17 Reasons Why Germany’s Weimar Republic Was a Party-Lovers Paradise

2. Prostitution was deregulated and tens of thousands of women sold their bodies during the heady days of the Weimar Republic

The end of the First World War left many Germans financially ruined. Many flocked to the big cities in order to try and make a living. From 1920 onwards, the size of Berlin grew by a factor of 13. Almost overnight, it became a teeming metropolis and a party place for the relative few who could afford it. Of course, there was a darker side to the decadence. Lots of those who moved to Berlin and other big cities in search of work struggled to find it. Inevitably, many women felt they had no choice but to sell their bodies in order to survive. Prostitution boomed.

Towards the end of the war, the German government had moved to legalize prostitution. Since many soldiers had been returning to the front after a few days’ leave in the city suffering the effects of sexually transmitted diseases, the authorities set up legal and approved brothels. What’s more, soldiers were even given coupons to use in these establishments in the hope that they would at least remain disease-free. Once the war was over, huge numbers of young men moved back to the big cities. Many of them were frustrated and traumatized, and most no longer saw anything wrong with using the services of a prostitute.

In Berlin, many prostitutes worked on the streets. Moreover, as the famous journalist Hans Ostwald remarked at the time, “most dance halls are nothing but markets for prostitution.” Many of the dancing girls in the cabaret bars and dance halls could be taken home – or just into a back room – for the right price. Of course, once the effects of the Wall Street Crash hit the Weimar Republic, the ‘right price’ plummeted almost overnight. The newspapers of the time reported that street prostitutes ended up turning tricks in exchange for food rather than worthless paper money. There were even instances of ‘mother and daughter teams’ working together in order to survive. Almost overnight, prostitution once again became seedy and disreputable.

3. Prostitution was like a candy shop – whatever you wanted, you could find it on the streets of Berlin and in the city’s cabaret bars

Nobody can say for sure how many women turned to prostitution during the days of the Weimar Republic. What is almost certain is that the majority of them, and not just in Berlin, were women in their 20s or 30s who had been made widows as a result of the First World War and so were desperate to make some money any way they could. However, these were by no means the only ladies on offer to men happy to pay for sex. Indeed, the history books show that, when it came to prostitution in Weimar Germany, almost anything went.

A whole new vocabulary emerged in 1920s Berlin, for example, with specialist words and terms for different girls and different sexual services. A man might want to enjoy the company of a ‘half-silk’, for instance, that is a woman who worked in an office or shop by day and then sold her body on occasional weekends or evenings. Then there were the nuttes, boyish teenage girls who often turned tricks after school, or even munzis, heavily-pregnant ladies who would wait for clients under lampposts on the street. There was even a market for so-called gravelstones, women who didn’t fit the accepted definition of beauty. A man could pay for a woman missing limbs, with severe burns or with any other deformity. Again, thanks to the Great War, there was no shortage of gravelstones for men who got their kicks this way to choose from.

For the more discerning ‘gentleman’, there was a variety of high-class hookers to choose from, almost all of them working out of clubs or hotels rather than making a living on the streets. So-called Fohses (the French word for vagina) would advertise their services in newspapers and magazines, while ‘half-beavers’ were ladies of good breeding who worked in high-class brothels during the afternoon or early evenings, but never late at night. But it was in the dance halls and cabaret venues where things were really crazy. In some establishments, if you booked an expensive table for an evening, a table-lady would be included in the price. Almost always the most beautiful girls – and, invariably, they were also chosen for their cultured demeanor as well as their looks – in the venue, these would be yours for the whole evening.

4. Desperate men also turned to prostitution, and Berlin even became a tourism hotspot for Europe’s homosexual gentlemen

After the end of the war, young men flocked to Berlin in their thousands. Most of them were desperate to find work and, when they couldn’t get a job in a factory or on a building site, they found work in the city’s booming prostitution scene. According to some social historians, many men had enjoyed homosexual experiences in the trenches during the First World War and, their curiosity well and truly piqued, were keen to enjoy their new freedom as much as possible. Combined with the general air of liberty and open-mindedness in Berlin from 1920 onwards, this meant that homosexuality became increasingly tolerated – including the presence of male prostitutes on the streets of the capital.

