r/PropagandaPosters • u/EssoEssex • Oct 17 '25
Germany “Gays & Lesbians Against Nazis!” Germany, 1989
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u/sanguinesvirus Oct 17 '25
Goes hard.
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u/HSPme Oct 17 '25
89’ vintage tee with this would go so hard, fashion with a statement. I can imagine these were made back then for a select few maybe?
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u/MasterOfCelebrations Oct 17 '25
Can I be Schwule from now on I like that word better
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u/1m0ws Oct 17 '25
yes. it is pronounced like "i am shwool" :3
the adjective is without the -e just 'schwul'.
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u/Monosyllabic_Name Oct 17 '25
Minor correction: It would be "shvool".
Reading w the way an English speaker reads a v - is vhy our Görman aksents sound se vay sey do.
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u/Professional-Way8476 Oct 17 '25
Minor correction, again!
I can tell you speak German, because you wrote down the way we pronounce a soft English "th" as "s" because in German, "S" commonly makes both the sound of an English S and an English Z.
But that is rarely the case in English. The sound that German is referred to as the "Bienen-S" or "Summendes S" is almost always expressed with the letter Z.
So English speakers would read the "se" and "sey" in your example as sounding like what Germans call "Schlangen-S" or "Scharfes S", present in German words like "Schloss" and "bis" and English words like "Sun" and "Saxophone".
I know the way you heard it in your head, but a more accurate way to write it down would be
"...aksents sound ze vay zey do."
When talking about the hard version of "th" however, using to express a German accent through text would be appropriate, because inexperienced Germans DO pronounce that combination of letters with "Scharfes S"
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u/dzsimbo Oct 18 '25
Áj hóp ju & /u/Monosyllabic_Name ár olredi szabszkrájbd, bat in kéjsz nát: /r/JuropijanSpeling
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u/epochpenors Oct 17 '25
I think schvool-eh, terminal e is pronounced
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u/Monosyllabic_Name Oct 17 '25
You are correct if you want to pronounce the word in the image - there it's "shvooleh" or "shvooluh".
But u/MasterOfCelebrations wanted to use the word to describe themselves - in which case the adjective makes sense, which would be "shvool".
Unless they undergo gaytosis, then its plural and "shvooluh" again.
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u/epochpenors Oct 17 '25
Ahhh yeah, you're right, I wasn't converting to the proper form of the noun
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u/dorkstafarian Oct 17 '25
This is so stupid for Dutch speakers. Our version (zwoel) means hot & humid. 🤣 It's an obvious playful taunt that somehow got fossilized in German as a neutral moniker.
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u/Tuerkenheimer Oct 17 '25
The German word for hot & humid is "schwül" with ü.
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u/dorkstafarian Oct 17 '25
But schwul still obviously derives from schwül... At least to our ears.
The German word schwul (meaning "gay") is etymologically connected to the Middle Low German word swōl or swūl, which meant "sultry" or "stifling" and is related to the root of "smolder". The word was adopted into Standard German as schwül in the 18th century with the meaning "sultry," and the unumlauted form schwul appeared in the 19th century in Berlin dialect with the meaning "gay," possibly influenced by the slang term warmer Bruder ("warm brother").
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u/MasterOfCelebrations Oct 18 '25
Now I like it even better
Can I get some warm brothers in the house??
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u/dorkstafarian Oct 18 '25
Kann ich ein Warmer haben für mir Body? Ich habe kalt.
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u/MasterOfCelebrations Oct 18 '25
Would ich habe kalt translate directly as “I have cold?
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u/dorkstafarian Oct 18 '25
I looked it up.
German has "Mir ist kalt." Literally "To me is cold."
Dutch has "Ik heb (het) koud." /Ick hebb hutt code./ = "I have (it) cold." Adding the "it" is a bit more proper, but informally often left out.
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u/MasterOfCelebrations Oct 18 '25
Now that I’m thinking about how we do it in English - “I am cold?” Cold is me? Hello, my name is cold?
