![Pink triangle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Pink_triangle.svg)
A pink triangle has been a symbol for the LGBTQ+ community, initially intended as a
badge of shame
A badge of shame, also a symbol of shame, a mark of shame or a stigma, is typically a distinctive symbol required to be worn by a specific group or an individual for the purpose of public humiliation, ostracism or persecution.
The term is also u ...
, but later
reclaimed
Land reclamation, usually known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new land from oceans, seas, riverbeds or lake beds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamati ...
as a positive symbol of self-identity and love for queerness. In
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
in the 1930s and 1940s, it began as one of the
Nazi concentration camp badges
Nazi concentration camp badges, primarily triangles, were part of the system of identification in German camps. They were used in the concentration camps in the German-occupied countries to identify the reason the prisoners had been placed ther ...
, distinguishing those imprisoned because they had been identified by authorities as
gay men
Gay men are male homosexuals. Some bisexual and homoromantic men may also dually identify as gay, and a number of young gay men also identify as queer. Historically, gay men have been referred to by a number of different terms, including ' ...
.
In the 1970s, it was revived as a symbol of protest against
homophobia
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitude (psychology), attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, h ...
and for queer liberation, and has since been adopted by the larger LGBTQ+ community as a popular symbol of
LGBTQ pride
LGBT pride (also known as gay pride or simply pride) is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to sha ...
and the
LGBTQ rights
Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality.
Notably, , 33 ...
and queer liberation movements.
History
Nazi prisoner identification
In
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...
, each prisoner was required to wear a downward-pointing, equilateral
triangular cloth badge on their chest, the color of which identified the stated reason for their imprisonment.
Early on, prisoners perceived as gay men were variously identified with a green triangle (indicating criminals) or red triangle (political prisoners), the number ''175'' (referring to
Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175 (known formally a§175 StGB also known as Section 175 in English) was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision ...
, the section of the German penal code criminalizing homosexual activity), or the letter ''A'' (which stood for , literally "arse fucker").
Later, the use of a pink triangle was established for prisoners identified as homosexual men, which also included bisexual men and
transgender women
A trans woman or a transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity, may experience gender dysphoria, and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and ...
.
(
Lesbian
A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...
and bisexual women and
trans men
A trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth. The label of transgender man is not always interchangeable with that of transsexual man, although the two labels are often used in this way. ''Transgender'' is an umbrella term that inclu ...
were not systematically imprisoned; some were classified as "asocial", wearing a
black triangle Black triangle may refer to one of the following:
* Black triangle (badge), a Nazi concentration camp badge worn by inmates deemed "asocial"
** LGBT symbols#Triangle badges of Nazi Germany, Lesbian or feminist symbol reclaimed from the Nazi use
* A ...
.) The pink triangle was also assigned to others considered sexual deviants, including
zoophiles and pedophiles
in addition to sex offenders. If a prisoner was also identified as
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, the triangle was superimposed over a second yellow triangle pointing the opposite way, to resemble the
Star of David
The Star of David (). is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles.
A derivation of the ''seal of Solomon'', which was used for decorative ...
like the
yellow badge
Yellow badges (or yellow patches), also referred to as Jewish badges (german: Judenstern, lit=Jew's star), are badges that Jews were ordered to wear at various times during the Middle Ages by some caliphates, at various times during the Medieva ...
identifying other Jews. Prisoners wearing a pink triangle were harshly treated by most other prisoners.
After the camps were liberated at the end of the Second World War, some of the prisoners imprisoned for homosexuality were re-incarcerated by the
Allied
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
-established
Federal Republic of Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated between ...
, as the Nazi laws against homosexuality were not repealed there until 1969. An out homosexual man named
Heinz Dörmer
Heinz "Saddi" Dörmer (8 January 1912 – 28 September 1998) was a German man who was imprisoned by the Nazis for homosexuality under Paragraph 175. He was repeatedly released and rearrested, spending more than ten years in a variety of concentrati ...
, for instance, served in a Nazi concentration camp and then in the jails of the new Republic. The Nazi amendments to Paragraph 175, which turned homosexuality, previously labeled as a minor offense, into a
felony
A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "félonie") to describe an offense that resu ...
, remained intact in East Germany until 1968 and in West Germany until 1969.