It wasn’t just Great War veterans who were turning tricks in Berlin, as well as in Hamburg. One contemporary writer noted: “Every high school boy wanted to earn some money and in the dimly lit bars, one might see government officials and men of the world of finance tenderly courting drunken sailors without any shame.” As well as selling themselves on the streets, male prostitutes would advertise their services in specialist newspapers and journals. According to one study, as many as 30 homosexual publications could be found on a typical Berlin kiosk at the height of the Weimar Republic. These magazines might also feature adverts for private detectives – many gay men were victims of attempted blackmail and there was a huge market for detectives capable of finding out who might be behind such a scam.

The booming male prostitution industry meant that Berlin became a magnet for sex tourists. Men from across Europe, above all from Britain and Scandinavia, as well as from Russia, flocked to the German capital to enjoy the company of other men – and they were happy to pay for the privilege. Some American men also traveled to Berlin and indulged in the city’s many vices. The American architect Philip Johnson – widely regarded as one of the country’s finest ever architectural minds – admitted to using male prostitutes and praised the openness of Berlin during the Weimar years.

5. Androgyny was all the rage as young people defined the gender norms and enjoyed shocking older conservatives through their dress and behavior

In the dance halls and cabaret clubs of Weimar Germany, some of the most popular acts were male and female impersonators. Cross-dressing was huge as people of all ages and from all social backgrounds made the most of their newfound freedom and experimented with their fashion and sexuality. Indeed, at almost every party you might expect to find women dressed in top hats and tails or men in cocktail dresses, as well as intersex individuals known as hermaphrodites.

Cross-dressing was legal in Berlin during the Weimar years. But that didn’t mean all sections of society accepted it. As such, it was largely restricted to clubs, bars and other private venues. However, it was hardly a secret phenomenon. In respectable magazines and newspapers, adverts specifically aimed at the cross-dressing community were regularly on display, promising everything from plus-size elegant gowns to wigs and other accessories. What’s more, cross-dressing prostitutes were also all the rage, and many were well-known celebrities on the cabaret circuit and charged huge amounts for their company.

Almost from the very start of the Weimar Republic, cross-dressing went from being seen as an unhealthy perversion to something to be understood and even celebrated. In 1919, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld opened the Institute for Sexual Science, a truly revolutionary organization. He not only offered to counsel to both female and male crossdressers but carried out pioneering research into this area of human sexuality. Moreover, Dr. Hirschfeld offered hormone treatments, helping, for instance, men become more feminine or women more masculine. He also pioneered some of the earliest gender reassignment surgeries.

The Institute for Sexual Science helped make German society more tolerant of cross-dressers. It issued ‘transvestite passes’, to be shown to the police to prove that a person was not perverted or a deviant. This meant that crossdressers and intersex performers could work and walk the streets without fear of harassment – though, of course, the reality was not everyone in Berlin was so progressive and understanding as Dr. Hirschfeld and his colleagues.

6. Cabaret wasn’t all fun and decadence – as the shockingly dark, satirical Ballad of the Dead Soldier showed

The people of the Weimar Republic liked to have a good time. Indeed, for many people, the decadent parties, drugs and sex served as a way of not thinking about the darker side of life, and in particular about the horrors of the First World War. But that doesn’t mean that all entertainment was completely frivolous. There was a deeper side to cabaret, with performers mixing silliness and eroticism with darker messages about German society and politics.

In 1920s Berlin, no subject was off-limits. Both on the stage and in the audience of the biggest dance and cabaret halls, politicians were routinely criticized and ridiculed. When Adolf Hitler emerged onto the political scene, he was routinely mocked. But he wasn’t the only one. The left-wing political titan Friedrich Ebert was also subjected to widespread ridicule, though mostly for his weight than for his beliefs and policies. By the mid-1920s, most of the comedians performing on Berlin’s stages included at least some satire or political observations in their material, it wasn’t all about having a good time!

Most famously of all, Bertolt Brecht, arguably Germany’s most celebrated man of letters of the time, scandalized Berlin society by reminding the city’s partygoers of the grimness of recent history. In January of 1922, Brecht performed his Ballad of the Dead Soldier in a popular nightspot. It was a tale set in the First World War. In it, the German Army, running low on manpower, decides to dig up the body of a dead soldier. They load the deceased young man’s body with schnapps and cover it with incense to mask the smell and then send him back to the front to fight and die all over again. In a city that tolerated drugs and even child prostitution, this was an outrage too far. Brecht would only perform the work for six nights before ditching it completely.

