudes towards LGBTQ people. Have to remember that while HIV/AIDS is considered in the west to be a condition highly associated with MSM, this is not the case globally, and an informed person in early/mid 80s GDR would not assume their population would follow the western trend, to the extent it was even real.
passage from “Not Even the Highest Wall Can Stop AIDS”
And also found s short, interesting primary document. AIDS in East Germany, an account of a visit to GDR published in 1988 BMJ. It is comporting with the title of the previous article with the photo, which I also included.
fulltext BMJ article
source: AIDS in East Germany (BMJ. 1988 Nov 26)
So I think both of those are showing a bigger picture of HIV/AIDS that is more commensurate with the realities in the 80s. The idea of “gay plague” or GRID is a nasty western concept to begin with, and has from the first moment been disputed.
Reading what you posted was very interesting, thank you.
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