Gesetze der Liebe


Gesetze der Liebe: Aus der Mappe eines Sexualforschers is a 1927 film produced by Magnus Hirschfeld, a sexologist who ran the Berlin Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, Hermann Beck and the Humboldt-Film-Gesellschaft.
Like its predecessor film from 1919, Anders als [die Andern] – one of the first films to openly depict homosexuality – it campaigned against Paragraph 175, the provision of the German Penal Code which prohibited sex between men.

Plot

The film is framed as a lecture in five chapters, given by Magnus Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld was a sexologist from Berlin and an early gay rights activist.
The film dealt with sexual intercourse in the animal kingdom, discussing gestation, birth, and the nurturing of newborns, before dealing with "sexual intermediates" in chapter four, a term used by Hirschfeld to refer to certain gender and sexual minorities: hermaphrodites, transvestites and homosexuals.
The fifth and final chapter was an abridged version of Anders als die Andern entitled Schuldlos geächtet! Tragödie eines Homosexuellen.

Timeline of censorship

  • 6 October 1927: The film is approved by the Film Review Office, provided it removed references to law reform.
  • 12 October: At the behest of FRO chairman, the film was re-screened before a new panel of censors, who decided to totally ban the film.
  • 31 October: On appeal, the previous decision to totally ban the film is reversed. The new panel ruled that the film could be shown, if accompanied with a lecture by a doctor or scientist. However, two members of this panel dissented.
  • 9 November: The film is released for adult audiences only, with the segments on sexual intermediacy in chapter four removed, dealing with homosexuality along with all of chapter five.

Legacy

During the few days it actually ran in Berlin, chapter 5 was not well received, even among the gay press.
However, it is this chapter which was smuggled out of Berlin and into the Soviet Union in 1928, where it played under the title Zakony Ijubvi, now the sole version of Anders als die Andern in circulation today.
In 2021 a restored version of the film was released by the Munich Film Museum.