# data[].attributes.body
The question of whether lesbians faced systematic persecution in the Third Reich is still an open one and historians have been hard-pressed to find sources to answer it. The situation is not one unique to the Nazi period. Lesbians are among those most silent in the archive, their voices muffled by centuries of both oppression and apathy. Women’s long standing socio-sexual repression in Western European cultures in particular has led to a dearth of written evidence of lesbianism. Though most medieval and early modern European states technically outlawed lesbianism, courts rarely prosecuted cases of female homosexuality out of a more general disregard for women’s sexuality (Huneke, 31).

# data[].attributes.body
(Kreisau Circle) A group of 25 German dissidents led by Helmuth James von Moltke

# data[].attributes.headline
A quote from Frau Freya von Moltke of the Kreisau Circle

# data[].attributes.subject
A quote from Frau Freya von Moltke of the Kreisau Circle

# data[].attributes.body
"[T]he treatment of the Jews and those whom Hitler considered inferior. They were human beings like us, and the treatment contradicted what we thought civilization stood for. We found it a treason against humanity, as humanity had been taught to us. And we had personal ties to Jewish human beings. Many Germans did not. For them everything they heard was... theory. For us, it was our own skin. Those were our friends. Then it's very simple to be in opposition" (249).

# data[].attributes.body
This Nazi magazine shows the propagandist image of an Aryan mother breastfeeding her baby. The continuation of the Aryan race (and the extermination of other races) was ingrained in German girls from a young age.

# data[].attributes.headline
Quote from Huneke's "The Duplicity of Tolerance"

# data[].attributes.subject
Quote from Huneke's "The Duplicity of Tolerance"

# data[].attributes.body
The question of whether lesbians faced systematic persecution in the Third Reich is still an open one and historians have been hard-pressed to find sources to answer it. The situation is not one unique to the Nazi period. Lesbians are among those most silent in the archive, their voices muffled by centuries of both oppression and apathy. Women’s longstanding socio-sexual repression in Western European cultures in particular has led to a dearth of written evidence of lesbianism (31)

# data[].attributes.headline
Criminal Code of the German Empire, Section 183 Exhibitionist Acts

# data[].attributes.subject
Criminal Code of the German Empire, Section 183 Exhibitionist Acts

# data[].attributes.body
§ 183a. Public nuisance. Anyone who publicly engages in sexual acts and thereby deliberately or knowingly causes a nuisance is punished with imprisonment for up to one year or with a fine if the act is not punishable in Section 183.

# data[].attributes.body
"The Gauleiter and student leaders insult the honor of female students with lascivious jokes. German female students at the college in Munich have given a dignified answer to the besmirching of their honor. German male students have gone into action on behalf of their female comrades and stood firm. This is a beginning in the fight for our free self-determination; without this, intellectual values can never be created. Thank you to all the brave comrades who have led the way with such an illuminating example!" (Leaflet 6)

# data[].attributes.headline
Denouncement of National Socialism in the Reichstag

# data[].attributes.subject
Denouncement of National Socialism in the Reichstag

# data[].attributes.body
"The presidential cabinet bears a great burden of guilt. It is fully responsible for the murders of the last few weeks, murders for which it is fully responsible through its abolishing the ban on uniforms for the National Socialist Storm Troopers and by its open patronage of Fascist civil-war troops.

In vain, it seeks to hide its political and moral guilt through quarrels with its allies about the division of power in the state; the blood that has been spilled will forever link it to the Fascist murders" (Zetkin, 1932).

# data[].attributes.body
Selbstbildnis (self-portrait) 1934

# data[].attributes.body
Saatfrüchte Sollen Nicht Vermahlen Werden (Seed Corn Must Not be Ground) 1942

# data[].attributes.body
1924

# data[].attributes.body
"This time the seed for the planting — sixteen-year-old boys — are all around the mother, looking out from under her coat and wanting to break loose. But the old mother who is holding them together says, No! You stay here! For the time being you may play rough-and-tumble with one another. But when you are grown up you must get ready for life, not for war again" (177).

# data[].attributes.body
"Germany's cities have become rubbish heaps, and the worst of all is that every war already carries within it the war which will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything, everything is smashed. The devil only knows what the world, what Germany will look like then. That is why I am whole-heartedly for a radical end to this madness, and why my only hope is in a world socialism... Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is work, hard work" (Kollwitz, 184).

# data[].attributes.body
The story I have been told since I was a young girl was that Germany, in its entirety, was complicit in Nazism. Knowing that my ancestors had contributed to such atrocities felt like a huge burden of guilt and shame for me. I decided to construct this archive in order to explore the stories of women like me (queer and with a passion for justice) and their existence in Third Reich Germany.