7. The men of Weimar were wild – but the women often wilder. And Anita Berber might well have been the craziest of them all

Weimar-era Berlin had more than its fair share of crazy characters. But arguably the craziest of them all was a petite, young woman. Anita Berber was, for many, the epitome of 1920s style. What’s more, she also epitomized the liberal and experimental nature of the Weimar Republic. To her fans, Berber was a pioneer. To her detractors, however, she was presented as evidence that Germany had lost its moral compass in the years following the First World War, and her death at the age of just 29 was presented as proof that the nation needed to clean up its act.

Born in Leipzig in 1899, Berber was raised by her grandmother. While her parents may not have been around much, since her father was a top violinist and her mother an occasional actress, the young Anita did at least inherit a love of show business from them. As a result, she moved to Berlin at the age of 16, determined to make it as a cabaret dancer. For a couple of years, she danced in cabaret shows, slowly making a name for herself. And then, when the war ended, and the Weimar Republic was founded, she really exploded onto the scene. By the end of 1918, she was also dancing in movies too, much to the delight of her growing army of fans.

It wasn’t just her dress sense that made Berber so shocking – though her short bobbed hair, often painted red, and androgynous style certainly outraged many conservative Berliners. Rather, it was her habit of dancing completely nude or her determination not to hide her bisexuality. Berber had torrid affairs with artists and actors, both male and female. What’s more, she was a raging alcoholic and rampant drug user. According to the legend, she started each day with a breakfast of chloroform and ether and then would steadily progress to cocaine, morphine and heroin.

Even though she managed to clean up, ditching alcohol altogether by 1928, a few months later she was dead from severe tuberculosis. Weimar Germany had lost its ultimate icon, even if there were plenty of other women determined to take her place. Thanks to her movies, as well as the fact she was the muse and model for some of the era’s leading artists, including Otto Dix, she remains the poster child of the time, a ground-breaking hedonist who to this day continues to divide opinion.

8. Marlene Dietrich made a name for herself as an icon of the Weimar era before she headed to Hollywood and global fame

Before she became a Hollywood superstar in the 1930s, Marlene Dietrich made a name for herself as an actress and socialite during the heady days of Weimar-era Berlin. As an extrovert and as bisexual, she thrived in the liberal atmosphere of 1920s Berlin. Indeed, one newspaper dubbed Dietrich “perhaps the busiest and most passionate bisexual in theatrical Berlin” – quite an accolade given the competition. Her exploits made her as infamous as she was famous, and soon she became almost as well known for her colorful private life as she was for her movie career.

Dietrich had just turned 20 when she started making a name for herself in Berlin. Like many future stars, she started out as a chorus girl, progressing to bit-parts in cabaret shows and then movies. Though she married fellow actor Rudolf Sieber in 1923, even having a daughter with him, this didn’t slow her down. In fact, Sieber was well aware of her nature and she was open about the numerous affairs she conducted with both men and women.

Even for Weimar Berlin, Dietrich’s behavior was often seen as shocking, especially her love of women. Klaus Kinski, one of Germany’s biggest-ever movie stars, recalled in his biography how Dietrich’s passionate affair with actress Edith Edwards was particularly scandalous. In his autobiography, Kinski writes breathlessly: “Marlene tore down Edith’s panties backstage in a Berlin theater and, using just her mouth, brought Edith to orgasm.” Such behavior certainly didn’t hinder her career. In 1929, Dietrich landed the lead role in Lola Lola and then starred in The Blue Angel. This brought her to the attention of Hollywood and, within a year, she had moved to the United States, where she soon became a genuine A-lister.

9. Child prostitutes could easily be found in 1920s Berlin – so long as you knew where to look and what codewords to use

As we’ve seen, Weimar Germany was a hotbed of sex, much of it of the paid-for variety. Both adult men and women sold their bodies in the streets and clubs of Berlin. But child prostitutes were also bought and sold here. In fact, there was a booming and well-regulated industry, with pimps happy to cater to almost any taste. Quite simply, if you knew where to go – and, just as importantly, what to ask for – the chances are, you could get it, no questions asked.

In downtown Berlin, some pharmacists peddled a side trade in child prostitutes. These boys and girls were prescribed as ‘medicine’. If you knew where to go, you simply told the chemist you wanted some ‘medicine’. You would also tell him how long you had been ill for. This was all part of a not-so-elaborate ruse; if you said you had been ill for 13 years, then the pimp knew you wanted a 13-year-old girl. Similarly, if you requested red pills, he would try and procure a redhead for you. In most cases, the pharmacist would know exactly where to take a prospective client and would deliver him to the appropriate club or apartment.

