Richard Grune

The Nazis had already begun closing down LGBTQ+ meeting places in Berlin, so LGBTQ+ people had to meet each other in private. Because Richard had his own apartment, he hosted a couple of parties for his gay friends in fall 1934. During the parties, one of the attendees – Princess Inge Ellen zu Bentheim – made note of the names, professions, and addresses of the men in attendance. In November, she turned in a long list of gay men to the Nazis.

Between December 1-5, 1934, the Gestapo arrested Richard and 70 other men who had attended his parties. Richard was put in “protective custody” in a jail for 5 months without trial. Eventually, a judge sentenced Richard to 15 months in prison under Paragraph 175, Germany’s law that criminalized “unnatural indecency between men.”

As soon as the police released him from prison at the end of his term, the Gestapo put Richard back in “protective custody,” arguing his sentence had been too lenient for someone who had thrown parties that “seduced” so many men into “indecency.”  In October 1937, the Nazis sent Richard to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp in April 1940, where he stayed until he escaped during liberation in April 1945. In total, Richard survived nearly 10 years in prison and concentration camps.  

“After I was liberated in 1945, I saw it as my duty to educate people about the concentration camps and the terror of the Third Reich,” Richard said. He sought to do this by creating nearly 40 drawings, which he curated into a traveling exhibit called “The Pariahs” that premiered in Nuremberg in 1945, at the same time as the international war crime trials against former Nazi leaders. Unfortunately, much of the German public was averse to confronting Nazi crimes in detail. Furthermore, social and institutional homophobia was still widespread, and the Allies had kept the Nazi version of Paragraph 175 in their zones of occupation, which meant that homosexuality was still illegal. Richard persisted and published his artwork into a portfolio in 1947. His exhibit and portfolio were the first visual works on this topic to be made available to the public.

Richard tried to gain official recognition as a victim of Nazism, which would have made him eligible for legal and financial aid in rebuilding his life. But the authorities rejected his claims since he had been imprisoned for being gay. Richard was arrested under Paragraph 175 again in 1948. When he was released, he moved to Barcelona, hoping to find a more accepting place to live.  After almost fifteen years, financial hardship forced him to return to Germany in 1962. He died in Kiel in a retirement home in November 1984.