Magnus Hirschfeld

Magnus Hirschfeld born 14 May 1868 (d. 1935)

Magnus Hirschfeld was a prominent German-Jewish physician, sexologist, and gay rights pioneer.

Hirschfeld developed the theory of a third, 'intermediate sex' between men and women. He was interested in the study of a wide variety of sexual and erotic urges, at a time when the early notions of sexual identity was still being formed. His scientific work extended that of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and influenced Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter.

As a young man he had lived in Paris and worked as a journalist. His subsequent career successfully found a balance between medicine and writing. After several years as a general practitioner in Magdeburg, in 1896 he issued the anonymous pamphlet Sappho and Socrates, on homosexual love.

In 1897, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee with Adolf Brand, Benedict Friedlaender and other leaders of Der Eigene, a homosexual campaign and publication. The group aimed to undertake research to defend the rights of homosexuals and to repeal Paragraph 175, the section of the German penal code that since 1871 had criminalised homosexuality. They argued that the law encouraged blackmail, and the motto of the Committee, 'Justice through science', reflected Hirschfeld's belief that a better scientific understanding of homosexuality would eliminate hostility toward homosexuals. He was a tireless campaigner and became a well-known public figure.

Within the group, some of the women, as well as Friedlaender, scorned Hirschfeld's analogy that homosexuals are like cripples. They argued that society might tolerate or pity cripples, but never treat them as equals. They also disagreed with Hirschfeld's (and Ulrichs's) view that male homosexuals were by nature womanish — Brand, Friedlaender and others would later leave the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and form their another group, Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, which argued that male-male love is a simple aspect of virile manliness rather than a special condition.

However, the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, under Hirschfeld's leadership, managed to gather over 5,000 signatures from prominent Germans for a petition to overturn Paragraph 175. Signatories included Albert Einstein, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke and Leo Tolstoy, but no one admitted publicly to being homosexual themselves.

The bill was brought before the Reichstag in 1898, but was only supported by a minority from the Social Democratic Party of Germany, prompting a frustrated Hirschfeld to consider the controversial strategy of 'outing' — that is, forcing some of the prominent law-makers who had remained silent out of the closet. The bill continued to come before parliament, and eventually began to make progress in the 1920s before the takeover of the Nazi party obliterated any hopes for reform.

In 1921 Hirschfeld organised the First Congress for Sexual Reform, which led to the formation of the World League for Sexual Reform. Congresses were held in Copenhagen (1928), London (1929), Vienna (1930), and Brno (1932).

Hirschfeld was both quoted and caricatured in the press as a vociferous expert on sexual manners, receiving the epithet 'the Einstein of Sex'. He saw himself as a campaigner and a scientist, investigating and cataloging many varieties of sexuality, not just homosexuality. He coined the word 'transvestism', for example.

Hirschfeld co-wrote and acted in the 1919 film Anders als die Andern (Different From the Others), where actor Conrad Veidt played possibly the first homosexual character ever written for cinema. The film had a specific gay-rights law reform agenda — Veidt's character is blackmailed by a lover, eventually coming out rather than continuing to make the blackmail payments, but his career is destroyed and he is driven to suicide.

In 1919, under the more liberal atmosphere of the newly founded Weimar Republic, Hirschfeld was given a former royal palace for his new Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research) in Berlin. His Institute housed his immense library on sex and provided educational services and medical consultations. People from around Europe visited the Institute to gain a clearer understanding of their sexuality. Christopher Isherwood writes about his and Auden's visit to the Institute in his book Christopher and His Kind. They were visiting Francis Turville-Petre, a friend of Isherwood's who was staying there. The Institute also housed the Museum of Sex, an educational resource for the public which is reported to have been visited by school classes.

Hirschfeld's work continues to be controversial. Critics have claimed that some of his financial support came from closeted but prominent German homosexuals whom he blackmailed. Though he was immensely popular in some circles, in others he was reviled. Gatherings at which he spoke came under attack from anti-gay groups: in one such instance in 1921, his skull was fractured and he was left lying in the street.

Others complain that his belief that homosexuality was, at root, hormonal opened the door for others who were seeking a 'cure' for homosexuality.

When the Nazis took power, one of their first actions, on May 6, 1933, was to destroy the Institut and burn the library. The press-library pictures & archival newsreel film of Nazi book-burnings seen today are often pictures of Hirschfeld's library ablaze. Fortuitously, at that time Hirschfeld was away from Germany on a world speaking tour.