West Germany continued to imprison those identified as homosexual until 1994 under a revised version of the Paragraph, which still made sex between men up to the age of 21—as well as queer male sex work—illegal.
While many, though not all, lawsuits seeking monetary compensation have failed, in 2002 the
German government
The Federal Cabinet or Federal Government (german: link=no, Bundeskabinett or ') is the chief executive body of the Federal Republic of Germany. It consists of the Federal Chancellor and cabinet ministers. The fundamentals of the cabinet's or ...
issued an official apology to
gay men
Gay men are male homosexuals. Some bisexual and homoromantic men may also dually identify as gay, and a number of young gay men also identify as queer. Historically, gay men have been referred to by a number of different terms, including ' ...
who were persecuted during the war.
Rudolf Brazda
Rudolf Brazda (26 June 1913 – 3 August 2011) was the last known concentration camp survivor deported by Nazi Germany on charges of homosexuality. Brazda spent nearly three years at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where his prisoner uniform ...
, one of the last known homosexual concentration camp survivors, died on August 3, 2011 at the age of 98.
Symbol of homosexual liberation
![19](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/19.Assembly.ActUp.NYC.30March2017_%2833609021152%29.jpg)
In the 1970s, newly active Australian, European and North American queer liberation advocates began to use the pink triangle to raise awareness of its use in Nazi Germany. In 1972, gay concentration camp survivor
Heinz Heger Josef Kohout (24 January 1915 – 15 March 1994) was an Austrian Nazi concentration camp survivor, imprisoned for his homosexuality. He is best known for the 1972 book ''Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel'' (''The Men With the Pink Triangle''), which ...
's memoir (''The Men with the Pink Triangle'') brought it to greater public attention.
In response, the German gay liberation group issued a call in 1973 for gay men to wear it as a memorial to past victims and to protest continuing discrimination.
In the 1975 movie ''
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' is a 1975 musical comedy horror film by 20th Century Fox, produced by Lou Adler and Michael White and directed by Jim Sharman. The screenplay was written by Sharman and actor Richard O'Brien, who is also ...
'', Dr. Frank N. Furter—a
bisexual
Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, whi ...
transvestite
Transvestism is the practice of dressing in a manner traditionally associated with the opposite sex. In some cultures, transvestism is practiced for religious, traditional, or ceremonial reasons. The term is considered outdated in Western ...
—wears a pink triangle badge on one of his outfits. In 1976, Peter Recht, Detlef Stoffel, and Christiane Schmerl made the German documentary (''Pink Triangle? That was such a long time ago...'').
Publications such as San Francisco's ''Gay Sunshine'' and Toronto's ''The Body Politic'' promoted the pink triangle as a memorial to those who had faced persecution and oppression.
In the 1980s, the pink triangle was increasingly used not just as a memorial but as a positive symbol of both self-identity and community identity. It commonly represented both gay and lesbian identity, and was incorporated into the logos of such organizations and businesses. It was also used by individuals, sometimes discreetly or ambiguously as an "insider" code unfamiliar to the heterosexual majority.
The logo for the 1987
March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was a silhouette of the US Capitol Dome superimposed over a pink triangle.
Taking a more militant tone, the
AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. The group works to improve the lives of people with AIDS through direct action, medical research, treatment and advocacy ...
(ACT UP) was formed by six gay activists in New York City in 1987, and to draw attention to the disease's disproportionate impact on gay and m-spec men, and the apparent role of "genocidal" queer-antagonism in slowing progress on medical research, adopted an upward-pointing pink triangle on a black field along with the slogan "
SILENCE = DEATH" as its logo. Some use the triangle in this orientation as a specific "reversal" of its usage by the Nazis.
["San Francisco Neighborhoods: The Castro" KQED documentary.] The
Pink Panthers Movement in Denver, Colorado adopted a pink triangle with clawed panther print logo, adapted from the original Pink Panthers Patrol in New York City.
In the 1990s, a pink triangle enclosed in a green circle came to be commonly used as a symbol identifying "
safe space
The term safe space refers to places "intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations". The term originated in LGBT culture, but has since expanded to include any place where a margi ...
s" for LGBTQ+ people at work or in school.
The pink triangle served as the basis for the "
biangles
The bisexual flag is a pride flag representing bisexuality, bisexual individuals and the bisexual community. The magenta stripe represents attraction to the same sex, while the blue stripe represents attraction to the opposite sex. The purple ...
