#41 Uncensored: A Berlin City Tour of Sex and Freedom

00:00:05: The first modern queer identities were coined.

00:00:08: Queer people have always existed.

00:00:10: It's not an invention of a decadent modern times.

00:00:14: Vibrant, queer and sexually liberated life

00:00:17: in Berlin.

00:00:32: Hi and welcome to Sex in Berlin.

00:00:35: I am Nika.

00:00:36: I'm a cultural journalist and pleasure enthusiast.

00:00:39: And your host for today's episode brought to our collaboration with the Berliners.

00:00:45: Your guide to Berlin's cultural politics and sex-positive scene.

00:00:49: And the whole thing is now available as a book.

00:00:52: Sex and Berlin Guide to Love with lots of pictures, helpful tips and exciting texts.

00:00:58: Today I have the pleasure of welcoming Jeff Mannes to our studio.

00:01:03: He is a social scientist, a sex educator, freelancer, freelance author and a tour guide.

00:01:10: And I was so happy last Friday I could attend a tour of him.

00:01:14: and I can say it was really magical.

00:01:18: He offers some rather unconventional city tours under the name Berlin Guide.

00:01:24: I took part in his tour.

00:01:25: Berlin Uncensored, a history of sex and freedom.

00:01:29: Dear Jeff, I'm delighted to have you in this little pink studio with us today, so welcome.

00:01:35: Thank you for having me.

00:01:36: How did it come that you're professionally involved with sexuality and social freedom?

00:01:42: And then you created tours.

00:01:44: So how did it happen?

00:01:45: Well, I started very early to be interested in human sexualities and sexual science.

00:01:51: And I had with Sixteen.

00:01:53: I had my coming out as a gay man.

00:01:55: And then immediately I started to be very interested.

00:01:58: I wanted to understand why do humans have the sexuality that they do.

00:02:03: So I already came across the name Magnus Hirschfeld very, very early when I was about seventeen or so.

00:02:10: Magnus Hirschfeld is a person also that's very important to my touristy, founder of modern sexual science in Berlin.

00:02:16: And yeah, my eagerness to understand sexuality also grew a lot over the following years.

00:02:23: And then eventually I moved to Berlin.

00:02:26: I got a job offer in Berlin and then I fell in love with the city because it's often referred to as the world's most sexual city sometimes by a lot of people that come here and love to Berlin exactly for that reason.

00:02:39: And that's also exactly why I love Berlin.

00:02:41: I was able to see so many different sexualities.

00:02:47: gender and sexual identities, also kings and fetishes in Berlin's club scene, for example, that it really fueled my fascination with sexuality and also my writing around sexuality.

00:02:57: I mean, I've been living already for a few years in Berlin.

00:03:00: at that point, and when friends were visiting me in Berlin, I was already bringing them around the city a lot.

00:03:07: And I thought, well, why not actually do this into a business, into a tour business of film, actually?

00:03:14: telling people about the history of sexuality in Berlin and also about the sex life in Berlin today.

00:03:20: When you started to be interested in sexuality, where did you grew up and what kind of like free sexuality was around your home place?

00:03:29: So I grew up in Luxembourg, a very small country in between Germany, France and Belgium.

00:03:34: I've

00:03:34: heard of.

00:03:35: Yeah, yeah, I always say it because I'm always, my tour, of course, a lot of people who are not from Europe and they might not know Luxembourg so well.

00:03:44: Luxembourg is a very small country, so everybody knows.

00:03:46: Everybody, of course, that's already something.

00:03:48: that's not so, let's say, not so good for a very visible, open, diverse sex life as we have it here in Berlin, where people can be a little bit more anonymous in the city.

00:04:00: And also, I mean, we... do have sex ed in Luxembourg and it's probably also better now than what it was when I was young.

00:04:10: But when I was young, for example, and I had sex ed in school, we were basically just learning the basics on how to prevent HIV and how to prevent pregnancy.

00:04:19: Remember one thing that we learned in school that today, of course, is complete rubbish when I look back at it.

