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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.
TRANSVESTITES: 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.
FIRST NAME: JOSEF CRIMINAL CATEGORY: § 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.
During that first visit, we were up to so many shenanigans.
They didn't have a real bathroom.
They had this, what we in Vienna called a "lavor".
His mom would fill it with water
and put us both, naked, into this bathtub, see?
And as Lumpi saw me, he got a boner.
As he saw me naked. I did notice it.
But we didn't touch each other sexually.
But I was always very flustered.
In the early 30s,
Hitler tries to come to power through legal means
by using as much propaganda as possible to get people's votes
and to take over parliament in order to then destroy it from within.
SPD DIVISION BERLIN FRIEDRICHSFELDE
CUPID IN THE BROWN HOUSE
RÖHM APPROVES THE SA PARADE
"THAT MAN SAT ALONE AT THE TABLE" "OF COURSE YOU FELT PROVOKED"
PIGSTY AND SWASTIKA
"Revelations about Hitler's chief mercenary."
"Welt am Sonntag is publishing a letter by Lieutenant Colonel Ret. Röhm…"
THE RÖHMIAN WEDDING
A TREMENDOUS VICTORY HAS BEEN ACHIEVED!
Same sex!
Germans,
fellow members of the German Nation.
On January 30th,
the die has been cast in Germany.
And I do not believe
that the enemies who were laughing back then are still laughing today.
Sieg!
Heil!
-Sieg! -Heil!
On January 30th, 1933, Hitler is appointed chancellor.
REICH CHANCELLOR HITLER!
Hitler becomes the Führer of his totalitarian regime.
The Nazi ideology has no use at all anymore
for determining your life individually.
Instead everything is only ever subject to a higher idea.
Every individual in this national community
has to defer to this higher purpose.
Shortly before the Nazis even seize power, the Eldorado is closed down.
No farewells, no send-off.
And the queer community loses one of its most important ports of call.
And then, to go from bad to worse,
the Eldorado is used as advertising space for the Nazis.
ELDORADO HERE IT IS RIGHT!
VOTE FOR HITLER - LIST 1
In 1933,
the life that Gottfried and Manasse had led also changes drastically.
Manasse very quickly loses all his theater engagements
because as a Jew he is no longer allowed to work in the theater.
He realizes very early on that he is no longer safe in Germany.
Everyone is aware that the situation is quickly escalating.
More and more, the relationship is overshadowed by the question,
how can Manasse safely get out of Germany?
But Gottfried wants to play tennis.
And if that means he has to play tennis in Nazi Germany,
then he will play for Germany.
The pressure is mounting.
He has a romantic relationship with a homosexual Jew.
But at the same time his popularity also grows,
both nationally and internationally.
And maybe he's thinking that as long as he keeps winning,
the regime can't touch him.
And with Cramm's decision to play for Germany, there was no other option.
Magnus Hirschfeld meanwhile is on a tour of the world.
While he can't make public appearances in Germany anymore,
he's still being celebrated internationally.
THE PRETTY MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD, BIGGEST TURNIP PIG OF THE 20TH CENTURY
I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann,
Ernst Glaeser, Erich Kästner.
I consign to the flames the writings of the School of Sigmund Freud…
MY DEAR CHIEF OF STAFF!
At the beginning of 1934,
the SA has reached its highest member count
with approximately 4.5 million members.
It has become something that is increasingly causing Hitler problems.
It seems to Heinrich Himmler that the moment has come
to lead his SS out of the shadow of Ernst Röhm and his SA
and to expand his own position of power.
-Get dressed! -Out!
Two days later Hitler decided
to make Röhm the offer that he should shoot himself.
Only after Röhm refuses to kill himself
is he shot dead by two SS captains.
On June 30th and the following two days,
a total of around 90 people are shot,
around 1,000 people are arrested.
Among them aren't only Ernst Röhm and some of his SA men,
but political opponents and members of parliament.
