The Wandervögel movement has sometimes been called “the first gay scout movement.” Is this true?
No. While there undoubtedly were some gays in the movement, this would be like saying the whole state of California is homosexual because San Francisco has a visible gay community. This canard has been promulgated by some “queer theorists,” as well as anti-Nazis, to demonstrate supposed developmental roots of the Nazi storm trooper organization (the SA), which did have many gays within its top leadership and had authority over the Hitlerjugend for a brief time when the HJ was formed as the Youth League of the NSDAP in 1920. Through this intended smear, virulent anti-Nazis appear to be calling into question the manhood and honor of all organized German youth prior to 1933, as if to argue that the National Socialist era was a direct and inevitable result of deficits in the German character. Nevertheless, open homosexuality was a factor within at least one minority faction of the Wandervögel, and detractors have made too much of it. In 1911, Wilhelm Jansen, a wealthy gay who was a leader