", a symbol of
bisexual identity which consists of pink and blue triangles overlapping in a lavender or purple area. The pink and blue symbolize either homosexuality and attraction to people of other a/genders (which can still be queer desire) reflecting some bisexuals' and biromantics' attraction to both the same a/gender(s) and other a/genders.
Use of the pink triangle symbol is not without criticism. In 1993, historian Klaus Müller argued that "the pink triangles of the concentration camps became an international symbol of gay and lesbian pride because so few of us are haunted by concrete memories of those who were forced to wear them."
Memorials
The symbol of the pink triangle has been included in numerous public monuments and memorials. In 1980 a jury chose the pink triangle design for the
Homomonument
The Homomonument is a memorial in the centre of Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. It commemorates all gay men and lesbians who have been persecuted because of their sexual orientation. Opened on 5 September 1987, it was the first monumen ...
in Amsterdam, to memorialize gay and m-spec men killed in the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
(and also victims of
anti-gay violence generally).
In 1995, after a decade of campaigning for it, a pink triangle plaque was installed at the
Dachau Memorial Museum to commemorate the suffering of gay men and lesbians.
In 2015 a pink triangle was incorporated into Chicago's
Legacy Walk
The Legacy Walk is an outdoor public display on North Halsted Street in Chicago, Illinois, United States, which celebrates LGBT contributions to world history and culture. According to its website, it is "the world's only outdoor museum walk and y ...
. It is the basis of the design of the
Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial in
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
. In 2001 it inspired both San Francisco's
Pink Triangle Park in
the Castro
The Castro District, commonly referred to as the Castro, is a neighborhood in Eureka Valley in San Francisco. The Castro was one of the first gay neighborhoods in the United States. Having transformed from a working-class neighborhood throug ...
and the Pink Triangle on Twin Peaks that is displayed every year during the
Pride
Pride is defined by Merriam-Webster as "reasonable self-esteem" or "confidence and satisfaction in oneself". A healthy amount of pride is good, however, pride sometimes is used interchangeably with "conceit" or "arrogance" (among other words) wh ...
weekend.
It is also the basis for LGBTQ+ memorials in
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
,
Sitges
Sitges (, , ) is a town about 35 kilometres southwest of Barcelona, in Spain, renowned worldwide for its Film Festival, Carnival, and LGBT Culture. Located between the Garraf Massif and the Mediterranean Sea, it is known for its beaches, nights ...
, and
Montevideo
Montevideo () is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...
, and the burial component of the LGBTQ+
Pink Dolphin Monument in
Galveston
Galveston ( ) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Galvesto ...
.
File:In memory of homosexual.JPG, Pink triangle ( in German) memorial for gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...
men killed at Buchenwald
Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...
.
File:Gedenktafel Rosa Winkel Nollendorfplatz.jpg, In the Berlin Nollendorfplatz subway station, a pink triangle plaque honors gay male victims.
File:Ac.homomonument.jpg, Amsterdam's ''Homomonument
The Homomonument is a memorial in the centre of Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. It commemorates all gay men and lesbians who have been persecuted because of their sexual orientation. Opened on 5 September 1987, it was the first monumen ...
'' uses pink triangles symbolically to memorialize gay men killed in the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
(and also victims of anti-gay violence generally).
File:Pink Triangle Sydney,.jpg, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial Project was founded by a group of community activists. Over the years they raised funds and decided, with South Sydney City Council, on the site at Green Park in Darlinghurst, in Sydney, Australia. D ...
File:Pink Triangle 6.jpg, Pink Triangle Park in the Castro District
The Castro District, commonly referred to as the Castro, is a neighborhood in Eureka Valley in San Francisco. The Castro was one of the first gay neighborhoods in the United States. Having transformed from a working-class neighborhood throug ...
of San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
honors gay holocaust victims
File:Pink Triangle installation on Twin Peaks in 2022.jpg, Pink Triangle 2022 installation on Twin Peaks
''Twin Peaks'' is an American Mystery fiction, mystery serial drama television series created by Mark Frost and David Lynch. It premiered on American Broadcasting Company, ABC on April 8, 1990, and originally ran for two seasons until its cance ...
in San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
References
Further reading
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pink Triangle
Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany
LGBT symbols
Terminology of Nazi concentration camps
Triangle, pink
Triangles