Gate to the World of Pleasure - Extra Extra Magazine

PLACE-MAKING IN A SEXUALIZED CITY

Forget what you already know about Hamburg. Certainly, city tourism is striving to promote sexual entertainment at Reeperbahn, the red light district, packaging it into musical or harbour-related themes such as ‘Harbour Days’. There is also the latest mega-project, the unmissable Elbphilharmonie, a concert hall built at huge expense in the newly developed HafenCity. There is more to the city than the popular mass entertainment that promotes the metropolis as the sensual ‘Gate to the World’ (Das Tor zur Welt).
Water is the lubricant of Hamburg, whether you take the Elbe as an industrialized waterway towards the sea and out into the world, or the inner lakes such as Inner or Outer Alster with their public shores that improve the quality of life for the city’s residents, and which can be used for sailing, cruising, for public barbecues, sunbathing and romantic encounters.

It took a while before the famous Ukrainian women’s movement Femen finally got the infamous Reeperbahn in Hamburg’s port city of Hamburg. The topless activists were quite original; they had a sexy torch walk. According to the Femen leadership, Hamburg is the capital of the sex industry, which has been fighting for nude demonstrations.

REEPERBAHN

In the seventeenth century, commercial establishments that were not welcome in the city centre, or that needed space for expansion, were destined to be located in St Pauli. Because of its altitude and the view over the Elbe river, the district developed into a day-trip destination, attracting jugglers and other entertainers. These mobile forms of entertainment, such as Carl Hagenbeck’s seals, elephants and tigers, and the travelling circuses, soon were replaced by solid, immobile buildings such as coffee houses, dance cafés, bars and brothels. Ropemakers gave the Reeperbahn its name because a long, straight length was needed to produce ship ropes. Also known as the most ‘Sinful Mile in the World’, Reeperbahn was, and still is, the main artery of St Pauli. Its reputation is notorious. Sailors, when they disembarked the ships, came here to enjoy the entertainment of woman and beer. St Pauli used to be located right next to the Reeperbahn in those days. Later on, when profits increased as a result of the many bars and clubs, as well as sexual services, pimps and drug barons controlled the landscape of St Pauli, and it seemed a lawless zone. It has long been associated with outlaws, illegal activity and unconventional forms of living. The district has a long tradition as ‘Pleasure Capital’ and has retained its image as a place of sin, catering for amusement and sexual fantasies. Now it is internationally known and recognized as a site for sex tourism and entertainment.

Hagenbeck Zoo (Tierpark Hagenbeck) in Hamburg was founded March 11, 1874 at the former Neue Pferdemarkt in Stellingen. Carl Hagenbeck and his father Gottfrid had both been involved in trade with exotic animals, which they had found on their journeys since 1848. Hagenbeck Zoo became an example to many other zoos since the first so-called liberal orientation schemes had their beginning here.

COFFEEHOUSE LAUSEN

One of the most notorious places of sensual pleasure and entertainment in the 1900s was Coffeehouse Lausen (Kaffeehaus Lausen), one of the longer-lasting dance cafés on Reeperbahn. During its ninety years of business the café mostly functioned as a brothel and meeting point for locals and outsiders, including famous politicians and actors. Before its closure in the early 2000s, the owner tried new business models. Offering a platform for people to dance, drink and meet prostitutes was no longer enough to attract tourists, and the owner converted part of the coffeehouse into a low-budget hotel, in an attempt woo guests who did not necessarily want the sex on offer, but who were instead interested in the flagitious reputation of the hotel. In the other half of the building business as usual continued.

In the Hamburg traditions ‘Café Lausen’, tourists can now stay overnight. On the third floor, directly above the brothel, the manager offers two small hotel rooms.