00:04:25: But we were, for example, learning also back then in school that men are naturally polygamors and women are naturally monogamous because men want to spread basically the semen and women want to have somebody who provides.

00:04:40: and that was of course later when I started also to go study sexuality I also realized it was of course complete rubbish but it gives a picture of what sexuality was actually like in Luxembourg.

00:04:52: or sexual learning about sexuality was also like in Luxembourg back then.

00:04:56: it just didn't exist a lot and But I wanted to understand.

00:05:00: I wanted to learn, of course, a lot at that time.

00:05:02: I was very, very eager to learn sexuality.

00:05:06: And that's also why, I guess, one of the reasons also why I eventually studied sociology, because, I mean, sexual science is difficult to find still today.

00:05:16: Even Berlin doesn't have a master in sexual science.

00:05:20: And I wanted to go more into the sociological, psychological perspective of it.

00:05:25: I didn't want to explain so much about what's happening chemically or biologically, I wanted to understand why do people have the sexuality that they have?

00:05:33: What does, what role does our socialization play, for example, in it?

00:05:37: And yeah, and that's, that grew then, that grew then over the years into what I'm doing now.

00:05:42: Yeah.

00:05:43: So what are the main learnings you had over the years?

00:05:46: So one of the main learnings that I'm also giving on my tours, for example, is that there was a very, very big and early sexual liberation movement, including queer liberation movement in Berlin, in Europe, especially in Berlin, around the beginning of the twentieth century, especially in the nineteen twenties.

00:06:10: we had the world's first queer emancipation liberation movement long before Stonewall for example.

00:06:16: A lot of people think today that the queer liberation movement started with Stonewall and there is some truth to that in that the prides as we know them today started with Stonewall but the actual The groundwork for that was actually late already in the mid of the nineteenth century, but then especially in the nineteen twenties here in Berlin, when you had the world's first institute of sexual science at.

00:06:41: that institute was also the world's first organization for queer rights, was located at that institute in Berlin and in Germany.

00:06:52: The first modern queer identities were coined.

00:06:56: As in the world's, for example, in... In the mid of the nineteenth century in Germany you had Karl Heinrich Ulrichs that was living, was a lawyer living in Germany, born in Germany.

00:07:08: And he was often referred to by Volkma Siegers, a very famous sexual scientist in recent history of being the world's first gay man.

00:07:18: And that was because he was the first one to link homosexuality to an identity before the word homosexuality even existed.

00:07:24: Like the word homosexuality was coined in eighteen sixty nine.

00:07:28: and Carl Heinrich Ulrich was mostly active in the eighteen fifties, eight and sixties.

00:07:33: So before him it was seen as something that you do, not something that you are.

00:07:37: It wasn't an act, not an identity.

00:07:39: So, for example, the song Born This Way by Lady Gaga would make no sense at all in those times, since people just didn't see it as something that you were born as.

00:07:47: And he was the first one to change this, to say, no, this is not just something that I do, this is part of who I am, this is part of my identity, but that he led to Cornerstone for the modern, queer identity movement that we have today, because without the shift away from from an act towards an identity, there would also not be the feeling of a shared identity in a community and therefore also another political movement that they can build out on the other community.

00:08:10: that then also indeed then happened later.

00:08:14: starting already a little bit by the end of the nineteenth century but then especially in the nineteen twenties in Berlin when you had a vibrant queer and sexually liberated life in Berlin.

00:08:25: Not only queer but also in generally sexually liberated.

00:08:28: You had a very strong feminist movement, a very strong women's liberation movement also in the nineteen twenties that of course also contributed to the sexual liberty.

00:08:37: and you had the sexual science institute, the world's first institute of sexual science was founded in Berlin in nineteen ninety... And it was not just only an institute about science, but it was also an institute that wanted to connect the fight for sexual liberation with science.

00:08:54: It was founded by Magnus Hirschfeldt and a Jewish doctor, and he believed like his main motto was through science to justice.

00:09:04: He really believed in connecting science with the fight for sexually marginalized communities.

00:09:10: there are still like these kind of scientists in Berlin today.