It is the regime's first state-sanctioned mass murder.
Hitler welcomed the SA murders,
saying that the sexual debauchery inside the SA had recently increased so much
that it supposedly damaged t he reputation of National Socialism.
It was a huge, a huge scandal.
It was on the front page of every newspaper.
I gave the order to shoot
the chief culprits of this treason,
and I gave the order to burn out these ulcers of our internal well poisoning
and the poisoning from foreign countries.
I must have heard it on the radio,
because I have a very clear memory of that moment
that I found out what happened there.
It, it frightened you.
No matter if you were homosexual or not homosexual.
As a human… It could have happened to anyone.
And it showed who Hitler was.
Due to the SS committing the murders of the SA,
Himmler has once again clearly proven his loyalty to Hitler.
And Hitler thanks him by satisfying Himmler's wish
and separating the SS from the SA.
It is now directly under Hitler's command.
Which is what Heinrich Himmler had wanted all along.
This ultimately creates the basis of Himmler's rise and career.
After the Röhm murders,
he bit by bit takes over the leadership of the political police in all German states
until he eventually becomes both chief of the whole of the German police
as well as Reich leader of the SS and Gestapo.
Heinrich Himmler becomes the leader of the fight against homosexuality.
His goal is to eradicate homosexuality.
"Homosexuality tears down any accomplishment
and destroys the state in its very foundation."
"For only the nation that has a great many children
has an entitlement to world power and world domination."
"Homosexuality has to be combated at all costs,
otherwise it will be the end of Germany, the end of the Germanic world."
It is the sword of the revolution
that the only enemy no longer causing damage
is the one who is dead and who is annihilated.
The pink lists previously compiled by the police
now not only fall into the hands of the German police,
but also the hands of the Gestapo.
There is then a wave of persecution and sentencing like never seen before.
…IN RESPECT TO HOMOSEXUALITY…
Many, I think, were also surprised
by how quickly the police stepped in,
how quickly you ended up in court.
They don't yet know how to protect themselves.
They have address books at home
that suddenly turn up as evidence in court.
Denunciations are expressly encouraged.
And the German people deliver.
Neighbors monitor if you get a visitor
and pull the bedroom curtains closed.
Neighbors make statements on women wearing pants and looking lesbian.
So the police are called upon to remove these individuals
that one no longer wants to tolerate within Nazi Germany.
Thus you see between 1933 and 1936,
Manasse tries again and again to find a place where he can keep living,
a place outside Germany.
And they try to meet up, whether it be in Berlin
or in cities where Gottfried plays tennis,
in order to be able to keep seeing each other.
It must have been very, very exhausting and also very oppressive.
They are young lovers after all.
And that easiness suddenly changes to this intense,
"How can I get out of here? How can I get to safety?"
And there is one last meeting.
And for many years, that is the last night they can spend with each other.
Gottfried transfers prize money he won in various tournaments to Manasse,
so that in early 1936 Manasse is able to emigrate to Palestine and be safe.
He also loses Lisa that same year because Lisa files for divorce.
We know from her later letters that she often regretted this step,
but is also convinced
that she couldn't exist
alongside this huge love that Gottfried has for tennis.
She says that if she had continued to live this life with him,
she would have had to give up everything important to her.
Because there was barely room for her anymore.
One of the biggest tennis matches in Gottfried von Cramm's career
is the 1937 Davis Cup at Wimbledon
against his American opponent, Donald Budge.
At this time, Gottfried is one of the most popular athletes in the world.
The Nazi regime expects their tennis player,
the German player, to win.
There are 15,000 spectators, Queen Mary herself
and part of the global public watching.
There had never been anything quite like it.
And to this day,
this match is remembered as one of the greatest games of tennis of all time.
There is an anecdote by Donald Budge
that Gottfried had a call shortly before the match,
supposedly from Hitler,
threatening him that if he did not win this game,
they could no longer protect him.
A match unfolds where it looks for the most part
as if Gottfried would be the winner.
