Berlinica Publishing LLC

12/22/2025

Rosa von Praunheim, the famous German filmmaker and gay rights activist died this week. He was 83 years old. This is a story he wrote about Berlin for our book "Our West-Berlin" that came out in 2023. This is your Advent story.

Survival in Berlin
By Rosa von Praunheim

Berlin… City of Lost Souls: that is the title of my 1983 film, the story of several American singers and dancers who were stranded in Berlin and whose biographies inspired me to improvise a feature film about their lives. Many of them are already dead. Tara was murdered in Tiergarten Park. Beautiful Tron died of AIDS, Angie Stardust of cancer, and talented Black dancer Gary seems to have disappeared.

Only Lorraine, punk singer Jayne County (“Man Enough to Be a Woman”), drag star Joaquim la Habana, and the versatile Judith Flex are known to be still alive. Now the film has been rediscovered internationally because it’s a historical display of Berlin before 1989, when the Wall was still standing: an island of outsiders where creative people from all over the world met. Rents were cheap, the nightlife endless, and the gay scene was unique in Europe.

I came to Berlin in the early sixties to escape military service. I studied free-style painting at the Academy of Arts and lived in a storefront apartment with other artist friends. The police long suspected that we were running a narcotics ring and watched us from a flower store across the street. On my 21st birthday, there was a raid. At the time I was painting murdered kings, and there was a Punch puppet hanging out of one of the paintings. I’d hidden ma*****na in it, and the cops didn’t find it.

For a short time, an architecture student lived with us who wanted to turn me in when he found out I was having gay s*x. He wouldn’t even use our bathroom anymore. The anti-gay Paragraph 175 of the criminal code, taken directly from N**i law, still existed at that time. If charges had actually been filed, a court would have had to convict me.

From 1949 to 1969, twice as many gay men were convicted in West Berlin and West Germany as during the N**i era; the only difference was they landed in prison instead of a concentration camp. Finally, in 1969, the Paragraph was liberalized in favor of g**s, although it wasn’t completely abolished until 1994 in united Germany.

In the sixties, I had caused a sensation with my short films that also dealt with homos*xuality. Bavarian Television asked me on behalf of WDR, the biggest German public TV station, if I wanted to make a feature-length film about homos*xuality. I did so with pleasure. I shot the film very subversively without synchronized sound, but with a very provocative voice-over. This is how my sensational, scandalous film "Not the Homos*xual is Perverse, but the Situation in Which He Lives" was made in 1970.

In that film, I let out all my rage at the cowardly gay scene in West Berlin. Most g**s, as I had experienced it over many years, were apolitical and uninterested in their own emancipation; they preferred to take refuge in glamour and movie-star fantasies. They entered gay bars furtively, had s*x in dark parks, and were always in danger of being beaten up by homophobes in public toilets. It was hard to meet politically like-minded people. And the leftist groups were as anti-gay as they were anti-woman. When the movie premiered in 1971, it caused furious indignation; but a small minority of g**s took it as an opportunity to form the first gay liberation groups.

Television banned the film, so we showed it in cinemas, never without heated discussions, by the way. During this time, over fifty gay groups were founded. Finally, in 1973, the film made it on television and became a big hit. G**s in East Berlin could also see it, and gay activists over there founded the first liberation group. Unfortunately, the group was soon forbidden by State Security, the all-powerful secret police.

Berlin was the liberation for me, too. I grew up in Praunheim, a district of Frankfurt am Main. I was very sheltered and shy; only in Berlin did I dare to live out my gayness. But in the circle of my artist friends, there seemed to be no g**s. I was considered eccentric and wild, and I expressed that in my paintings and poems. 1968 was the time of politicization. Many students were protesting against authority and also against the Vietnam War.

Most of them considered art to be reactionary at that time, because leftist ideology saw art as nothing but a means of propaganda. I didn’t like mass movements. At that time, I only participated on the fringes of the many rallies on the Kurfürstendamm, West Berlin’s main boulevard, because I saw myself as an individual. Even later, when many of the political firebrands turned to drugs or joined sects, I didn’t participate.

Nevertheless, I attracted attention at film festivals. With my cult film The Bed Sausage from 1970, I got really big publicity. For the movie, I brought my elderly aunt Luzi together with a hustler from West Berlin, and we parodied a heteros*xual love affair. To this day, the film is loved by young people. So I quickly became famous.

