Decades after his death a gay clergyman persecuted by the Nazi as part of their so-called moral crusade to racially and culturally purify the German race has been posthumously reinstated by his church.
“Revoking the ordination rights of Reverend Friedrich Klein on January 20, 1943, has been recognised as an injustice and is declared null and void,” Protestant Bishop Christian Stäblein told a congregation recently held at Berlin’s Immanuelkirche church. The ceremony, held in Klein’s honour, was as full as is permitted given coronavirus restrictions with between 80 and 90 guests in attendance, many of them older gay men.
Nine years after Hitler came into power, Friedrich Klein was convicted of homosexual activity by a Nazi military tribunal. Following the conviction the church was quick to disrobe the clergyman.
Sentenced to two years imprisonment upon his release in the summer of 1944 Klein was conscripted to fight for the Nazi’s on the Eastern Front, where he was likely killed during combat at the age of just 39.
Speaking to his congregation, Bishop Christian Stablein continued by saying, “Because of this unjust treatment, much suffering has befallen people who wanted to live and to love differently and who were discriminated against in a dreadful way.”
It is unknown how many other gay clergymen were persecuted by the Nazis. However, with 100,000 historical arrests of men found to have violated Nazi Germany’s laws against homosexuality there are likely to be many more. Records show that up to 15,000 of these men may have died in concentration camps alongside individuals from the Jewish and other persecuted minorities.
Read the article by Jessi Lewis in Star Observer.