At the same time, young prostitutes could also be ordered like a takeaway pizza. Pimps would place advertisements in newspapers and magazines. If you knew what you were looking for, the code was simple enough to crack. Then all you needed to do was phone the number given and a ‘telephone girl’, that is a child between the ages of 12-to-17 would be delivered right to your home or hotel room. Such ‘telephone girls’ (almost always advertised as virgins, with their physical attributes hinted at through references to female movie stars) were often the most expensive prostitutes in all of Weimar Germany, with only rich businessmen or film stars able to afford their niche services.

10. It wasn’t all about the Kit Kat Club. In fact, Berlin alone had 900 nightclubs, many of them were hotspots of jazz, drugs and sex

For many, the Kit Kat Club was the epicenter of Weimar-era Berlin. The club is arguably the city’s leading entertainment venue and was made famous by Liza Minnelli in the hit musical Cabaret. But the Kit Kat Club was far from the only place Berliners could let their hair down. In fact, the records show that, by 1930, some 899 venues with a dancing license were registered in the German capital. Many of these were just as decadent as the world-famous Kit Kat Club, if not more so.

The Moka Efti nightclub, for example, was one of the crazier places in town. Now made famous again thanks to the massively popular Babylon Berlin books, as well as the TV series of the same name, the venue was completely over-the-top: it had its own barbershop, pastry shop and billiard hall, while there was also a room full of typists ready to take dictation for businessmen or journalists needing to take a break from their party to do some work. While there was no members-only brothel on-site, it’s believed that the Moka Efti was still a hotbed of prostitution, with many of the beautiful dancing girls – and boys – happy to go home with a client for the right price.

Other infamous Berlin venues of the time included the Haus Vaterland, a known hangout of gangsters as well as prostitutes, drug addicts and bohemians. Haus Vaterland was known as a “palace of pleasure”, with the interiors modeled on everything from ancient Egypt to Moorish Spain via the Orient Express. Clients would spend whole days there, sometimes even two or three days. Of course, there were plenty of ways they could keep awake – as well as the cocaine and other drugs, legend has it that the Haus Vaterland was selling up to 25,000 cups of coffee on a single day!

11. Soaring demand meant that the illegal pornography industry boomed during the Weimar years – with celebrity lookalikes especially popular

Along with drug use and prostitution, pornography also enjoyed a golden age during the years of the Weimar Republic. Making full use of the latest photographic technology, both amateur and professional porn producers struggled to keep up with the insatiable demand of the Berlin public. Much of this was produced by seemingly respectable photographers. By day, they would take family portraits, but by night they would switch their focus to making adult images. Similarly, the booming movie industry of the 1920s was also complicit. Directors and cameramen would often have a nice sideline making some of the first porn films after-hours in the big studios.

Of course, the quality of such pornography varied considerably. Some of it was obviously amateur, but some of it was slick and professionally done, with an eye on the aesthetics not just the erotic. The cheapest images could be purchased under-the-counter at most street new kiosks (strictly speaking, indecent images were still illegal) though for the more discerning viewer, more expensive images could be purchased, if you knew where to look, of course. Above all, pornography featuring models who bore a striking resemblance to the biggest movie stars of the day, such as Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo, were in high demand. Such models could charge a premium for their services and producers would charge a small fortune peddling the finished product out of cabaret clubs.

However, pornography wasn’t just about sex. In many cases, it was used as a satirical tool, too. There was a healthy market for nude or suggestive pictures of models who looked like Kaiser Wilhelm II or certain leading politicians. While the authorities would often turn a blind eye to most porn, even images featuring underage models, pressure from their bosses meant that the police would often come down hard on producers who dared to associate the former monarch or the country’s political elite with such adult material.

12. The public loved to read all about a good homicide case, especially if the victim was young and pretty

Berlin in the 1920s wasn’t just a city of decadence – it was a city of violence, too. With crime gangs battling for control of the booming trade in drugs and prostitutes, murder was all too common. But gangster killings weren’t the type that really excited the Berlin public. Instead, the people of Weimar Germany developed a fascination for so-called lustmord, that is lust-fueled murders, ideally of pretty young women by spurned lovers.

If there had been a murder, especially a lustmord, then newspaper sales were guaranteed to soar. Not only would a report of such a crime include all the grisly details, it would also feature gruesome crime scene photographs and any other potentially titillating information, especially if it related to the sexual life of the victim. Far from fair and neutral, the press coverage of murders of young women was sensationalist and often downright misogynistic. So, when it emerged that a serial killer was at large in the west German city of Dusseldorf, the public were gripped.

