 This change opened the modern era of LGBTQ rights by providing support for the overturning of laws against homosexuals and by advancing gay civil rights, including the right to marry.Hartmann was born in Vienna, Austria in 1937 into a family of intellectual social reformers.Hartmann's early years were unsettled by the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany (Anschluss), and his family's consequent emigration from Vienna to Paris in 1938, to Switzerland in 1939, and to New York City in 1941.