The English portrait artist Glyn Warren Philpot (1884–1937) visited Berlin in 1931. His encounter with that city’s homosexual underworld had a profound spiritual and emotional effect, influencing his adoption of a new style that owed much to international modernism (including the art of George Grosz and Otto Dix). In Berlin Philpot met a young man, Karl Heinz Muller, who was likely his lover and also served as his model for several paintings, including his St Sebastian (1932), a common subject of homosexual eroticism, which was never exhibited during Philpot’s lifetime. The first London exhibit of Philpot’s new work was greeted with overt hostility. The scandal led to a period of acute financial hardship, which undoubtedly contributed to the artist’s early death at fifty-three. Tragically, Philpot did not live long enough to see what he regarded as his most ambitious work accepted or approved. His reputation as a portraitist never faltered, though his later pictures remain controversial.24
Not only opportunistic or closeted homosexuals were drawn by the spectacles of cross-dressing, same-sex nightclubs, and male prostitution. As so many have suggested, Weimar Berlin attracted curiosity seekers and voyeurs, including the steadfastly heterosexual. If Berlin’s reputation was spread largely by word of mouth, a few published sources mentioned the city’s alternative charms. One rather unconventional guidebook claimed that “the Cook’s Travel Agency takes tourists to these locales as if to a cabinet of curiosities, because this state of affairs [transvestitism] is considered one of the sights of Berlin.”25 The Eldorado was Berlin’s most famous transvestite bar and was the one visited most often by slumming straights. As a young man, the author Wolfgang Cordan (1909–1966) worked as a Berlin journalist and described how “the bar differed in no way from the nicer harems of the upper class. Elegant entrance and cloakroom, thank you very much: no tie, no admission, dancing upstairs. Also the blond women in the gold lame dresses. Only they wore wigs and had artificial breasts.” Located in the West End at Nollendorfplatz, the bar became a popular tourist destination for foreign visitors (due in part to Cook’s, no doubt), displaying proudly the autographed photos of dignitaries, including celebrities such as the boxer Jack Dempsey, or film stars Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, and, not surprisingly, Marlene Dietrich.26
One of Oxford’s “bright young things,” David Herbert (1908–1995), a close friend of Paul and Jane Bowles and younger brother of the earl of Pembroke, moved to Berlin in 1927 to enjoy the city’s cultural attractions: “The theatre was the best in the world; modern and imaginative, it was far in advance of its counterparts in other capitals.” He explained further, “Even after London, which in 1927 had seemed gay enough, life in Berlin was an orgy of fun.” The restaurants, bars, and nightclubs, according to Herbert, catered to every conceivable whimsy or taste, upscale, sordid, squalid, and sexual. When relatives visited to assist Herbert’s cousin Sidney, hospitalized in Berlin for an operation, the family made an outing to the Eldorado. “My Uncle Geordie was so innocent,” Herbert explained, “that he did not realize what was happening all round him, and was deeply shocked at finding a male organ beneath the chiffon dress of the ‘girl’ sitting on his knee.”27
The American novelist Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), who lived in Europe in the 1920s, sent the namesake character from his novel Dodsworth (published in 1929) on a Berlin pub crawl. Escorted by hosts, American businessman Sam Dodsworth visits an unnamed transvestite bar: “Here was a mass of delicate young men with the voices of Chorus girls, dancing together and whispering in corners, young men with scarves of violet and rose, wearing bracelets and heavy symbolic rings. And there was girl in lavender chiffon—only from the set of her shoulders Sam was sure that she was a man.”28 French film director Jean Renoir (1894–1979) was a frequent visitor to Berlin during the interwar period and commented on the city’s most salient attractions: “[T]he fashionable entertainments in Berlin between the wars were boxing and homosexualism. Sodom and Gomorrah were reborn there. I cannot resist describing an evening at the Grosses Balhaus [sic] on the Alexanderplatz…. It was huge hall packed with a dense crowd of male and female dancers, but on looking a second time one realized that the ‘females’ were males in ‘drag.’ What was disconcerting was their air of respectability.” According to Renoir, the city manifested every extreme. “Berlin was the fertile climate in which the best and the worst flourished. The best was the work of painters such as [Bauhaus member] Paul Klee, plays such as those of Bertolt Brecht, films like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari…. The worst was prostitution, both female and male, which extended even to members of the strict Prussian bourgeoisie.”29
When Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) first visited Berlin in September 1930, he made the acquaintance of the occultist and drug guru Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), who, according to some accounts, introduced Huxley to mescaline right there in the German capital. Huxley also undertook the requisite tour of the city’s famed homosexual haunts, including an unnamed same-sex dance hall. According to his friend Robert Nichols, Huxley admitted later that he had “danced with one of the male prostitutes rather than hurt the fellow’s feelings.” Nichols had asked Huxley how his party had responded to the importuning young men who approached their table. According to Nichols, Huxley explained, “ ‘I was just a little tipsy when I did it. But I can assure you my dear Bob, a couple of times around that hall and I was sobriety itself. Horror is a wonderful disintoxicant.’ ”30 And no doubt the overture of a genuine rent boy conferred an aura of authenticity on Huxley’s Berlin experience.