The so-called Dusseldorf Monster (also known as the Vampire of Dusseldorf), committed a string of sexual assaults and murders in the city between February and November of 1929. People couldn’t get enough of the case. Newspapers devoted entire sections to the crimes, focusing on the sexual aspect of the attacks. Fictional accounts of the murders appeared on book-stands and these too sold like crazy. And then, when Peter Kurten was arrested, convicted and executed for the Dusseldorf murders in 1930, a movie version of the whole affair was in the cinemas within a matter of weeks. Needless to say, it was a box office smash.

Such a fascination with lust-fueled murder was also evident in the literature and art of Weimar Germany. Pulp fiction was big business, with most books featuring young, sexualized female victims. Similarly, the paintings of Otto Dix and George Grosz, two of the biggest artists of the Weimar era, often featured mutilated female bodies. Some modern scholars now see the art of the era as profoundly misogynistic, getting a kick out of sexual murders almost celebrating violence against women.

13. Behind all the decadence was organized crime, and almost all the major gangs of Berlin had the police on their payroll

Many Berliners may well have been having a good time in the 1920s, but there was a darker side to the city during the Weimar period. The German capital was a hotbed of organized crime. Above all, the so-called Ringvereine (or ‘Ring clubs) ruled the roost. While these criminal gangs had existed since the end of the 19^th century, they flourished in the inter-war years, cashing in on the excesses of the Weimar period, especially through their control of drugs, prostitution and illegal pornography.

Historians believed that as many as 60 Ringvereine operated in Berlin alone during the 1920s. These were largely made up of First World War veterans, as well as petty criminals and former convicts. However, the gangs also had a significant number of corrupt policemen on their payrolls. This insider help meant that they were often left to go about their illicit business unmolested. Indeed, it was only really when the Nazis came to power and wanted to take control of every aspect of German society that the authorities started clamping down on organized crime in Berlin – up until that point, so long as the drugs kept coming, the pornography kept being made available and the backhanders were still being paid, little attention was paid to the city’s gangsters.

According to the local folklore, the Ringvereine honored a strict criminal code. While they operated protection rackets and fought to control the lucrative drugs trade, they never used violence against ‘civilians’, only against fellow gangsters. To keep the public onside, these criminal gangs also presented themselves as Robin Hood-type outlaws. They always made sure to give a portion of their ill-gotten gains to poor mothers and children. The Sass Brothers were local legends in this regard. Throughout the 1920s, they robbed banks, keeping most of the loot for themselves but also making a point of stuffing stolen banknotes through the letterboxes of homes in working-class neighborhoods. The Saas Brothers’ criminal racket came to a shuddering halt under the Nazis and the pair ended up being killed in a concentration camp in 1940.

14. Berlin’s decadence became a tourist attraction and the city even promoted itself as a den of vice

Berlin’s decadent nightlife was hardly a secret at the time. In fact, the city authorities were proud of the fact that their city was one of the most liberal, tolerant and indeed decadent places in the whole world. They embraced the reputation Berlin started to get at the beginning of the 1920s and, as the decade progressed, the scandalous underground scene became increasingly mainstream, with a major tourism industry growing up around it.

Alongside the official Berlin tourist board advertisements, a large number of guidebooks offering visitors an insight into the racier parts of the city were published during the Weimar period. One of the most popular was Curt Moreck’s Guide Through Depraved Berlin. As the title suggests, this guidebook shunned the usual palaces and parks and instead pointed the curious visitor in the direction of homosexual bars like the Topp, transvestite cabarets and places they could pick up a girl (or boy) for the night. Similarly, Ruth Margarete Rolling wrote a popular guidebook to lesbian Berlin, advising readers that there was something for everyone in the city: “Here, each can find their own happiness, for they make a point of satisfying every taste,” she said.

Even traditional guidebooks couldn’t help mentioning the seedier side of the city. And while some warned visitors to stay away from the many ‘dens of sin’, this would often have quite the opposite effect. By the mid-1920s, many were already complaining that the Berlin scene was over. Curious tourists were filling the tables of the main cabaret clubs, much to the annoyance of local artists and writers. Nevertheless, a true underground scene remained and thrived right until the start of the Nazi dictatorship.

