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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