Gay Berlin

by Robert Beachy

  Into the twentieth century, Unter den Linden and the Tiergarten Park remained Berlin’s best-recognized cruising locations for men seeking erotic male companionship, as well as for those prepared to buy or sell it. The southwest corner of the park, in the area surrounding the Goldfish Pond, was especially well trafficked, accessed along the so-called schwuler Weg, or gay path.74 It was here in 1904 that a young Kurt Hiller (1885–1972), the communist author and homosexual rights activist, reported meeting an older male prostitute whom he paid for his first homosexual encounter.75 In 1911 the police president, Traugott von Jagow (1865–1941), requested that this section of the park be outfitted with gas lighting. Jagow wrote the Berlin City Council, “I have received many complaints, also from those who manage the Tiergarten, that certain sections of the Park have become meeting places at night for male homosexuals…. But we are unable to take significant action unfortunately, because no punishable crime [under Paragraph 175] is committed there, and instead the rendezvous are arranged for elsewhere.” Within a year the city had managed to install some three dozen “efficient” gas lanterns, and “without damaging tree roots or other foliage.”76

  The relationship between male and heterosexual prostitution was complex and variable, not only within Germany but also throughout Europe, depending on national, regional, and even local ordinances. Germany had no federal statutes governing male prostitution, since Paragraph 175 criminalized “sodomy.” The criminal code was ambiguous, however, on the question of female prostitution; although federal law banned “procurement” (Kuppelei), it likewise authorized the police to register female prostitutes and force them to submit to medical exams, a formal if implicit sanctioning of the world’s oldest profession.77 In 1888 the German Supreme Court interpreted the prohibition on heterosexual procurement as a ban on pimping and brothel keeping. The application of the law after this decision varied dramatically from place to place, however, reflecting the independence of urban and regional officials. A few German cities continued to tolerate brothels, despite their proscription by the supreme court ruling, notably Hamburg and Leipzig. Others, such as Bremen, adopted an “internment” policy (Kasernierung), which required that prostitutes live and work within a restricted area, creating de facto red-light districts. Property owners in these districts often received formal municipal licenses allowing them to rent to prostitutes. Most German cities adopted registration policies, though these were also applied with great variation. In some locations prostitutes were required to register with the police, while in others registration was voluntary. The specific Berlin regulations included a prohibition on brothels (in place since the mid-nineteenth century), and a free-will or voluntary registration. While prostitutes were allowed to live throughout the city, streetwalking was banned on main thoroughfares such as Unter den Linden.78 These rules were enforced by Berlin’s morals police, the Sittenpolizei, which had extensive personnel for monitoring the heterosexual demimonde.

  The Department of Homosexuals was under a different administrative unit—a subdivision of the criminal police—and lacked the resources to monitor male prostitutes with the same diligence.79 As boys or young men, moreover, male prostitutes had greater freedom of movement and could cruise most public areas with relative impunity. Male prostitutes were also spared the degrading scrutiny of forced medical exams, despite posing a public health risk as potential agents of venereal disease. Male prostitutes were generally less recognizable than their female counterparts, though there was significant variation. Kurt Hiller described his Tiergarten contact as “masculine,” “muscular,” and “mature,” meaning a man in his mid-twenties. Soldier prostitutes actually solicited in uniform, which signaled strength and virility. But many adolescent male prostitutes rouged their cheeks, plucked their eyebrows, wore lipstick, and assumed feminine nicknames. Some even appeared in public attired as women, although this could attract police attention or incite the anger of some unsuspecting heterosexual john. More conspicuous manners and attire subjected male prostitutes to greater surveillance, of course, and their photos were typically entered in the Verbrecheralbum after an initial arrest.80

  It was also common for male and female prostitutes to share working and living quarters; sometimes they were even coupled or married. The newspaper account of a 1904 police raid offers an evocative portrayal of one milieu: “The area around Oranienburger Gate houses a large number of dive bars, most located in rear courtyards, where business only begins in the early morning hours. When the Variétés and the evening cafés close, then the big-city night owls flutter to this spot. Here in the wan lamplight and thick tobacco smoke the night is lengthened. Often only with the street noise that penetrates an open door comes the warning that a new day is dawning outside.”81