Who were the young men and boys who sold themselves for sex, and why was Berlin such a magnet? Of course, we know that male prostitution had developed almost symbiotically with the city’s homosexual milieu. As a traditional garrison town, Berlin had earned a reputation for so-called “soldier” prostitution, mentioned in published sources as early as the late eighteenth century. The most prominent gay cruising sites—the Tiergarten Park, Unter den Linden, and the Passage—were frequented by prostitutes and had been established long before 1900. Berlin’s population of male prostitutes ballooned after the First World War, fueled by economic instability and the chaotic demobilization of millions of German soldiers in the weeks following the armistice on November 11, 1918. In September 1921 an internal memo of the Ministry of Public Welfare considered the growth of Berlin’s homosexual community and claimed that “the number of male youth, often pre-adolescents, who sell their sexual services is now estimated at 50,000 for greater Berlin.”31 (This estimate was certainly exaggerated, and a more credible figure of 22,000 was adduced a few years later by the Institute for Sexual Science.)32 In response, the Prussian minister for public welfare recommended in January 1922 that a general statement about the dangers of male prostitution be issued to public school teachers (at all levels), as well as to the members of the schools’ parents’ advisory committees, and finally to the staff of juvenile detention homes. The official also recommended establishing a counseling center at the Charité Hospital.33
These somewhat feckless recommendations, even where implemented, had little impact, especially in response to the economic hardship that drove both men and women to pursue sex work. The Great Inflation and later the world economic crash of 1929 conspired to increase the number of boys and young men (in addition to women and girls) who were willing—or compelled—to sell themselves. The ubiquity of male prostitution sustained a public discussion—one that had begun well before the First World War—prompting the Institute for Sexual Science to sponsor a sociological study that was begun in 1926. The study was based on detailed interviews of several hundred male prostitutes and was undertaken by one of Hirschfeld’s young colleagues, Richard Linsert (1899–1933). As an active member of the Communist Party, Linsert had joined the institute in 1923. He also worked closely with the Scientific Humanitarian Committee and was elected to its board of directors in 1926. Linsert’s methodology was fairly primitive, and he identified his subjects randomly, approaching them in public spaces, often the Tiergarten or th
e Passage, though also in bars and clubs. The study was never completed, but Linsert published an essay in 1929 that synthesized some of its findings.34 While the data was presumed lost when the Nazis destroyed the institute in 1933, a typewritten manuscript of one hundred completed questionnaires that Linsert compiled from his estimated three hundred interviews was recently discovered and is now archived by the Magnus Hirschfeld Society in Berlin.35
Linsert’s questionnaire consisted of thirty questions addressing biography; sexual orientation; “business” details about work venues, “fees,” and sexual practices; clashes with police and arrest records; and, finally, personal life, including lovers or spouses. In most cases, Linsert completed the questionnaires himself after conducting lengthy interviews. His descriptions were sometimes unprofessional, including comments about hygiene or dirty underwear, which revealed a lascivious interest if not an actual sexual encounter. In at least one case, Linsert admits to sleeping with his interview subject, Willi M., whom he described as a twenty-five-year-old auto mechanic with a “gripping appearance” and an “intellectual superiority” as both “proletarian and a Kulturmensch.” Linsert first met Willi M. around 9 p.m. on June 30, 1926, promenading in the Tiergarten Park between the Schiller and Goethe statues. “Sitting on a bench we had lively conversation about social and sexual problems,” Linsert tells us, and “Willi M. was very interested in Berlin’s homosexual life.” Linsert eventually took the young man back to his apartment. Though clearly a prostitute, Willi M. never demanded money from Linsert, nor did Linsert offer to pay him after their tryst, since he feared giving offense. This was their only sexual encounter, moreover, even though Linsert pursued the relationship. The two had brief interactions on several occasions during lectures and other events at the institute, but Willi M. politely deflected Linsert’s overtures, and eventually told the would-be sexologist that their initial encounter “was not the right thing.” “I mention this case, which deeply upset me,” Linsert wrote, “because it demonstrates how a crazy economic and social order can drive a highly competitive and gifted individual to the brink of prostitution…. I bitterly regret my sexual indiscretion on that humid summer evening, because it forfeited the friendship of a worthwhile human being.”36
