Conceal | Condemn

Scat­tered through­out the space are cloak­room walls, cov­ered with fab­ric, some translu­cent, oth­ers for­bid­ding the view. They rep­re­sent an era of dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures in which much that is almost tak­en for grant­ed today had to be done in secret. At the same time, they speak of the undig­ni­fied laws and pro­hi­bi­tions, of moral­i­ty and immoral­i­ty, and the result­ing con­se­quences for those affect­ed. Right next to them, at eye lev­el, the vis­i­tor gazes into the faces of the indi­vid­u­als print­ed on trans­par­ent pan­els. Their facial fea­tures – the most indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter­is­tic of our bod­ies – are blurred beyond recog­ni­tion. Their alien­ation not only reflects the feel­ing of being reject­ed by soci­ety as a homo­sex­u­al, it also rep­re­sents the defama­tion of these indi­vid­u­als through pro­hi­bi­tions and laws. Over­lap­ping lay­ers cre­ate a crowd, allow­ing vis­i­tors a moment of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and thus bring­ing the many indi­vid­ual fates back into the present (time) space. The pri­vate sphere of those days enters the here and now, can tell sto­ries and warn! But the move­ment spaces inte­grat­ed into the exhi­bi­tion con­text demon­strate that these very pro­hi­bi­tions and pros­e­cu­tions nev­er­the­less also left room for indi­vid­ual and lib­er­al pos­si­bil­i­ties. The focus here is increas­ing­ly on indi­vid­ual biogra­phies, spaces that indi­vid­u­als have cre­at­ed for them­selves, and their own sub­cul­tures that have formed and resist­ed. And since even today, despite the lib­er­al­iza­tion of mar­riage and homo­sex­u­al eman­ci­pa­tion, intol­er­ance and fear still per­me­ate the pri­vate sphere, the vis­i­tor finds a mir­ror in the mid­dle of the exhi­bi­tion that delib­er­ate­ly and provoca­tive­ly pos­es ques­tions: What would hap­pen if my child were gay/lesbian/trans*/intersex? How am I allowed to be? What prej­u­dices do I have?

Die Ausstel­lung ist ein wichtiger Baustein für die Aufar­beitung dieses Teils der bun­desre­pub­likanis­chen Geschichte, und wir freuen uns, sie für das Min­is­teri­um für Fam­i­lie, Frauen, Jugend, Inte­gra­tion und Ver­brauch­er­schutz real­isiert zu haben. Am 19. Feb­ru­ar fand die Eröff­nung im Mainz­er Rathaus statt. Die Ausstel­lung basiert auf den Forschungsar­beit­en von Dr. Gün­ter Grau und Dr. Kirsten Plötz, veröf­fentlicht als Bericht der Lan­desregierung zum Beschluss des Land­tags vom 13. Dezem­ber 2012 zur Druck­sache ¹⁶⁄₁₈₄₉: Aufar­beitung der strafrechtlichen Ver­fol­gung und Reha­bil­i­tierung homo­sex­ueller Men­schen: Dr. Gün­ter Grau/​Dr. Kirsten Plötz: Ver­fol­gung und Diskri­m­inierung der Homo­sex­u­al­ität in Rhein­land-Pfalz, Mainz 2017.