An old tradition. See for example Adolf Brand (1874–1945)

To this new group, male-male love, in particular that of an older man for a youth, 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.[5] The GdE was a sort of scouting movement that echoed the warrior creed of Sparta and the ideals of pederasty in Ancient Greece, and the ideas on pedagogic eros of Gustav Wyneken.[5] The GdE was heavily involved with camping and trekking. They occasionally practised nudism – the latter then common as part of the Nacktkultur (‘culture of nudity’) sweeping Germany. In the 1920s this would develop into the Freikörperkultur under Adolf Koch.

The Gemeinschaft opposed Hirschfeld and the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee’s stance that homosexuality existed on a continuum with femininity. Brand and the Gemeinschaft instead believed that homosexuality was the epitome of manliness and brotherly love, to be expressed by any man. The group tended towards elitism who based their ideas of attractiveness around Germanic racial purity. Their views towards women were often misogynistic.