00:09:14: so like are there people doing good work for this kind of topic still?

00:09:19: I mean we do have that although we do not have a institute of sexual science in that sense anymore we do have.

00:09:27: there are some Some classes, for example, at the Charité around sexuality, all those are more from a medical point of view.

00:09:33: You do also have, for example, Professor Andreas Krasse was somebody who's also studying a bit the history of sexuality at the University of Berlin.

00:09:43: But you don't really have an institute of sexual science in that sense anymore, like you had in the nineties.

00:09:50: But of course, you do have a lot of... movements for sexual liberation, for sexual exploration in Berlin, for sexual expression in Berlin also.

00:10:01: Today it's a bit more connected to the club culture, in parts to the club culture in Berlin, which sounds in the beginning maybe a little bit like it's all about just having fun and dancing, which... itself is not a problem of course also.

00:10:14: but it's more than that because club culture in Berlin today is very political.

00:10:19: club culture comes out.

00:10:20: club culture in Berlin today was built up by marginalized communities including queer communities.

00:10:25: so of course club culture in Berlin today is very very political and the sexuality that is so much connected with the club culture in Berlin today and for which Berlin is also so famous for today is also then by itself very very political yes.

00:10:39: Jeff let's go back to Magnus Hirschfeld.

00:10:41: so here with this very interesting institute.

00:10:44: Can you tell us a little bit more about the work of Markus Hirschfeldt and also what changed?

00:10:50: when the Nazis

00:10:51: came.

00:10:51: So Magnus Hirschfeldt was a Jewish doctor who moved to Berlin in eighteen ninety six and at that time he was already very much shaped by first of all the the process against Oscar Wilde who was punished for his homosexuality.

00:11:08: That was the first thing that shaped him very very much and the other thing was he was a doctor as I said and he was at the time also treating one of his patients for depression.

00:11:17: and that patient committed suicide the day before his wedding because he was gay and his wedding was basically trying to fit into the social norms.

00:11:27: but he realized that he just couldn't and he committed suicide.

00:11:30: and in his last letter he also wrote to Magna Seersfeld and I hope you can fight for the rights of people like me in the future so that one day we can live more freely and that really shaped him.

00:11:45: Magnus Erschwald was of course also gay but he then in a year later after he moved to Berlin in eighteen ninety-seven he then co-founded the scientific humanitarian committee the world's first organization for the rights of queer people and the main goal of that organization at the time was to abolish paragraph one hundred seventy-five which was criminalizing male homosexuality in Germany back then.

00:12:09: And they tried to do this via many different ways.

00:12:14: For example, they asked their members to lie, have leaflets lying around in train stations, in cafes, in bars, for example, that were then educating people about homosexuality.

00:12:26: Herschwald was also, for example, co-producing the movie Different from the Others, which was the world's first gay movie.

00:12:34: He was also educating about homosexuality.

00:12:37: And Hirschfeldt was.

00:12:39: the main way that he tried to abolish the paragraph, however, was via petitions that they had many inferential people sign.

00:12:44: For example, there are names like Albert Einstein's name, for example, on that list.

00:12:49: They also succeeded eventually to the Weimar Republic, the government at the time, to abolish the paragraph, however, then the Nazis, of course, also came into power and the paragraph was never abolished.

00:13:04: But, of course, there's also much more that happened before.

00:13:05: Before I come to the Nazi times, there's, of course, much more than just this organization that he founded.

00:13:09: As I already said, he founded, in nineteen nineteen, he founded the world's first institute for sexual science.

00:13:15: And that institute became really world-renowned globally.

00:13:19: There were people from all over the world who came to Berlin to go to that institute because it really made Berlin the center of sexual science in the world back then.

00:13:28: The only center, of course, was because there was just this one institute in the world back then.

00:13:34: But it really, it really led to, like for example, there were doctors could go to the institute to get free education about sexuality.

00:13:40: There were international conferences happening at the institute.

00:13:45: For example, the countries changed their laws around sexuality based on what was taught at those conferences.