  This was the scene of the raid of a bar located off Novalisstraße, remarkable only for its location directly across from the police precinct house in north-central Berlin. The area was noted for its large tenement buildings and labyrinthine courtyards. Neither noise nor alleged prostitution prompted the bust-up, however. Rather, a thousand marks had gone missing from the precinct house earlier in the day and was presumed stolen by an occupant of the all-night tavern. According to the newspaper account, police herded some two dozen female and male prostitutes into the street, demanded identification, and transported those without papers to the central station at Alexanderplatz.82 Clearly female prostitutes and rent boys not only formed close associations and even rented common quarters but also shared work spaces that served men of every sexual persuasion. In some cases married couples pursued prostitution as a family business. The male barkeep of the Haase-Ausschank, a small tavern that attracted male prostitutes and was located conveniently at the southern edge of the Tiergarten near the city’s foremost homosexual cruising area, was himself a prostitute who pimped for his wife, likewise a prostitute.83

  Although Hüllessem’s policies prevented most male prostitutes from plying their trade indoors, at least before the 1920s, a few particularly disreputable bars—such as the Haase-Ausschank—served male prostitutes and their clients. One of the best known was the Katzenmutter, along the Waterloo Canal just east of Hallesches Gate. The bar was likely named for its numerous pet cats, or for the cat motifs on the walls, or possibly for the catlike appearance of Wilhelmine Techow, who managed the place. Exactly when the bar opened is unclear, but Techow had lived in the building since before 1885. Located close to several military barracks, the area was notorious for soldier prostitution, and the canal was popular for homosexual cruising. The bar itself served both soldiers and homosexual johns, facilitating assignations. Psychiatrist Paul Näcke described it as two small rooms on the ground floor, packed with men, half of whom were soldiers. “Here is the main place,” according to Näcke, “where one can have soldiers, and although most are heterosexual, they are always keen to earn something on the side.” Another observer claimed that “a significant portion of the history of homosexuality had unfolded at the Katzenmutter in the last two decades.” Not only military personnel but also “blue-blooded, landed aristocrats with endless genealogies, workers with calloused hands—all sat together in the small, lowly restaurant of the Katzenmutter.” The bar’s profile changed dramatically, however, in the wake of the Eulenburg scandal (discussed in detail in chapter 4), when, in 1908, army officials placed the Katzenmutter on a list of bars prohibited to soldiers.84

  Hüllessem and his successors were especially diligent in thwarting pimping and brothel keeping, neither of which was tolerated among heterosexuals. There are many examples that illustrate this priority. One would-be pimp, an out-of-work actor named Gustav Haupt, formed a partnership with the merchant Karl Moscholl and then opened for business in a dingy apartment at 21 Mohrenstraße, located a few blocks south of Unter den Linden. Recruiting male prostitutes straight off the streets, Haupt and Moscholl cultivated a wealthy clientele and enhanced their profits by robbing their disrobed johns. Of course, these victims of theft avoided the police for fear of a s
econd and more figurative exposure. By the time an anonymous tip led to the apprehension of the pimps in 1902, they had operated the boy brothel for nearly two years.85 The enterprising merchant Fritz Geßler, a tobacconist who specialized in cigars, used the backroom of his shop as a boy bordello. A newspaper account of his arrest described the reaction of neighbors, who had marveled at the apparent uptick in his business and the boisterous traffic in and out of his small store. Geßler was finally arrested in May 1905, but only because he and his rent boys had become greedy and begun blackmailing the customers.86 Another procurer, a young man named Wittenberg, abducted a fourteen-year-old in Hamburg, brought him to Berlin, pimped him on Friedrichstraße, and then blackmailed his patrons. Until Wittenberg’s arrest in May 1906, the two lived comfortably in a small hotel in central Berlin.87 Prostitution was only one line of business for these pimps and brothel keepers, who likely earned much more from robbing and extorting their clients.