WILD WEST ST PAULI

The St Pauli Archive is one of the cultural institutions that works with the ‘exotic’ image of the so-called ‘Kiez’. Through documentation, oral histories and walking tours, as well as exhibitions and publications, the membership-based association mediates and interprets St Pauli’s value as a neighbourhood, tourist attraction and anarchic community. The different forms of living and community practices in this neighbourhood are treated with respect. Included in their predominant collection of texts and images are not only shape-shifters and city dwellers, but also everyday people living in a liberated and tolerant environment. This resource provides enough information for an active dialogue to take place about Pauli with locals and outsiders. Approaching from an alternative perspective, the archive offers walking tours such as ‘Wild West St Pauli’ or ‘Reclaim Your Vorstadt’ in order to reproduce the Kiez that is associated with its image as a centre for experimental forms of living and community engagement.

There are neighbourhood walks in all corners of St Paulis with a wide variety of current and historical themes. An initiative against the marketing of St Paulis from the Schanze to the Reeperbahn. For centuries, St Pauli was just outside the fortress of Hamburg Reeperbahn and landing bridges to the south – Pesthof, rubbish dump and the battlepost Sternschanze in the north. Excluded not only in the metaphorical, but also in the literal sense. This outlaw status is now being increasingly marketed at the expense of the people who are different from the mainstream of the population. But St Pauli would not be St Pauli, if there were not a lot of controversy here: the tour invites you to discover a variety of projects in Karo, Schanze and Sankt Pauli Nord. If you like to join feel free to call Tel: ++49 - 40 - 319 47 72; Treffpunkt: Ludwigstraße 11 (Schanzenviertel)

SOME HAD CROCODILES

Savings clubs have a long tradition in St Pauli. In earlier days every bar had a savings club, a tradition that emerged in order to deter sailors from blowing their pay immediately. During the glory days of the vibrant sex scene in St Pauli, pimps used the contents of piggy banks to pay for comrades in prison or to address health issues of their prostitutes.
In his film Manche hatten Krokodile, filmmaker Christian Hornung documents St Pauli inhabitants and local bars, such as Kaffeepause (coffee break), that keep the tradition of savings clubs. So-called members, specifically selected and frequent visitors of a bar, are asked to save up their extra money every month. The money box is displayed, accessible, in the public area of the bar. Anyone who does not save any money in one month has to pay a fee. At the end of the year the individual savings are returned to the saver. For some people this was a secure way to keep their money instead of spending it, and more convenient than taking it to the bank.
However, the local bars are more than savings shelters or second homes. They are microcosms, offering a platform for a range of choices and cultural diversity. In an intimate close-up view, Julia, a retired drag queen, explains: ‘Today it is possible to work as a drag queen and hold a regular profession. During that time, it was impossible.’ The bar owners, clients and residents invite the viewer into a time when the Reeperbahn neighbourhood offered refuge to those who did not conform with societal conventions, and they share personal and intimate stories as humans in a society (economically) driven by sex culture.
While recalling memories about their savings club experience, the residents who are interviewed in the film reveal what they like about the Kiez and how it has affected them and how they live their lives. With their oral histories they are mapping their lives, unintentionally, in and around St Pauli. The changing facades of shops, bars and buildings in the documentary reveal the fast speed of development across a city district that is driven by event culture and mass tourism. Nevertheless, St Pauli’s reputation as a villainous city relies on community and alterity.

Decades ago, they came to Hamburg’s St Pauli, hoping to escape the narrow-mindedness of the petite bourgeoisie. They struggled as dancers, strippers, sailors and pimps. Now they turn up at their favourite bars, divey spots in the city’s red light district, reminiscing about gold hunting, sinking ships and contraband crocodiles. And of course the savings clubs, which they continue to be members of to this day. Through the years the savings clubs became a home.