00:13:50: So it was generally a very, very influential institute.

00:13:54: There were a lot of trans people who came to Berlin from all over the world to undergo gender affirmation surgery.

00:14:00: This was the time where some of the world's first gender formation surgeries were performed here in Berlin in the nineteen twenties.

00:14:07: There was a sex museum at the institute where for example you had masturbation machines that were developed for women that were exhibited for example at that institute.

00:14:18: So overall it was really a very very influential and globally very renowned place and that really made Magnus Hirschfeld very very famous.

00:14:28: far over the borders of Berlin.

00:14:30: And that of course also was then destroyed basically by the Nazis.

00:14:34: The Nazis came then into power or were given the power in nineteen thirty-three and then everything was destroyed.

00:14:41: The Institute was one of the very first places that the Nazis attacked.

00:14:44: First of all, Hirschwald was Jewish.

00:14:45: That played already a major role.

00:14:47: The fact that he was gay also, but to a very different degree.

00:14:51: There were at least in the beginning also quite a few gay Nazis, but even if there were gay Nazis, they still had a very strong idea about ideal masculinity and Hirschfeldt, what he did and how he... his research was definitely not how they perceived ideal masculinity.

00:15:07: They started very early to do propaganda against Hirschfeld and in nineteen thirty-three when they then had the power the institute was also one of the very first places that they attacked.

00:15:18: Luckily Hirschfeld was traveling the world back then so he also never returned to save his life.

00:15:22: but the Nazis then started to destroy the institute.

00:15:25: They took all the books, all the papers, everything out of the institute and brought it then to the Bibelsplatz or the place of the opera as it was called back them, and they were then publicly burning his books.

00:15:36: Most people know about the Nazi book burnings, but what many people don't know is that a lot of the books that were burned there came directly from the Institute of Sexual Science, and everything was destroyed.

00:15:46: Hirschwald was able to only save a little part from the Nazis, from all his works that he did.

00:15:55: And when all that was destroyed, of course, because there was just this one institute, There was nothing left.

00:16:00: The whole, not only the sexual science movement was destroyed, but also the World's First Korean participation movement was completely eradicated then.

00:16:09: And that's why a lot of queer people still today... don't know their own history because it was all destroyed by the Nazis.

00:16:17: Now there's a society, they try to collect the remaining things from Hirschfeld.

00:16:23: What is the name?

00:16:24: Yeah, there's the Magnus Hirschfeld Gesellschaft, Magnus Hirschfeld Society, and they have an archive with those things that were then found again from the times around Hirschfeld.

00:16:35: And there's, of course, some of those things that were then found in the trash container in Canada.

00:16:43: But even though I said that the Nazis destroyed everything, that's also not one in a percent true, they destroyed a lot, but they were also smart enough that they could sell a lot of the things, make money basically with all the things that they took away from the institute.

00:16:57: Jeff, you said in the beginning that it's important for you to know history and to know queer history also.

00:17:04: please explain this a little bit more.

00:17:07: So how important is it to know like also queer people like in foreign times?

00:17:13: or see yourself or us in a kind of linear way and not only in a heterosexual world?

00:17:21: we were used to live for two thousand years and we know that it's not true.

00:17:25: So how important is it to know the history for a queer person?

00:17:31: I think for a very good example is the discussions that we have today around trans people and around non-binary people.

00:17:39: A lot of people think today that this is all a new trend, like now.

00:17:43: suddenly people are

00:17:45: changing the gender like they want.

00:17:47: I read an article and someone said, yeah, they want to change their gender every day and to mix their names like they feel on a Monday or on a Tuesday.

00:17:57: So is it a new thing?

00:17:58: I

00:17:59: believe those beliefs are direct results.

00:18:02: of the Nazis destroying the Institute of Sexual Science.

00:18:06: We've been at this point of discussion already a hundred years ago in Berlin.

00:18:12: with different words.

00:18:12: We didn't have the words non-binary at the time.

00:18:15: We didn't have the words trans as we use it today at the time.

00:18:19: We had different words.

00:18:20: For example, we had the words transvestite.