He never returned to Germany, dying in exile in Nice of a heart attack on his 67th birthday in 1935. He is buried there.

Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim

Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim born 27 April 1906 (*)

Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim, born in Lübeck, Germany was an ordinary German man who was imprisoned by the Nazis for the (then) crime of homosexuality.

Von Groszheim was one of 230 men arrested in Lübeck on suspicion of being gay by the SS in January 1937 under paragraph 175, which outlawed homosexuality. He was imprisoned for ten months, during which he had to wear a badge emblazoned with a capital A, for Arschficker (arse-fucker):

They beat us to a pulp. I couldn't lie down...my whole back (was) bloody. You were beaten until you finally named names.

Von Groszheim was held in a cell with no heating, very little food, and no toilet facilities. He was rearrested in 1938 and tortured. Von Groszheim was eventually offered the 'alternative' of castration or Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He 'chose' castration. Terrible as it may seem, it was a decision that probably saved his life. He was then released.

Because of the castration, von Groszheim was rejected as physically unfit for military service in 1940. In 1943 he was arrested a third time, this time as a supporter of the former Kaiser Wilhelm II, and imprisoned as a political prisoner at Neuengamme concentration camp.

After the war, he settled in Hamburg.

Von Groszheim was never acknowledged as a victim of the Nazi regime, and due to on-going persecution of homosexuals in Germany, it took nearly half a century before he broke his silence. Eventually he explained why he began to speak out: 'I'm living proof that Hitler didn't win. I'm aware of that every day. If I don't tell my story, who will know the truth?.' He only told his story in 1992, on We Were Marked with a Big "A", a film in German with English subtitles.

*I can find nothing to indicate when Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim died, but as he would now be over 100 years-old I can only assume that he is no longer with us - but his memory is important.

Richard Plant

Richard Plant born 22 July 1910 (d. 1998)

Richard Plant was a German-American writer. He is said to have written, in addition to the works published under his own name, several detective novels or Kriminalromane, on which he collaborated with Dieter Cunz and Oskar Seidlin, and which were published under the collective pen-name of Stefan Brockhoff.

Richard Plant was born Richard Plaut in Frankfurt am Main to the family of the town councillor Theodor Plaut. Upon the accession of the Nazis to power in Germany in 1933 and the zealous enforcement of the provisions of Paragraph 175 of the criminal code against homosexuality, he was obliged to leave Germany for Switzerland in concert with his partner, Oskar Seidlin. Here he obtained a doctorate from the University of Basle (Universität Basel) in 1935 with a dissertation on Arthur Schnitzler.

His first non-academic book seems to have been a children’s tale, Die Kiste mit dem großen S., published in 1936. This was followed in 1938 by his Taschenbuch des Films. In the same year, Richard Plaut arrived in the United States, where he eventually adopted the name Richard Plant. Here another children’s book, S.O.S. Geneva, co-authored with Oskar Seidlin, was published in October 1939. His next book had to await the end of the Second World War, when The Dragon in the Forest appeared in 1948.

From 1947 to 1973 Plant taught at the City University of New York, and discontinuously also at the New School for Social Research.

He is the author of The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals (1986; German translation, 1991).

Richard Plant died in New York City on March 3, 1998.

Carl Bruns and Heinrich Roth

Carl Bruns and Heinrich Roth died 1945

Carl Bruns and Heinrich Roth were two ordinary gay German men who became victims of Nazi Germany.

The gay pogrom in Germany started just over 70 years ago, in the summer of 1937. The Gestapo launched a systematic crack-down in the mid-1930s, actively entrapping gay men. The Nazis created a vicious protection racket that allowed gay bar owners to remain in business, on condition that they handed over names of customers on a regular basis.

Landlords were bribed to inform on tenants. If someone at work didn't like a bachelor co-worker, all he had to do was to go to the Gestapo and suggest a sexual advance had been made, and the next day the co-worker would be gone. It mattered little whether there was any truth to the allegations.

In the city of Hamburg, Gestapo men in leather trench coats entered the city's most famous department store, the Alsterhaus, during business hours and rounded up about 40 gay employees, who were hauled off in vans waiting out on the street.

The Alsterhaus department store raid was just the beginning. Raids occurred with growing frequency in the late 1930s.

What followed were weeks and months of 'protective custody' and transfers to mental asylums for 'curative treatment' and eventual sentencing to imprisonment in concentration camps. Many were 'offered' castration, with a vague promise of leniency, as an alternative to imprisonment.