But my following films flopped. That’s why I went to New York, where I shot successful documentaries, among them Survival in New York, a movie about three young German women in New York; Ulrike Buschbacher, Claudia Steinberg, and Anna Steegmann (as pictured above in a New York subway car). That enabled me to continue working.

The eighties were marked by the disease AIDS, to which many friends in America and Berlin fell victim. For almost a decade I devoted myself to prevention work with films, talk show appearances, and newspaper articles. It was an emotionally difficult time. Many of my friends didn’t want to lose the s*xual freedoms we had fought for so laboriously, and they downplayed the peril of HIV and AIDS. At the time, however, there was no viable way to ameliorate it. The disease meant dying in agony.

This also changed Berlin. But that was only the beginning. When the Wall came down in 1989 and many g**s from the East came to the s*xually liberal West, they were fascinated by the s*x clubs and s*xual freedoms. But I was very afraid that this could mean a death sentence for many. My strident safer-s*x campaigns became more and more furious. In 1985, I made one of the first films on AIDS: A Virus Knows No Morals. It was a deliberate black comedy meant to educate with humor. When we showed the film, there were good discussions, but we also experienced protests and ignorance. I remember disputes with young, handsome gay men who didn’t take our warnings seriously or even mocked them. Many of them soon became tragic victims of the virus.

It wasn’t until the mid-nineties, when new drugs curbed the danger of AIDS, that the gay scene became more relaxed again. Today, Berlin is once again the capital of s*x and wild nightlife. Meanwhile, there is Prep, which is supposed to protect against HIV infections, but of course not against STDs like syphilis and gonorrhea, or against hepatitis. The young gay scene has become more careless and numbs itself with drugs.

Yes, Berlin is getting expensive, rents are rising and apartments are hard to find; but the city is still a magnet for artists and outsiders from all over the world. I’ve now made over one hundred fifty films, many of them with gay themes. Last year I made a movie about Berlin’s new creative center: Survival in Neukölln shows the international diversity of the artistic and gay scenes there, centering on the wonderful Juwelia, who has been running a small club in the south-central district of Neukölln for many years and enchants her guests with her charm.

In the meantime, I have become old. In November 2023 I will celebrate my 81th birthday. I have been fortunate to live in a wonderful relationship for eleven years, and I am finally enjoying the quiet side of Berlin. I will remain faithful to this city. This is where I will die, and until then I am enjoying the diversity of a great, wonderful city. The success of right-wing parties makes us aware that we should not take our democratic freedoms for granted, and that we must always remain vigilant and active.

Rosa von Praunheim, director, author, and winner of many film awards, is considered an important representative of the post-modern German film scene and a pioneer of the gay and le***an movement. In over fifty years he has made more than one hundred fifty movies. Born Holger Mischwitzky in 1942 in Riga, Latvia, he grew up in Frankfurt / Main and has lived in Berlin since the sixties. / Photo: Markus Tiarks

https://berlinica.com/our-west-berlin

12/19/2025

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a Great New Year

We wish all readers, booksellers, librarians, book-lovers, and friends of Berlinica Merry Christmas, Blessed Hanukkah, and a Happy New Year 2026.

This year, we have brought two books back from Erik Kirschbaum, Burning Beethoven and Rocking the Wall, about the legendary concert Bruce Springsteen gave in Berlin in 1988. Next year, we will publish three books from Weimar authors with a connection to America. Those are Alfred Kerr (New York and London), Alexander Roda Roda (Springtime in America), and Walter Hasenclever, who wrote a screenplay about Christopher Columbus, together with Kurt Tucholsky. They are all translated into English for the first time. We will keep you posted. And here is a pic from the book Wings of Desire.

Alfred Kerr's book about his journey to America will come out in March 2026. Kerr visits the Broadway theaters and Wall Street, and marvels at Times Square and Pennsylvania Station. He talks to the satirist Henry Louis Mencken, the railroad magnate W. Averell Harriman and Adolph Ochs, the German Jewish publisher of The New York Times. In London, he meets the poet George Bernard Shaw. The book, written concisely and wittily, is much more than just a travelogue. Kerr is also on a mission to ask for sympathy and help for the fragile Weimar democracy.

