Folsom Europe
Folsom Europe is a gay and lesbian street festival of the leather and fetish scene . It takes place once a year in the Schöneberg district of Berlin and follows the example of the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco .
history
In 2003 the association Folsom Europe e. V. founded in Berlin. Since 2004, an event called Folsom Europe has been held annually in September in Fuggerstrasse and Welserstrasse .
In addition to the homosexual groups, the BDSM associations SMart Rhein-Ruhr , BVSM e. V. and BDSM Berlin represented with their own booth. The surpluses go to support groups that do prevention or care work in the area of HIV / AIDS . The Berlin Tourism Association supports the event, which was the first street festival for the leather fetish scene in Europe and is now considered the most important meeting.
Controversy over the greeting from the governing mayor
In 2005, Mayor Klaus Wowereit's greeting to the event sparked controversial reactions in the media and politics. Berlin editors spoke in response to the first-time support of the event of a "really tough number" after the Berlin CDU had described the greeting Wowereits as incompatible with the dignity of the high office and leaflets had appeared that said Wowereit belittled racist rape pornography as "pure joy of life". The party took the view that photos in the written marketing material of the event showed outright acts of uninhibited violence and fascist motives.
CDU opponent Friedbert Pflüger , who, like Wowereit, had recently visited Berlin's Christopher Street Day , said, however, that the festival would not get a greeting from him, that one had to think carefully about which event to mark with a greeting, and emphasized , he wouldn't write a greeting for an erotic fair either. Under the heading “Lesbians and gays in the Union see acceptance endangered by violent hedonia at Folsom Europe Fest” , in 2005 the lesbians and gays in the Union support Pflüger's criticism of the event. The chairman of the organization, Jan Kayser, published a press release in which he put forward the thesis that Folsom Europe would endanger the acceptance of the entire gay scene in society with the aggressive portrayal of the festival character and its potential visitors. A few days later he stated that he had been misquoted in the press release and had never questioned the peaceful and open nature of the festival.
The Secretary General of the Berlin CDU, Frank Henkel , described the participants of the event as a group of people who see their purpose in life in practicing abnormal sexual methods, and underlined his view that the event had nothing to do with tolerance and a cosmopolitan city , but rather an act of self-staging of a scene. The chairman of the board of Folsom Europe e. V. Daniel Rüster rejected the criticism in a press release. He emphasized that the event was not a “Sado Maso festival”, but a street festival for the leather and fetish community in Europe. He emphasized that this particular scene had been socio-politically active since the 1970s and that it had made a significant contribution to the development of many Aids aid programs at home and abroad in the 1980s. He firmly rejected the accusation of glorifying or even promoting racist rape pornography.
In 2006, Wowereit, who was running for re-election at the time, supported the event again with a greeting: “An event like Folsom Europe fits Berlin: As a meeting point for people from all over the world who come to a tolerant and cosmopolitan city to celebrate together in order to exchange ideas with like-minded people, to collect donations for charitable purposes and thus to reduce reservations. "
Web links
- Official website of Folsom Europe
Individual evidence
- ↑ Self-presentation of Folsom Europe eV ( Memento of the original from September 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Press release of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group, “Koschyk / violence: SPD must distance itself from Wowereit”, August 30, 2005, online at presseportal.de
- ↑ ntv.de Union outraged: Wowereits greeting
- ↑ tagesspiegel.de from September 1st, 2005 Sado-Maso-Fest: Wowereit defends the opening speech
- ↑ a b Focus.de from August 9, 2006 Wowereits warm words
- ↑ cf. queer.de: LSU versus Folsom Europe , September 2, 2005, online at queer.de .
- ↑ cf. queer.de: Berlin LSU rows back , September 5, 2005, online at queer.de .
- ↑ cf. Christian Scheuß: Frank Henkel (CDU) , queer.de, September 2, 2005, online at queer.de .
- ↑ Folsom Europe: press release , folsomeurope.com, August 29, 2005, archived under [1] .
