Pink Triangles: Reclaiming symbols of oppression

As agents of non-verbal communication, symbols have been powerful tools used throughout history to identify and unite, just as much as they have been used to isolate and divide. When one thinks of symbols used by members of LGBTQIA+ communities the most obvious example may be the ubiquitous rainbow flag, although, prior to its design in 1976, images of pink triangles could be found around the world denoting queerness.

First seen during World War II, the pink triangle, like so many symbols identifying minority groups, originated as a tool of oppression having been used to identify prisoners who were sent to concentration camps for breaking Nazi Germany’s laws against homosexuality, especially against gay men.

Thanks to homosexuality being difficult to prosecute and laws seldom being enforced, Pre-war Germany was home to a vibrant gay community which flourished in gay bars, associations, publications and networks between cities. This, however, came to an end with the rise of the Nazi regime and the Third Reich who saw homosexuality as a threat to German purification and the Aryan race since their partnerships could not produce children and would therefore decrease the birth rate and weaken the nation.

Known as Paragraph 175, the German criminal code that banned sexual acts between men was first enacted by the Germany Empire in 1871 and existed, to some extent, into the postwar period of the mid-twentieth century. 665 and 801 men were sentenced for violations to Paragraph 175 in 1931 and 1932 respectively, and in the first years of Nazi control, this remained relatively stagnant with 853 men sentenced in 1933 and 948 in 1934.¹ When revised homosexuality laws took effect in 1935 sexual acts between men was strictly outlawed and authorities were directed to make arrests at the mere rumour of engaging in such behavior, regardless of confirmation and whether or not the men identified as homosexual. An unpublished report of the Federal Security Office for Combating Abortion and Homosexuality records that, following the revision, 9,081 men were sentenced in 1936, 12,760 in 1937, 10,628 in 1938 and 10,450 in 1939, and Gestapo records show that in the first half of 1940, 3,816 men were sentenced.² Although escalation of conflict and increasing focus on deporting Jewish people has resulted in a paucity of reliable statistics from here until Germany’s surrender in 1945 with the most reliable estimation being around 12,000. Those convicted as repeat offenders, somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000, were sent to concentration camps where some 63% perished.³

Figure 1: Policemen stand outside the shuttered Eldorado nightclub, long frequented by Berlin's gay and lesbian community. Berlin, March 5, 1933.

As Nazi imprisonment became increasingly systemic, prisoners in concentration camps were sorted into groups according to the reason for their imprisonment and by 1938, groups could be identified by the coloured badges required to be worn on camp uniforms. Just as those imprisoned for their Jewish heritage were forced to wear a yellow Star of David, those labelled as gay wore an inverted pink triangle. It is important to note, however, that when gay men and those convicted of homosexuality were imprisoned in concentration camps for reasons other than their sexuality and fit into multiple prison categories, such a political, religious, criminal or racial convictions, their sexuality became secondary and they were generally identified by their official prisoner category. As such, the actual number of gay men sent to concentration camps is believed to be much higher.⁴

Figure 2: A chart of prisoner markings used in German concentration camps (c. 1938-42), Dachau

Figure 3: Prisoners wearing pink triangles on their uniforms. Sachsenhausen, Germany, December 1938

The persecution of homosexuals in Germany did not, however, end when Germany surrendered and concentration camps were liberated with many of the pink triangle men reclassified as regular criminals and transferred to other prisons to serve out the remainder of their sentence, and Paragraph 175, as written in 1935, remaining part of West German law until 1969.⁵ In an article from The German Quarterly, Kai Hammermeister notes that, during the post-war period “German courts convicted homosexual men at a rate as high as that of the Nazi regime”, although public knowledge about the persecution of homosexual men during and after the regime remained limited due to enduring bias and homophobia.⁶ In the 1970s, as newly active queer liberation and LGBTQIA+ rights advocates gained ground in Australia, Europe and North America, the persecution of homosexuality in Nazi Germany was highlighted and the slow reclamation of the pink triangle began.

