Schuldige seks. Homoseksuele zedendelicten rondom de Duitse bezettingstijd

In: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/39322

Abstract

From the 1970s onwards, public debates on the history of the anti-homosexual prosecution during the Second World War gained in intensity in the Netherlands. Representatives of homosexual organisations challenged the national government to recognize the Dutch victims of anti-homosexual Nazi-persecution. The Dutch government opposed such recognition without proof of anti-homosexual persecutions during the occupational years. Dutch historians were greatly influenced by these debates. Against the background of the literature on the horrendous fate of homosexuals in the Third Reich, Dutch publications were primarily concerned with similarities between the Dutch and German histories in the Nazi-era. The statistics, which showed a stagnation – and not an intensification – in the numbers of anti-homosexual prosecutions during the occupational years, sat uneasily with this tendency in historiography. Guilty Sex rewrites the history of homosexual prosecution in the 1940s Netherlands in two respects. First, Guilty sex focuses on the differences between the German and Dutch stories, placing the stagnation in anti-homosexual court cases firmly within the Dutch history of homosexuality. Secondly, contrary to the existing body of Dutch war-literature, Guilty sex approaches 'homosexuality' as a variable rather than a given – in the tradition of Michel Foucault and David Halperin. This research analyses the daily practices of police officers, legal officials and forensic experts in the court district of The Hague during the pre-war years, the occupational period and the post-war years. Within these daily practices the main focus lies with the ways in which 'homosexuality' was conceptualised by the different agents involved in the legal proceedings against the defendants of homosexual sex crimes. Guilty sex shows that the German concept of 'homosexuality' – inscribed in the German anti-homosexual verdict VO 81/1940 criminalising sex between all men – never governed the daily routines in the court district of The Hague. In The ...