Today Berlin is seen as one of the world’s most queer-friendly cities — and that was also true roughly a century ago, before the National Socialists took power in the early 1930s.
During the 1920s, in Germany’s Weimar Republic, Berlin became a haven for queer nightlife and one of the world’s leading centers for early LGBTQ+ research, activism and community building, helping shape modern ideas about sexuality and gender.
Paragraph 175, introduced in 1871 and enforced with varying intensity from 1872 through 1945, criminalized sexual acts between men. Its existence spurred pushback from activists, doctors and writers and gave rise to one of Europe’s earliest visible gay rights movements. East Germany struck the law from the books in 1968; West Germany reformed it in the late 1960s and early 1970s and finally abolished it in 1994.
A central figure in the early movement was Magnus Hirschfeld, a physician and sex researcher who argued that sexual orientation and gender identity were natural variations rather than moral failings or crimes. In 1897 he founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in Berlin, often considered the world’s first organization dedicated to defending gay rights and challenging Paragraph 175. In 1919 Hirschfeld opened the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, combining research, education and patient care. The institute became internationally known for its progressive work on sexuality, gender expression and what we now understand as transgender identity; it offered counseling, kept extensive archives and questioned rigid male–female binaries.
In that atmosphere many artists and performers felt comfortable being open about non-heterosexual identities. Berlin hosted numerous clubs, publications and meeting places for gay, lesbian and gender-nonconforming people, despite legal risks and persistent prejudice. Birgit Bosold, long-term board member at Berlin’s Schwules Museum, has described Weimar-era Berlin as among the most liberal cities of its time.
Schöneberg, like today, was a meeting place for artists and creatives. The cafe Dorian Gray on Bülowstrasse was a notable lesbian social venue, alternating mixed evenings for women and men, hosting live music, costume balls and readings before the Nazis closed it. One of the most famous queer nightclubs was Eldorado, opened in 1924 in Charlottenburg and later moving locations. Eldorado offered drag performances and a closed-door social freedom that drew artists and writers; Otto Dix depicted its scenes, Marlene Dietrich reportedly performed there, and British author Christopher Isherwood drew on Berlin’s bohemian, queer life for his The Berlin Stories.
The Nazi rise to power ended Weimar-era tolerance. Hirschfeld’s institute was raided on May 6, 1933; its library and archives were looted and many books and documents were burned during the Nazi book burnings on May 10, 1933. The Nazis tightened legislation and arrested gay men: at least 50,000 sentences under Paragraph 175 were handed down, and an estimated 5,000–15,000 of those men were sent to concentration camps.
While Nazi persecution violently interrupted Berlin’s vibrant queer life, the city later experienced a gradual renaissance and has become again a major center of queer culture. Today visitors can see a commemorative plaque at the former site of Hirschfeld’s institute, and neighborhoods like Schöneberg and areas around Nollendorfplatz remain important landmarks in Berlin’s ongoing queer history. Edited: Cristina Burack