Eldorado (Berlin)

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Eldorado ( Spanish: El Dorado : “The Golden”) was the name of at least five restaurants in Berlin before the Second World War . These included two well-known transvestite bars (men and women), which were also described by writers and immortalized in pictures. There is no other trendy local at the time where there are as many sources and image documents as about the Eldorados. Today another restaurant is called Eldorado .

The Eldorados

The Eldorado on the corner of Motz and Kalckreuthstrasse, 1932
  • In Lutherstraße 31/32 (since 1963: Martin-Luther-Straße , 13), opposite the Scala (Lutherstraße 22–24, since 1963 Martin-Luther-Straße 14–18) and the famous Horcher restaurant (Lutherstraße 21, corner of Augsburger Straße; today Martin-Luther-Straße 12, corner of Fuggerstraße), was the original Eldorado from 1926 to 1932 .
  • One block further, at the corner of Kalckreuthstrasse 11 / Motzstrasse 15 (today: Kalckreuthstrasse 11 / Motzstrasse 24), there was a second branch of the Original Eldorado from 1928 to 1932 , which was also called Eldorado .

Eldorado Lutherstrasse

At least from 1900 to 1907 the Auguste Victoria-Säle restaurant was located at Lutherstrasse 31/32 . There were also performances in the “large theater”.

The first Eldorado opened there in 1926 . In Konrad Haemmerling's alias Curt Moreck's guide through “vicious” Berlin from 1931, it is referred to as a “transvestite business staged for metropolitan sightseeing ”. The program with shrill and weird travesty shows and program events was tailored to a predominantly heterosexual target group, who then as now "dared to take a detour to mysteriously wicked Berlin following a curious desire." itself a component and promoter of that tourist voyeurism:

“A larger style dance hall with an extremely elegant audience. Tuxedos and tuxedos and large evening gowns - this is the normality that comes here to look. The actors are present in large numbers. Bright posters beckon at the entrance, and paintings that mock the perversity of themselves adorn the corridor. The rip-off begins at the cloakroom. 'It's right here!' it says on the ads . A mysterious motto under which you can imagine all kinds of things. Everything is a backdrop and only the totally unworldly believes in its authenticity. Even the real transvestites who put their variety in the service of the business become comedians here. Between the dances, in which even the normal can afford the piquant pleasure of dancing with an effeminate man in women's clothes, there are board performances. A male chanteuse sings ambiguous Parisian chansons with her shrill soprano . A very girlish revue star dances gracefully feminine pirouettes under the spotlight . He is naked except for the breast shields and a pubic belt, and even this nudity is still deceptive, it still worries the audience, it still leaves doubts as to whether a man is a woman. One of the most delightful and elegant women in the whole room is often the delicate Bob, and there are men enough who deeply regret that he is not a girl, that nature has mistakenly made her a delicious one Has betrayed a lover. "

- Curt Moreck : 1931

Guests who visit the restaurant for the first time were very curious and tried to guess from one another which person was a real woman or a real man. You could buy tokens that had an all-male or all-female couple dancing on one side. These were given to transvestites when you wanted to dance with them. In the morning they counted the chips and the number was an internal measure of their popularity.

Also Ruth Margarete Roellig reported in 1928 by a dense entertainment program. From the “dance boy Carlo”, from transvestites who put on their fumble and then sell autograph cards and from the obligatory “girls”, those young professional dancers who were not allowed to be absent on the big revue stages or in the small Tingeltangel.

