The West German Right and the "Sexual Revolution" since the 1960s

• Applicant: Dr. Sebastian Bischoff
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 541080944

In 1970, the Federal Supreme Court concluded that in West Germany, in only a decade, “the previous taboo of sexual life has been almost completely eroded, so that questions of sexuality are now discussed in all openness”. This idea of such a radical and rapid change in sexual morality has long since been relativized by researchers examining long historical lineages and stabilities of the sexual and gender order, even if numerous changes were abrupt for contemporaries. It is striking, however, how little historical research has been done on the widespread ideological and activist resistance to such changes. Sexual change had a fierce opponent in large parts of West German Christian Democracy and conservatism, church circles and the völkisch-radical-nationalist Right. If historian Ulrich Herbert asks about the “bearers of change” in West Germany from the 1950s through the 1970s, then this project will attempt a review of the bearers of perseverance. Moreover, taking a closer look at central actors who saw themselves as resolute opponents of this specific sexual “progress”, their contributions to the discussion and their networks seems worthwhile even beyond the individual case: this can serve as a probe into the social negotiation processes about the modernization of the sexual, family and gender order, and thus fundamentally about the moral-ethical sovereignty interpretational sovereignty of the period. In addition to protagonists, their networks and organisations as well as various, mostly local practices, the focus will be on three substantive issues that ignited heated debates and led to the gathering of diverse counterforces: 1. the “porn wave” and the release of “lewd writings” as a crystallization point of right-wing diagnoses of decay. 2. the debate on state sex education as a central means to negotiate the meaning of moral concepts in relation to family, childhood and the state's right to intervene, as well as on the relationship between state and church 3. the rejection of homosexual desire as a central subtext of the contemporary media-spread moral panic “group sex” A second part, taking up about one tenth of the study and included in the outlook of the monograph and a journal article, attempts to interweave the history of discourse/effect and that of memory: The focus will not be on the relationship of the political Right to sexuality, but rather on the role of the “sexual revolution” as a place of memory at discursive-media crystallization points, which in its ambivalence creates memory and identity.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants