Frankfurter Engel

The Frankfurter Engel stands on Klaus-Mann-Platz, a small square named after the gay writer at the edge of Frankfurt's Bermuda Triangle gay quarter. It was unveiled in December 1994 as the first memorial in Germany to homosexual men and women persecuted under National Socialism. Rosemarie Trockel's bronze angel carries a visible scar around the neck where its head was severed and reattached, and she left that seam deliberately on show. The inscription also says plainly that persecution did not end in 1945, since Paragraph 175 convictions continued in West Germany for decades. The memorial grew out of a citizens' initiative and is a gathering point on remembrance days and at Frankfurt CSD. It takes a few minutes to see, and the gay bars on Alte Gasse are around the corner.