Soon after it opened, the Eldorado was well known, soon also far beyond the city limits, even across Europe, and it also became a magnet for tourists. The hetero and homo world mixed there. Spending an evening in the Eldorado was very fashionable in Berlin society. The well-known bank director or the member of the Reichstag came along as well as many people from the theater and film. Among them were stars like Marlene Dietrich , often together with her husband Rudolf Sieber and Claire Waldoff, as well as Wolfgang Cordan and Anita Berber . Egon Erwin Kisch took Josef Hora and Marka Majerova into the restaurant and told his girlfriend Jarmila about it. Also Magnus Hirschfeld was in the local well known, partly out of professional interest, and has been lovingly Aunt Magnesia called. When the author Ferdinand Bruckner was working on his play Die Verbrecher (1928), which also deals with the subject of § 175 , he researched the Eldorado in order to be able to reproduce the situation of homosexuals as realistically as possible. The English journalist Sefton Delmer , who with SA boss Ernst Roehm maintained a friendly relationship, reported in his 1962 memoirs on a joint visit to the Eldorado in 1931. He described it as dull and smoky dance bar. There a transvestite came to the table whom Delmer took for a prostitute and Röhm for his customer. The transvestite chatted with Röhm about a fun party the days before. When he left, Delmer said to Röhm: “There you have it, Chief of Staff. No female hooker would come to a previous customer like this and talk to him about a night spent together in the presence of a stranger. "To which the latter replied:" I am not his customer. I am its commander. He's one of my SA men. ”Röhm's favorite bar, however, was the Schattenbild , also a transvestite bar. The later politician and SA group leader Karl Ernst managed to get by with various jobs for a while and - depending on the portrayal - was for a while a waiter, employee or hustler in the Eldorado on Lutherstrasse.

In parts of the scene, however, such eateries met with severe criticism. Immediately after the Eldorado opened at the turn of the year 1926/1927, the Federation for Human Rights commented in its magazine:

"The decent homosexuals protest very vigorously against being identified with such people who frequent these bars."

Eldorado Motzstraße

The Eldorado in Motzstraße was opened as a second business in 1928 and was supposed to continue the recipe for success of the original. Moreck describes it in 1931 as more comfortable than the old one.

The three well-known exterior views come from this restaurant: One from 1932 with the plaque “Here's the right thing!” And a male and female head, and two from around February / March 1933 with attached election posters “Vote Hitler. List 1 ”and swastika flags that campaigned for the 1933 Reichstag election (one with police officers and one without). The photo without the police appeared in the May 1933 issue of the Vienna National Socialist magazine Der Notschrei in a collage of photos of gay bars on the occasion of a report about the closure of those. On the photo with the police officers you can still see a leftover poster in the door: "Temporarily closed due to changeover."

In 2008, there is an organic supermarket at this point in the renovated building, which bears the name Pantry in Eldorado , and a tax consultancy firm is located on the first floor that used to belong to it. In 2005 there was a Plus branch in the business premises .

reception

Fiction

Unless further details are given or it is restricted by the year, mentions cannot always be clearly assigned to an Eldorado. Above both restaurants was written “Here's the right place!”, The one on Lutherstrasse later advertises with “The Original Eldorado”. Often the descriptions are about Lutherstrasse.

The novels Mr. Norris rises to (1935) and Lebwohl, Berlin (1939) by Christopher Isherwood are partly set in the Eldorado . It is also of Erika and Klaus Mann described (in his memoirs), furthermore (1945), by Peter Sachse in Victor Alexandrov Berliner Journal (1927), by Eugen Szatmari in The Book of Berlin (1927) and Franz Hessel will briefly outlined as a local suggestion on his walk through the nightlife (1929). In Eva Tucker's autobiographical novel Berlin Mosaic: A Family Chronicle , Hugo surprisingly takes Ruth to the Eldorado on Motzstrasse, where she is at first quite flabbergasted. The Irishman Charles Bewley mentioned the restaurant on Motzstrasse in his memoir, edited by McCormack and published 20 years after his death. The English science journalist James Gerald Crowther (1899–1983) describes in his memoirs how some friends were amused that he stayed with a host family on Motzstraße, although this was also the home of the “notorious homosexual dance club”. Wyndham Lewis describes in his 1931 book Hitler , where he portrays him as a peacemaker, horrified the Eldorado on Motzstrasse. In 1934, the English city guide Germany on £ 10 of the Ten pound series describes how the first-person narrator goes with a local to the Eldorado at Motzstrasse 15, which at that time had actually been closed for two years. Long after the Second World War, the restaurant played a role in the works of Ulrich Becher (1969), Michel Rachline (1979) Pierre-Jean Rémy (1985, Motzstraße) and Wolfram Fleischhauer's 2006 novel School of Lies begins in the Eldorado of the year 1926. Also in the Dutch novel In de schaduw van Marlene Dietrich. Berlijnse thriller (In the shadow of Marlene Dietrich, Soesterberg: Aspect 2014) by Marianne Vogel , most of which is set in the twenties, the Eldorado occurs. The Eldorado is also a setting in Lutz Wilhelm Kellerhoff's crime novel Die Tote im Wannsee (2018), which takes place in 1968.

painting

Ernst Fritsch and Otto Dix ( big city triptych, 1927/1928) immortalized the restaurant in their pictures. Christian Schad (1894–1982), who later also contributed two illustrations ( Knutschloge 1929, Adonis parlor 1930) for the guide through “vicious” Berlin , painted the portrait of Count St. Genois d'Anneaucourt in 1927 , which is one of his most famous paintings . You can see the count in evening suit, a member of the Eastern European nobility, who found exile in Vienna and whose homosexual inclinations are very subtly alluded to. On the left you can see Baroness Glaser, who constantly accompanies the homosexual count as a concession to social conventions and possibly - at least temporarily - maintains an even closer relationship with him or at least wishes it to be. According to the painter, a well-known transvestite from the Eldorado can be seen on the right-hand side . Behind the Count's back, the two ladies cast not exactly friendly looks.

music

The Eldorado is also mentioned on the first German-language record, on which a homosexual love affair is sung openly. Gabriel Formiggini and his orchestra played in the Eldorado for years and were more or less "the house band on Lutherstrasse". During this time, the singer Theodor Lucas was engaged for the refrain singing from spring 1927 to autumn 1928. Several records were recorded with him. At the turn of 1929/1930 was one of the biggest hits of the very famous song today On Sunday wants my sweet with me sailing geh'n of Robert Gilbert (text) and Anton Profes (music), which is probably the first time Weintraub Syncopators was taken . In three short stanzas and a long refrain, this is about working women who take up their free time on Sunday and want to relax, a cheerful and spirited examination of the then new social phenomenon of working women from the middle class. At the end of 1929 / beginning of 1930 Theo Lucas also recorded this song with Karl Rockstroh at the piano, whereby the third verse was changed. Only Robert Gilbert is named as lyricist, but it is unknown whether the text change was also made by him:

“In the Eldorado bar
sat a gentleman with blond hair.
A lady said: 'Are you alone on Sunday?'
Then the blonde laughed and said: 'Oops, no!'
Refrain:
On Sunday my sweetie wants to go sailing with me
If the winds blow, that would be wonderful
On Sunday my sweetie wants to be my sailor
With me in the sunshine so completely alone. [...] "

The “Huch, no!” And the last refrain were sung by Lucas in a very humorous manner and thus this interpretation serves a lot of heterosexual gay clichés.

The first gay radio program in Germany, which was broadcast from 1985 to 1991, was called Eldoradio .

The end

In the wake of the so-called " Prussian Strike " on July 20, 1932, Kurt Melcher became police chief of the city of Berlin and remained in office until February 14, 1933. In July he announced a “comprehensive campaign against Berlin's vicious nightlife” and in October it was decreed that all “homosexual dance pleasures must be avoided”. In December, many "friendship bars" closed and the police hour was brought up to ten o'clock in the evening.