This photo shows homosexual prisoners in Buchenwald concentration camp, recognisable by the pink triangles on their striped prison uniforms.

After German unification, hundreds of thousands of case histories were released and historians have spent the least few years sifting through them. Their findings are still just being published, and have shocked even those historians who knew that atrocities had occurred, but were surprised by the extent of them.

With Prussian thoroughness, the Nazis documented every detail of the lives of those they rounded up. Those documents provide chilling insights into a hitherto unknown story.

One such story was that of Carl Bruns and Heinrich Roth, a gay couple who ran an upmarket men's clothing shop in central Hamburg, right across the street from Gestapo headquarters.

Bruns and Roth were arrested in 1940 and, after months of pre-trial detention, they were sent to concentration camps near Hamburg. By some miracle, both men survived until spring 1945, when the camps were being liberated by Allied forces.

But it was then that the final tragedy struck.

Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army in early 1945, and the pictures of skeletal camp inmates shocked the world. In response, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to all camp commandants that they were to ensure that no camp inmates should ever fall into the hands of Allied forces. He didn't specify what they should do, leaving it in the hands of camp commandants.

Some commandants at Dachau and other camps began gassing all surviving inmates so that none would be left alive. Others began evacuating their inmates.

Thus Bruns and Roth were forced to leave their camp near Hamburg on a forced march to the Baltic Sea, 100 kilometers (62 miles) away, where the converted cruise liner Cap Arcona was at anchor.

The Allies were advancing on all fronts. Everyone knew that the war was over. All the inmates had heard the news. British forces had dropped leaflets saying they would be in Hamburg within hours.

And yet these men were sent on a death march to the sea. Stragglers were machine-gunned to death. Others collapsed and died of exhaustion. Bruns died along the way. Roth made it to the Baltic Sea docks where the Cap Arcona was waiting and he was herded aboard along with thousands of other inmates. Two other ships were also used in this way, the Thielbek and the Athen.

The British RAF was conducting intensive air raids to pave the way for ground forces, which were only a few miles away. RAF fighter-bombers had been told that Nazi officials were seeking to flee Germany aboard a big ship disguised as a refugee vessel.

On 3 May 1945, four days after Hitler's suicide but four days before the unconditional surrender of Germany, the RAF planes came in and bombed and strafed the Cap Arcona, setting it ablaze and sending it to the bottom. Those inmates who managed to dive into the water were either killed by the bombs and strafing from the planes or else were machine-gunned by Gestapo men as they tried to climb ashore.

A handful found shelter in reeds along the shore and were found shivering in the water by British soldiers a few hours later. Roth was not among them.

There were 4,500 prisoners on board the Cap Arcona, 2,800 prisoners on board the Thielbek, and 1,998 prisoners on board the Athen. 350 were rescued from the Cap Arcona, 50 were rescued from the Thielbek and all the 1,998 prisoners from the Athen survived. A total of 7,500 people were killed in the air-raid. The British who were seen as potential rescuers by the concentration camp prisoners turned out to be their unwitting excecutioners. Although there is evidence to suggest that the SS planned to sink the Cap Arcona, and the other two other ships, to 'destroy the evidence' and remove potential witnesses to their atrocities.

According to documents at the Dutch Institute of War Documentation (NIOD), the government of Sweden had warned the British government that prisoners were aboard the ships. The British government is keeping its documents relating to the attack on the three ships closed until 2045

Karl Gorath

Karl Gorath born 12 December 1912

Karl Gorath was born in the small town of Bad Zwishenahn in northern Germany. When he was 2, his family moved to the port of Bremerhaven. His father was a sailor and his mother became a nurse in a local hospital. After his father died, Karl continued to live with his mother. Karl was 20 when he began training as a deacon at his parish church.

Gorath was training for a nursing career when, at twenty-six, he was denounced as a homosexual.

1933-39: I was 26 when my jealous lover denounced me and I was arrested at my house under paragraph 175 of the criminal code, which defined homosexuality as an 'unnatural' act. Though this law had been on the books for years, the Nazis had broadened its scope and used it as grounds to make mass arrests of homosexuals. I was imprisoned at Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg where the '175ers' had to wear a pink triangle.


1940-44: Because I'd had some training as a nurse, I was transferred to work at the prisoner hospital at the Wittenberg subcamp. One day, a guard ordered me to decrease the bread ration for the patients who were Polish war prisoners, but I refused, telling him that it was inhuman to treat the Poles in this way. As punishment, I was sent to Auschwitz, and this time, rather than being marked as a '175er', I wore the red triangle of a political prisoner. At Auschwitz I had a lover who was Polish; his name was Zbigniew.