New York and London
Author: Alfred Kerr
Translator: Professor Alan Bance
Cover Picture: Berenice Abbott
Genre: Narrative Nonfiction
Softcover; 172 pp.
Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5’’
ISBN USA: 978-1-935902-64-5
Suggested retail $13.95
Release: 2026

https://mailchi.mp/cc56e806ceb1/932185x3xo-10597115

12/14/2025

Advent, Advent! In those days, 69 years ago — from December 12 to December 14, 1953 — Der Schatz im Silbersee (The Treasure in the Silver Lake) premiered, the first of many movies about the famous, albeit fictional, Apache Chief made famous by Karl May. The movie had three million visitors in its first year, 12 million altogether in theaters alone, and since it is shown on German TV before Christmas, by now every German must have seen it twice. Winnetou, with his "blood brother" Old Shatterhand, the main character, was played by the late Pierre Brice, a French actor, who would continue the role in a half dozen follow-ups. But who was Karl May? The author, who only came to America late in his life and imagines most of his adventures, was from Saxony. He is mentioned in our book: Leipzig! The City of Books and Music, about the history of the 1000-year-old city. Here is an excerpt.

During Karl May’s sojourn in Leipzig in March 1865, no one knew that he would one day bear the title of most-read author in Germany—indeed, at the time, the twenty-three-year-old had not yet published a single word. He was already using pseudonyms, however, though his motives were not all that poetic in nature—serving only in the illegal acquisition of others’ property. And so it was that he stepped into Erler’s fur shop on the corner of the Brühl and Reichsstrasse on March 20, 1865, under the illustrious name of Hermes Kupferstecher, chose a beaver fur, and arranged to have it delivered to his rented room at the St. Thomas Churchyard

May’s beaver coat was not the only dead fur animal on the Brühl at that time, which was teeming with Rauchwaren. The root of the word Rauchwaren is the Old German word rauh, meaning “hairy” or “shaggy.” The fact that Leipzig, of all places, developed as the center of the fur trade had something to do with the significance of the trade fairs and with the city’s location in the heart of Europe, where it connected fur suppliers in the east with markets in the west. Though at first, Leipzig really was just more of an industrial meeting place and would not have its own fur industry for quite some time.
Karl May had no inkling of any of this in 1865, but he did have other concerns of his own. His formidable beaver coat, which he stole under a pretense on his way to the pawn shop, got him four years in jail in Zwickau a short while later, which would not be May’s only prison sentence. While he wrote his novels after his sojourns in prison, the ideas for them came to him while he was behind bars, so one might conclude that the compelling workmanship of a bunch of dead rodents indirectly led to the birth of Winnetou, the famed, albeit fictional, Apache chief from the Wild West, who fought side by side with his white brother, Old Shatterhand, both known to every man, woman, and child in Germany.

https://berlinica.com/leipzig-and-luther

12/13/2025

Advent, Advent! Yes, I have been slacking a little. So, during these days in December 1521, Martin Luther began to translate the Bible from Latin into German, an undertaking that occupied him for more than a year. Luther spent these months in hiding at Wartburg Castle, where his protector, Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, had hidden him. This was necessary because translating the Bible so that the common people could read it was frowned upon by the Pope. Not only the Pope, but also the devil was unhappy; he swarmed around Luther in the form of a fly! Luther threw his inkwell at the devil. This caused a large ink stain that remained on the wall of Wartburg Castle forever. Even when tourists broke off small pieces, the ink stain would reappear the next morning, throughout the late Middle Ages, the founding of the Reich by Bismarck and even in communist East Germany - most of Lutherland became part of the GDR after 1945. The inkblot only stopped freshly materializing when the West took over in the name of "honesty". Boring! Anyway, here's a picture of the Wartburg, and if I get a few likes, you'll see me and the inkblot.

