Richard Grüne

Richard Grüne, much like me, was born August 2 and was an artist. Drawing from a young age, he later attended the Bauhaus, having teachers such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. His family were social democrats, and this upbringing helped him resist the Nazis as an artist. He moved to Berlin so he could live freer as a gay man. 

While there, he hosted parties for queer people. A German spy woman attended one of the parties and wrote the names of everyone there. She directly caused the imprisonment and suffering of 70 queer men by turning the list in to the Gestapo. Richard was sent to prison for 15 months in 1934. At his release, the Gestapo re-arrested him and sent him to several concentration camps for 10 years. He only escaped during the liberation of Flossenbürg in 1945.

Not long after the end of the war, Richard felt it was his duty to educate people about what happened in the camps. He drew 40 scenes from his experiences and those of other prisoners and created a traveling exhibit called The Pariahs that premiered during the Nuremberg Trials. This was one of the earliest testimonies about queer (and other) people’s persecution. 

As the post war government kept the Nazi law against being gay, Richard was arrested again in 1948. Sick of the persecution, he left for Barcelona and spent many years there. He returned to his hometown of Kiel eventually, and died in November 1984. He was 81.