Homosexuality in Berlin
This article deals with homosexuality in Berlin . Berlin has been one of the most important metropolises in which homosexuals can live relatively freely and safely since the beginning of the 20th century. The center of the lesbian and gay scene is Nollendorfplatz in Berlin-Schöneberg with its surrounding streets.
history
Early modern age
Almost nothing is known about homosexuals in Berlin and the Berlin area from the Middle Ages. The first evidence from the early modern period tells of persecution and murder. In 1620, Elector Georg Wilhelm (1595–1640) issued a land law that was based on laws passed by Emperor Charles V :
"[...] / that all unchastity / so against nature / and otherwise in whatever way it can always happen / and is not due / committed for chaste ears / should be inexorably judged with the Fewer from life to death."
Several cases that apply the law are known from the Berlin area. On June 11, 1704, Ludwig Le Gros and Martin Schultze were sentenced to death for having committed sexual immorality together. The sentence was carried out on June 15. On January 31, 1729, the baker Ephraim Ostermann was sentenced to death for having orally satisfied his 19-year-old apprentice Martin Koehler. This contrasts with the two acquittals of nobleman Ludwig Christian Günther von Appel, who was accused of sodomy with farm boys in 1718 and 1720 . The nobleman was not punished while two farm boys were beaten and a third was beaten and expelled from the country.
The reports on King Frederick the Great and his brother Prince Heinrich are contradictory . Even during their lifetime it was claimed that they were homosexual. They both had no children. However, there is no clear evidence of their sexual orientation.
Since the end of the 18th century there have been increasing reports of homosexuals in Berlin. On the one hand, it concerns reports from an existing scene in Berlin , on the other hand, an intensified scientific examination of the topic began in the middle of the 19th century. The initially anonymous pamphlet with the title: Letters on the Gallanteries of Berlin collected on a trip by an Austrian officer dates from 1782 and was probably written by Johann Friedel . In this document, Berlin is referred to as Sodoma . There is a report from an evening party where warm brothers (homosexual men) met and there is a report of a visit to a boys' brothel.
In 1794 the general land law was established in Prussia . Homosexuality was no longer punished with death, but with imprisonment and banishment.
A police report was already available from the 1840s that the zoo was used as a meeting place for gays. A little later, through descriptions by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs , one learns of balls at which Urninge (gays) met. But this also reports that the police kept secret lists of Urningen .
In 1852 the physician Johann Ludwig Casper published the essay "About emergency breeding and pederasty and their investigation by the forensic doctor " in the quarterly journal for judicial and public medicine . This essay is important because he classified homosexuality not as a disease or a crime, but as a human trait that is innate. Accordingly, homosexuals are not at fault.
From the year 1869 there is an opinion of the Berlin doctor Rudolf Virchow with the demand to delete paragraph 143, which made homosexual acts among men a criminal offense. However, the request had no effect. With the unification of the empire in 1871, the legal status of male homosexuals did not change. With the notorious Section 175 , male homosexuality remained punishable, even if it did not include the death penalty.
From the year 1885, a larger trial against the innkeeper Carl August Seeger, a waiter and ten guests from Seeger's restaurant has come down to us, who were accused of being a public nuisance because they kissed, grabbed the genitals and with each other in the restaurant Having addressed maiden names. Seeger was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment for pimping, the others three and four months.
1890 to World War II
In 1903 and 1904, 3,000 students and 5,721 members of the Metalworkers' Association were asked whether they were bisexual, heterosexual or homosexual. According to this survey, 94.6% were heterosexual , 1.5% homosexual and 3.9% bisexual .
Homosexual organizations
At the end of the 19th century, the doctor and sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld , who became known worldwide as the co-founder of the first homosexual movement, began working. The first gay organization was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee , which was founded on May 15, 1897 in Magnus Hirschfeld's apartment. The other two founding members were the publisher Max Spohr and the railway official Eduard Oberg . By 1905 the number of members of the organization rose to 408. The main goals were to collect signatures, especially from celebrities, for the abolition of Paragraph 175. In addition, the writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs were reprinted; the journal Yearbook for Sexual Intermediate Levels was published and numerous lectures were given.