Gorath was one of the lucky ones. Being reclassified as a political prisoner spared him much of the brutality that was often inflicted on inmates marked with the pink triangle.

Karl Gorath was liberated in Auschwitz in 1945. However, when his past conviction under paragraph 175 became known, he was ostracised and found great difficulty getting a job. Gorath had survived the holocaust but remained a marked man.

Gorath is one of six gay men who are the subject of a documentary on gays in Nazi concentration camps. The film, by producers Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein and narrated by Rupert Everett, is called Paragraph 175.

Between 1933 and 1945, 100,000 men were arrested under Paragraph 175. Some were imprisoned, others were sent to concentration camps. Only about 4,000 survived.

In 2000 when the film was released, fewer than ten of these men were known to be living. Five come forward in the documentary to tell their stories for the first time, considered to be among the last untold stories of the Third Reich.

Those Who Are Left

Robert Odeman

Robert Odeman born 30 November 1904 (d. 1985)

Robert T Odeman, born Martin Hoyer in Hamburg, Germany was a German classical pianist, actor, writer, and composer. He was a Holocaust survivor.

Odeman [pictured right] met his first love, architecture student Martin Ulrich Eppendorf [pictured left], who went by the name Muli, at the age of 17. The two shared a close relationship for ten years until Muli's death.

After training to become a carpenter, Odeman studied classical piano, successfully performing throughout Europe for several years as a pianist. He played accompaniments for silent films in many cinemas in Hamburg. After suffering a hand injury, Odeman was forced to give up piano playing, and turned to theatre.

A year after Muli’s death, in 1933, Odeman became musical director of the New Theater in Hamburg. In 1935, Odeman opened a cabaret in Hamburg, which was shut down a year later by the Nazis, who claimed it was politically subversive.

Odeman's boyfriend, a bookseller, was pressured by the Gestapo to denounce him in 1937 and he was arrested under paragraph 175, which outlawed homosexual acts between men. Odeman was sentenced to 27 months in prison, which he spent first in Plötzensee and then in various Berlin prisons. After his release in 1940, Odeman was subject to a 'Berufsverbot' forbidding him from carrying on certain professions, and he was not permitted to appear in public. He also remained under police surveillance.

Odenbach purported to carry on a relationship with the singer Olga Rinnebach, but in 1942 he was again arrested under paragraph 175 and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he was assigned an office job. During a forced march from the camp towards the Baltic Sea in April 1945, he escaped with other homosexual concentration camp prisoners.

After the war, Odeman focused on cultural activities, completing training as an actor and appearing in various theatres and productions. He also wrote many satirical poems, which were released in book form, and were later set to music and released on musical and spoken records, some with Odeman himself performing.

In 1959, Odeman met the 25-year-old Günter Nöring, with whom he lived until his death. Since the two were unable to marry, Odeman adopted his younger partner. After the adoption, Nöring used the name Günter Odeman-Nöring.

Odeman died in the Berlin-Grunewald district of Berlin in 1985, at the age of 81.

Ernst Röhm

Ernst Röhm born 28 November 1887 (d. 1934)

Ernst Julius Röhm was a German military officer, and the commander and co-founder of the Nazi Sturmabteilung, or storm troopers — the SA, also known as 'Brownshirts'.

Ernst Röhm was one of the most prominent of a number of early Nazi party members who was a homosexual, and his homosexuality was ultimately the pretext used for his removal during the purge of the SA. The real reason was the threat he eventually posed to Hitler's authority. Having been outed in 1925, Röhm made little attempt to hide his sexuality. Despite Hitler's pretense of shock upon discovering his deputy's sexual orientation, he had in fact long known - probably since 1919 - that Röhm was homosexual.

During Röhm's tenure at the head of the SA, it has been suggested that a number of homosexual men (notably Karl Ernst, a former bouncer at a gay nightclub, and Edmund Heines) were appointed to and promoted within the SA as a result of high-level liaisons with powerful SA figures. Röhm's Brownshirt militia - mostly undisciplined soldiers and roughnecks from the city-slums - contained many gay men, and there was debauchery in the ranks. This was despite the openly anti-gay policies of the Nazis, exemplified by their strengthening of Paragraph 175 (criminalising homosexual acts) of the German Criminal Code of 1871.

Röhm was executed without trial during the purge of the SA — the so-called 'Night of the Long Knives' in June 1934.

