German authorities have compensated nearly 250 people who were prosecuted or investigated under a Nazi-era law criminalizing homosexuality that continued to be enthusiastically enforced after World War II.
The Federal Office of Justice said Monday that, as of the end of August, 317 people had applied for compensation and it had been paid in 249 cases. So far, it has disbursed nearly 860,000 euros (just over $1 million).
Fourteen applications are still being processed, 18 were rejected and 36 were withdrawn, the office said. The deadline for applications is July 21 next year.
German lawmakers in 2017 approved the overturning of thousands of convictions under the Paragraph 175 law, which remained in force in West Germany in its Nazi-era form until homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969. They cleared the way for payments of €3,000 per conviction, plus €1,500 for each year in prison that convicts began.
In 2019, the government extended compensation to people who were placed under investigation or taken into investigative custody but not convicted. It offered payments of €500 per open investigation, €1,500 for each year of remand started, and €1,500 for other professional, financial, or health disadvantages related to the law.
The law criminalizing male homosexuality was introduced in the 19th century, tightened under Nazi rule and retained in that form by democratic West Germany, which convicted some 50,000 men between 1949 and 1969.
Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969, but the legislation was not taken off the books completely until 1994.
In 2000, the German parliament passed a resolution lamenting the fact that paragraph 175 remained after the war. Two years later, it overturned convictions of homosexual men under the Nazi regime, but not postwar convictions.
Compensation also applies to men convicted in communist East Germany, which had a milder version of Paragraph 175 and decriminalized homosexuality in 1968.
In total, some 68,300 people were convicted under various forms of Section 175 in both German states.