The National Socialists came to power on January 30, 1933, and on February 23, 1933, the Reich Commissioner for the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, Hermann Göring , ordered the closure of all restaurants "that are being abused to promote immorality". In particular, it also means those "who serve as public places for the circles that worship unnatural fornication". On March 4, 1933, the Berliner Tagblatt reported that some restaurants had been closed the day before. The Eldorado is no longer mentioned here. Of the originally over 100 relevant eateries, only very few escaped closure over time and these were intended to serve as places where the scene could be more easily monitored.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Bollé: Eldorado: Homosexual women and men in Berlin 1850–1950. History, everyday life and culture . Berlin Museum, Frölich & Kaufmann, 1984, ISBN 3-88725-068-0 , p. 71
  2. ↑ a b Ralf Jörg Raber: “We are what we are!” Homosexuality on record 1900–1936 . Bear Family Records, 2002, ISBN 3-89795-887-2 , pp. 23-27
    With a pictured billboard on a stick and the inscription: “Eldorado / vis-á-vis Skala / Lutherstrasse 31/32 / Internationaler Betrieb! Interesting nights! "
  3. ↑ Martin-Luther-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
    “Heinrich-Kiepert-Strasse was renamed Martin-Luther-Strasse on December 28, 1899 when it was extended to Hauptstrasse . On March 1, 1963, the street was extended in a northerly direction by including the connection street, Lutherstraße, named in 1885, into Martin-Luther-Straße. This inclusion had been planned several times since the twenties, but was not implemented. ”In addition, the numbering was changed from rotating to reciprocal numbering.
  4. ↑ a b c d Musikbar Eldorado Berlin: History  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Accessed July 12, 2008@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.eldoradoberlin.de  
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Ralf Jörg Raber: “We… are how we are!” Homosexuality on record 1900–1936 . In: Invertito - Yearbook for the History of Homosexualities , 5th year, 2003, ISBN 3-935596-25-1 , pp. 50–52
    With a (dance) token with the inscription: “Eldorado - Berlin - Motzstr. 15 "
  6. ^ Günter Grau: Homosexuality in the Nazi Era . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-596-11254-0
    Picture on the first cover page: Eldorado with Nazi election posters, where on a street sign it is written: "Kalckreuth Str." And underneath "15-11", where the "11" is closer to Motzstraße.
  7. ↑ Staci / Lana: eldorado , November 16, 2007, advertising postcard with a dancer and the inscription: "Eldorado - Motz 15 - Berlin / Male or Female?"
  8. ↑ Motzstrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
    “The eastern part of Motzstrasse between Nollendorfplatz and Kurfürstenstrasse, named in 1870, was renamed Mackensenstrasse on February 24, 1934.” Today this part is called Else-Lasker-Schüler-Strasse. Today the numbering runs alternately from this side (now from Nollendorfplatz) in the direction of Eldorado and Viktoria-Luise-Platz .
  9. ↑ Berlin, Charlottenburg, Berlin: Lutherstrasse 31/32, Restaurant Auguste Victoria-Säle
  10. ↑ Internet auction of a card from 1907
  11. ^ A b c Curt Moreck: Guide through the "vicious" Berlin . Modern City Guide, Leipzig 1931; Reprint 1996, Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, ISBN 3-87584-583-8 , pp. 180f.
  12. ↑ a b Peter Sachse in the Berliner Journal , 1927
  13. ↑ Images in Berlin Dance Club Tokens , World of Coins Wiki
  14. ↑ Ruth Margarethe Roellig: Berlin's lesbian women . Bruno Gebauer Verlag, Leipzig 1928, p. 52 f.
  15. ↑ a b Annelie Lütgens: Just being a pair of eyes. Jeanne Mammen - an artist in her time . Berlin 1991, p. 67
