Sexual Morality in 1960s West Germany

This essay investigates the relationship between the sexualrevolution of the 1960s in West Germany and the short and long-termlegacies of the Third Reich. It offers a challenge to conventionalperspectives on the sexual politics of Nazism and thus alsoon the complicated combination of continuities and rupturesin sexual politics that marked the transition from the end ofWorld War II into the more conservative sexual culture of the1950s. The essay then turns to the multiple factors that triggeredthe sexual liberalization of the 1960s. Rejecting as too simplisticthe long-held assumption that rising economic standards explainthe liberalizing trends, the essay also charts how, in waysdistinctively West German, the sexual liberalization that occurredin the course of the 1960s was morally legitimated. The essayexamines the changing interpretations of the Third Reich thatemerged in the course of the 1960s and how these were deployedin battles over sexuality. Although recognizing the dramatictransformations in young people's sexual practices and viewsin particular, the essay stresses as well that sexual liberalizationwas not only the result of New Left student activism but ratherrequired engaged activism also from older liberals; the sexualrevolution was carried by a very broad social base, involvingmembers of all generations and a broad spectrum of politicalpersuasions. Special attention is also paid to the importantrole of liberalizing processes within the Christian churchesin helping to justify the loosening of popular mores.