  As in most cities, Berlin’s prostitution often had links to the city’s criminal underworld. According to Hans Ostwald, the popular author and lay sociologist of the Berlin demimonde, prostitution was a symbiotic feature of organized crime. Magnus Hirschfeld claimed that “prostitution and criminality go hand in hand; thefts and break-ins, blackmail and extortion, and violent acts of every kind.”88 A gang of eight thieves arrested in March 1898 embodied this all-purpose deviancy. Employed as house servants, butchers’ apprentices, grill cooks, and barkeeps, according to one newspaper report, these youths appeared to earn their pocket money as rent boys and shoplifters, and they spent much of their free time dressed in women’s garb. They were apparently successful passing themselves off as women, for they descended on department stores, en masse, where they stole large quantities of merchandise, which was later recovered from the ringleader’s apartment. In drag they used nicknames like “Die Schöne” (the pretty one), “Schminkjuste” (Juste in makeup), and “Seiden-Guste” (Gustav in silk), and solicited sex at the Katzenmutter.89

  The relationship between female prostitution and homosexual subcultures is especially important since policies regulating prostitution—in most times and places—generally shaped early homosexual milieus. In most cities the first identifiable homosexual neighborhoods tended to border or even overlap with heterosexual red-light districts. Consider Montmartre in Paris, Soho in London, or the Tenderloin in San Francisco. In the German cities of Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Leipzig, the oldest homosexual venues were likewise opened in and around areas designated for the heterosexual demimonde. Berlin’s policies had a more tenuous impact, however, on the city’s homosexual scene. For one, the prohibition on brothels and the rejection of “internment” policies prevented the emergence of any single red-light neighborhood. As a result, Berlin’s same-sex bars, entertainments, and outdoor cruising areas were geographically diffuse.

  Even more significant than the policies that regulated prostitution in Berlin was Hüllessem’s tacit toleration for “respectable” taverns and public drag balls. By permitting “homosexual fraternization,” Hüllessem and his successors fostered safe, separate spaces, apart from the sexual underworld of street solicitation or an established red-light district. The boundaries of Berlin’s more staid homosexual club culture were never impermeable. Male prostitution venues such as the Haase-Ausschank or Katzenmutter attracted “criminal elements,” certainly, and skirted the limits of official toleration. Yet the open character and longevity of so many homosexual taverns fostered a new homosexual eroticism that was liberated from the shadow of a semi-criminal sex trade.

  The men who did patronize male prostitutes made themselves particularly vulnerable to blackmail, a crime that was clearly not victimless. Because of both Paragraph 175 and the social stigma of homosexuality, same-sex-loving men faced far greater risk of scandal. By contrast, nineteenth-century bourgeois ideology tacitly sanctioned straight prostitution to “absorb” the surfeit of male sexuality and “preserve” the more delicate sexual natures of elite and middle-class women. This double standard endorsed male promiscuity and tended to shield heterosexual johns. Of course, the customers of male prostitutes risked not only exposure as homosexuals but also arrest and possibly jail time. The young men and boys who prostituted themselves understood the vulnerability of their patrons. As historian Angus McLaren has argued, sexual blackmail in the nineteenth century was nearly synonymous with homosexual scandal and was largely a product of the increased awareness of erotic same-sex love.90

  Hüllessem had confronted the problem throughout his career, and finally in 1896 he renamed his unit the Department of Homosexuals and Blackmailers.91 The curious pairing of two seemingly incongruous phenomena—blackmail and homosexuality—demonstrates well the extent to which blackmail threats accompanied illegal sexual acts. Long before this, of course, Hüllessem’s mug shot album had subsumed sexual blackmail under the rubric of crimes related to Paragraph 175; it was an article of faith that most rent boys also blackmailed their clients. Under the new title, the department was formally responsible for policing “pederasty and the offenses related to this, including blackmail or the creation of public disturbance through exhibitionism.”92

