Different strategies against violence

Content note: In this text suicide is mentioned.

This exhibition can only be a small glimpse into the numerous biographies of people who were perceived as gender nonconforming under Nazi rule. Many of the people featured here actively exercised resistance against their tormentors during the violence directed against them or employed queer survival strategies.

When Adele Haas was forcibly admitted to a psychiatry, she went on hunger strike. Käte Rogalli actively refused to identify as a man in the Wittenau sanatorium, even though she knew she would not be released this way. *Otto Kohlmann stole clothing with male connotations in Hadamar, *Anni Wündsch tried to escape sterilisation and Charlotte Charlaque wrote her letters to the Berlin district court as a proud Jewish woman, even though Nazi rule had already begun.

As a final form of resistance, some of those affected took their own lives. Resistance took on many forms and was dangerous for those who practised it. But many of them had no choice but to be resistant, because they had to somehow defend themselves against the violence that was happening to them.