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Homophobia remained ingrained in the German criminal code nonetheless. As part of the reform, the government had created a bizarre loophole, closed five years later, which criminalized any sexual acts between a man over eighteen with another under twenty-one; in other words, if two 19-year-old men slept together, they could still be prosecuted under §175. When that loophole was closed in 1973, the age of consent for gay sex still remained higher than that for heterosexual acts. Until the law was fully repealed in 1994, approximately 180 men would be convicted under §175 every year.The damage inflicted upon Germany's gay community, though difficult to quantify, was great. It undoubtedly stunted Germany's gay rights movement, which only got off the ground in the early 1970s, after repressive censorship and aggressive policing shuttered earlier postwar attempts at organization and visibility.Postwar Germany never developed the same vibrant, queer literary culture that came to characterize postwar Anglo-American letters. For every Tony Kushner or Alan Hollinghurst in the Atlantic world, there is a deafening silence in Germany. And, of course, Germany remains one of the few major Western countries where gay men and lesbians do not enjoy the right of marriage.At the same time, the memory of over 30 years of violent oppression has helped gay Germans—in Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne in particular—develop one of the most vital gay scenes in the world today. The sheer exuberance of the gay rights movements that burst forth after the 1969 reform helped create the uniquely permissive and experimental gay culture that persists today—which The New Yorker in 2014 called Berlin's "most essential and distinguishing element."The memory of those early postwar decades still weighs heavily on Germany and its queer communities. It is a persistent reminder that even modern democracies can exercise the most brutal repressions, and that free elections are no guarantee of minority rights.Samuel Clowes Huneke is a doctoral candidate in Stanford University's department of history whose dissertation focuses on homosexuality in postwar Germany. Follow him on Twitter.The memory of over thirty years of violent oppression has helped gay Germans—in Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne in particular—develop one of the most vital gay scenes in the world today.