Trans Liminality and the Nazi State

Abstract

Abstract Weimar Berlin is considered a past haven of queer possibility, but for trans people its permissiveness had clear limits. A close reading of the life of trans woman Gerd R. undermines a simple idealization of Weimar Berlin and addresses continuities and breaks between the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. How the Nazi state policed trans people is yet to be acknowledged by historians. Thus far, trans people have been subsumed into histories of queer persecution. Yet, if they had ‘Aryan’ racial status and were not considered homosexual, some trans people could avoid the worst of Nazi violence. If they had significant utilitarian value in their ability to perform skilled work, they could even be considered for rehabilitation into the Volksgemeinschaft. R.’s treatment therefore demonstrates the heterogeneous nature of Nazi policy and persecution in practice. Her contradictory and complex position within the Nazi societal matrix serves to undermine the coherence of the racial state paradigm and reasserts the vagueness and malleability of the Volksgemeinschaft model. This microhistorical analysis offers a new perspective on gender and sexuality in Weimar and Third Reich historiography, and foregrounds unexpected ways that trans liminality highlights incoherencies in Nazi state practice.