Queer Berlin: Birthplace of LGBTQ+ Movements

3-Hour Tour

Discover Berlin’s Queer Pioneers, Scientists, Activists & Artists

Schöneberg, the world’s first gay ghetto

At the colorful monument to the Gay Emancipation Movement, you’ll learn of the Institute for Sexual Science founded on this spot by Magnus Hirschfeld, who coined the term transsexualism and pioneered the gay rights movement. Hirschfeld also co-authored the first pro-gay film in the world in 1919, Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others). Nazis closed the Institute in 1933 and burned its library.

Exploring the the world’s first gay ghetto, Schöneberg, a neighborhood that featured legendary lesbian bars, you’ll see Christopher Isherwood’s former flat and learn how his Weimar-era adventures inspired the musical Cabaret. Passing by nightclubs he frequented, we’ll see a rent-boy dive that remains gay-run to this day.

Outside the infamous former El Dorado Cabaret where Marlene Dietrich performed, we’ll learn of notable regulars like Ernst Röhm, the openly gay head of the Sturmabteilung (aka, the Nazi Brown Shirts). Röhm was later executed in the “moral purge” of 1934, or Night of the Long Knives (Nacht der langen Messer).

While discovering sites connected to the post-WWII rebirth of Schöneberg as the gay-heart of the city, we pay particular homage to city’s most iconic nightclub of the 70s, Chez Romy Haag, where transgender actress, singer, and dancer, Romy Haag, met and began an affair with David Bowie, a tragic relationship that inspired Bowie’s iconic song Heroes.

On the historic boulevard Unter den Linden, you will meet early gay Berliners such as the Prussian King Frederick the Great and explorer Alexander von Humboldt and find out how they disguised their sexuality. Finally you’ll travel to Alexanderplatz, the heart of Cold War East Berlin, and hear about the suffering endured by gays and lesbians behind the Iron Curtain.

By the tour’s conclusion, you’ll get to know today’s Queer Berlin. After the fall of the Wall, the LGBTQ+ communities became less centralized, with a self-expression that gained nuance, and through it all, the scene remains vibrant and relevant.