00:18:22: Transvestite was a term coined by Magnus Hilschfeld as an umbrella term for what we today would then call trans people, drag queens, drag kings, non-binary people, etc.

00:18:33: Hilschfeld also coined the term sexual intermediary, which was also an umbrella term for anything that's outside the cisgender heterosexual norm.

00:18:45: So there were already words there and the debate that we had in Berlin in the nineteen twenties sometimes reminds me a lot of the debate that we have today.

00:18:55: And I believe that if the Nazis had not destroyed this history so it was completely forgotten we would talk very very differently globally today.

00:19:06: around trans people, among non-binary people, and around queer people in general, because people would realize, oh, this has actually been something that it's not a new trend, it's not now that suddenly people want to change their gender quote-unquote all the time, but this is actually something trans people have existed already always in human history.

00:19:24: Non-binary people have existed already always in human history.

00:19:29: Queer people have always existed.

00:19:30: It's not an invention of a quote-unquote decadent modern times, but it has always been here in human history.

00:19:39: And how important is it for you personally to know that there were queer people like hundreds of years ago?

00:19:46: When I was in school and had history and history classes in school in Luxembourg, we were for example also talking around the so-called Night of the Long Knives.

00:19:56: The Night of the Long Knives was when Hitler decided to have his close friend Ernst Röhm killed.

00:20:02: Ernst Röhm was the, as I said, a close friend of Adolf Hitler.

00:20:06: He was chief of the SA, or the Sturmabteilung, the Stormtroopers, a very, very important Nazi organization, a very, very big, brutal organization, and very, it was a really key organization in the Nazi rise to power, very, very important.

00:20:21: And he was pretty much openly gay, Ernst Röhm.

00:20:26: and when his homosexuality was then one of the reasons that Hitler and the Nazis used to have him murdered.

00:20:34: But back then, when we were learning about the Night of the Long Knives, his homosexuality was not mentioned at all, even though it was such an important, crucial moment in the history of Nazi Germany.

00:20:49: And of course, people might not think, okay, but that's a gay Nazi.

00:20:52: That's maybe not something that somebody that you wanna... identify with and of course I don't want to identify with Ernst Röhm, but it was then very much connected to the persecution of gay people that then followed after that.

00:21:04: Of course the Nazis already were kind of persecuting gay people before, but then after the murder of Ernst Röhm, paragraph one in it's seventy-five, the paragraph that was criminalizing male homosexuality in Germany, was then toughened by the Nazis and the persecution of gay people then also really began and it's a very It was a very, very important moment in the history of Nazi Germany that was completely not talked about in our history classes, for example.

00:21:31: When I was on your tour, I really enjoyed it.

00:21:33: And I talked to other people who were also joining from the US.

00:21:37: And one of the women, she told me that she works also for sexual science and she's not allowed to talk about certain topics anymore.

00:21:47: because of the Trump government.

00:21:51: For me, it's always easy to do finger pointing in the direction of the US and say, oh, they have such a crazy president now.

00:22:01: And then you said, yeah, in Germany, they have twenty percent Nazis also today.

00:22:06: Twenty percent voted for the Nazi Party in the last elections, yes.

00:22:09: And for me as a German, I've had pretty bad, because it's so much easier to do finger pointing in different countries and don't see what's... So I know that there are so many AfD voters in Germany, I know that, but it's also in my bubble, easy to forget sometimes.

00:22:27: I live in Kreuzberg, so many queer friends.

00:22:31: For me, it's not really changed something, but it's... it is a big topic.

00:22:36: So how do you link the Nazis one hundred years ago to today's like discussions also?

00:22:44: I forgot who said it but somebody once said History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

00:22:50: And I like that saying a lot.

00:22:52: We see it, for example, with the AFD today, that we just talked about Ernst Röhm in the Nazi Party in the nineteen twenties, early thirties.

00:23:03: Today we have Alice Weidel, another queer person who's leading the far-right party AFD today.

00:23:12: So it's interesting how you sometimes have these parallels because of course we all know what the AFD thinks of queer people.