At the very end, in the fifth set,
he ends up losing eight to six
and does what he has also become famous for,
he honors the victor.
That delighted the audience.
And everyone understood that this tennis player,
while he might play for Nazi Germany, is not identical with Nazi Germany.
Which then poses the question:
does that still serve the regime?
After the defeat, Gottfried goes on a tour of the world
where he rushes from one tennis tournament to the next.
At a press conference,
he is asked what he thinks about the persecution of Jews in Germany.
And he clearly states that he does not agree with it.
So he makes no bones about his distaste for National Socialism,
which means he puts himself in more and more danger.
ONE PEOPLE, ONE REICH, ONE FÜHRER!
FREE GERMAN AUSTRIA GREETS YOU!
ONE PEOPLE, ONE REICH, ONE FÜHRER!
The Austrians became Nazis overnight.
He had 400,000 people at Heldenplatz
cheering for him.
As Führer and Chancellor of the German Nations of the Reich,
I now declare before German history,
the accession of my homeland to the German Reich!
Heil! Heil!
JEWRY IS GANGSTERISM
When you went out into the street,
the whole city was full of these posters: "Jews banned."
There were posters everywhere you looked.
NON-ARYAN SHOP HERZMANSKYARYAN AGAIN
But I still went out into the street.
I really was just wandering the city.
Suddenly I see a crowd of people.
And there's my Aunt Gretel on her knees,
made to clean the pavement with a toothbrush.
JEW
The day after Hitler came here, this letter comes in a blue envelope.
"Dear Walter,
Since you visited me, everything has become so dreadful in Budapest."
"You wouldn't recognize it anymore."
"I also hear dreadful things out of Vienna."
"How are you? Are you safe?"
"My parents have to give up the business, even though we converted."
"They're trying to get us out of the country."
"But we have no family or close friends."
"Except you."
"The Nazis are ever-present everywhere and I am very scared."
"Can you help us somehow?"
"What will you do?"
"If you go,
please take me with you and write to me quickly."
"Your Lumpi."
It was a desperate letter.
But I didn't answer the letter because I…
At the time the letter arrived,
we were already in a very, very precarious situation in Vienna.
And then, that night,
they came into our apartment at two in the morning
and took my father
and sent him to Dachau.
It was terrible. How could I have helped him?
Yes…
That was the end of Lumpi for me.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe,
who has sanctified us with His good deeds,
and commanded us to light a candle for the Sabbath.
During the nights of the 9th and 10th of November, 1938,
the Pogrom takes place in the entire Reich.
It was long called the Night of Broken Glass,
downplaying its severity.
During those nights, synagogues burn all over Germany.
Jewish stores as well as homes
are looted, robbed and destroyed.
Many, many Jews are arrested, and sent to concentration camps.
It's a cold March
when Gottfried returns from his six-month world tour.
And on the first evening back,
he sits down with his mother and his brothers for supper.
There was a dinner in Brüggen, where everyone came together.
And then suddenly, like knock, knock, knock on heaven's door.
Grandma went out and returned all pale, saying,
"Gottfried, they're asking for you."
It was two Gestapo officers, they immediately took him with them.
And so he was in prison.
The arrest was really theatrically staged.
They could just have written a letter telling him to come to the police station.
But I think the Nazi regime pretty deliberately chose
to do this very publicly.
On May 14th, 1938,
Gottfried is sentenced to one year in prison for violation of Paragraph 175.
The basis for that is his five-year relationship with Manasse Herbst.
"We had to consider the aggravating factor
that the accused engaged in homosexual activity
so quickly after his wedding."
"But most egregious was that the accused,
with his standing in German sports
with his world-renowned name and his overall position,
didn't shy away from engaging
in homosexual intercourse with a Galician Jew."
It's lucky that Manasse had already left Germany at that time.
Or he would not have survived that.
From the beginning,
concentration camps were an instrument of Nazi terror.