https://berlinica.com/leipzig-and-luther

12/10/2025

Advent, Advent! Here is a picture of the famous concert Bruce Springsteen gave in Berlin-Weissensee 1988, where he called for toppling the Berlin Wall! Author Erik Kirschbaum spoke to scores of fans and concert organizers on both sides of the Berlin Wall, including Jon Landau, Springsteen's long-time friend and manager. With lively behind-the-scenes details from eyewitness accounts, magazine and newspaper clippings, TV recordings, and even Stasi files, as well as photos and memorabilia, this gripping book transports you back to those heady times before the Berlin Wall fell and gives you a front-row spot at one of the most exciting rock concerts ever. It takes you to an unforgettable journey with Springsteen through the divided city, to the open air concert grounds in Weissensee, where The Boss, live on stage, delivered a speech against the Wall to a record-breaking crowd of more than 300,000 delirious young East Germans full of joy and hope. Pictures by Herbert Schulze

https://berlinica.com/springsteen-in-berlin

12/09/2025

Malve von Hassell joins Paul Rushworth-Brown on Down Under Interviews to discuss her new historical novel The Price of Loyalty: Serving Adela of Blois. We ex...

12/09/2025

Advent, Advent! Today, I am still tired after baking cookies for about six hours, so here is a recipe from Germany. It is from The Berlin Cookbook. Enjoy!

Eene jut jebratene Jans is ne jute Jabe Jottes” (A well roasted goose is a gift from God), is a favorite saying in Berlin. Especially on holidays, the “Christmas Bird” is a must. Kale or red cabbage and potato dumplings usually go along with it. In the early 19th century, there was a goose market on Dönhoffplatz (in the Mitte district) twice a week during Advent. Not only were there Sunday geese there, but goose down, too, for featherbeds. The market women were known to be clever and tough, as the following story shows, from a young man who wanted to haggle over the price of a goose:

“Ma’m, Goosey-Loosey has such a sad look on his face, he must be mourning his bride!” “You little whippersnapper! What do you know of brides, you monkey hatchling?” “And what’s the goose cost, Ma’m?” “One dollar five,” “No, it’s much too skinny for that.” “Skinny? You think this swamp hog is thin? I’ll show you skinny, Sonny. Come here and I’ll grab you by the bones till I get calluses on my fingers, and you’ll squawk so loud they’ll hear you all the way over to Potsdam.

[“Madamken, der Jänserich hat so n trübes Jesicht, der trauert wohl um seine Braut!” “Du Jrinschnabel, du! Wat weeßt du ausjebrütetes Affenküken von ne Braut!” “Und wat kost de Jans, Madamken?” “Enen Dahler, fünf Jute!” “Nee, davor is se zu mager!” “Wat, mager soll diese Oderbruchsche sein? Du bist mager, mein Söhneken, komm mal her, ick werde dir an deine Knochen fassen, det ick Schwielen an de Finger krieje, und du quietschst, det man s noch in Potsdam hören soll!”]
Makes 4 large servings or more!
1 prepared goose, approx. 8 pounds, traditionally from Poland.
Salt, black pepper
1 bunch mugwort
5 tart apples (e.g. Boskop, Braeburn, or Granny Smith)
2 onions
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 Rinse the goose under cold running water, washing thoroughly and removing fat from inside the abdominal cavity. Pat dry with paper towels; season inside and out with salt and pepper.
2 Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Wash the mugwort and shake dry. Wash, core, and cut apples into quarters; do not peel.
3 Put apples and mugwort inside the abdominal cavity. Sew shut with cooking thread and bind the legs together.
4 Place goose in roasting pan, breast-side up; pour 1 cup water around side of pan. Place pan on lowest rack in preheated oven. Roast goose about 2 ½ hours.
5 Midway through the roasting time, poke a needle into the goose, beneath the leg, to allow fat to run out. Peel and slice onions and spread them around the pan—they’ll taste good and soak up fat. Pour an additional 2 cups cold water around the side.
6 Increase oven temperature by 40 degrees, or turn to the “grill” setting, to brown the goose in about 20 minutes. Remove the goose from the roasting pan and place it back in the oven on aluminum foil, with the oven turned off.
7 Place the roasting pan on the stove. Add 2 cups hot water and bring the pan drippings to a boil. Strain through a fine sieve and bring to a boil again. Mix cornstarch with 3 tablespoons cold water, until smooth, and add to the gravy. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
8 Remove the thread and cut the goose in half. Arrange the apples on a preheated serving platter. Cut the legs and wings from the halves. Cut the halves into smaller portions and arrange on a large serving platter. Serve with the gravy.

https://berlinica.com/the-berlin-cookbook

12/07/2025

Advent, Advent ... This year, the war on Christmas in America is going slowly. For those who are on the Internet for the first day, there is a steadfast belief in America that saying Merry Christmas is not inclusive enough, because there are many, many other holidays on the same day. Not really the same day, though, they are in a two-to-three-month period, which begins with Oktoberfest and ends abruptly on December 26 because nobody cares about Orthodox Christmas or any other competing holiday later on.

