Gay struggle offers new window on Berlin Wall's fallThe role of the gay in bringing down East Germany from within is getting attention, at a time when sexual liberation is still a battleground.
by Agence France-Presse
03-11-2022 19:43
in LGBTQIA+
Gay people were an important part of an incredibly exciting subculture, he said, along with overlapping groups of intellectuals, churchgoers, environmentalists and squatters that finally spilled onto the streets in East Germany's peaceful revolution. Photo: PEXELS
The role of gay people in bringing down communist East Germany from within is getting fresh attention three decades on, at a time when sexual liberation is still a battleground.
--
Art exhibitions, films and city tours are casting a new spotlight on LGBTQ life in the now defunct state, capturing the imagination of generations born after the Berlin Wall tumbled on November 9, 1989.
It was a high-wire act, said East German art expert Stephan Koal about the life of Juergen Wittdorf, a long-closeted gay artist whose daringly homoerotic works decorated even official buildings of the Stalinist regime.
Koal has co-curated a major retrospective of more than 250 pieces by Wittdorf for what would have been his 90th birthday.
--
ALSO READ: Beauty queens representing the queer community
Although it's being staged in a sleepy eastern Berlin suburb, the exhibition has been a surprise success with more than 20 000 visitors since it opened in September.
As sexual autonomy comes under fresh attack around the globe, even in EU members such as Hungary and Romania, Wittdorf's work is seeing a renaissance four years after his death.
--
Part of that renewed interest comes from a contemporary understanding of the courage required for LGBTQ people to fly beneath the radar, Koal said.
Gay people were an important part of an incredibly exciting subculture, he said, along with overlapping groups of intellectuals, churchgoers, environmentalists and squatters that finally spilled onto the streets in East Germany's peaceful revolution.
The regime saw the gay scene as a threat.
Bubbling beneath' Born in 1932, Wittdorf was a long-time member of the German Democratic Republic (GDR)'s ruling SED party, living off official commissions for his art.
The communist state decriminalised gay sex in 1968 a year before West Germany but it remained a serious social taboo.
Years before that reform, Wittdorf pushed the envelope with graphically lustful works featuring young men's bodies that he managed to pass off as Socialist Realist heroism.
One work that stands out is a print that hung in the official Academy of Sport in Leipzig featuring buff athletes soaping up together under the showers.
Karin Scheel, artistic director of Biesdorf Palace, which is hosting the Wittdorf retrospective, said the collection was a nearly buried treasure that explored the limits of social repression in an authoritarian state.
In the GDR these were just depictions of athletes, said Scheel, who co-curated the show. Today we see it totally differently under these prints there's something huge bubbling beneath the surface.
Wolfgang Winkler, 86, a retired librarian visiting the show who met Wittdorf a few times, said the role of LGBTQ people in East Germany's churning underground had long been underestimated .
History just swept it aside, what Wittdorf achieved with his work, he said. But for those of us who knew about it, it was a sensation.
Berlin's chief culture official, Klaus Lederer, who is also gay and from the east, hailed new efforts to correct the erasure of Eastern artists and their battles for freedom.
Although most gave way to gentrification and online dating, a few of the gay bars and cafes of East Berlin are still around, such as the Sonntags Club (Sunday Club) which is now a stop on popular tours of the Prenzlauer Berg district's LGBTQ history.
Since 2021, an annual East Pride Berlin demonstration has paid tribute to the LGBTQ pioneers in the resistance behind the Iron Curtain as well as embattled communities in eastern Europe today.
Cheeky' One of the stops is at the Gethsemane Church, a centre of anti-regime protest and the birthplace of the rights group Lesbians in the Church.
Sexual liberation also drives the new movie In a Land That No Longer Exists set in East Germany's world of fashion in the summer of 1989.
Director Aelrun Goette, who was herself discovered as a model on the street in East Berlin, tells the story of Suzie, a teen who escapes a state-mandated factory job by posing for a style magazine.
There she meets the designer Rudi based on GDR style icon Frank Schaefer, author of a rollicking memoir about his life as a gay punk in then bohemian Prenzlauer Berg.
Even as they work in the official clothing industry, Rudi leads Suzie into East Berlin's wild, creative underground a niche Goette said could be found in most dictatorships.
Either you're free everywhere or you're not, Rudi tells his protegee. If you're not, then the West can't help you either.
