Manfred Bruns

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Manfred Bruns (1934 – 22 October 2019) was a German federal prosecutor and a well-known gay rights activist. He served on the board of the Lesbian and Gay Association (LSVD) until 2016.

Born in Linz am Rhein, Rhineland-Palatinate, Bruns grew up in a conservative Catholic family and spent years hiding that he might be gay. He married in 1961 and had three children. He worked as a prosecutor at Germany’s courts in Karlsruhe.

In the early 1980s he told his family he was gay, and later spoke about it at work. He never divorced his wife.

In 1985 Bruns publicly spoke about his sexuality on live television during a show about homosexuality. The host suggested there was a “special arrangement” with his wife. This moment helped push Germany’s gay rights movement forward. Bruns then focused on ending Paragraph 175, the law that criminalized male homosexual acts. The law, adopted in 1871, had been used harshly during the Nazi era. It was finally struck down on July 11, 1994.

Together with Volker Beck and Günter Dworek, he campaigned to abolish Paragraph 175.

He received the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class, in 1994 and the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal in 2002.