In this age of book burning, let’s share queer history!

On a Forgotten Author and How Nazis Burned Berlin’s Queer Underbelly

Elektropolis Coked to the Eyeballs: Berlin’s Modernist Identity Crisis

Nazis plundering the library of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld on 6 May 1933. The library’s 10,000+ books and documents on sex and gender were to be burned at Berlin’s Opera Square on 10 May. Public domain photograph, Schwules Museum Berlin.

This article was first published by Modernist Studies Ireland on 1 October, 2021. It has been reformatted for inclusion in Prism & Pen’s Queer History call to arms.

Berlin underwent significant changes and took on many names during La Belle Époque: The Garrison City. New Athens. The German Chicago. Elektropolis. Babylon-on-Spree. World City of the Future. This part of the city’s tumultuous history and its many identities can be hard to reconcile with the Berlin known today, but one might see traces of it written on the façade of the grand Adlon Hotel.

Intended to compete with the luxury of The Savoy in London, L’Hôtel Ritz Paris, and New York City’s Waldorf Astoria, the Hotel Adlon opened in 1907 with 391 beds, 140 bathrooms (with both hot and cold running water), on-site laundry, its own power plant to supply electricity, a restaurant, café, library, barber shop, and numerous lounges and grand ballrooms. [1]

Though the building was largely destroyed in the closing days of World War II, literature from the period…