A record of Herbert Welack's denunciation

This is an excerpt from a protocol from the Weibliche Kriminalpolizei (Female Criminal Police) in Berlin from June 9, 1943, about a statement by Margarete Welack. At the end of April, Mrs. Welack had written a letter to the Gestapo in an attempt to get rid of her domestically violent and adulterous husband through denouncing him. She accused him, presumably falsely, of putting on make-up. She did this probably to attract the attention of the Gestapo, who would not have taken action solely because of domestic violence.

The Gestapo forwarded the case to the criminal police for reasons of jurisdiction. Investigations began immediately against Herbert Welack, who was now suspected of being gay, because of his alleged feminine gender presentation. Suspicions were quickly dropped after Herbert Welack was able to prove how many children he had fathered and after his lover at the time told the police that nothing had ever seemed strange to her.

One of the tasks of members of the Nazi “Volksgemeinschaft” was to constantly produce it. Denunciation, as an instrument of social control, was a frequently used means. Various motives stood behind this reveal of private information. A denunciation could have been motivated by the desire to gain personal advantage, such as taking over the apartment of the person being denounced or obtaining sole custody of children after a divorce.

It was possible to denounce people on the basis of behaviour viewed as gender nonconforming, even if the person had not behaved in a gender nonconforming manner. Therefore, all members of society were under threat of being affected by such denunciations, even the most masculine acting cis men.