Heroes and Gay Nazis (2005)

Männer, Helden, schwule Nazis
Heroes and Gay Nazis (2005)
Rosa von Praunheim

The filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim continues to challenge his audience with his stubborn perambulation His new documentary: "Men, Heroes and Gay Nazis," was screened at the festival alongside an additional short documentary based on a series of interviews that von Praunheim conducted with gay survivors of work camps. The 18-minute monologue of Walter Schwarze, an 80-year-old broken vessel, survivor of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, leaves every spectator exhausted by the resulting tears, laughter, and sorrow at the thought of the impossible circumstances in which a person tries, again and again, to live his life. The film itself deals with the phenomenon of the discovery of homosexuality among high-ranking Neo-Nazi politicians and leaders of the most extreme groups based on hatred of the other. Von Praunheim met with a number of personalities who will no doubt undermine the worldview of the most entrenched person; he interviews them, accompanies them, and gives them a stage (ah, the double-edged sword). One of these interviewees is a very young political activist, outfitted with a tie, who is fastidious about his dress and his comport, and who claims, in high German and without any hint of hesitation, that he understands the [public] "disgust for effeminate gays," since "men must be men, and not degrade themselves"; the second interviewee, a wild head-shaven man from the former East Germany, explains why "being a Neo-Nazi is a matter of lifestyle"; the third was an actual leader in the former West Germany, who became famous when he announced that he was the "living proof that Hitler can, and will, happen again." When he was in his 20s, the producer took him to a visit in Auschwitz, and in the short documentary screened at the time on television, he is seen in the gas chambers, in earnest debate with visitors regarding whether the Holocaust happened. Following the movie, the man was sent to jail, where he made amends with his sexual identity and came out of the closet. Today he is organizing mass S&M sex parties for leather-loving men in Berlin. The fourth interviewee is a former activist in neo-Nazi youth groups who today devotes his time to volunteering in anti-Fascist organizations, and discovers that he was recruited to hatred by a state-employed social worker, during a period when he was in need. The central character in the film, the fifth, is an absent participant: Michael Kuhnen, who continued in the footsteps of the Fuhrer in the 1970s-80s-90s, until his death by AIDS that surprised and shocked his masses of supporters. The movie eternalizes a private event of Kuhnen, attended by hundreds of people. At a moment of pleasure, Kuhnen takes out his guitar and leads a rousing sing-along. Between sips of bear, they repeat the chorus, something like: "Here is a Jew, hit him in the nose, let him bleed, and then kill him out of mercy." Captivating.

In the 3rd Rich homosexuals were banned in the dozen concentration camps, many killed there too. Even gay leaders of the Nazi Party were executed as soon as they Roehm, the long-time companion Hitler was politically inconvenient, were taking their "abnormality" should be the murder appear legitimate. While the neo-Nazi scene most of the radical homophobia of the 3rd Reich held up further shows behind the scenes, a different picture. Some "members" of neo-Nazi movements secretly practicing their homosexuality, some even relatively open. The funeral Kuhnen visited homophobic proponents of German nationalism.

Kuhnen was for the German nationalists what John F. Kennedy was for the Americans: young, handsome, with a personal magic that came through the screen, polished, elegant, and full of rage. His scandalous death was taken with a painful ambivalence, also evident in the words of this same potential "Hitler" who today organizes parties: "I cried because he died, I cried more because he was gay. The man who I admired and for whom I was prepared to do everything, betrayed me." A somewhat problematic internal contradiction. The film discusses the public's tendency to take an interest in the "exposure" of Nazis as gays (for example, studies and persistent rumors regarding the sexuality of Hitler himself, as well as of Goebbels and others), and asks whether this involves the desire to marginalize the Nazis and to distance them as much as possible from the bounds of the "normal." Is the origin of this tendency in a wish to view the Nazis not as "Germans" but as "gays," and if this is so, to relate to the rest of the Germans as civilian victims of these eccentric deviants, who were sexually dissatisfied and gender-challenged?

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• nazis
• gay
• germany
• jews