The ages of those interviewed by Linsert ranged from fourteen to thirty-one, though only ten were under eighteen. The vast majority came directly from Berlin or Brandenburg, seven were from the Rhineland, and four were from southwestern Germany. All were native German speakers, though the three from Silesia also spoke Polish. The overwhelming majority had trained in blue-collar vocations or were unskilled. All but a few were working class with limited education. Not one from the group had attended Gymnasium, the elite German secondary education that qualified one for university study. However, the group included eleven sales personnel or other office employees, two actors, two secondary school students, one dancer, one photographer, and one soldier. Some thirty-five of the hundred described themselves as homosexual, twenty-six as bisexual, and thirty-two as heterosexual. Certainly the language is Linsert’s, not his subjects’, though the labels do correspond to sexual practices and experience. Only one interviewee had ever had a female client, and Linsert described him as bisexual. For those Linsert deemed heterosexual, for example, “non-professional” sexual contact appears to have been exclusively female. There was also a strong correspondence between a subject’s presumed orientation and the specific sexual acts engaged in for pay.
The “rates” demanded and received varied tremendously, ranging from as little as fifty pfennig to ten marks and more. (It appears that Isherwood and Auden were quite generous indeed, paying ten marks for a single encounter.) A number of Linsert’s respondents, primarily those with girlfriends or female lovers, limited their sexual services to mutual masturbation. However, a majority engaged in most homosexual practices, including oral and anal penetration. Those claiming the greatest remuneration included an “athletic boxer,” Hugo G., and Karl W., a competitive swimmer who hoped to represent Germany in international competitions; both reported receiving ten marks or more per sexual act.37 Others with similarly high earnings included Rudolf L., Albert K., B. Sche., M. P., Karl E., and F. K., whom Linsert described as very good-looking or manicured and well dressed.38
Another significant factor in the “price” differentials was the location or venue of solicitation. One of Berlin’s particularities was the relatively diffuse character of the homosexual scene, whose bars and clubs were scattered throughout the city. In turn male hustlers plied their trade in most sections of Berlin’s vast geography. Linsert counted no fewer than twenty-four separate locations where his interview partners reported picking up johns. He also claimed that through the course of his study he had become aware of some ninety additional sites where one might encounter a male prostitute. These included specific streets and squares in east, west, north, and south Berlin, as well as other outdoor and public venues, such as parks, train stations, and bathrooms. There were also bars or cafés in most sections of the city that catered to male prostitutes and their clients.39
The best-paid male prostitutes worked exclusively in west Berlin, where better-heeled patrons, the so-called Kavaliere (“cavaliers,” or wealthy johns), sought same-sex assignations. These locales were based in the theater and cinema district, which reached from west Berlin’s “boulevard of millionaires,” the Kurfürstendamm, to Nollendorfplatz. This area expanded dramatically during the Weimar period, and was sometimes described as Berlin’s “Broadway.”40 Tauentzienstraße, which extended east from the “Ku’damm,” connecting Wittenbergplatz with Nollendorfplatz, was also counted among the more elite cruising areas. The most refined west Berlin bars for male prostitutes included the Kurfürsten Lounge, the Kurfürsten Kasino, the Nürnberger Lounge, the Schloßkonditorei Bellevue, and the Internationale Lounge.
