• Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
  • Search Site

Polari Magazine

  • Home
  • Up Front
    • Editorial
    • Clementine: The Living Fashion Doll
    • Polari Safari
    • WTF? Friday
    • Bulletin Board
    • Polari Facts
  • Features
    • Interviews
    • Features
    • Gallery
    • Opinion
    • Heroes & Villains
  • Community
    • Oral Histories
    • Coming Out Stories
    • Relationships
    • IDAHO
    • LGBT History Month
    • Blogs
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • Film and Television
    • Music
    • Stage
    • Visual Arts
    • Classics: Books
    • Classics: Film and Television
    • Classics: Music
  • About
    • About Polari Magazine
    • Contributors
    • Contact

You are here: Polari Magazine / LGBT History Month / LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 27

LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 27

27 Feb 2013 / Comments Off / in LGBT History Month/by Christopher Bryant

To celebrate LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.

LGBT History Month Heroes Hans Sophie Scholl

Hans & Sophie Scholl
Co-Founders of Nazi Resistance Movement, The White Rose 

by Christopher Bryant
………………………………………………………………………………………….

To mark the theme of 2013’s UK LGBT History Month – Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths – the Polari Magazine LGBT Heroes feature opened with the mathematician, codebreaker, and father of computer science, Alan Turing. As the month draws to a close, and preparations get underway to celebrate the 2014 theme, Music, the series returns to the era of the Second World War, and to a brother and sister who, like Turing, worked to bring about an end to the Nazi regime.

LGBT History Month is about reclaiming stories that have been lost to history. One such story is that of Hans Scholl. With his sister Sophie, Hans co-founded the movement The White Rose. Starting in June 1942, the organisation distributed leaflets detailing Nazi atrocities and encouraging resistance to the regime. Their work was discovered in February 1943. Hans and Sophie were promptly executed.

Scholl’s homosexuality, and the part it played in the evolution of his political consciousness, was not revealed until the 2006 essay ‘Solving Mysteries: The Secret of The White Rose’ by Jud Newborn. The question of Scholl’s sexuality was then explored in greater detail by Frank McDonough in his 2009 biography Sophie Scholl: The Woman Who Defied Hitler. McDonough revealed that when the Gestapo tortured the pair in February 1943, Sophie cited Hans’ trial for homosexual activity in 1938 as “the most important reason” for her dissident politics.

Hans Scholl was born in 1918, and his sister Sophie in 1921. In 1933, Hans joined the Hitler Youth. He believed that the National Socialists would lead the German people back to greatness, and because of his enthusiasm for the cause quickly became a Squad Leader. He was soon disillusioned, however, and the sheer hypocrisy of the Nazi regime created a dissident. In 1935 he was ordered to look into the dissident group d.j.1.11, and consequently became influenced by subversive youth groups that were on to the dishonesty of the Nazi propaganda. The question “What is an Aryan?” would be asked at the campfire, to which came the reply, “Blond like Hitler. Tall like Goebbels. Slim like Goering.” Touché.

Hans was arrested in November 1937, and in June 1938 tried under under section 175a of the German Criminal Code. Paragraph 175 criminalised homosexuality, and 175a determined how those under 21 should be treated. Hans faced expulsion from the Army, and banishment to a concentration camp to wear a pink triangle. The judge, Hermann Cuhorst, concluded that Hans’ suffered a “youthful failing”, and on the back of the highly favourable report on his career in Hitler Youth, he was acquitted. Hans was, nevertheless, traumatised deeply by the interrogation in the lead-up to the trial. It sealed his disillusionment with the National Socialists, and started a chain of events that would end with his death as well as that of his sister.

Hans and Sophie Scholl are revered figures in German history. A public poll in Germany in 2003, in fact, listed the pair the fourth most popular Germans, and put them ahead of Einstein, Mozart and Bach. There is no denying that their dissident politics were founded on Hans’ homosexuality. That fact, once hidden and now visible, is a powerful reminder of the importance of History Month as a tool that can enable people to take a stand against prejudice and the oppression to which it so often leads.

I’d like to thank Richard Smith, from whom I first learned of Hans Scholl. Click here to read Richard’s superb, irreverent blog Fagburn.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
Tags: day 27, frank mcdonough, german criminal code paragraph 175, hans scholl, lgbt history month 2013, nazi resistance, section 175a, sophie scholl, white rose

Related Posts

Did you like this entry?
Here are a few more posts that might be interesting for you.
Related Posts
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 14
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 3
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 28
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 25
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 18
Our LGBT Histories: Music – Day 26
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 21
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 17
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 8
Our LGBT Histories: Music – Day 7

Search Polari

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

About Polari Magazine

Polari Magazine is an LGBT arts and culture magazine that explores the subculture by looking at what is important to the people who are in it. It’s about the lives we lead, not the lifestyles we’re supposed to lead.

Its content is informed & insightful, and features a diverse range of writers from every section of the community. Its intent is to help LGBT readers learn about their own heritage and to sustain a link between the present and the past.

Polari is designed to nurture the idea of community, whether that be social and political, or artistic and creative. It is your magazine, whether you want to read it, or whether you want to get involved in it, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer.

Polari Magazine is all these: it's a gay online magazine; it's a gay and lesbian online magazine; it's an LGBT arts and culture magazine. Ultimately, it is a queer magazine.

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

Twitter

Tweets by @PolariMagazine

Archive

  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
© Copyright - Polari Magazine - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at
  • scroll to top
  • Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Website Privacy & Cookies