Netflix
Documentary about the legendary Berlin “Eldorado”
Scene from the documentary “Eldorado – Everything the Nazis Hate”. photo
© Netflix / dpa
Netflix is bringing a glamorous documentary about the downfall of the gay and lesbian Golden Twenties to coincide with Pride Month. The Nazis put an abrupt end to gender freedom and queer activities.
The launch date is no coincidence with this one Netflix production entitled “Eldorado – Everything the Nazis Hate”. It’s June 28th, Christopher Street Day. It’s sort of the founding date of the lesbian and gay movement.
Christopher Street Day (today often CSD) refers to June 28, 1969, when a riot against discriminatory police began in New York on Christopher Street in Manhattan.
But decades earlier there was a struggle for sexual diversity and gender freedom – and that on this side of the Atlantic. And a Netflix documentary is now dedicated to this brief heyday of the first visible queer community in Berlin in the Roaring Twenties.
The title
“At the center of this documentary about the freedoms lost under Hitler is a dazzling nightclub in Berlin in the 1920s that became a haven for the queer community,” Netflix describes the documentary “Eldorado – Everything the Nazis Hate” – and sells almost below their value. Because it’s also about the legendary club “Eldorado” on the corner of Motzstraße and Kalckreuthstraße in Schöneberg, but it’s also about much more; for example the (Jewish) doctor, trans researcher and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, who was radically opposed by the Nazis and whose innovative institute for sexology seemed to be the worst possible thing for reactionaries. Hirschfeld died in exile in Nice in 1935.
If you were to follow the earlier NS documentaries by Guido Knopp on ZDF (“Hitler’s helpers”, “Hitler’s manager” etc.), the film would probably be called “Hitler and the LGBTIQ” – or something like that. English abbreviations such as LGBTQI+ stand for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex people. Plus signs or an asterisk are intended to be placeholders for additional identities.
the makers
Director and co-author Benjamin Cantu (“Stadt Land Fluss”) says: “This part of German history is still unknown to many today. The history of the “Eldorado” and above all that of the queer people, whose persecution did not end with 1945, was uncomfortable for a long time in the post-war public and was hushed up.” Making the film for global streaming giant Netflix and its 233 million subscribers is an important sign at a time when LGBTIQ* rights are under pressure in many places around the world. Netflix emphasizes that the film was made with the participation of a predominantly queer team – in front of and behind the camera.
The content
Author Morgan M. Page (“Framing Agnes”), political scientist Katrin Himmler and historian Robert Beachy (“The Other Berlin – The Invention of Homosexuality”) have their say in the documentary. First and foremost, a more than 100-year-old (!) eyewitness and the game scenes made in the style of high-end series such as “Babylon Berlin” remain in memory, for example around the tennis star Gottfried von Cramm (1909-1976), his Frau Elisabeth von Dobeneck and his lover Manasse Herbst.
Netflix says: “Historically sensual reenactments bring us closer to a queer community that was already a pioneer of our time 100 years ago.” The “Eldorado” was a place of contradictions, where the gay NSDAP politician and SA leader Ernst Röhm, who was killed by Heinrich Himmler’s SS in 1934, frequented. The historian Ben Miller also clarifies: “The then “Eldorado” has now become an organic supermarket. You can go to the place where drag shows used to be shown and buy expensive avocados.”
The moral of the story
The historian and filmmaker Klaus Müller (“Paragraph 175”) says about the 1920s and 30s, when freedom and oppression were so close together: “Germany does not only consist of cities, but mostly of small towns and villages. And they are unfamiliar with what is happening in Berlin and other big cities. They also feel intimidated by this rapid change.”
Ben Miller (“Bad Gays: A Homosexual History”) adds ambiguously: “The pace of change frustrates almost everyone. The radicals are far too slow to change. The conservatives, on the other hand, are realizing that everything that gives their lives meaning is disappearing. This feeling the threat of change provides fascists with fertile ground for their poisoned ideas to flourish.”
Netflix: “Eldorado – Everything the Nazis hate” trailer for the documentary More about Magnus Hirschfeld