In the organizer's words:

The legal situation for lesbians and gays was very different in the FRG and the GDR:
In Germany, §175 criminalized sexual acts between men.
In the GDR, this prosecution was largely discontinued in the 1950s and the paragraph was abolished in 1968, while in the FRG it was only abolished in 1994.
was abolished in the FRG. Abortion was also largely unpunishable in the GDR. Despite these more progressive laws, the lives of LGBTQI* people there often remained invisible - until today. Literary works such as Brigitte Reimann's Franziska Linkerhand, Ronald M. Schernikau's Kleinstadtnovelle, Irmtraut Morgner's Trobadora Beatriz and Maxie Wander's Guten Morgen, du Schöne provide an insight into their experiences.

Franziska Haug studied art education, sociology and German literature at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, where she completed her doctorate in literature and gender studies.
and gender studies. Her research focuses on queer literature in the GDR, gender production and pop culture. She is a PostDoc in the project Light On!
Queer Literatures and Cultures under Socialism at the University of Regensburg and co-founder of the collective DiasporaOst.