  16. ↑ David Bret: Marlene My Friend: An Intimate Biography . Robson, 1996, ISBN 0-86051-844-2 , p. 21
  17. ↑ Wolfgang Cordan: The mat. Autobiographical records. Edited and with an afterword by Manfred Herzer. MännerschwarmSkript Verlag, Hamburg 2003
  18. ↑ Egon Erwin Kisch: Letters to Jarmila . Das Neue Berlin, 1998, ISBN 3-360-00856-1 , p. 63
  19. ^ EJ Haeberle: Introduction to the anniversary reprint by Magnus Hirschfeld, "The homosexuality of man and woman", 1914 . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1984, pp. V – XXXI
  20. ↑ Bernhard Rosenkranz, Gottfried Lorenz: Hamburg on other reasons: The history of gay life in the Hanseatic city . Lambda, 2005, ISBN 3-925495-30-4 , p. 33
  21. ↑ Sefton Delmer: A photo of Stalin's earlobes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44 , 1962, pp. 46 ( online ).
  22. ^ Helmut Allardt: Politics before and behind the scenes. Experiences of a diplomat between East and West. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf 1979, ISBN 3-430-11027-0 , p. 24
  23. ^ Hans Bernd Gisevius: Until the bitter end . Fretz & Wasmuth, 1946, p. 180
  24. ↑ Andreas Sternweiler (Ed.): Love, research, teaching: The art historian Christian Adolf Isermeyer . In: Life stories  4. Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-86149-082-X ; ( Quote from "A gay emigrant [7] [...]")
  25. ^ The friendship sheet 5 (1927), No. 10, p. 1
  26. ↑ Pantry in the eldorado  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Fördergemeinschaft Ökologischer Landbau Berlin-Brandenburg e. V., accessed July 12, 2008@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.bio-berlin-brandenburg.de  
  27. ↑ Axel Schock: Cabaret - The Musical - In the experimental laboratory of the apocalypse . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 10, 2005
  28. ↑ Journey Through Chaos. Foreword by Upton Sinclair , Literary Press, New York 1945
    Journey through Chaos. The lost generation , from the American by K. Baumann. Falken-Verlag, Zurich 1946
  29. ↑ Bärbel Schrader, Jürgen Schebera (ed.): Art metropolis Berlin 1918–1933 . Construction Verlag, 1987, ISBN 3-351-00454-0
  30. ^ Eugen Szatmari: The book of Berlin . R. Piper, 1927, pp. 153-155
  31. ^ Franz Hessel: Flaneur durch Berlin , 1984, p. 43; New edition of Walks in Berlin , Berlin 1929
  32. ^ Eva Tucker: Berlin Mosaic: A Family Chronicle . Starhaven, 2005, ISBN 0-936315-22-9 , p. 78
  33. ^ Charles Bewley: Memoirs of a Wild Goose . The Lilliput Press, 1989, ISBN 0-946640-42-4 , p. 118
  34. ↑ James Gerald Crowther: Fifty Years with Science . Barrie & Jenkins, 1970, ISBN 0-248-65220-6 , p. 61
  35. ↑ Peter Parker: Isherwood: A Life Revealed . Random House, 2004, ISBN 1-4000-6249-7 , p. 147
  36. ^ Sydney Clark: Germany on £ 10 (Ten pound series) . I. Nicholson and Watson, 1934, p. 189
  37. ↑ Ulrich Becher: Marble Hunt: Novel . Rowohlt, 1969, p. 487
  38. ↑ Michel Rachline: Tendre banlieue: roman . La Table Ronde, 1979, p. 95
  39. ^ Pierre-Jean Rémy: La vie d'un héros . Albin Michel, 1985, ISBN 2-226-02457-3 , p. 205
  40. ↑ Lutz Wilhelm Kellerhoff is a pseudonym for the trio of authors Sven Felix Kellerhoff , Uwe Wilhelm and Martin Lutz . See Lutz Wilhelm Kellerhoff at www.ullstein-buchverlage.de .
  41. ↑ The dead in the Wannsee. Berlin 2018. pp. 96-100, 221, 341f.
  42. ↑ V. Dollenmaier: The eroticism in the work of Christian Schad . Dissertation, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 3-8364-2667-6 , ( diss.fu-berlin.de ); 8.1. Concession to the Convention: "Count St. Genois d'Anneaucourt", p. 150 & 5. EXCURSUS: The Importance of Sexuality in the Twenties, p. 94
  43. ^ Günter Grau: Homosexuality in the Nazi Era . Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-596-11254-0 , pp. 54, 56f.