Beweise für die Unzucht

The exhibition Beweise für die Unzucht presents materials and documents seized by the Austrian police in the course of the criminal prosecution of homosexual women and men in the period from 1900 to the end of the criminalisation of "Unzucht wider die Natur" in 1971. What was once an expression of intimacy and personal freedom – love letters, private photographs, diaries, everyday notes, harmless keepsakes – was turned into incriminating evidence through state intervention. These documents, never meant for strangers' eyes – neither for the police, nor for historians, nor for visitors to an exhibition – stand for profound violations of privacy and mark moments in which people lost their security, their self-confidence, their dignity and their personal integrity.