GLR March-April 2026

years. However, certain people, including Hahm, worked clan destinely to keep those connections alive. This was not an easy endeavor. With the eradication of their establishments and pub lications, queer people relied on snippets of unverified news, often spread by word of mouth. Confusion was not uncommon. Three contemporary witnesses, including famous anti-fascist les bian Hilde Radusch, claimed to have witnessed or heard about Hahm’s arrest and imprisonment in the Moringen concentration camp between 1933 and 1935. Recent research has demonstrated that this was most likely not the case or, if it was, she was not confined there for an extended period. In reality, Hahm was organizing underground events that would require a very low profile. She chaired a “women’s sports club” named Sonne that covertly held lesbian events. The club met twice a week in a Jewish lodge until December 1934, then in the Türkische Zelt restaurant in 1935. The authorities did not initially notice Sonne ’s activities until the club was denounced a few months later. A Nazi policeman surveilled one of its events on July 17th and reported that there were about 65 attendees and that most of the women were so dressed that they “could be mis taken for men.” The officer noted that women were dancing to gether in a manner that gave a “revolting impression” and was particularly scandalized when he caught two women kissing in one of the booths. One week later, on July 24th, the Sonne club was raided, and 54 people were detained. However, police did not find Hahm. Instead, when they interrogated one of the women they detained, she informed them that Hahm was on the island of Hiddensee. Hiddensee is in the Baltic Sea just off the coast of Germany. By 1935, it had developed a reputation among certain circles as a meeting space for lesbian women. Hahm had acquired a guest house on the island that the Nazi police suspected served a sim ilar function to the Sonne sports club. If this were true, it could be an additional reason that other lesbian women recalled her absence from Berlin. Two distinct legal disputes attest to the ex istence of the Hiddensee guesthouse: First, records show that Hahm was sued by a Berlin friend for “breach of contract” when she was unable to make them the guesthouse manager; second, Hahm was charged in Hiddensee’s regional court with violating vegetable fat regulations at her guesthouse. These legal conflicts aside, Hahm was able to create an additional covert space for queer women to find safety, community, and possible romance in an immensely dark chapter of Germany’s history. Hahm provided limited help for her partner. It is unknown whether Fleischmann traveled to Hiddensee with her, but Hahm had returned to Berlin by the end of 1936. In 1938, the Nazis confiscated all of Fleischmann’s possessions. The fol lowing year, the regime forced her to work unloading wagons at the Berlin East Harbor. Due to the brutal conditions, Fleis chmann injured her foot in 1941, and she used her medical treatment as an opportunity to escape her forced labor. She re lied on several people to help her escape, including Hahm, who accompanied her to the Saarland, where they rented an apartment in Saarbrücken near the French-German border. However, this was not a long-term solution. Hahm returned to Berlin in spring 1942 and Fleischmann was forced to find shel ter elsewhere. She narrowly survived the Nazi regime and suf fered medical complications for the remainder of her life. When asked in the 1960s, Fleischmann disclosed that she “felt

abandoned” by Hahm and said they had separated by the end of the 1950s. It’s unclear why Hahm returned to Berlin before Fleischmann was safe. § A FTER W ORLD W AR II, around two-thirds of Berlin’s apartments were uninhabitable. Food scarcity, homelessness, and a growing black market for everyday necessities occupied the Allied au thorities during Berlin’s reconstruction. Amid larger social con cerns and confusion about which legal codes would remain in place, Berlin’s queer scene gingerly re-emerged from its Nazi exile. Records for Hahm after the war are scarce. In the imme diate aftermath, she briefly became active again in Berlin’s les bian scene. With Käthe Reinhardt, whom she worked alongside in the 1920s, Hahm attempted to again organize balls at The Magic Flute. Later in 1945, they opened the first queer bar in East Berlin, but their establishment closed in 1947 for unknown reasons. It was not uncommon to travel or relocate between dif ferent zones before a hard border rose between the east and western halves of the city, and Hahm eventually relocated to West Berlin. Between 1949 and 1953, both East and West Berlin began cracking down on queer subcultures. Bars and dance halls were surveilled and raided. Queer magazines, mostly published in Hamburg, were seized and their publishers eventually shut down (with the notable exception of the gay magazine Der Weg ). Perhaps sensing the need for political organization, Hahm joined several others in applying to re-establish the BfM in 1958—but this effort failed. She died on August 17, 1967, just short of West German’s homosexual liberation in 1969. On balance, Lotte Hahm was an activist and community or ganizer for Berlin’s queer scene for most of her life, even under the Nazi regime, but she did not provide the support that her girlfriend vitally needed during a time of crisis and genocide. Alongside Käthe Reinhardt, Hahm expanded Berlin’s lesbian nightlife, and Fleischmann helped her to establish two venues for that purpose. After the war, Hahm attempted to rekindle that nightlife where she could, perhaps even igniting the sparks that would allow the next generation of Berlin’s queer organizers to take over. The narrative of her life offers insight into the human experience of Germany’s dramatically changing sociopolitical landscape from the Weimar Republic to the bifurcated Germany of the Cold War era. R EFERENCES Boxhammer, Ingeborg and Christiane Leidiger. “Offensiv – strategisch – (frauen)emanzipiert: Spuren der Berliner Subkulturaktivistin* Lotte Hahm (1890–1967).” Gender 1 (2021). Dobler, Jens. Von anderen Ufern: Geschichte der Berliner Lesben und Schwulen in Kreuzberg und Friedrichshain . Bruno Gmünder Verlag, 2003. Hansi. “Die Welt der Transvestiten.” Die Freundin 23 (October 1932), Forum Queeres Archiv München. I.A. des Vorstandes, Kroneberg. “Die Welt der Transvestiten.” Die Freundin 18, October 1928, Forum Queeres Archiv München. Kokula, Ilse. “Interviews mit Älteren Lesbischen Frauen,” February 4, 1985. Spinnboden Archive, AK/Kok/Eigene Text/16. Marhoefer, Laurie. Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Eman cipation and the Rise of the Nazis. University of Toronto Press, 2019. Raid Report , July 26, 1935, Landesarchiv Berlin, A Rep. 030-02-05 198a Nr. 106. Surveillance Report , July 18, 1935, Landesarchiv Berlin, A Rep. 030-02-05 198a Nr. 106. A complete set of references can be found online at GLReview.org.

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