According to a travelogue by French journalist Ambroise Got, the west Berlin bars screened and selected both the male prostitutes and the patrons who were allowed to enter. “Led by a sure guide,” Got begins, “I discover the Kleist-Kasino, in the street of the same name, not far from the Kurfürsten Damm.” Got’s account was seconded by Linsert’s better-paid subjects, who also favored the Kleist Kasino. “No luminous advertising, no loud sign draws it to the attention of the passer-by,” Got tells us. “It is an ordinary establishment…that is not distinguishable from clubs with women or Likörstuben, the bars that abound in this neighborhood.” Got continues,
It is eleven thirty at night. We enter: the narrow, long room is divided by woodwork, both open and sculpted, into three compartments that have deep recesses like alcoves furnished with circular leather couches…. Sheltered by propitious screens placed in abundance at the entrance to the recesses, uni-sexual couples entwine in silence. In the middle of the room, the buffet, leaning against the wall, is besieged by a group of ephebes, sitting high on their stools. They sip cocktails or Swedish punch, looking at one another tenderly; all their moves are studied and nonchalant, their poses, feminine…. Establishments haunted by inverts are as plentiful on the east side of Berlin as in the west end and the homosexual scourge wreaks its damage at every level of the population.41
The process of introducing hustler and john for a “commercial” transaction is of particular interest in Got’s account:
Next to us, there is a fat man with a ruddy face…. He is consulting a booklet that the waiter has brought him by request. On the cover in big calligraphed letters are written the French words ‘Je t’aime.’ Sneaking a peek I can distinguish a list of names with all sorts of indications. So the fat man, his look sharpened, calls the waiter back, and dictates to him in spotty German—he is Dutch—seemingly fragmentary sentences…. The waiter shamelessly and conscientiously plays his role as a go-between and leaves after having noted everything mentally.42
The Kleist Kasino, like other west Berlin locales, both profited from and “managed” its patrons’ sexual liaisons. And unlike the proletarian central
and east Berlin bars, the West End venues actively supported solicitation and screened both the prostitutes and clients who entered their establishments. It becomes clear, moreover, that they did so with police connivance.
The 1926 novel by John Henry Mackay, Der Puppenjunge (The Hustler), widely noted for its realistic description of Berlin’s male prostitution, gave a similar account. The protagonist, a sixteen-year-old from the provinces named Gunther, is befriended by an older and more seasoned male prostitute, who rescues the inexperienced boy from the somewhat tawdry Passage and introduces him to a wealthier class of sexual patrons in the West End. With a better suit of clothing and the introduction provided by his new friend, Gunther is able to find more remunerative “employment.” He is also advised to avoid public cruising areas such as the Tiergarten Park or public restrooms, or the shabby bars of east Berlin. After Gunther loses the support of his older friend—who acted as his pimp—the underage boy is no longer allowed into the West End bars. Now Gunther is forced to return to the Passage, and to the Adonis-Diele, one of the proletarian locales in the east.43
Wolfgang Cordan offers a revealing description of the Adonis-Diele, located on Alte Jakobstraße: “One must never go too early. Otherwise nothing is going on and one is conspicuous. But also never too late, during the most hectic time. Accordingly I went at 10 o’clock.” Inside the smoke-filled “den of iniquity,” Cordan claims, turned out to be a typical Berlin Bierlokal. “On the right was the bar with its beer taps, and behind it a mirrored wall and colorful liquor bottles.” Unlike the Eldorado, Cordan tells us, “there were no photos with expensive autographs. The barkeep was fat and amiable.” The back of the establishment, Cordan continues, contained a number of niches with tables and was divided from the front by a screen of hanging artificial flowers. Since the “boys” were only allowed in the back when invited, and it was still too early, they all clustered in the front around the bar. After Cordan and his companion pushed their way past the gaggle of prostitutes, they took their places at a table. The only other customers at this point were four middle-aged men drinking beer and playing skat. “These lower-middle class Berliners with wrinkles of fat, bald heads, and bellies—are they also johns?” Cordan questioned. No, indeed not, as it turned out. They were simply neighborhood shop owners who continued to patronize their old Stammlokal, even after the pub had undergone its own peculiar transformation. Known for their tolerant civic attitude, the locals clearly took this sort of thing in stride and were able to coexist with the ambient prostitution.44
Gay Berlin Page 26