In 1903 a second gay organization called the Community of Ownership was launched. Most of them were readers of the magazine Der Eigen . This organization was often in downright hostility to the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, but after the First World War they worked together more intensively.
In 1919 Magnus Hirschfeld opened the Institute for Sexology in Berlin . He was also a consultant and supporting actor in the first global film Anders als die Andern (1919), which had homosexuality as its theme and did not portray it in a negative light.
In the course of the twenties, many of the existing homosexual organizations united in the Federation for Human Rights , which was headed by entrepreneur Friedrich Radszuweit , and in the German Friendship Association .
Gay life
By the turn of the century, lesbian and gay life had already established itself in two Berlin districts, on the one hand northwest from Alexanderplatz to Friedrichstrasse and southeastern Friedrichstrasse in northern Kreuzberg . From the 1920s a third focus developed in the New West , the northern Schöneberg.
A particularly lively and free scene developed around Nollendorfplatz between Kurfürstendamm and Bülowstrasse, especially compared to other capitals at the same time. There were numerous bars and pubs, and Berlin became an international magnet for homosexuals who fled persecution in their own country. The best known of them is the English writer Christopher Isherwood , whose experiences he published in the book Farewell Berlin , which later became the musical and the film Cabaret . Among the restaurants of that time, the Eldorado on Motzstraße was particularly famous . This is where transvestites, transsexuals and voyeuristic tourists all met.
The sometimes very promiscuous and supposedly perverse of this scene was not without controversy and led in part to clear rejection by organized homosexuals who wanted to paint a positive image of homosexuals in their fight against Paragraph 175, based on bourgeois values through "decent people and long-term relationships" replicated and against male prostitution and the stick boy being e.g. B. of the Kleist casino and the curiosity of the "pervert", which is practiced in Eldorado.
From the 1920s there are also numerous reports of a lesbian scene, not least supported by activists such as Lotte Hahm , Selli Engler , Käthe Reinhardt or Charly . During this time, homosexual women had an unprecedented number of clubs, bars, hallways and cafes at their disposal. There were dozens of pubs, such as the Auluka-Diele , the Cafe Domino , the Toppkeller , the Dorian Gray or the tavern . A popular meeting place for women were also clubs that met in pubs or with which the women drove to the country together. With girls in uniform there was the first film with an openly lesbian plot in 1931, and with Die Freund , der Frauenliebe and Die BIF - Blätter Idealer Frauenfreundschaften there were also magazines especially aimed at lesbian women and at the same time high-circulation magazines. A total of three lesbian magazines published in Berlin of this time are known, but they often appeared under different names if they were affected by the ban on posting at kiosks by the then § 184 against “trash and dirty literature”.
On March 3, 1933, just a few weeks after the National Socialist seizure of power, the fourteen most famous homosexual meeting places in the city were closed, namely the Luisen Casino , the Magic Flute , the Dorian Gray , the Kleist Casino , the Nuremberg Hall , the International Hall , the Monokel-Bar , the Geisha , the Mali und Igel , the Boral , the Kaffee Hohenzollern , the Silhouette , the Mikado and the Hollandais . In the further course of the National Socialist rule, most of the facilities for homosexuals, such as the Eldorado, but also the Institute for Sexology, were closed and the systematic persecution of homosexuals began, many of whom were killed in concentration camps or suffered from severe repression.
Divided Berlin
After the end of the National Socialist dictatorship, the legal situation regarding male homosexuality was initially not relaxed. Paragraph 175 in its National Socialist version was only defused in West Germany in 1969 and completely abolished in 1994.
