Walls Come Tumbling Down

I'm travel editor of the UK's biggest and best lesbian magazine Diva, which means when I'm not hunting down Deutschland's hot spots, I'm exploring the great and the glamorous gay scenes around the world.

I know I can come across as a little flighty and shallow with all this talk of spas and gay bars, but every now and then something a bit more meaningful captivates my attention and puts all these glam jaunts around Germany into perspective.

I’m in Berlin this week, and sure, I’ve been to Checkpoint Charlie and posed in front of the graffiti-clad remnants of the Wall before, but for some reason this visit I’ve really stopped to think what this behemoth of a barrier meant for my favourite city.

I’m so used to hopping on a bus and going from the upmarket West to the über cool East, I just can’t imagine what life was like at a time when a barricaded border severed the two sides of the city, creating a political and ideological wall as much as a literal one.

I can’t help feeling that it’s this richly complicated history that makes Berlin such a complex, edgy and fascinating place.

2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall. These events triggered drastic changes around the world, marking the end of the Cold War and of the division of Europe.

On a smaller scale, the fall of the Wall meant the city had a lot of catching up to do, and fast. This has contributed to the sense of constant kinesis I always feel from Berlin. It’s making and remaking itself as new on such a regular basis that it is without a doubt Europe’s most exciting city.

Berlin’s young, fashionable gay scene is equally fresh. Parties and ‘places to be’ are driven by trends and are as mutable as Kylie Minogue. Nothing hangs around long enough to seem tired or outdated, meaning every time I visit Berlin there’s something new to experience on the scene.

I’m in town for the Festival of Freedom (7 to 9 November) which is celebrated on both sides of the Brandenburg Gate. The highlight of this event is the multimedia staging of the symbolic fall of the Wall using a 'domino effect'. Amazing, and so powerful.

I also made time this trip to visit the Berlin Gay Museum (www.schwulesmuseum.de) which holds a fascinating collection documenting Germany’s often-troubled GLBT life, as well as Berlin’s history as Europe’s post-war queer capital, which reached its heyday in the 1920s. I learnt that the reawakening of Berlin’s gay subculture happened slowly throughout the 1950s, culminating in 1968 with the abolition of Paragraph 175 which had outlawed homosexuality.

What I really respect about Berlin is that it doesn’t shy away from its past. There’s the beautiful Holocaust Memorial of course, but also just across the street, at the entrance to Tiergarten Park, you’ll see a slightly off-kilter cube set by the side of the path. Read the sign, which proclaims that this newest of memorials (inaugurated in 2008) honours the GLBT victims of the Nazis and stands as “a lasting symbol of opposition to enmity, intolerance, and the exclusion of gay men and lesbians”.


As this year, marking the 20th anniversary of the reunification of Germany, draws to a close, there’s no better time to visit Berlin and discover its fascinating pre and post-war history. Learning more about Nazi rule, the Berlin Wall and how a vibrant gay and lesbian community didn’t just survive, but went on to thrive, put today’s scene in context for me.

It meant that later that evening while I was sipping a cocktail in Rosa’s bar I felt not just part of a trendy, emerging gay Berlin but also connected to the people and places that defined the city’s colourful queer past. And somehow it made that Mojito taste so much the sweeter.


Visit GayGermany.co.uk - the official gay and lesbian site of the German National Tourist Office Videos are at YouTube.com/MyGayGermany
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