‘We will show you Berlin’: space, leisure,flânerieand sexuality

Abstract

Both the seat of the German government and the capitol of queer German culture, Berlin has been that spatial nexus of politics, sexuality and gender, work and leisure that has enabled the development of multifarious sexual and gender identities. This has caused celebration and consternation among Germans and foreigners alike. Contemporary studies of urban homosexual space cite an erosion of its ‘authenticity’ when cities market homosexual space in order to attract tourists. My literary analysis shows that Berlin’s homosexual male culture and space had already been subject to commoditisation in the Weimar period (1918–1933), when Berliners discovered marketing potential in the French slight la vice allemand [the German vice] – male homosexuality. This article’s examination of Weimar Berlin’s spatial binary as ‘sexy space’ and ‘sexualised place’ in literature by Klaus Mann and Curt Moreck engages with current debates in leisure studies on the gendering and sexing of geography and leisure. Central to this re‐evaluation of leisure and tourism in Weimar Berlin is my discussion of flânerie: the figure of the flâneuse indicates that flânerie was not the lone dominion of heterosexual men. In the context of urban leisure and male homosexuality, I argue that Weimar Berlin consistently and successfully negotiated its dual function of sexy space (allowing self‐fashioning for homosexual men in Berlin) and sexualised place (voyeurism and sexual exploration for Berlin’s newcomers and tourists).

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