Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate

There is scarcely another period in history

where freedom and oppression

are as close to each other as in the 1920s and 1930s.

It was a calamity for humankind.

And I was part of that humankind.

The Eldorado heralds a new freedom

where gay men, lesbian women,

trans men and trans women can be free and self-determined for the first time.

In Berlin's nightlife, we see two new faces:

Lisa and Gottfried, newly married, in their early twenties,

like so many who visit the Eldorado they are ready to just drift along,

to discover new things, to discover new loves.

Lisa, full name Lisa von Dobeneck,

and Gottfried von Cramm have known each other since childhood.

They grew up in neighboring castles.

Lisa was a born Dobeneck.

And they lived 15 kilometers from one of our estates.

It was called the "Babylon of Sin"

because it's where the Cramms were free to do anything.

Lisa and Gottfried want the big life.

And of course that eventually stops happening in this rural environment

but instead in the magnet of wild Berlin.

ABOLISH PARAGRAPH 218

THE GIRLFRIEND WOMEN LOVE

THE ISLAND

WOMEN'S LOVE

THE GIRLFRIEND

THE THIRD SEX

This is the first time Lisa and Gottfried discover a world unknown to them.

The Eldorado was synonymous with the fact that something new was beginning here.

...with swastika flags blowing all across the Reich today...

Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm meet as early as 1919 in the right-wing movement.

They very quickly become friends on a first-name basis

and have a close friendship for years.

...to stand strong for all eternity.

ELDORADO HERE IT IS RIGHT!

Men out of the Reichstag!

And men out of the Landtag

And men out of the manor

We'll make it into a women's house

Magnus Hirschfeld also frequents the Eldorado.

He loves observing queer life.

THE EROTIC DRESS-UP IMPULSE

On the queer city map of Berlin,

there is one focal point for progressive thinking:

Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science.

For Ernst Röhm, Magnus Hirschfeld embodies the enemy.

He is Jewish, a social democrat,

and he championed the rights of trans men and trans women.

As such, he is the opposite of the masculine ideology

that Ernst Röhm adheres to.

But both have something in common, they are not openly homosexual.

Magnus Hirschfeld knows that he would lose his reputation as a scientist.

And Ernst Röhm knows that he would be expelled from the Nazi Party.

"Dear Dr. Heimsoth."

"A handshake first of all."

"I can remember a number of same-sex feelings and acts

reaching back to my childhood,

but I have also associated with many women."

"Never, however, to my particular enjoyment."

"All women are loathsome to me."

"I am not at all unhappy about my disposition,

even if it has caused me considerable difficulties at times."

"Internally, I may even be proud of it."

"At least I believe so."

WITH A COMPANIONABLE HANDSHAKE YOURS, ERNST RÖHM

But there is also another reality.

After all, Germany does not only consist of cities,

but a large part of it is towns, villages.

For those, what is happening in Berlin and other major cities is alien.

The also feel intimidated by this rapid change.

We want to school the Germans

insofar as that there is no life without law

and that there is no law without power

and there is no power without strength

and that any strength has to be rooted in our own nation!

He sounded to me like Hitler always sounded when he gave a speech,

like a madman.

The yelling and the things he said.

And of course he talked about the Jews, yes.

It was a horrible thing to listen to.

I didn't concern myself with it any further.

I was an innocent young man.

I had fallen in love, you see.

We had a villa in Sauerbrunn

where we spent our summers.

And someone else who went there on holiday every year was Lumpi.

That's how I met him.

He lived in Budapest and I lived in Vienna.

Lumpi and I became friends.

We did a lot of stuff together.

I loved him. After all, why not?

We were both Jewish.

But we didn't give it much thought.

We were pretty removed from it all, as you'd put it.

But the trouble was in the air.

Not just in Berlin or in Germany, but everywhere in Europe.

The SA recruited its members

mostly among young men from lower class and lower middle-classes.

Because of its relatively low-threshold admission criteria,

it didn't consist of only radical nationalists,

but also of outsiders, eccentrics and quite a number of criminals.

The storm trooper, Karl Ernst, worked in Berlin,

sometimes as a doorman in gay and lesbian nightclubs, sometimes as a bellhop.

