Berlijnse nachtlevenin de jaren twintig en dertig

Berlijn was in de jaren voordat Adolf Hitler aan de macht kwam een homomekka vol extravagantie. Voor iedere seksuele smaak was er wel een bar, een cabaret of een naaktstrand..Tal van etablissementen stonden internationaal bekend om de travestieoptredens.

After the I World War appeared the first mass movements for homosexuals, the Freundschaftsbund, popular associations of gays and lesbians that dedicated an important part of their effort to socialization and diverse activities for their members, like excursions, visits, sports, and balls.

For example, the club Kameradschaft ("camaraderie") organized on November 1, 1929, celebrating their anniversary, a Böser-Buben-Ball ("Bad Boys Ball"); the club reached 100 members, and survived until 1933. Kameradschaft tried to offer some support and activities for gays from lower extraction; so their balls were celebrated on weekends, Saturdays or Sundays, and gathered about 70 men, many without a job, who could pay the low entry price.
In 1922 the association Gesellschaftsklub Aleksander e.V. celebrated balls every day, beginning 7 o'clock p.m., with a quality orchestra. In 1927 the Bund für Menschenrecht (BfM) bought the Alexander-Palast, but that same year they changed to the Florida and the Tanz-Palast salon of the Zauberflöte, in the Kommandantenstraße 72, in Berlin. The BfM balls took place from Tuesdays to Sundays; the entry was free, but you had to pay 50 Pfennig for a dance card that allowed you to actually dance.

In the 1920s gay balls reached enormous sizes, with premises filling several ballrooms with some thousands of men. And not just in Berlin, several other cities in Germany organized smaller balls for gays.
In the 1920s and 30s, there were uncountable bars, cafés, and dance halls in Berlin. The most elegant could be found in West Berlin, near the area formed by the Bülowstraße, the Potsdamer Straße, and the Nollendorfplatz, reaching up to the Kurfürstendamm.
No doubt, the most famous was Eldorado, that really was two, one on the Lutherstraße, and a second one in the Motzstraße.

Curt Moreck (Konrad Haemmerling) described the Eldorado in 1931, in his Führer durch das „lasterhafte“ Berlin ("Guide through the 'dissolute' Berlin"), as "an establishment of transvestites staged for the morbid fascination of the world metropolis." The program at the Eldorado included loud and racy shows by drag queens, addressed mostly to an heterosexual audience, that, now as then, wanted to "satisfy their curiosity, and dared to visit the mysterious and infamous Berlin". Moreck continues, even though he himself was encouraging, and was part of this kind of voyeuristic tourism with his travel guide:
A dance hall of a larger style, with an extremely elegant audience. Tuxedos and tailcoats, and full evening dresses – this is the normality that comes to observe here. The actors are present in large numbers. Bright posters are already luring at the entrance, and paintings, where the perversity mocks itself, decorate the corridor. At the wardrobe begins the swindle. "Here it's right!" A mysterious motto, that can mean anything. Everything is staged scenery, and only the worldly innocent believe in its authenticity. Even the real transvestites, who put their anomaly at the service of the business, become comedians here. Between the dances, where even the normal man can afford the naughty pleasure of dancing with an effeminate man in female dress, there are cabaret performances. A tomboy chanteuse sings with her shrill soprano voice ambiguous Parisian chansons. A very girlish revue star proceeds under the spotlight with female graceful pirouettes. He is naked except for the breast plates and a loincloth, and even this nakedness is deceptive, it still makes the spectators question, it still leaves doubts whether man, or woman. One of the most enchanting and elegant women present in the hall is often the dainty Bob, and there are enough men who, in the depths of their hearts, are sorry that he is not a girl, that nature, through an error, has deceived them of a delicate lover.

