ELDORADO

Milestone in our LGBTQ+ history.

Club in Berlin 1920’s

All those associated with and frequented the ELDORADO

Ludwig Konjetschni The owner

Hier ist's Richtig

Eldorado was a gay cabaret in that along with gay, lesbian, and bisexual patrons, a heterosexual-identifying audience (artists, authors, celebrities, tourists) would have been present as well. "Cross-dressing" was tolerated on the premises, though for the most part legally prohibited and/or sharply regulated in public (and to an extent in private) at the time. This exception to everyday life attracted not only male patrons who wished to dress in the "clothing of the opposite sex", and their admirers, but also to no small extent women who wished to do the same, and their admirers. Wealthy lookers-on were encouraged to come and drink and watch as so-called "Zechenmacher"

Berlin’s 400 or so bars were divided in tourist guidebooks according to a strict taxonomy of desire. Flush heterosexuals might choose the Kakadu, with Polynesian-style décor and caged parrots hanging over each table; when patrons wished to leave, they could tap their glasses and the bird would squawk loudly for the check. Gay men would descend on the Karls-Lounge, where the waiters and “Line Boys” all wore neat sailor’s outfits. Lesbians liked Mali and Ingel, where guests were obliged to dance with the randy owners, or the Café Olala, where some customers liked to dress in Salvation Army outfits. Male cross-dressers went to the Silhouette, female cross-dressers to the Mikado, and everyone the entire sexual spectrum over blurred at the Eldorado, where one dancer, when quizzed by a slumming grand dame as to gender, replied in a haughty voice:

“I am whatever sex you wish me to be, Madame.”

In December 1932, the local police chief Kurt Melcher ordered a closure of all the "homosexual dance pleasures” which forced closure on more than a dozen clubs.[2] A few weeks later the Nazis were in power.Ernst Röhm was a regular at the club prior to the closure. Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933, and shortly after the Nazis seized the club space at Motzstraße 15 to use it as the Sturmabteilung (SA) headquarters By May 1933, Berlin's Institute for Sexual Science (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) was also raided by the Nazis.
The club was written about in the German nonfiction book, Ein Führer durch das lasterhafte Berlin: Das deutsche Babylon 1931 (English: A Guide Through Licentious Berlin: The German Babylon 1931), authored by Curt Moreck (pseudonym for Konrad Haemmerling).
Two of the fiction novels by Christopher Isherwood are partially set at the Eldorado;
Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935; U.S. edition titled The Last of Mr Norris)
Goodbye to Berlin (1939)

Homosexual Action West Berlin

W. H. Auden
Marlene Dietrich
Otto Dix
Ernst Fritsch
Magnus Hirschfeld
Christopher Isherwood
Egon Erwin Kisch
Erika Julia Hedwig Gründgens - Hugh - Auden
Klaus Heinrich Thomas Mann
Ruth Margarete Roelling
Ernst Röhm
Rudolf Sieber
Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt von Cramm
Manasse Herbst
Christian Schad

The first Berlin radio station that featured gay content, Eldoradio [de] (1985–1991) was named after the nightclub

ELDORADO

Holocaust Sources in Context

Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany

Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate
2023 film

Babylon Berlin