MISS DRAG QUEEN OF THE WORLD

Former Miss Drag Queen of the World (1997) Olivia Jones has conquered the empire of St Pauli little by little with her interactive entertainment programme and business structure. In the night jungle of St Pauli, Olivia organizes nightly walks, ‘Olivia’s Safari’ and ‘Olivia’s Safari Light’, guiding tourists alongside bars, strip clubs and other joints of sexual entertainment. During the weekend a large number of tourists are invited to stroll through the city with such guides. Using her personal perspective, and as an active member of the scene, the queen of drag Olivia Jones invites and engages the tour participants into a world they have only known via the tabloid press, and in this way she is able to create dialogues about otherness and tolerance. Drag culture and queens are nothing new in the context of St Pauli. Personalities such as Lilo Wanders and others established public programmes about sex education on TV and became role models for the drag culture. Amongst them, Olivia Jones stands out from the crowd of drag entertainment, literally because of her size, at a height of 2.07 metres. She also employs her persona to engage in political contexts; by establishing her own one-person party as a candidate for the Hamburg parliament, she encouraged the electorate not to vote a right-wing politician into the Senate. On another occasion she interviewed party members of an extreme right-wing party at a party congress, asking specific questions about their campaign. Besides this, on national TV, she exposed the party’s hostility, as well as its aimlessness. As an ambassador of queer culture and as a community activist, Olivia Jones understands how to employ her persona in the context of a predominantly heterosexual society: as a queer person who is not living at the edge of society but who actively engages in defending the community and personal rights – as any other member of a democratic society.

Slim K meets Olivia Jones (winner of 1997 Drag Contest in Miami/ USA as the official ‘Miss Drag Queen Of The World’). Slim K performed and Olivia appeared for an interview at ‘SHOWTALK’ in Timmendorfer Strand (Germany) – hosted by Andre Holst Photo Kristina Becker’s PHOTOVISIONEN

THE EMPIRE OF OLIVIA JONES

At the same time, Oliva Jones is expanding her empire in St Pauli, which is described as the razzle-dazzle family experience. Recently she started to offer boat harbour tours with live music on the Elbe river. She had already invested in the fast-paced entertainment industry in St Pauli, with formats such as the Olivia Jones Bar, featuring party/folk music: ‘Olivias Wilde Jungs’ (Olivia’s Wild Boys), a male strip club for ladies only; ‘Olivias Show Club’, offering burlesque and travesties’ theatre entertainment. Last but not least, there is ‘Olivias Kiez Oase’, a beer garden amidst the newly developed Spielbudenplatz, the central plaza and meeting point on Reeperbahn. Using her personality, she has established a brand that is dominating the queer entertainment industry in St Pauli. The speed in which she established her businesses emulates the business model more usually employed by competitors such as fast food/bar chains.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel meets the famous drag queen Olivia Jones during the ceremony to elect a new president in Berlin. The 6ft 5in drag queen with a shock of bright orange hair stole the show at the ceremony to choose Germany’s new president in Berlin. Olivia Jones, her real name Oliver Knobel, posed for photos with the Chancellor Angela Merkel and brought a touch of glamour to the occasion. The 47-year-old was invited to be among the 1,260 voting delegates by the Green Party. Jones arrived at the ceremony in a wheelchair after receiving a leg shortening operation to reduce her height by 6cm. She is famous in Germany for her guided tours of Hamburg’s Reeperbahn red light and bar district and her activism in support of animal rights, AIDS patients and anti-racism. Courtesy; Daily Mail ©AP

ONS ONE NIGHT STAND

Erotic photography and images of pornographic scenes are powerful and have an immediate influence on the human brain and body, if the recipient wants to get intimate. Hamburg certainly offers an ideal platform for the porn industry, but it also gave birth to critical voices and more creative ways of working with sensual images, such as those the Hamburg-based visual artist Jan-Holger Mauss is producing. In his ongoing work series ONS, Mauss edits offset and high-quality portraits of young naked men. His resources are the so-called DON-porno magazines of the 1970s, from which he selects pages in which naked men pose in landscapes, bizarre interiors or patisseries. With a special type of rubber, the artist erases the protagonist from the photographic blueprint. The portrayed bodies vanish into the background of the page and decompose into mountains or wall decorations. The act of rubbing leaves traces and impreciseness, a blank space that triggers personal fantasies. Led by the photographic gaze, the viewer tends to replace the figures with a simulation of an erotic projection or action that could have taken place in this spot. Mauss’s artistic intervention into the already staged pornographic scene produces a surreal space or rather a landscape that plays with preconceptions.
Erotic photography and images of pornographic scenes are powerful and have an immediate influence on the human brain and body, if the recipient wants to get intimate. Hamburg certainly offers an ideal platform for the porn industry, but it also gave birth to critical voices and more creative ways of working with sensual images, such as those the Hamburg-based visual artist Jan-Holger Mauss is producing. In his ongoing work series ONS, Mauss edits offset and high-quality portraits of young naked men. His resources are the so-called DON-porno magazines of the 1970s, from which he selects pages in which naked men pose in landscapes, bizarre interiors or patisseries. With a special type of rubber, the artist erases the protagonist from the photographic blueprint. The portrayed bodies vanish into the background of the page and decompose into mountains or wall decorations. The act of rubbing leaves traces and impreciseness, a blank space that triggers personal fantasies. Led by the photographic gaze, the viewer tends to replace the figures with a simulation of an erotic projection or action that could have taken place in this spot. Mauss’s artistic intervention into the already staged pornographic scene produces a surreal space or rather a landscape that plays with preconceptions.

