Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
GAY BERLIN IN THE WEIMAR AND NAZI YEARS
Even by contemporary standards, Weimar Berlin's gay scene in the 1920s and early 1930s
was prodigious: there were around forty gay bars on and near
Nollendorfplatz
alone,
and gay life in the city was open, fashionable and well organized, with its own newspapers,
community associations and art. The city's theatres were filled with plays exploring gay
themes, homosexuality in the Prussian army was little short of institutionalized, and gay
bars, nightclubs and brothels proudly advertised their attractions - there were even gay
working men's clubs. All this happened at a time when the rest of Europe was smothered
under a welter of homophobia and repression.
Under the Third Reich, however, homosexuality was quickly and brutally outlawed: gays and
lesbians were rounded up and taken to concentration camps, branded for their “perversion”
by being forced to wear pink or black triangles. (The black triangle represented “antisocial”
offenders: in an attempt to ignore the existence of lesbianism, lesbians were arrested on
pretexts such as swearing at the Führer's name.) As homosexuality was, at the time, still illegal
in Allied countries, no Nazis were tried for crimes against gays or lesbians at Nürnberg. A red
granite plaque in the shape of a triangle at Nollendorfplatz U-Bahn station commemorates the
gay men and women who were murdered for their sexuality.
Cabaret Berlin
W
cabaret-berlin.com,
T
0151 25
22 03 42.
Well-informed 75min English-language
6
walking tours around Berlin's gay village with emphasis on
places relating to Christopher Isherwood. Sat 11am; €12.
Grimm, united in death as they were in copyright. he bodies of Stauffenberg and his
co-conspirators were also buried here following the July Bomb Plot, only to be
exhumed a few days later and burned by Nazi thugs.
Rathaus Schöneberg
Martin-Luther-Str. •
Tower
April-Sept daily 10am-4pm • Free • U-Rathaus Schöneberg
Schöneberg's most famous attraction,
Rathaus Schöneberg
, actually offers very little
to see. Built just before World War I, the Rathaus became the seat of the West Berlin
parliament and senate after the last war, and it was outside here in 1963 that
John F.
Kennedy
made his celebrated speech on the Cold War, just a few months after the
Cuban missile crisis:
There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the
free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that Communism is the wave
of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the
Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say it is true that Communism is an evil system,
but it permits us to make economic progress. Lässt sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin … All free men,
wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner”.
Rousing stuff. But what the president hadn't realized as he read from his phonetically
written text was that what he had said could also mean “I am a doughnut”, since
Berliner
is a name for jam doughnuts - though not in Berlin, where it is usually known
as a
Pfannkuchen
. he urban myth that peals of laughter greeted this embarrassing error
only developed years later. People did laugh at the time, after applauding, but because
the president thanked his interpreter, who had simply repeated his quote, for
translating his German. he notion that he been laughed at for erroneously calling
himself a jam doughnut was largely the work of pedants long after the event. Five
months later, the day after Kennedy was assassinated, the square in front of the Rathaus
was given his name - a move apparently instigated by the city's students, among whom
the president was highly popular.
You can climb the
Rathaus tower
and see the replica
liberty bell
donated to the city by
the US in 1950.
