The era of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) witnessed a flourishing of the arts, liberalization of social attitudes, and the emergence of a vibrant queer culture in Berlin and other German cities. But a conservative backlash, economic depression, and the rise of the Nazi regime reversed this progress after little more than a decade.

Like much of Europe, Germany was devastated by World War I. Hungry for peace and eager for change, the country ousted the monarchy of Kaiser Wilhelm II in November 1918 and instituted a parliamentary democracy led by the Socialists. The following year, the legislature drafted a new constitution granting gender and class equality, privacy rights, and individual liberties such as freedom of speech and assembly.

Thus began an era of remarkable artistic and intellectual ferment. The realms of literature, drama, music, architecture, and the new medium of film exploded. Philosophy and political theory enjoyed a renaissance as well, and medicine and science flourished, with new advances in fields ranging from psychology to physics.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people were in the thick of these developments. By this time, Germany already had the strongest gay rights movement in the world. In 1897, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and others had founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee—the first-ever homosexual rights group—devoted to reform of Paragraph 175, the German law criminalizing sex between men. In 1919, Hirschfeld opened the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, which housed a library, museum, and clinic. The movement was even large enough to have internal schisms: Adolf Brand’s Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Community of Self-Owners), founded in 1903, celebrated masculine culture and rejected Hirschfeld’s medicalized view of homosexuality.

Gay social life flourished during the 1920s. While there were hubs of activity in cities such as Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne, Berlin was without doubt the center of queer culture. Attracted by the heady atmosphere and a weak currency that made living relatively cheap, gays and lesbians flocked to the capital from across Germany and around the world. By one estimate, there were 350,000 gay men and women among the city’s four million residents.

An active cabaret culture emerged, complete with venues catering to every sexual proclivity—as portrayed in gay British author Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin (1939), which inspired the play and film Cabaret. Berlin boasted dozens of gay, lesbian, and transvestite nightclubs, leading Hirschfeld to note that "Uranians [his term for homosexuals] have been seen arriving from the depths of the provinces weeping tears of joy at the sight of this spectacle." Many such venues were concentrated in the Scho[+um]neberg and Nollendorfplatz neighborhoods, which remain centers of gay life today. One of these, the Eldorado Nightclub on Motzstrasse, sported large signs over the entrance announcing "You’ve found it!" and "It’s OK Here!" In addition, there were numerous cafes, bathhouses, fetish clubs, bookstores, theaters, and hotels—many operated by gay entrepreneurs—as well as an estimated 2,000 male prostitutes.

Lesbian and bisexual women were active in mixed-gender homosexual organizations such as the League for Human Rights, as well as in the burgeoning women’s movement, working for educational reform and the right to employment outside the home. By one estimate, there were some 50 lesbian venues and organizations in Berlin, including bars—often frequented by butch/femme couples—salons, bowling clubs, and living collectives. Several well-known lesbian literary figures called the city home, including writer Christa Winsloe (author of the novel that was the basis of the film Ma[+um]dchen in Uniform) and American journalist Dorothy Thompson.

The new press freedom encouraged the establishment of some 30 queer literary and political publications, which were sold openly on newsstands and boasted a combined circulation in the millions. Among these were Brand’s Der Eigene (One’s Own)—thought to be the first-ever gay magazine—Die Freundschaft (Friendship), Die Insel (The Island), Frauenliebe (Women’s Love), and Garconne.

But many Germans, disturbed by the era’s cultural changes and economic hardships, yearned for a return to traditional values. Religious conservatives decried shifting gender roles and perceived vices such as homosexuality, pornography, and abortion. The nation’s problems were blamed on Communists, Jews, feminists, and homosexuals.

Adolf Hitler exploited these fears and prejudices to consolidate his political power, aided by factionalism on the left. He was appointed chancellor in January 1933, and the staged Reichstag fire the following month provided a pretext for suspending civil liberties. In May, the Institute for Sexual Science was sacked and its materials burned by right-wing youth. Homosexual publications were banned and venues were shuttered; the Eldorado was converted into a Nazi propaganda center.

In 1935, Paragraph 175 was strengthened. An estimated 5,000 to 15,000 accused homosexual men were sent to concentration camps. Amid this climate of fear and isolation, an untold number of queer men and women went into hiding, entered sham marriages, emigrated to safer countries, or committed suicide.

Weimar Germany offers one of history’s most prescient lessons about how liberalization can lead to backlash, and seemingly secure rights and freedoms can be lost. In the words of cultural critic Marcus Bullock, Weimar’s cultural renaissance was "remarkable for the way it emerged from a catastrophe, more remarkable for the way it vanished into a still greater catastrophe."