One of the most extraordinary examples is Gad Beck, whose autobiography has an irresistible subtitle (Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin) and highlights just how much sexual attitudes have changed.
For example, he blithely recounts his first sexual encounter when he was nine or so—with his uncle, who was in his fifties:
'He put me on his lap and kissed me on both cheeks. And suddenly I felt that I was sitting on something! It was warm and firm and felt… well… nice. Nothing else happened. He smiled at me in a special way, mischievous and at the same time loving, which is why I tried to provoke these situations. For the first time, I had erotic feelings in that bottom of mine.'
After messing around with his schoolmates, Gad then had a one-off encounter with his PE teacher at the age of twelve.
'I embraced him and noticed that he was aroused as well. We caressed and rubbed against each other, not even all that much, and then we came, both of us.'
Later, when his mother asked how his day had been, he told her excitedly, 'Really nice. I hugged my gym teacher in the locker room. It was really fun.'
At this point, most modern parents would be on the phone to the police.
But Gad claims his mother 'was not at all upset: "Aha, I thought so," she answered dryly.'
Beck explains her response: 'Relationships between boys and girls were treated much more seriously.'
Mainly because of fears of pregnancy, but also Nazi laws on racial mixing.
'If something had happened with a girl in my class, I probably would have been afraid to say anything. But being affectionate with a male teacher? What could happen?... I came out, as you say nowadays, in a totally nonchalant fashion.'
It seems ironic that even the most liberal parents now, having grown up after both Sexual Revolutions, would act more conservatively than a bourgeois German mother in 1934.
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