Figure 4: David McDiarmid, Mardi Gras (1978)

Coinciding with the AIDS epidemic, the gay liberation movement demanded not just an end to the extreme social, cultural and political discrimination encountered by gay men around the world, but also for their voices to be heard and struggles recognised. After establishing himself as a street artist and activist in the late 1970s and early 1980s, American Pop artist Keith Haring (1958-1990) began creating works advocating for queer rights with his distinctive cartoon-like motifs drawing attention to the epidemic, such as his pre-eminent Safe Sex T-shirt (1987). Featuring ‘Willie’, the animated, smiling penis who holds a condom and instructs viewers to practise safe sex, Haring’s use of witty, sometimes whimsical designs does not detract from his obstinate activism, rather, such approach was intentional and part of his efforts to draw attention to the virus and encourage the gay community to use contraception to stop its spread. Towards the end of 1988, a year after starting to make these works, Haring was diagnosed with HIV before succumbing to AIDS-related complications in February 1990.

Figure 5: Haring, Safe Sex T-shirt (1987)

Continuing to work through his worsening health, Haring produced some of his most personal, introspective and revealing works in the eighteen months before his death, a large portion of which he used to address the devastating impact the virus was having on queer communities around the world. As curator Jason Rubell notes, “rather than allowing AIDS to paralyze his artistic vision, Haring used the adversity as a means of expanding his horizons … Haring began to examine his own condition in relation to the surrounding world. This introspective vision is in sharp contrast to the earlier works that stressed a more universal dialogue”.⁷ One such work, Silence = Death (1988), examines not only his relationship to the contemporary world, but also the historical subjugation of gay men.

With an inverted pink triangle covered by figures covering their eyes or their ears, Haring combines historical symbolism with his own to convey both the history of discrimination and oppression along with the public’s ongoing disinclination to acknowledge homosexuality, much less the AIDS crisis. While in Silence = Death the pink triangle is a direct reference to its history as a tool of oppression, in Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death (1989), we again see the pink triangle and figures who are silent to the community’s struggles, along with the its changing role. Here, however, Haring also invokes imagery of the three monkeys (also known as the three wise monkeys) who represent the ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ proverb that, in Japanese and Buddhist tradition, encourages people to avoid evil thoughts or actions but is often interpreted in the West as avoiding to moral responsibility and difficult conversations.

Figure 6: Haring, Silence = Death (1988)

Figure 7: Haring, Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death (1989)

While in Silence = Death the pink triangle is a direct reference to its history as a tool of oppression, in Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death (1989), Haring also invokes imagery of the three monkeys (also known as the three wise monkeys) who represent the ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ proverb that, in Japanese and Buddhist tradition, encourages people to avoid evil thoughts or actions, but is interpretated in the West as avoiding to moral responsibility and difficult conversations. As the AIDS crisis raged on, the pink triangle was increasingly seen as a symbol not of the queer community in general, but of queer liberation and political rights, and, more specifically, the lack of support to help stop the spread. Made in collaboration with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) organisation, in Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death it is clear that the pink triangle had become one of the most prominent symbols of empowerment and solidarity.

As curator Angela Bailey notes, queer communities have long used codes and signifiers to safely identify and connect with each other, and often to declare one's sexual preferences – Oscar Wilde’s green carnation worn in the lapel, a specifically coloured hanky placed in the back pocket (right for ‘passive’, left for ‘aggressive’), drawn from Hal Fischer's Gay Semiotics series. Bailey states, “The criminalisation of our sexuality and threats of violence forced us to rely on coded sartorial language that connected us in both celebration and survival”, and the pink triangle is one of many such encoded graphemes.⁸ Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as the pink triangle came to be embraced, it became a frequent sight in LGBTQIA+ media, protests, organisations and, especially, art. What originated as a badge of shame became a secret cipher for meeting places and community safety, before being a symbol of pride and eventually, as so often is the case with such community identifiers, a tool for strategic marketing and commodification of community. Thus, the ‘pink dollar’ was identified.