Goette said the time had come to tell a story about how cheeky, insubordinate East Germans liberated themselves, little by little then all at once.
Things were already falling apart in the late 1980s in the GDR, she said, allowing subcultures to seize the moment when it finally came.
The movie's success has a certain symmetry with the first gay-themed feature film to be released in East Germany, Coming Out , which premiered the night the Wall fell.
Agence France-Presse
ENTER The South African Queer survey 2022 & stand a chance to win R5 000!
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
01/12/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
01/12/2025
Artemis II is NASA's first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The crew, from left: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Vic...
01/12/2025
IRVINE, Calif. Wooden Camera has introduced its new Accessory Collection for the Canon EOS C50. The new lineup includes a low-profile, gimbal-ready cage, expand...
01/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for its Dec. 18 Open Commission Meeting that will include a vote on a report an...
01/12/2025
In most years, a graph of annual local TV ad spending is about as predictable as an electrocardiogram of a reasonably healthy patient in a doctor's office. ...
01/12/2025
Many industries have seen big-ticket hardware turn into software. Switchers, though, demand a combination of real-time performance and sheer bandwidth that has ...
01/12/2025
GENEVA Shanghai will host the next quadrennial Radiocommunication Assembly (RA-27) and World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-27), Oct. 11-Nov. 12, 2027. This...
01/12/2025
NEW YORK Just in time for Giving Tuesday tomorrow (Dec. 2), the Broadcasters Foundation of America is seeking out donations to help television and radio industr...
01/12/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Net Insight CEO Crister Fritzson has informed the company's board that he will retire from the video transport and media cloud technology ...
01/12/2025
01 Dec 2025
Kyivstar and Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation Select Go...
01/12/2025
The prequel to the global hit Sky Original mob crime saga, Gomorrah' is a s...
01/12/2025
Featuring Florence Welch, Red Hot Chilli Peppers' Flea, designer Bella Freud...
01/12/2025
Back to All News
A Down to Earth, All Too Relatable Hero: Cashero' Teaser ...
01/12/2025
In the rush to deliver content to every screen, many broadcasters overlook one of the most crucial steps in the workflow: format and frame rate conversion. Get ...
01/12/2025
Fox Corporation Chief Financial Officer Steve Tomsic to Participate in Upcoming ...
01/12/2025
Arvato Systems' Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Receives BSI C5 Certification (T...
01/12/2025
Summary This short video gives you an summary of the changes in under two minutes.
--...
01/12/2025
As the festive season approaches, RT Supporting the Arts is proud to showcase a...
01/12/2025
Researchers worldwide rely on open-source technologies as the foundation of their work. To equip the community with the latest advancements in digital and physi...
01/12/2025
Festive specials of Christmas in Kilmainham presented by Marty Whelan, High Road Low Road, Callan Kicks the Year and Keys to My Life
Ring in the New Year with ...
01/12/2025
Architect and television presenter Hugh Wallace, best known to RT audiences as a long-serving judge on Home of the Year, has died at the age of 68.
In a state...
28/11/2025
Nadia Fall attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Brides at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Donyale West/...
28/11/2025
It's easy to ignore those little red update available badges. But when it ...
28/11/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 18, 2025 ...
28/11/2025
The Professional Fighters League is looking to super-serve fans of mixed martial...
28/11/2025
Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once....
28/11/2025
The WNBA playoffs and Week 4 of the NFL regular season highlight the list of live sports events airing on television this weekend....
28/11/2025
The 32nd class of honorees to the B+C Hall of Fame took to the stage at New York's Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 26 for a gala induction event. Click below...
28/11/2025
We hold in our hands the very last Next Text for Next TV, the weekly back-and-fo...
28/11/2025
DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar's video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus...
28/11/2025
The Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the premier industry event paying tribute to the influencers, innovators and shining lights of broadcast, cable and streami...
28/11/2025
Friday 28 November 2025
Sky Sports x Slawn drop limited-edition football jersey...
28/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz shows resilience in a challenging environment, revenue exceeds t...
28/11/2025
Unwrapped: The Toy Show Appeal - airing this Sunday on RT One and RT Player- s...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Marks a Grand...
27/11/2025
27 Nov 2025
GSMA brings M360 Eurasia 2026 to Samarkand in partnership with VEON...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
Gay struggle offers new window on Berlin Wall's fallThe role of the gay in bringing down East Germany from within is getting attention, at a time when sexual liberation is still a battleground.
