Eisenherz bookstore
The Eisenherz bookstore was founded in November 1978 in Berlin as the first gay bookstore in Germany. The founders were anchored in the West Berlin gay movement , from which various offers and locations for gays emerged in the mid to late 1970s.
The bookstore, which was initially not just a bookstore but also a meeting place for the gay intelligentsia of the time, was the nucleus for the ideas for numerous projects (such as the gay and lesbian city magazine Siegessäule , the queer film prize Teddy Award or the gay advice center Mann-O -Meter ), which promoted the emancipation of homosexuals in Germany to a large extent.
history
The shop was founded under the name “Prinz Eisenherz” by a collective of Peter Hedenström, Lothar Lang, Michael Keim and Christian von Maltzahn (whose partner Bruno Gmünder joined a year later). The bookstore should actually be politically correct: “ Magnus-Hirschfeld- Buchladen” or “ Klaus-Mann -buchladen”, but the night before the GmbH was registered with the notary, the decision was made to use the name Prinz Eisenherz . The shop was officially opened on November 12, 1978 at Bülowstrasse 17 in Berlin-Schöneberg . The store's employees, including Stefan M. Weber, had the aim of offering a wide range of literature that touched on the subject of homosexuality or was written by homosexual authors. But the shop not only served as a bookstore, but also as a contact point for political activists and homosexual artists and writers such as Christoph Geiser , Ronald M. Schernikau or Felix Rexhausen .
In the mid-1980s, the bookstore moved into new premises in Bleibtreustraße on Savignyplatz , which at the time was considered the center of Berlin's bookselling business. Sometimes these new rooms could accommodate up to 20,000 titles. Because of this wide range, the bookstore's reputation as the best-stocked gay bookstore in the world quickly established itself. The self-confidence of gays, but also the acceptance of gays in society, grew. The store, originally creating an identity, has become a permanent fixture on the Berlin scene.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the structures and paths changed in Berlin, but the competitive situation also became more difficult due to, among other things, the up-and-coming internet trade, which meant that the business situation in Charlottenburg was no longer ideal. Therefore the decision was made to move to Lietzenburger Straße 9a in Schöneberg in April 2004 . Since then, there has been a wide range of German and foreign-language fiction, non-fiction, guides, photo and art books, magazines and DVDs on over 200 square meters. The new premises also served as exhibition space for queer artists. Since the lesbian and transsexual range also grew more and more, it was also decided to no longer call the shop Prinz Eisenherz , but simply Eisenherz . In November 2013 the shop moved to Motzstraße .
literature
- Elmar Kraushaar : 100 years gay. A revue . Rowohlt Verlag, Berlin, 1997.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ www.prinz-eisenherz.com : the story
- ↑ Kriss Rudolph: 40 years of the Eisenherz bookshop - "That had to be back then!" In: Team magazine. October 26, 2018, accessed October 29, 2018 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 59.2 " N , 13 ° 20 ′ 36.3" E