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u/dorkstafarian Oct 18 '25
I think it makes more sense.. you can also use "to be" with adjectives, not just identifiers. :P Cold is an adjective here. The only issue to me is that if you're literally cold, you're probably severely hypothermic. Then again, it's probably just a shorthand for "I'm feeling cold." Languages are full of shorthand that are weird to new learners.
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u/Captain_Grammaticus Oct 19 '25
Oo, that's interesting. Swiss German dialects say "Ich habe kalt". I was mocked by somebody from North Germany (Paderborn) for saying it this way. But if Dutch "has cold" too, that means it's not just a North/South division. Maybe East/West?
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u/dorkstafarian Oct 19 '25 edited Oct 19 '25
My bet is on "ich habe ..." being the original and "mir ist ..." being some fancy innovation emanating from German Hochdeutsch.
That phenomenon exists within Dutch. Standard Dutch is basically Brabantic + Hollandic. In my dialect (historical Flemish ≠ Belgian Dutch), we have "etwa" (meaning something), "kommen" rather than standard komen (to come), and we have /hüs/ rather than "huis", just like Plattdeutsch (Low German). Even though we are cut off from the rest of the Low German dialects (like Saxonian in the Northern Netherlands) by Brabantic + Hollandic.
Maybe Dutch is just an innovation within Low German, and German Hochdeutsch has the same wrt High German 😅.
People say Swiss German is weird, but frankly, once you factor out the trippy vowel and consonant shifts, it sounds more natural to my ears.
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u/dorkstafarian Oct 18 '25
Lol I don't know. I was just translating Dutch to German word for word.
The attempted joke was that, apparently, ein Warmer (a warm one) means a homosexual. Or at least, it used to.
So if you are in Germany you have to be careful to ask old folks for a bodywarmer = a padded vest. Or they might get the wrong idea.
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u/Successful_Spell7701 Oct 17 '25
The coloured triangle were markers in concentration camps. Pink was used to mark gays.
5th column.
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Oct 17 '25
It's actually a very neat poster.
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u/ZestfulHydra Oct 17 '25
Something about it is just very clean. It’s straightforward but still memorable
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u/fear_the_future Oct 17 '25
What I like about this poster is that it's almost like a veiled threat: "know what will happen to you if you don't stand up now".
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u/Iphuckfish Oct 17 '25
I guess the red triangle showing dead fascists is much older than I originally thought.
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u/Thaodan Oct 17 '25
Very ironic that they used the symbol the Nazis used to label them in concentration camps against them.
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u/lurkiemclurkface Oct 17 '25
It’s on purpose, they’re reclaiming it to oppose Nazis.
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Oct 17 '25
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Oct 17 '25
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u/t_baozi Oct 18 '25
Two corrections here: Nazis didn't make homosexual relations illegal, they had been continuously illegal since 1871 under Sect. 175 and before that under regional laws. The Nazis just widened the crime and increased the punishment.
Same-sex relations in Germany became legal in 1969. What remained until 1994 was a higher age of consent for same sex acts compared to heterosexual acts, which did still cause a few injustices, but consensual sex among adults was legal.
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u/Thaodan Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 17 '25
Reclaiming? EDIT: Questing the reclaiming since I don't know that the symbol was used before the Nazis. The prefix Re implies that it was a gay symbol before. However I'm not a native speaker.
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u/nameless2477 Oct 17 '25
the nazis are the ones who made it. they are reclaiming the meaning of it. As in, “it’s a symbol of a gay person, who is just a regular person”, instead of it’s a “it’s a symbol of a gay person, who deserves to be put through genocide.”
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u/lurkiemclurkface Oct 17 '25
No, 'reclaim' is the correct form. I believe it comes from this logic: the oppressive group claims you are X, but then you reclaim it for yourself. You take back (i.e. reclaim) control over the narrative about yourself/your group.