In the wake of Röhm's execution, Hitler ordered the registration of homosexuals and the Gestapo was charged with the responsibility of creating dossiers on homosexuals and other 'asocials' in the Third Reich. The beginning of the Nazi terror against homosexuals was marked by the murder of Ernst Röhm.

Ernst Röhm
The Gay Holocaust - Nazi Persecution: The Röhm Affair

On a personal note, I gave considerable thought as to whether I wanted to feature a leading Nazi in Gay For Today - this site has always been intended to mark and celebrate the contributions of gay men to (usually) the worlds of the arts, media, sport, politics and entertainment and so on - but a Nazi? And Hitler's deputy to boot. However, the story of Ernst Röhm's openness about his sexuality, his leading role in the early days of the Nazis - he very much believed in the 'socialist' part of National Socialism - and the way Hitler tolerated this powerful homosexual as long as he was useful to him and then ruthlessly snuffed him out and purged the SA and then Germany of homosexuals is interesting and significant.

In the end, yes, Ernst Röhm was a gay man and a Nazi but he ultimately became a victim of the Nazis and his death, as it says above, marked the real beginning of the still tragically under-told story of the Nazi terror against homosexuals - an intensely dark period in the long, dark history of gay persecution and oppression.

Adolf Brand

Adolf Brand born 14 November 1874 (d. 1945)

Adolf Brand was a German writer, anarchist and pioneer activist for the acceptance of male homosexuality.

Born in Berlin, Brand became a school teacher briefly before establishing a publishing firm and producing a German homosexual periodical, Der Eigene in 1896. This was the first ongoing homosexual publication in the world, and ran until 1931. The name was taken from writings of egoist philosopher Max Stirner, who had greatly influenced the young Brand, and refers to Stirner's concept of 'self-ownership' of the individual. Der Eigene concentrated on cultural and scholarly material, and may have had an average of around 1500 subscribers per issue during its lifetime, although the exact numbers are uncertain. Contributors included Wilhelm von Gloeden, as well as many contributions from Brand himself.

In 1899/1900 Brand published Elisar von Kupffer's (1872-1942) influential anthology of homoerotic literature, Lieblingsminne und Freundesliebe in der Welt-literature. The work was reprinted again in 1908.

In 1899 he was sentenced to a year in prison for publicly attacking a member of parliament with a dog whip.

Brand became involved in Magnus Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (the first public homosexual rights organisation), until there was a split in 1903; that same year Brand led the formation of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen organisation with the scientist Benedict Friedlander and Wilhelm Jansen. To this new group, male-male love was viewed as a simple aspect of virile manliness available to all men; they rejected the medical theories of doctors such as Magnus Hirschfeld who found that a gay man was a certain type of person, the intermediate sex.

Brand was a proponent of outing famous gay men long before the advent of the term; when in 1907 he claimed in print that German chancellor Prince von Bülow (1849-1929) had a homosexual affair with Privy Councilor Max Scheefer, he was sued for libel and sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

Brand was sentenced to two months in prison, allegedly for allowing 'lewd writings' to be published in Der Eigene, under the notorious Paragraph 175 of the German legal code. During World War I Brand and the GdE curtailed their activities for the duration; Brand served in the German army for two years and married a nurse, Elise Behrendt. After the war the enforcement of Paragraph 175 slowly declined.

The GdE and other groups formed a united 'action committee' with Magnus Hirschfeld's group, to formulate a new law. In 1925 more groups joined and the larger Cartel for Reform of the Law against Sexual Offences was formed. Despite a new law being drafted, it was not voted on, and by 1929 there was no further chance to reform Paragraph 175.

Adolf Brand gave up homosexual activism in the early 1930s, after constant harassment from the Nazis who silenced Der Eigene, destroyed his life's work and left him in financial ruin. After the sacking and burning of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft he finally sent a public letter to his followers announcing the end of the movement. He and his wife were killed by an Allied bomb on February 2, 1945.

Micky Burn

Micky Burn born 1912*

Michael 'Micky' Burn is an English journalist, commando, writer and poet.

Burn was born into a Roman Catholic family, and admits that in earlier life: 'I had been drawn to three autocracies: German National Socialism, Communism, and the Roman Catholic Church.' Burn's father was secretary and solicitor to the Duchy of Cornwall became a trusted confidant of the King; while his mother's family was instrumental in developing the golf-and-gambling resort of Le Touquet.