00:23:21: But again, there's somebody who chooses to turn a blind eye to that.

00:23:26: in favor of seeking power.

00:23:29: And we know how it ended for Ernst Röhm.

00:23:32: And I think it will also probably not end good for Alice Weidel either.

00:23:36: I'm not saying that she will be killed, but it will probably not somebody.

00:23:39: The AfD will eventually not want to have a queer person leading their party, especially when they're doing so much queer, anti-queer politics.

00:23:48: Jeff, when you do your tours, you're not only talking and telling wonderful stories and you make a nice walk, which is already very good.

00:23:56: You showed us pictures on your iPad and there you have, we had some three D's, pictures from today and like four and times.

00:24:04: Can you explain us the technical thing a little?

00:24:07: So I use augmented reality with an app called Zaubach or the company is called Zaubach as the startup in Berlin and they approached me to basically do this project together.

00:24:22: It's an augmented reality app and it allows me to bring history to people in a completely new way.

00:24:28: So for example, we are standing in front of a building where in the nineteen twenties you had the El Dorado Club.

00:24:37: The alterado was, you can kind of call it the Burkhan of the nineteen twenties in terms of how famous it was.

00:24:43: And we are standing in front of this building and then using my tablet I can then point at the building and on the screen people see them through the camera, building in front of them, but with the front of the building layered over with how the building actually looked like in the nineteen twenties.

00:25:03: Another example is that, for example, we can walk through the street and we then see in the street again as in... the real life size.

00:25:12: sex workers standing in the street where they're walking past them sex workers from the nineteen twenties and I can then tell people about them.

00:25:19: it's a little bit of a way of bringing history a little bit closer in a in a new way and especially because the tour is also quite a long tour.

00:25:27: it's a three and a half hour tour.

00:25:28: so instead of just me constantly talking talking talking I try to include a lot of media elements, pictures, videos, augmented reality, quiz questions, some audio, etc.

00:25:42: So that it's a little bit more, it's a bit more interactive and a bit more interesting for all the senses, not just your ears in that way.

00:25:50: So you do the tour, Berlin Uncensored, a history of sex and freedom and also about queer history and about the club culture.

00:26:00: So how is it linked?

00:26:01: I have two tours about club culture, one about the history of club culture and club culture in general today in Berlin, and another tour about more the kingly sex-positive spaces and clubs in Berlin today.

00:26:14: And they are all linked over the subjects from my previous tours, namely sexual history and queer history.

00:26:23: Because, as I already said, club culture today and what the sexuality in Berlin today is very much linked to club culture and club culture itself was also built up in marginalized communities including the queer communities.

00:26:36: so after after the second world war Berlin and Germany were of course divided into East and West Berlin and West Germany and the GDR and that played an also very big role, important role in the emergence of club culture and of the sexual Berlin that we know today because first of all when the Nazis were over it didn't go back

00:27:01: to

00:27:02: the liberty of the nineteen twenties that we had before.

00:27:05: Of course there was, especially West Germany, continued a very very patriarchal idea of what a woman is, what a man is, what a family is supposed to be.

00:27:15: And so in the fifties and sixties there was not really that much of a movement, either a queer movement or a sexual liberation movement, so much in West Germany and West Berlin.

00:27:28: And that all changed, of course, with the sexual revolution by the end of the sixties, and also with the loosening of paragraph one hundred seventy-five.

00:27:37: The paragraph was then existed in the Nazi version in West Germany, and the GDR was a bit different, but in West Germany it existed in the Nazi version until nineteen sixty-nine, so more than two decades after the end of the Second World War.

00:27:50: It was then loosened in sixty-nine and seventy-one.

00:27:52: That was the first reason for a queer movement to come up again.

00:27:57: The second reason were the Stonewall riots in the United States in nineteen sixty nine the reason why we have the price today and it also influenced the the movement here in Europe.

00:28:05: and the third most important reason was the movie not the homosexual is perverted but the situation in which she lives which was a movie that was released by Rosa von Pauenheim in nineteen seventy one and calling upon queer people especially gay men to do something against their oppression.