To the movement!

There is one man in the Nazi movement

whose dangerousness Ernst Röhm underestimated for a long time.

That is the Reich Leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler.

As a young person, Heinrich Himmler was very interested

in this kind of fraternity-based comradeship

But at the same time he always feared the danger inherent in the possibility

of these manly friendships giving rise to erotic attraction.

At this point in time, Himmler was the leader of the SS, the Schutzstaffel.

To distance himself from the SA, which is widely decried as homosexual,

he plans to forge this SS into an elite organization.

For him, that includes that its members should ideally be blond and blue-eyed.

So he invariably seems to consider external criteria

to be an ostensible proof of "good Aryan blood".

Gottfried von Cramm becomes a star during those years.

After two extremely close games, the German champion tears a muscle,

and from then on cannot really resist Perry.

Gottfried started playing tennis at the age of ten,

and at 13 he decided that he would become the best tennis player in the world.

The moment he gets to Berlin,

he immediately joins this very famous tennis club, "Rot-Weiß".

And one of its members is Hermann Göring,

the eventual Interior Minister of the Nazi government.

Gottfried is a handsome man, a tall man.

He has blue eyes, blond hair.

He embodies the prototype of an Aryan.

And he gets prompted early on to become a member of the Nazi Party.

We know that Gottfried refuses,

and of course over the years that becomes more and more of a problem.

Of course we don't know any details about how the meeting comes about.

But we do know that Gottfried meets a young man,

of a similarly young age as Gottfried.

This young man is called Manasse, Manasse Herbst.

Gottfried and Manasse certainly come from very different worlds.

Manasse comes from a Jewish family in the poor Scheunenviertel.

He's an actor.

But to make ends meet, he works as a bartender at the Jockey,

a small jazz bar a few blocks from the Eldorado.

Maybe there was a moment of recognition.

There exists a genuine threat for homosexual men: Paragraph 175.

The paragraph criminalizes homosexual relations between men.

But it is tricky in its application

since many courts demand proof of coital acts.

And that isn't exactly an easy task for the police.

A lot of the time you didn't know you were on one of them,

because you never ended up being charged.

But we know that the pink lists eventually had thousands of names written on them.

JOSEF § 175

But Gottfried possesses this inner freedom,

that if he falls in love,

he pursues that love.

After their first meeting, Gottfried and Manasse see each other regularly.

Of course, Lisa knows all about it.

There is no being secretive; instead it is all being lived out in the open.

What are you doing?

Come here! Come on!

And the three of them now start a new type of relationship,

which apparently works well, too.

For Lisa, the move to Berlin is also liberating.

She wants to live independently, and experience herself in a new way.

And she very quickly forms friendships

with the modern women that this Berlin has created.

With female authors, with female athletes, with female photographers.

It's important to note, Lisa also does photography herself.

She's an avid jazz dancer, she's an avid equestrian,

she plays hockey and even becomes the German champion.

And this stems from a deeper movement that began even before the 1920s

where you free yourself

from this "being confined by clothes, by houses."

So she has this tough way of speaking and goes her own way.

Relatively quickly, she had affairs, also with lesbian friends.

She was curious, had a sexual thirst for adventure that she lived freely.

The relationship between Gottfried and Lisa

is one that is characterized by this almost endless trust in each other,

that whatever one does, it is okay.

ELECTION CAMPAIGN IN GERMANY

Shortly before they seize power,

the Nazis once again significantly increased their street terror.

There were massive street fights with fatal casualties.

The purpose behind all of this

was to attempt to demonstrate the instability of democracy.

And they presented themselves as the part of law and order

that, after winning the election,

would once again restore security, order and peace.

TAKE TO THE STREETS! ADOLF HITLER

It is not so much fear

that the people associate with the Nazis

but the hope for a reinvigorated Germany

and the promise of a golden future.

Hello, good evening.

WORKER, EVA KATTER, IS KNOWN TO WEAR MEN'S CLOTHING

INSTITUTE FOR SEXUAL SCIENCE MEDICAL CERTIFICATE

A few years later I went to Budapest

to spend my Easter holidays there

and I stayed with Lumpi, in the Andrássy út,

I don't remember the street number, near the opera.