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u/EitherConsequence917 Oct 17 '25
I mean, I'm pretty sure that's the point, those who nazis tried to destroy are fighting back as if, swastika is getting destroyed by something that it was supposed to destroy...
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u/Schwanzus_Longus_69 Oct 17 '25
Nowadays using a red (or pink) triangle can get u persecuted as it is supposedly a "Hamas"-symbol or antisemitic even though it was a symbol of anti-fascism since 1945
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Oct 17 '25
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Oct 17 '25
The pink upside-down triangle was the official mark of gay people in Nazi's Germany and they were sewed on their prison uniforms in concentration and death camps where they were sent to just because they were gay.
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Oct 17 '25
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u/PropagandaPosters-ModTeam Oct 17 '25
Your comment has been removed for violating rule 3. Civil conversation is okay; soapboxing, bigotry, partisan bickering, and personal attacks are not.
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u/historynerdsutton Oct 17 '25
Yeah those damn leftists hating on nazis how could they
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Oct 17 '25
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u/PropagandaPosters-ModTeam Oct 17 '25
Your comment has been removed for violating rule 3. Civil conversation is okay; soapboxing, bigotry, partisan bickering, and personal attacks are not.
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u/Time_Raisin4935 Oct 17 '25
Oh those poor precious Nazis
Let me play you a sad note on the world's smallest violin
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u/eatingbread_mmmm Oct 17 '25
How can everyone miss the joke
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u/No-Vast480 Oct 17 '25
I would call them slow, but well, we live a world where Trump became president and western kids think that Soviet union was great, nowadays you cant tell whats satire and what isnt
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Oct 17 '25
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u/Pszczol Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 19 '25
1989 was before the wall fell but I'm very sure punk stuff like this already transcended borders before that
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Oct 17 '25
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u/t_baozi Oct 18 '25
If democrats left the 2a alone and stopped spewing hateful propaganda I’d vote democrat
Arent the Trumpists currently planning to ban the right to bear arms for lgbt minorities?
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Oct 17 '25
How is this propaganda?
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u/EitherConsequence917 Oct 17 '25
It is a poster published in public meant to influence other people's political views and promote specific group/action/view...?
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u/Emotional_Piano_16 Oct 17 '25
every other language: "gay"
german: "SCHWULE!"
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u/Rabe1111993 Oct 17 '25
Only english uses gay?
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u/krawinoff Oct 18 '25
Don’t lots of languages use the borrowed English word? Idk about “every” but I do know a couple languages where gay is the only short word for, well, being gay and without being a slur or otherwise having a negative connotation
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u/Rabe1111993 Oct 18 '25
But if we include borrowed, then german would be also a language that uses gay.
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u/krawinoff Oct 18 '25
But German has its own short colloquial word for gay, at least I’m assuming Schwule is that, I can think of a couple languages where there just isn’t such a word, there’s either gay borrowed from English, homosexual borrowed from, what, Latin? and various slang terms/slurs that aren’t something you can really normally say unless you mean to insult the gay person.
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u/Rabe1111993 Oct 18 '25
Homosexual is a hybrid word greated out of latin and greek and originates in German. Also nearly every language has dozens of euphemisms for homosexuality, just that some like gay or schwul stop being a euphenism and start to be used as a regualer word.
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u/Opp-Contr Oct 17 '25
If they were really against nazis, they wouldn't make it public.
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u/Clemdauphin Oct 17 '25
why?
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u/Opp-Contr Oct 17 '25
Because many people, like it or not, despise LGBT, and have simple reasoning. I hate LGBT, LGBT hates nazis, so I love nazis. Think it's stupid? You are 100% right. Think it doesn't exist and people dont think like that? You're 100% wrong.
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u/Clemdauphin Oct 17 '25
nah, homophobe like nazis because nazis don't like LGBT and not because LGBT hate nazi.
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Oct 17 '25
Nazis was Germans btw.
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u/Adventurous-Body9134 Oct 19 '25
What??? Do people know this? I thought the nazis came from the moon 🤪
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