00:28:22: and right after the screening of that movie The homosexual action West Berlin formed itself, which is today then seen as the beginning of the second queer liberation movement in Germany.

00:28:33: A lot of the things that we have today in Berlin come straight out of that movement.

00:28:39: So, for example, the Schwartz Queer Club was in the beginning their center for political activism, but eventually turned into a club.

00:28:46: It's today Germany's oldest and biggest queer club.

00:28:50: And then also the club culture that we know today, including also the sexuality in those clubs that we know today, started then also in the nineties.

00:29:00: cheese.

00:29:01: In nineteen seventy-four, Transwoman Romy Haak opened her club Chirom Haak in the Schöneberg district in West Berlin and that is today seen as the beginning of Berlin's modern club culture.

00:29:12: Everything that we know today from Kit Kat to Burkhain started basically in that building in nineteen seventy-four.

00:29:18: A little bit later than in the success of Romy Haak, not far away from there at Norland of Platz, the Mitropoul Club then opened.

00:29:26: And Mitropoul was very much shaped by the gay and by the BDSM community where you had known for people literally having sex on the dance floor.

00:29:34: And it was the first club to play continuous beat all throughout the night.

00:29:39: Like in other clubs, you had one song stopping, a second pause, not a song starting.

00:29:42: And here you had continuous beat playing all throughout the night, which is also why it's seen as a predecessor to techno.

00:29:47: that was then later coming from the black community in Detroit to Berlin in the beginning of the nineties.

00:29:53: And that really continued over the seventies into the eighties.

00:29:57: Of course, in the eighties, we have the eighties crisis.

00:29:59: that was because a very big backlash again, but Berlin really, especially West Berlin, because it was this islands in the middle of the GDR.

00:30:09: still continued developing the sexual life that we know today.

00:30:12: and it was especially also developed by the queer community.

00:30:15: and Bunker was a bunker built by the Nazis in the nineteen forties.

00:30:18: but then after the fall of the Berlin Wall it was then turned into one of those clubs in those abandoned buildings.

00:30:24: and at Bunker for example the first snacks parties were organized and the people who organized the snacks parties would later go on to open Burkhain.

00:30:33: Snacks was of course today probably the biggest tax party in the world today.

00:30:38: It's a party that happens twice a year at Laboratory Club.

00:30:43: a club that belongs to the Burkhain building or is in the same building than Burkhain and is run by the same people but it's on most nights we even separate from from from Burkhain.

00:30:53: but for this next party then it's then in an extended part of the building and it's probably the biggest sex party in the world today.

00:31:00: and that all started in the beginning of the nineties at this bunker

00:31:04: club.

00:31:05: Jeff, I would love to also do this tour.

00:31:08: It sounds very very good.

00:31:10: We are quite new.

00:31:11: we find all your tours.

00:31:13: There's a good way of following

00:31:14: you.

00:31:15: So my website is BerlinGuide.de.

00:31:17: I'm very easy-billing.de and there you find basically all my tours that I offer.

00:31:24: Jeff

00:31:24: Menace,

00:31:25: thank you so much.

00:31:26: I'm full of history things now and I learned so much from you.

00:31:30: I totally enjoyed the tour and I think there will be even more coming one day.

00:31:35: I think you're like doing work in progress and developing even more and it's so important to listen what you say

00:31:43: and to

00:31:44: follow you and your history lines because it's very important for all of us to know that history is not a linear, heterosexual thing.

00:31:55: History is always a thing people change after and say it in one or another way, so it's important to tell different kind of history and more complex and all your interesting topics.

00:32:08: Thank you very much.

00:32:09: Thank you very much for having

00:32:10: me.

00:32:10: This was Sex and the Berlin.

00:32:11: Thank you for joining.

00:32:13: Write us love letters, insert tips, or simply send us messages.

00:32:17: All links in the show notes and via Instagram or directly at info.http.berlin.

00:32:24: Have a nice day.

00:32:25: Kisses from Nico.

00:32:27: Thank you so much.