Bonn Harvest

Story is based on youthful personal experience. Main characters are two very young men, a gay English college student and a straight German police officer who meet and experience a very close friendship which is valuable and important to them both. The year is 1959 when Hitler's extreme anti-gay laws were still on the books in West Germany and still occasionally enforced due to lingering homophobia in Europe. This affected the relationship, which was never physical, but could impact a police officer's reputation if known. The college student has little experience of travel outside the United Kingdom. His first travel experience was to Paris, France, at age twenty, which encouraged him to select Spain and Germany for his next destinations. He was curious about Spain's status as a dictatorship and the contrast with Germany, which was now a democracy after experiencing the years of the Third Reich up to the end of WW2. His new friend, the German police officer, has progressive political views which both share and discuss. The difficulty for the gay college student is the intensity of his affection for his friend, who cannot reciprocate it; he likes the student only as a close friend whose friendship he values. After WW2, the extreme anti-gay statutes imposed by Adolph Hitler were not rescinded until the nineteen sixties, so were still recognized and occasionally enforced at the time the action of the story takes place, given homophobia still common in most European societies. Therefore, as a member of the police force, the officer's friendship with a gay individual could put him at some risk.