Burn spent an amount of time in Florence, befriending Alice Keppel, the former mistress of Edward VII. A homosexual, his lovers included later Soviet Union spy Guy Burgess. On two occasions during the 1930s, plagued by threats of blackmail, Burn took himself to the police, as homosexuality was then a crime.

Burn was introduced to German National Socialism by Nancy Mitford, who in 1936 arranged for Burn to meet Adolf Hitler, who signed his copy of Mein Kampf.

Burn then agreed to join The Times newspaper as a foreign correspondent. When World War II broke out, Burn quickly shifted his politics to Marxism.

Burn joined what were initially termed 'independent companies' that were first called storm troops, later renamed Commandos. Burn's team initial engagement was in Norway in 1940, part of the unsuccessful Allied campaign to counter the German invasion.

Burn was commander of 6 Troop, 2 Commando and leader of all Commando parties of Group 2 as part of the 1942 St Nazaire Raid. Although five of his colleagues were awarded the Victoria Cross, Burn's team after a failed land based escape were captured

Burn was interrogated, and eventually sent to Colditz Castle, Oflag IV-C. His captors, perhaps noting his royal connections and tattered copy of Mein Kampf, he was well treated.

Burn gave lectures to prisoners at Colditz, however, but due to his pre-war interest in Nazi philosophy he was widely regarded with distrust and scorn. However, shorthand learnt for previous employment in journalism meant Burn acted as scribe to Colditz's secret radio operator, Lieutenant-Colonel Jimmy Yule.

On liberation, Burn sent dispatches to The Times about what had gone on in Colditz, published in the times on the 19th and 21st April 1945. Burn had written a novel during his stay, which was published as Yes, Farewell in 1946.

When the war ended The Times gave Burn his job back, wary of what to do with someone of Burn's convictions. By chance he was assigned to Hungary, where he resultantly became the main British reporter on the political purges, and the faked trial of József Cardinal Mindszenty.

Despite his homosexuality, Burn suddenly fell in love with a widow who coped devotedly with his occasional lapses until her death. His friends - Victor Rothschild, Bertrand Russell, the Baroness Budberg rallied to keep him company.

Burn has written five books of non-fiction, four novels and four books of poetry — including a Keats Poetry Award volume. He presently enjoys reading his poetry aloud at regional poetry events.

This profile may not be up to the standard of accuracy I hope to achieve so will hopefully be updated soon.

*actual date unknown

Kurt von Ruffin

Kurt von Ruffin born 28 September 1901 (d 1996)

Kurt von Ruffin was a German actor and opera singer who was imprisoned by the Nazis for the crime of homosexuality.

Von Ruffin began his career as a singer. Starting in 1927 he sang with the operas of Magdeburg, Mainz, and Nuremberg. He made his film début in 1931 in Die Faschingsfee and Walzerparadies, also starring in Harry Piel's Bobby geht los in the same year. For the latter film von Ruffin took boxing lessons from heavyweight champion Hans Breitensträter.

After completing filming on Schwarzwaldmädel in 1933, von Ruffin was denounced as a homosexual by another gay man who named him under torture, and imprisoned at Lichtenburg, where many gay men were imprisoned, for two years. Von Ruffin says that SS guards touched prisoners and then beat those who got sexually aroused. He also recalls being forced to watch as some prisoners were beaten to death.

After nine months in Lichtenburg, von Ruffin was released thanks to the intervention of prominent theatre director Heinz Hilpert, and his lawyers arranged for the destruction of his Gestapo file.

Von Ruffin went on to star in five more movies: Königswalzer (1935), Die Geige lockt (1935), Schwarze Rosen (1935), Die Stunde der Versuchung (1936), and Du bist so schön, Berlinerin (1936) before he was finally prohibited from appearing in any more films. From 1941 until the end of the war, he appeared only on stage.

After the war, von Ruffin appeared in several more films, including Ich mach' Dich glücklich (1949), Der blaue Strohhut (1949), Neues vom Hexer (1965), Die Herren mit der weissen Weste (1970), and his last, Der Unbesiegbare in 1985.

The film We Were Marked With A Big 'A' (1991) tells the story of the gay holocaust through the experiences of three gay survivors, Kurt von Ruffin, Paul Gerhard Vogel and Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim.

As we hear in this film, before the pink triangle there was the big "A". Embarrassed by the crudity of its meaning, Kurt von Ruffin confides off-camera that the "A" stood for arschficker (arse-fucker). This was the identifying label that many gay men in the concentration camps were forced to wear before the more elaborate system of triangle identification was introduced.

Kurt von Ruffin died in Berlin in 1996.