Eldorado (Berlin)

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Eldorado

Eldorado at Motzstr. 15 (current No. 24), Berlin (1932)
Address	Berlin, German Reich
Coordinates	52°29′53″N 13°20′56″E / 52.49806°N 13.34889°E / 52.49806; 13.34889
Owner	Ludwig Konjetschni [de][1]

The Eldorado was the name of multiple nightclubs and performance venues in Berlin before the Nazi era and World War II.^[2] The name of the cabaret Eldorado has become an integral part of the popular iconography of the Weimar Republic. Two of the five locations the club occupied in its history are known to have catered to a gay crowd, although attendees would have included not only gay, lesbian, and bisexual patrons but also those identifying as heterosexual (e.g. artists, authors, celebrities, tourists).

"Cross-dressing" was tolerated on the premises, though for the most part legally prohibited and/or sharply regulated in public (and to an extent in private) at the time. This exception to everyday life attracted not only male patrons who wished to dress in the "clothing of the opposite sex" but also women who wished to do the same. Wealthy lookers-on were encouraged to come and drink and watch as so-called "Zechenmacher" (tab payers).^{[citation needed]}

The practice was particularly common in so-called "lesbian bars" or "lesbian balls" in the neighborhood at the time, and up to the 1960s in places like the Nationalhof at nearby Bülowstraße 37. As women's incomes were then much lower than men's on average, male spectators with money to spend were explicitly welcome and it was not uncommon that there were sex workers present to offer their services.

However, the eradication during the Nazi Period of any and all references to queer life in Germany was so thorough that very little explicit public, or even archival, reference to the clubs' queer history remained by 1945. Criminalization made researching, speaking, or writing about queer realities a legal risk during the first decades following WWII, not only in Germany. That the cabaret Eldorado is remembered at all is due in no small part to its central role in inspiring the novels of the Anglo-American author Christopher Isherwood and to the Broadway musical and, moreover, to the 1972 film Cabaret, which was inspired by Isherwood's novels. At the same time, historians and activists of the gay liberation movement and of the ensuing LGBT rights movement began piecing back together was is now called queer history. Eldorado thereby became a prominent part of the telling of LGBTIQ+ histories.