Some people claim that there are 59 holidays around Christmas. So far, nobody has ever seen this list, but I assume this number includes the four Advent Sundays that lead up to Christmas, all the Saintly days around Christmas, the twelve days of Christmas themselves, and all eight days of Hanukkah. There is also Kwanzaa, invented by an African-American wifebeater in the 1960s. It is a recreation of a traditional African harvest festival, which is kind of odd because harvest in Africa is not in December and should never be culturally appropriated by white people and Asians.

Some people include Divali in the Happy-holiday-list for Christmas, the Indian celebration of light. It is at the beginning of November, so it is kinda far away from Christmas. Divali is rather in a November cluster with Halloween, Reformation Day, All Saints Day, All Souls' Day, Samhain, the last day of Oktoberfest, Yom Kippur, Día de los Mu***os, Guy Fawkes Night, Sukkot, the first day of Carneval that is celebrated on November 11 (in Germany), and, of course, Thanksgiving.

This should be the second biggest mutual Happy-Holiday event, right after Independence Day. After all, the number of countries that are celebrating their independence from the British is 65; six more than the Christmas ersatz Holidays that only number 59 and also are partly imaginary. Whereas the British Empire was very real. Also, I feel strongly that the November cluster should not be connected to Christmas.

I'm entitled to make that call because Germany invented Christmas in the late Middle Ages. Martin Luther was supposedly the first one to decorate a Christmas Tree with shiny apples and candles. He coined the famous line: "Früher war mehr Lametta," we used to have more tinsel. Little did he know that people of both coasts of America would put up a "Holiday Tree," or that America would exist in the first place, because the Mayflower landed in America in 1620, nearly 75 years after Luther had died.

But is Christmas really legitimate? Christmas haters point out that Jesus was not born on December 25, and that the holiday goes back to Saturnalia, a festivity in Ancient Rome which was more of a rowdy thing, like Carnival in Germany. Think Monty Python meets Mardi Gras meets Mussolini election party. And another belief, Christmas is really about celebrating the Winter Solstice when the days get longer. In Scandinavia, it is known as Yule, although Scandinavians, as good Lutherans, emphasize Christmas more.

The idea of celebrating Christmas by prancing around a burning Yule log at midnight in the snow while waving torches as opposed to sipping Glühwein and hot chocolate in front of the lit Christmas tree is fascinating. But Pagan Christmas, honoring the Nordic Gods, is somewhat discredited in Germany nowadays. The N**i leadership did not especially like to celebrate the birth of Jesus because, you guessed it, Jesus was Jewish. So they promoted the ancient Germanic Gods instead, who were also quite bloodthirsty and bear little resemblance to the adjacent Marvel Comic characters.

They tried to rename Christmas "Yulfest", a festival that celebrates the return of the sun, symbolized by the sun-like Sw****ka placed on top of the "Yultree". Also, Santa Claus was really Wotan, or, as some call him, Odin. Even Christmas songs were rewritten by the N**is to praise New Jesus, i. e. the Führer. So it is a bit startling for Germans to see American Liberals happily culturally appropriating the Christmas of white superior Gods, including the torches and the alternate tree, and claim this is the real thing. At least they are not putting up Sw****kas. Yet. But if you're into "Happy Holidays", maybe accepting that you don't have a holiday would be the honest thing.

Most Germans, however, never went along with the N**i war on Christmas. A few years later, East Germany made another effort to get rid of Christmas — the Communists renamed the Christmas Angel "Jahresendflügelfigur," End-of-the-year-winged-figurine. They failed as well. Speaking of Angels, let me direct your attention once to our Wings of Desire — Angels of Berlin book, and post another couple of pictures.