  Middle-class and elite men—those able to pay and motivated to preserve a social reputation—were at greatest risk. This helps to explain Hüllessem’s concern, of course. But it oversimplifies to describe the pursuit of blackmailers as little more than a form of class-based justice. Indeed, elites and bourgeois men who had sex with other men or boys were also closely monitored; Hüllessem had maintained a collection of index cards with the names of aristocrats, military officers, and business leaders suspected of homosexual liaisons. Since 1885 Hüllessem had apparently safeguarded the reputation of his own superior, Berlin police president Richthofen, who allegedly caroused with young men. Hüllessem feared, presciently, that the exposure of Richthofen (or others like him)—a risk heightened by the threat of blackmail—could directly affect affairs of state. Shortly before his suicide in 1900, Hüllessem asked a friend to deliver some one hundred of these index cards to the emperor. William II refused to open the packet, afraid of finding names of associates or even family members, and sent it unopened to the police president.93 Hüllessem’s index cards represented the new reality that aristocrats and other elites could no longer indulge their “perversions” indiscriminately. In this respect blackmail proved a powerful leveling force. Wealth or title offered little protection, since even those with great resources might one day be branded homosexuals.

  One of the most jarring scandals involved Germany’s wealthiest industrialist, the “Canon King,” Friedrich Alfred Krupp, and led to his apparent suicide in 1902 at the age of forty-eight. Long before Krupp’s alleged escapades came to light, Hüllessem and Tresckow had cataloged the magnate’s interests in adolescent boys. Although the palatial Krupp villa was located near Essen, Krupp spent much of his time on the island of Capri, in the Gulf of Naples, or in Berlin, both sites for pursuing his greatest passion. When visiting the capital, Krupp always stayed in the Bristol Hotel, where he was attended by Italian boys recruited from Capri. Disturbed by Krupp’s interference with his management—namely, Krupp’s insistence that his young friends be employed by the hotel, albeit at Krupp’s own expense—hotel owner Conrad Uhl, fearing a scandal that might besmirch his own good name, approached Tresckow to discuss the problem. At this point Tresckow also learned that Krupp’s wife and two daughters lodged in a different hotel when accompanying him to Berlin.

  Though unrelated to blackmail, Krupp’s downfall was clearly the result of newspaper reports about his alleged homosexual activity. Italian officials banished Krupp in the spring of 1902 for having sex with minors. The great irony was that Italy did not otherwise have an anti-sodomy law; technically Krupp’s crime was sex with minors, not homosexuality. Italian papers reported on the affair, and Vorwärts, the official organ of the Social Democratic Party, decided to torment the class enemy by publishing the story, on October 20, 1902.
Krupp, in turn, considered bringing charges of libel. Before taking this step, however, he sent his personal secretary to confer with and sound out Tresckow. The commissioner recommended that Krupp take legal action only if his “conscience were clear,” since Krupp otherwise risked perjuring himself in court, which could create even more trouble. The day after this interview, on November 22, Tresckow learned that Krupp had died under mysterious circumstances.

  Krupp’s funeral was attended by the Kaiser himself, who blamed the Social Democratic press for the defamation that led to Krupp’s “heart failure.” The consensus of most contemporaries, including Commissioner Tresckow, however, was that Krupp chose to end his life rather than explain the accounts published in Vorwärts.94 A telling and extended postscript to the story was that there were repeated attempts to blackmail Krupp’s widow with alleged evidence of her deceased husband’s homosexuality. The first such attempt was mentioned in the Berliner Tageblatt in September 1905: a young man posing as a former associate of Krupp’s claimed to possess incriminating letters, which he offered the widow for an exorbitant price. She balked and managed to have the young man arrested, although he was later released.95 In 1910 a fifty-seven-year-old writer received a thirty-month jail term for attempting to extort Mrs. Krupp by threatening to publish a salacious tell-all book about the alleged exploits of her husband.96