Less than 80 years after roughly 6,000 gay men perished in Nazi concentration camps, Germany has become one of the countries mostly widely accepting of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Its capital of Berlin is known globally for its vibrant, diverse gay culture. Several of East Germany’s gay activists, including well-known transgender woman Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, center, pose for a photo in the 1970s. That stark cultural and political change intrigued Stanford researcher Samuel Clowes Huneke, a doctoral candidate in history, who began investigating how East and West Germany dealt with homosexuality from 1945 to 1990.