Prisoners marked as homosexual
faced particular cruelty
and rarely experienced solidarity from other prisoner groups.
BADGES FOR PRISONERS IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS
Homosexuals have to wear a pink triangle.
EMIGRANTS, BIBLE SCHOLARS, HOMOSEXUALS
They are forced to do hard labor under the harshest, most terrible conditions.
The rations are disastrous,
so that many, many of the prisoners
die from the unspeakable conditions of imprisonment.
Some of them are abused in medical trials,
not all of them survive.
There's also the option to get castrated
with the offer or the promise
that you get to leave the concentration camp afterwards.
However, we know from various documents
that a lot of them were not released despite that.
Many prisoners who were accused of homosexuality,
often based on denunciations,
don't survive imprisonment in the camps.
Their prosecution reaches its peak between 1937 and 1939,
immediately before Hitler starts his war against Europe.
In 1941, Hitler puts Heinrich Himmler in charge
of the so-called "final solution of the Jewish question."
That means Heinrich Himmler is tasked
with the order to exterminate German and European Jews.
I searched for Lumpi all my life.
I wanted to know where he was, what had happened to him.
Only now have I seen this pictures.
And only now has it all come out.
He was in a labor camp and starved to death.
It was terrible to me that he died like that.
Not only… The only thing you can say is that he didn't deserve that.
MARTYRS OF WAR
Terrible.
And what do I see?
This, this large stone, the photograph of this large stone that says,
"Fülöp Loránt", 24 years old or maybe 25.
FÜLÖP LÓRÁNT 25 YEARS
In Vienna you say that there's a lot to verkiefeln.
It's something you can never accept if you can't verkiefeln something.
Yeah.
I'm glad that if Lumpi is remembered by history,
I did my very small part in that.
Not knowing what happened to a loved one
is unfortunately very common for many Jewish victims.
For many of them we learn only much later or sometimes never at all
where they were murdered.
Homosexual survivors want to, but can't share their stories.
It's too dangerous.
After 1945,
the state-sponsored persecution of homosexuals
is not recognized as an injustice.
West Germany adopts the Nazi Paragraph 175.
Society considers homosexuals to be criminals and perverts.
Families remain silent, historians don't ask questions.
The persecution continues.
CRIMINAL CASE AGAINST GOTTFRIED VON CRAMM
In 1951, Gottfried tries, incidentally like many other homosexuals as well,
to have the conviction according to Paragraph 175
deleted from his record.
Without an expungement,
he can't receive a visa to be able
to participate in tennis tournaments in the US, Great Britain or France.
There is a trial
for which Manasse Herbst also returns to Germany
for the first time in 1951.
That means he returns to the country that had wanted to kill him.
And it is the first reunion between Gottfried and Manasse.
Lisa is also questioned.
She confirms the relationship between Manasse and Gottfried.
For one moment, they fearlessly rebuild
on the freedom that they lived in the late 20s.
And all that in the extremely conservative 50s in a German court.
DECLINED AN EARLY EXPUNGEMENT
Like for other convicted homosexuals,
Gottfried's expungement is denied.
He can't get a visa for the most important tennis tournaments.
He does win other tournaments in countries where he's admitted,
but the really important ones he can't play in,
exactly because he has a previous criminal conviction under Nazi Paragraph 175.
I emigrated to the US
and have lived here since 1939, happily.
I became a composer and have spent my whole life composing.
ELDORADO HERE IT IS RIGHT!
PANTRY AT THE ELDORADO
I think the queer life in Berlin
had to completely reinvent itself.
And that has worked out pretty well
when you look at how queer life in Berlin is really thriving
and how multifaceted and diverse it has become.
But drawing on something?
I don't think we could draw on anything.
For a long time,
we didn't even know anything about the persecution of homosexuals.
And in that sense, today's queer Berlin…
certainly isn't a…
a continuation in any shape or form of the 1920s.
That really was lost.
No names. No memory. Nothing.