Homosexuality in East Berlin
In the GDR, the Weimar Republic came into force with the establishment of the state, which was then abolished in 1968. The Homosexual Interest Group Berlin was founded in East Berlin in 1973 , campaigning for the rights of homosexuals. The meeting point for the initiative was often the Gründerzeit Museum in Berlin-Mahlsdorf with Charlotte von Mahlsdorf as the host.
Development of the scene and political movement in West Berlin
After 1969, a gay scene quickly developed in West Berlin with numerous pubs, bars and saunas, especially around Motzstraße in Schöneberg . In 1971 Rosa von Praunheim's film Not the homosexual is perverse, but the situation in which he lives was premiered at the Berlinale. That was the impetus for the modern gay and lesbian movement in Germany. In the same year, the homosexual action West Berlin was founded, the first group of the gay movement after the Second World War. The second group is the General Homosexual Working Group founded in 1974 . From the squatter scene active in Berlin , the Tuntenhaus emerged in 1981 as an alternative residential and cultural project for the gay scene. Another alternative living space was set up a decade later with the Schwarzer Kanal site. In 1985 there was the first radio show aimed at homosexuals in Berlin: Eldoradio . In the same year the gay museum was opened. The first city magazines such as the Victory Column appeared around this time .
Christopher Street Day has been celebrated annually in Berlin since 1979 . In 1979 there were 400 participants. In 1982 it was 3,000, in 1990 more than 10,000 and since 1997 over 100,000. In 1980 the film Taxi zum Klo was shot in Berlin, which shows the gay life of director Frank Ripploh in the city in all openness and also shows various graphically unambiguous sex scenes. The film is considered a milestone in the history of gay film.
After the turn
From 2001 to 2014 Berlin had an openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit . Even before his election he was open to his homosexuality and before the election he was mainly known with the saying: "I'm gay - and that's a good thing!" With this outing in a campaign speech, he was ahead of potential reporters who might have cannibalized this topic .
Initiative for the acceptance of sexual diversity
In 2009, on the initiative of the Greens , the Red-Red Senate decided to launch the Berlin initiative for self-determination and acceptance of sexual diversity in order to improve the living conditions of gays and lesbians in Berlin in various everyday situations. As a result, contacts on the subject at the police and public prosecutor's office and contact persons in schools were appointed.
In order to further promote the process, the parliamentary group of the left and the pirate group jointly developed a new initiative in 2012, “Berlin stands up for self-determination and acceptance of sexual diversity 2.0” with 52 points. Another proposal with a similar content was drawn up in parallel by the Greens.
Just as Berlin had the reputation of a “gay capital” until the early 30s of the last century, Berlin is now known to many as the “LGBTI * capital”.
Marriage and registered civil partnerships
In 2011, 12,939 Berliners were registered in a registered civil partnership (8803 male, 4136 female). In 2012 there were 13,224 (9004 male, 4220 female).
On June 12, 2015, the Bundesrat voted in favor of one of the states of Lower Saxony, Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia, which were ruled by the SPD, the Greens and the Left same-sex couples too. The state of red-black ruled Berlin abstained from the vote, as it had been agreed in the coalition agreement to abstain from any disagreement in the Bundesrat. Berlin Interior Minister Frank Henkel (CDU) had previously threatened Governing Mayor Michael Müller (SPD) with a break in the coalition if the SPD approved the resolution. The application at that time was postponed in the Bundestag.
Same-sex couples have only been able to marry since October 1, 2017. Civil partnerships entered into up to September 2017 can be converted into marriages upon request. On March 6, 2018, Bavaria's state government waived a lawsuit before the Federal Constitutional Court.
Lesbian cemetery
On April 6, 2014, the first cemetery area in Germany was opened in Cemetery I of the Georgen Parochial Community , where only lesbians are buried. It extends over 400 square meters of previously overgrown terrain and offers space for around 80 grave areas.
Festivals
See also
Movies
- Jochen Hick , Andreas Strohfeldt: Out in East Berlin , Documentation 2013
- Jochen Hick: My wonderful West Berlin , documentation 2017
literature
- Mel Gordon: Voluptuous Panic, The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin. Los Angeles 2000, ISBN 0-922915-58-X .