Eldorado became one of the nocturnal cultural centers in Europe. The establishment hosted from bank managers to members of parliament, as well as theater actors and movie stars. Amongst them, divas like Marlene Dietrich, often with her husband Rudolf Sieber, and Anita Berber, singers like Claire Waldoff,] and writers, like Wolfgang Cordan Egon Erwin Kisch, or Josef Hora. Magnus Hirschfeld was well known there. The co-founder and commander of the SA, Ernst Röhm, was also a patron, and Karl Ernst, later a nazi politician and Gruppenführer SA, tried to survive for a time working —depending on the source— as a waiter, an employee, or a rent boy in the Eldorado of the Lutherstraße. The ballroom cum cabaret has been mentioned, directly or indirectly, serving as inspiration, in many literary works, as in Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939) by Christopher Isherwood, or the memories of Erika, and Klaus Mann. The atmosphere has been captured in paintings by Otto Dix, and Ernst Fritsch.

 In 1929 vertrok de jonge schrijver Christopher Isherwood naar Berlijn. De geplande vakantie van een week zou uitlopen tot een verblijf van vier jaar. Stamkroeg van Isherwood en de Engels/Amerikaanse dichter W.H. Auden was The Cosy Corner, een bar die voornamelijk werd bezocht door Bubes (ruwe jongenshoeren van lage komaf gestoken in Lederhosen).

Ook Die Weisse Maus (Jägerstraße 18) was populair en is door Isherwood in zijn boeken – en later in de daarop gebaseerde musical Cabaret – onsterfelijk gemaakt als de Kit Kat Club. Hier zorgde Anita Berber, hogepriesteres van het exces, avond na avond voor opspraak. Dronken plaste zij op het podium in champagneglazen, danste met pythons, stak Pruisische vlaggen in de fik en werd tenslotte ontslagen toen zij flessen brandy tegen het hoofd van de uitbater gooide.The Silhouette was populair bij dragqueens en –kings. De Eldorado-Bar in de Mogtzstrasse was voor de high-society de lievelingsplek van Marlene Dietrich en Kurt Weil.



Bar Eldorado aan de Motzstraße.

Isherwood verliet Berlijn in de dagen dat Hitler aan de macht kwam om er nooit weer terug te keren. De nazi´s hielden grote schoonmaak rond de Nollendorferplatz en de Eldorado werd in 1933 gesloten en gedecoreerd met hakenkruizen. Nu zit er op deze plek een biosupermarkt die Spiesekammmer Eldorado heet als hommage aan het toenmalige café.

By the end of the 1920s, the German society had taken their image of homosexuals from this kind of establishment: decadent, refined, depraved, degenerate, tightly linked to drugs, wild sex, and prostitution. The Bund für Menschenrecht tried to distance gays of this kind of milieu in 1927, but to no avail. In 1932 the chancellor Franz von Papen started a campaign against the "depraved night of Berlin", and in October of that same year all balls for homosexuals were prohibited.

On January 30, 1933, the nazi party came to power, and on February 23, 1933, the Prussian Interior Minister ordered that all bars "that have abused [their permit] to promote immorality" be closed. He was referring specially to those "that are frequented by those who pay homage to the anti-natural immorality".

On March 4, 1933, the Berliner Tagblatt informed about the closing of some establishments the day before. Of the over 100 establishments catering to homosexuals in Berlin very few survived, and those would be used to help watch and control the homosexual population.

Over de homoseksuele subcultuur gvan Berlijn tussen de Eerste en de Tweede Wereldoorlog gaat het boek De getatoeëerde Lorelei  van Jaap Harten.  De centrale figuur is de Getatoeëerde Lorelei, een nichtenmoeder, die haar hoerenjongens voor ernstige misstappen tracht te behoeden.



De Duitse film Der blaue Engel uit 1930, waarin Marlene Dietrich de rol speelt van Lola en haar bekendste lied: Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe eingestellt, und sonst gar nichts zing spleelt zich voor een deel af in een Berlijns cabaret uit de jaren twintig.



Op de hoek van de Motzstrasse is nu delicatessenwinkel El Dorado gevestigd. (Foto: Bert Woudstra, 2018)

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