Advent Calendar 17th December 2011: Berlin, Berlin!

December 17th, 2011, 6:00 | No comments

Chapter 11 in Michael Davidson’s The World, the Flesh and Myself begins with a description of Berlin in the 1920s, with its Strichjungen and Stundenhotels, theaters that produced “serious plays of a sexual audacity that would have shocked London for the next 25 years”, and, of course, Magnus Hirschfeld’s legendary Institut der Sexualwissenschaft, in whose library Davidson would “spend hours”. Just think of it. Hirschfeld’s institute and its library were to be destroyed by Hitler just a few years later. Page 151 (chapter 11):

I discovered, too, the amazing tolerance of Berlin; the people generally accepted as a human fact, even though many deplored, conduct which in England would have raised cries of horror or menace.

Once a policeman appeared when I was having difficulty with an offensive youth whom I couldn’t shake off. ‘You know,’ said the policeman kindly, ‘you should be very careful about what boys you pick up – there are some bad ones about.’

I had a Swiss friend whom I’ll call B—: a senior functionary in one of the international organizations in Geneva. He kept going a pied-à-terre in Berlin; and there one morning, he told me later, he found on his doorstep when he answered the whirr of his bell a well-dressed man in a Homburg hat and carrying the inevitable briefcase.

‘Herr B—?’ said the stranger.

‘Jawohl’, answered B— inquiringly.

‘I believe you’re a friend of a boy named —?’ the man went on. B— was taken aback; but the visitor hastened to put him at his ease. ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ he said. ‘I just came to call – I always like to know what sort of man my son is going with.’

That was Berlin in the years that I knew it, between 1928 and 1933.

Category: Advent Calendar
Tags: Berlin, Michael Davidson, prostitution

Pirate Bay crew at Freedom not Fear demo in Berlin

September 12th, 2009, 19:30 | 5 comments

Like last year, the Freedom not Fear (Freiheit statt Angst) demonstration in Berlin attracted thousands of people (25,000 according to a press release found at Netzpolitik). Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay was there, as well as Pirate Party supporter Oscar Swartz, and Claudia Roth of the German Green Party.

A few rainbow flags could be seen in the crowd. I think the gay movement in general has missed that the privacy issues that the Pirate Parties have put on the agenda are very relevant to gay people. For example, when the Berlin gay guide Siegessäule interviewed politicians about gay issues, the focus was mostly marriage and adoption – the traditional gay issues. But those fights are won; today politicians compete in offering gay people human rights. It’s time to look upon gay politics from another angle. If gay people knew their history, they would worry about excessive surveillance laws, since gays and just about anyone with a different lifestyle are common targets in a society that aims to control its citizens. Surveillance laws will be misused, period.

Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay and Oscar Swartz in Berlin at the Freedom not Fear demonstration, September 12th, 2009

Peter Sunde and Oscar Swartz.

The German Pirate Party at the Freedom not Fear demonstration at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, September 12th, 2009

Pirate Party partying.

Freedom not Fear, Berlin, September 12th, 2009

Claudia Roth

Claudia Roth.

Thilo Weichert speaks at Freedom not Fear, Berlin, September 12th, 2009

Thilo Weichert speaks.

Freedom not Fear, Berlin, September 12th, 2009

Category: News & Politics
Tags: Berlin, Freedom not Fear, Freiheit statt Angst, Oscar Swartz, Peter Sunde, Pirate Bay, Pirate Party, Piratenpartei, Piratpartiet, The Pirate Bay

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