- Manfred Herzer: Love and reason of the Urninge, The gay Berlin from the 18th century to the year 1933. In: Berlin from behind. Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-9800578-0-1 , pp. 7-38.
- Ross, Alex. Berlin story . In: The New Yorker . January 26th, 2015.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Digitization ( 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.
- ↑ Manfred Herzer, in: Berlin from behind , p. 7 f.
- ↑ Letters about the gallantries of Berlin on a trip collected by an Austrian officer in the Google book search
- ↑ Manfred Herzer, in: Berlin from behind , pp. 10-12
- ↑ Manfred Herzer, in: Berlin from the back , p. 16
- ↑ Manfred Herzer, in: Berlin from the back , p. 18 f.
- ↑ About emergency breeding and pederasty and their determination by the court doctor. In: Quarterly for judicial and public medicine. Vol. 1 (1852), pp. 21-78 ( digitized version ).
- ↑ Manfred Herzer, in: Berlin from the back , p. 19
- ↑ Manfred Herzer, in: Berlin from the back , p. 19
- ↑ Manfred Herzer, in: Berlin from the back , p. 20 f.
- ↑ a b Kleist casino (1921–1933) - men for sale In: Andreas Pretzel: Historical places and dazzling personalities in the Schöneberger Regenbogenkiez - From Dorian Gray to Eldorado , undated (2012?), Pp. 21–29
- ↑ Exploring the history of the Kiez in Berlin-Schöneberg - Introduction In: Andreas Pretzel : Historical places and dazzling personalities in the Schöneberg Regenbogenkiez - From Dorian Gray to Eldorado , undated (2012?), Pp. 10-15
- ↑ Heike Schader: Virile, Vamps and Wild Violets. Sexuality, Desire and Eroticism in the Magazines of Homosexual Women in Berlin in the 1920s. Ulrike Helmer Verlag , Königstein / Taunus 2004, ISBN 3-89741-157-1 . P. 8.
- ^ Gordon: Voluptuous Panic , pp. 240 f.
- ↑ Gordon: Voluptuous Panic , p. 115 f.
- ↑ cf. Heike Schader: Virile, vamps and wild violets. Sexuality, Desire and Eroticism in the Magazines of Homosexual Women in Berlin in the 1920s. Ulrike Helmer Verlag , Königstein / Taunus 2004, ISBN 3-89741-157-1 , including pp. 42, 43 f. and 58.
- ↑ Florence Tamagne: History of Homosexuality in Europe, 1919-1939 . 2005, ISBN 978-0-87586-356-6 , p. 357
- ↑ Gays and Lesbians in the GDR: Late Coming Out ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2014 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. in flood
- ↑ Filmmaker and Bird of Paradise: Rosa von Praunheim. Deutsche Welle , accessed on June 18, 2019 .
- ↑ CSD in 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.
- ^ Action sexual diversity taz.de of September 14, 2012
- ^ Queer alliance between leftists and pirates queer.de of September 13, 2012
- ↑ Jan Feddersen: 150th birthday of Magnus Hirschfeld: A queer dream called Berlin . In: The daily newspaper: taz . May 14, 2018, ISSN 0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed May 15, 2018]).
- ↑ Civil partnerships in Berlin, rainbow families and right of residence , small inquiry from MPs Dr. Klaus Lederer and Hakan Taş (LEFT)
- ↑ Berlin abstains from voting on marriage for all ( memento of the original from June 14, 2015 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. , RBB of June 12, 2015
- ↑ Zeit.de : Bundestag votes for marriage for everyone
- ↑ Sueddeutsche.de: Ehe für alle, That changes for homosexual couples
- ↑ Bavaria renounces lawsuits against marriage for all. Time online from March 6, 2018
- ^ First cemetery for lesbian women opened in Berlin , Morgenpost from April 7, 2014
