The Eldorado in 1920s Berlin

Discussion 0 posts |  Only members can post. Join?

No topics have been posted yet.

About The Eldorado in 1920s Berlin

This group is meant for pictures taken at the Eldorado bar in the virtual 1920s Berlin Project in the online world called 'Second Life'.
Photos about the original Eldorado are also welcome.

You can visit this simulation by following this link;
slurl.com/secondlife/1920s%20Berlin/236/232/751

The Eldorado, Tanzlokale für Herren, has had a complicated history with at least 5 establishments claiming the name in and around Berlin from 1848 to the present day. But it was a pretty much openly gay and transvestite friendly bar in a time where most people would not have expected such liberal tolerance.

The most famous incarnation was at the corner of Motzstraße and Kalckreuthstraße from 1926 to 1933. Tourist guidebooks of the day suggested a visit to the Eldorado in order to see something to tell the folks back home about.

It is referred to in countless novels and guide books over the years, including those by Christopher Isherwood, well known for writing “Goodbye to Berlin” and the musical and movie;”Cabaret”.
Eldorado became immensely popular and a centre of attraction for homosexuals, transvestites, transsexuals and open-minded people, among whom numerous artists and writers.
In the late 1920s it was considered the most fashionable nightclub in Berlin. The cabaret shows and the refined atmosphere of the nightclub (in which is was difficult to distinguish the boundary between “male” and “female”) became legendary, and were immortalized by artists such as Otto Dix.
Eldorado is even mentioned in the first German-language recording of a song featuring an openly gay love affair in 1929, ‘Am Sonntag will mein Süßer mit mir Segeln geh’n’.

It featured regular performances by the likes of Marlene Dietrich,Paul O’Montis, Claire Waldoff and the Weintraub Syncopators, and was widely known to be a regular venue for transvestites and transexuals.
Customers could buy ‘chips’ to exchange for dances with the ‘performers’ who would then compare to see who got the most tokens and thus was most popular.
Of course it was most fun if a man gave a token to a transvestite thinking it was a woman.

In February of 1933, the Berlin Chief of Police announced a “comprehensive campaign against Berlin’s depraved nightlife” and brought forward the closing time of all “amusements with dancing of the homosexual kind’” to 10 O’clock.
Shortly afterwards Hermann Goering ordered the closure of a raft of premises and the Eldorado was raided and closed down.
The premises was then taken over by the Nazis and used as a local headquarters.

The writers and artists that had made the cabaret shows unique underwent brutal persecution by the regime. Many of them were arrested and deported to the concentration camps.
Others committed suicide in order to escape the torturers, and others took refuge in the United States.

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldorado_(Berlin)