15. The good times weren’t just for the rich; poor people also had their own bars where they tried to forget the trauma of the Great War

The popular image of the Weimar Republic is of well-dressed men and women drinking champagne and taking drugs in lush cabaret bars. And this is largely accurate. However, not everyone could afford champagne or cocaine. Nor would Berlin’s most infamous bars or dance halls let just anyone through the doors – often, clients would need either a full wallet or some useful connections in order to gain entry to the Kit Kat Club, for example. But that doesn’t mean that poorer Berliners couldn’t have fun, too. Quite the opposite, in fact. During the Weimar period, the German capital was full of bars and parties for all social classes, including the lowest.

Working-class hangouts were to be found right throughout the city. For a homosexual man, a bar close to an army barracks offered the best chance of a memorable night. Among these, the Mother Cat was the most famous – and infamous. Here, beer cost just a few cents a glass and off-duty soldiers mingled with manual laborers and bohemians keen to enjoy a different side to the city. In some, soldiers would sell their bodies for extra cash. In others, homosexual dalliances took place without any payment. Of course, when the authorities learned about what their soldiers were up to, they quickly shut down such offensive establishments. Within a few days, however, a new bar had opened up, with word of mouth or coded newspaper advertisements alerting the gay men of Berlin to its location.

It wasn’t just barred for homosexual men that were segregated along social lines. There were also lesbian bars to suit every social class, too. Some venues were largely the preserve of upper-class ladies and their friends. The Dorian Grey, for example, was notoriously hard to get into, as was the Eldorado. However, as with the men, women in the know knew where to go to find a working-class girl or perhaps a shop-girl or office girl looking to make a bit of extra money.

16. Berlin’s party people carried on drinking and dancing as the Nazis came to power, and some even supported the evil new regime

The Berlin cabaret scene of the Weimar period is widely credited with being a staunch opponent of the Nazi movement. And rightly so. From the very start, the stars of the stage would mock the Nazi brownshirts who roamed the streets of Berlin through the 1920s. Big-name acts would also routinely laugh at Adolf Hitler, poking fun at everything from his mustache and hair through to his mannerisms. But in many cases, the mocking was just that, a form of entertainment. Even when it became clear that the Nazis were no laughing matter, in Berlin, the party continued.

As some more recent histories of the Weimar Republic have shown, for all their mocking, Berlin’s clubs and dance halls continued to cash in even as the mood darkened in Germany. Many of the biggest stars carried on performing even as their Jewish colleagues started to leave the country in fear of their lives. Solidarity with Jewish musicians and artists was relatively rare. Indeed, even when it became clear to most people what a Nazi regime meant for Jews and other minorities, the clubs and bars of Berlin were as full as ever, as their guests partied, drank and took drugs like it was 1921 all over again.

Notably, for a short period, the Berlin club scene even fell into bed with the Nazis. In February of 1934, Moka Efti, regarded as one of the ultimate icons of the Weimar era, hosted a special party to celebrate the first anniversary of the Nazi party coming to power. According to the records, after a lavish banquet, the compere led the club’s guests in toasting Hitler, with “three Sieg heil for Germany’s Fuhrer and savior.” Similarly, over at the Eldorado, for many years one of Berlin’s main gay and lesbian venues, the owner closed the venue and handed the premises over to the Nazi SA. The once-infamous venue became the headquarters of the brownshirts in Berlin.

17. The decadence of the Weimar Republic would never be tolerated by the Nazis, and so the good times quickly came to an end

Even if some club owners tried to get on the right side of the Nazi regime from the mid-1920s onwards, the decadent, liberal lifestyle of the Weimar Republic would always be at odds with the authoritarianism of National Socialist ideology. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the writing was on the wall, not just for the Berlin nightlife but for many of its star performers and biggest fans. After all, a scene which celebrated homosexuality and where many of the biggest producers and stars were Jewish could never be allowed to continue under Hitler.

In fact, the end of the cabaret scene began before Hitler was named Chancellor. His predecessor Franz von Papen was a staunch Catholic. In the summer of 1932, he instructed the police to clamp down on all “amusements with dancing of a homosexual nature.” This meant that many of Berlin’s famous clubs and bars were subject to a strict curfew. Most were forced to close their doors by 10 pm at the latest. Soon after, same-sex couples were banned from dancing in public. This was only the beginning, however.

Within a matter of weeks of the Nazis coming to power, Hermann Goering was busying himself interfering in the private lives of German citizens. In February of 1933, dozens of Berlin venues were forcibly closed down. At the same time, gay men and transvestites were arrested and thrown into prison, often on trumped-up charges. Many more were subject to harassment and beatings in the street. The days of tolerance were well and truly over, and Germany was plunged into more than a decade of harsh and bloody authoritarian rule where even the slightest act of subversion might be punishable by death.

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