This project, led by Michael Schwartz, looks into changing sexual lifestyles in German society as well as their public representations, which underwent considerable change in the course of the period in question. The study begins with a comparison of the two German states with regard to these long-term societal developments as well as their relationship with transnational trends both in the “West” and within the “Eastern Bloc”. It then looks into reciprocal effects with regard to the development of reunified German society in the course of the transformation process in the 1990s. 

The project is closely connected to two subprojects, which investigate the lifeworlds and persecution of homosexuals in two German states:

• The Persecution and Discrimination against Homosexuality in Rhineland-Palatinate, 1946-1973
• The Lifeworlds and Persecution of Homosexual Men in Baden and Württemberg