Figure 8: McDiarmid, Gay Dollar (1978)

“Queer has a colour and that colour is pink” Claire G. Coleman writes, “Pink is the colour of money”.⁹ As grassroots organisations continued gaining ground, and as corporations increasingly used the pink triangle to target queer communities as consumers, the need for an intentionally designed marker of queer pride was already felt in 1976 when designer Gilbert Baker (1951–2017) conceived of the design for the rainbow flag in the middle of an LSD trip on the dance floor of San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom. “We rode the mirrored ball on glittering LSD and love power”, Baker recalled, “Dance fused us, magical and cleansing. We were all in a swirl of color and light. It was like a rainbow. A rainbow. That’s the moment when I knew exactly what kind of flag I would make”.¹⁰ Today, Baker’s flag is the most commonly associated symbol of queer pride due to its visability and having been chosen by the community, and, even though it, too, has been commercialised, its origins differentiate it from those that were once symbols of shame and humiliation.

Nevertheless, pink triangles are still common sites in the queer community, no longer used to identify and isolate homosexuals for being threats to posterity, instead, they are worn as badges of honour, pride and dignity, and in remembrance of those who were forced to stitch it into their uniforms and those who had their medical, social and political suffering ignored. 

1. Richard Plant, The Pink triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1986), 105-51, as cited in Brigitte Geissler, Die Homosexuellen-Gesetzgebung als Instrument der Ausübung politischer Macht,” MA thesis, University of Göttingen, 1968, 10.

2. Ibid., 25.

3. Richard Plant, The Pink triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1986), 105-51.

4. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Gay Men under the Nazi Regime", Holocaust Encyclopedia, May 28, 2021 (publication), https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gay-men-under-the-nazi-regime 

5. Dorthe Seifert, “Between Silence and License”, History and Memory 15 (2003): 94-129.

6. Kai Hammermeister, “Inventing History: Toward A Gay Holocaust Literature”, in The German Quarterly 70 (1997): 20.

7. M. Rachael Arauz, “Universal Child: The Transformation of the Radiant Baby”, in Keith Haring: Journey of the Radiant Baby, Reading Public Museum (New Hampshire: Bunker Hill Publishing, 2006), 13-21.

8. Angela Bailey, “Queer Kin – Then, Now and Forever”, Queer: Stories from the NGV Collection, eds., Ted Gott, Angela Hesson, Myles Russell-Cook, Meg Slater and Pip Wallis (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2021), 394-409. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the National Gallery of Victoria.

9. Claire G. Coleman, “Pink or Black”, Queer: Stories from the NGV Collection, eds., Ted Gott, Angela Hesson, Myles Russell-Cook, Meg Slater and Pip Wallis (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2021), 56-73. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the National Gallery of Victoria.

10. Meg Slater, “Over the Rainbow: The Origin and Reinvention of the Rainbow Flag”, Queer: Stories from the NGV Collection, eds., Ted Gott, Angela Hesson, Myles Russell-Cook, Meg Slater and Pip Wallis (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2021), 128-41. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Image credits:

Figure 1: Policemen stand outside the shuttered Eldorado nightclub, long frequented by Berlin's gay and lesbian community. Berlin, Germany, March 5, 1933. Image via United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Figure 2: A chart of prisoner markings used in German concentration camps (c. 1938-42), Dachau, Germany. Image via United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Figure 3: Prisoners wearing pink triangles on their uniforms are marched outdoors by Nazi guards at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany on Dec. 19, 1938. Image via United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Figure 4: David McDiarmid, Mardi Gras (1978). Collage of colour paper (streamers), cut metallic card and photocopied paper, blue fibre-tipped pen on cut paper, red ink, confetti, embossing tape, plastic, elastic and metal (staples) on brown handmade mulberry paper, 62.2 x 51 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. Figure 5: Keith Haring, Safe Sex T-shirt (1987). Screen printed cotton, dimension unknown. National Gallery of Victoria, Australia.

Figure 6: Keith Haring, Silence = Death (1988). Acrylic on canvas, 304.8 cm (each side). Keith Haring Foundation.

Figure 7: Keith Haring, Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death (1989). Offset lithograph, 61.1 x 109.4 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, U.S.A.

Figure 8: David McDiarmid, Gay Dollar (1978). Collage of cut photocopied paper, offset lithograph with screen print printed in pink ink and black embossing tape on brown handmade mulberry paper, 63.3 x 51 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Australia.