12/07/2025

12/05/2025

Advent, Advent! Today, on December 5, dear Friends and Fans, I will tell you about St. Nikolaus. So, Nikolaus was real. At least as real as Robin Hood. The character goes back to Nikolaus von Myra, a Bishop and a Christian Saint and martyr. According to Wikipedia, he is the patron Saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, toymakers, unmarried people, and students in most parts of Europe. The patron Saint of unrepentant thieves is Robin Hood.

Myra was a town in Lycia, a Greek region in the Western part of what became Turkey about 700 years later, when the Turks drove the Greeks out. So no, Nikolaus was not Turkish, the same way Geronimo was not an Englishman. At the time of Nikolaus, Lycia belonged to the Roman Empire. Around the year 300 after Christ, the Roman Emperor Diokletian went after the Christians all over his lands. He had churches burned down and Bibles destroyed, and he killed or enslaved many Christians, especially clerics, including Bishop Nikolaus.

Nikolaus had a testament that gave his earthly possessions to the poor, which was not surprising because in his lifetime, he did a lot of charity, some of it secret. He was said to have given toys to poor children and also performed miracles. Fast forward to the near-present, Nikolaus would visit German and Austrian children on the evening of December 6 (in some other countries on December 5) and leave little gifts in their boots outside. Like a tiny bar of chocolate, two cookies, and an orange when I was young, or a Sony PlayStation and a big screen TV today.

Nikolaus was depicted as that old man with a white beard, a red hat, and a red coat. His helper and companion was Krampus, who had a deformed foot and a rod. Krampus gave a piece of coal to kids who did not behave, or would even s***k them. I would not know because I was always a very well-behaved kid.
In America, Dutch settlers brought his story to the new world (they call him Sinterclaas), and the British also knew him as Father Christmas (sadly, they did not emphasize Robin Hood). Soon, Nikolaus would develop into Santa Claus. The New York caricaturist Thomas Nast drew the first picture of Santa Claus as we know him. His red-and-white coat was eventually picked up and popularized by the Coca-Cola company.

And he would no longer show up at the beginning of December, but on Christmas Eve, the night before Christmas. With a sled, filled by his North Pole elves (also a later add-on). Coca-Cola-Santa Claus has made his way back to Europe after WWII, including Germany, with the help of Hollywood movies, but not necessarily beloved by everybody. Because traditionally, the Christ Child brings the gifts, not Nikolaus. Tomorrow, I will tell more about Christmas and why some people think Santa Claus is really Odin, the Germanic God of war.

In the meantime, here is an angel from our book „Wings of Desire —Angels of Berlin“. Also available in German, including in book stores.

https://berlinica.com/angels-of-berlin

12/05/2025

Advent, Advent! This day 77 years ago — on December 4, 1948 — Free University was founded in West-Berlin, in the district of Zehlendorf, with a festive act at the Titania Palast, a movie theater in Steglitz. Berlin's mayor Ernst Reuter was present as well as Lucius D. Clay. This was decided after the Soviets tried to take over the main University of Berlin that was soonafter named Humboldt University. This is an excerpt from our book The Cold War in Berlin.

The University as a Political Battlefield

Soon even Berlin University, where teaching had already resumed in January 1946, by order of the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD), became the scene of political disagreement between the East and the West.
The university, located on the Avenue Unter den Linden and therefore in the Soviet sector, was subjected to increasing pressure by the Soviets and the SED, with regard to both course content and personnel. Professors or students who did not willingly submit to this influence were harassed and pressured. In March 1947, several students were arrested, most of them members of the SPD or the CDU.

In spring 1948, the situation intensified further when the SED reacted to student demands for more freedom in research and teaching by expelling numerous students and making serious threats. About two dozen students and lecturers took the initiative to found an independent university, free of any political influences, in the western part of the four-sector city. They were supported above all by the Americans, in particular by US Military Governor Lucius D. Clay, and the new institution was officially founded on December 4, 1948, as “The Free University,” situated in the idyllic area of Dahlem in the American sector, just a stone’s throw from the Allied Kommandatura building.

From then on, the Cold War in Berlin was also manifest in the existence of two competing universities. Both of the other two higher-level educational institutions, the Academy of Arts and the Technical University, were in West Berlin and were therefore shielded from the East–West confrontation, since the East did not have competing institutions.

https://berlinica.com/berlin-city-history