CRUISING IN HAMBURG

In the artwork AYOR (At Your Own Risk) Jan-Holger Mauss translated the idea of an empty landscape into photography. In this black-and-white photo series he documents deserted cruising zones in public parks and forests worldwide. To the viewer at first sight the photograph appears an idyllic image of a landscape. Only insiders recognize that the chosen motifs are cruising areas, frequented for anonymous and quick sex in public spaces. The biggest park in Hamburg, Stadtpark, for example, offers several possibilities for cruising. In his long-term photographic project the artist researches cities and their localities through a particular lens. Certain attributes offered by these areas – such as anonymity, security, being public, easy-to-access – reveal the conditions that help a place become established as a cruising zone.

TOM OF FINLAND IN ST GEORG

Hamburg’s rapid growth at the end of the nineteenth century as a sea port and large city was followed by an expansion of coffee houses, cabarets and cafés full of dancing and singing, in different parts of the city such as St Pauli, next to the inland port. Naturally, these locations, as well as the adjacent streets, were used as places for prostitution. With the construction of the central station in 1905, St Georg also developed into one of these places as an entertainment district. Even though this part of the city has been a restricted zone in terms of prostitution since the 1980s, it is still a sex tourist destination.
Adjacent to cultural establishments such as the Deutsche Schauspielhaus or the Politbüro, restaurants, bars and cafés, the street prostitution culture, including sex and entertainment destinations such as brothels, are very much alive in St Georg today. St Georg is a culturally diverse and vibrant district in which mosques are neighbours with sex shops and junkies share the same view over the beautiful Outer Alster with young professionals who just bought a redeveloped townhouse nearby.
St Georg has also been known as a ‘gaybourhood’ since the 1990s; it is here that the Christopher Street Day Parade starts off into the city, where there are gay and lesbian street lights to signal the traffic.
The oldest gay club in Hamburg is Tom’s Saloon, which was established in 1974, and was named after Tom of Finland, whose artwork and original drawings decorate the walls of the club. Nondescript from the outside, the establishment hosts a dim room and serves as gallery for Tom’s drawings. According to insiders, Finland frequently visited the city due to its gay underground scene in the 1970s, and for the opening of this gay club he drew directly on the wall in the dim room. Some time later the owner of the bar bought the drawings, and this is the largest private collection of Tom of Finland drawings, numbering as many as 48.

Touko Laaksonen (1920–1991), the artist behind Tom of Finland, is one of the most notable internationally acclaimed Finnish artists. Say what you will about his art, it leaves no one untouched and in a way you either love it or hate it.

By the mid-1970s Mr Laaksonen was also emphasizing a photorealism style making aspects of the drawings appear more photographic. Many of his drawings are based on photographs, but none are exact reproductions of them. Tom took many of the photographs in his archives himself. The greatest number of those are of his favourite posing buddies, Eero, Aarno and Veli. He occasionally hired professional models but, usually dissatisfied with the results, preferred to work with amateurs and friends to don his uniforms and leather gear and hold a pose for him.

Toms Saloon, Pulverteich 17, 20099 Hamburg

Drawing at the Toms Saloons’ darkroom

HANS GIESE AND THE PUBLIC SEX DISCOURSE

A thirty-year-old Germanist and medical practitioner, Hans Giese published his Dictionary of Sexology in 1952. Shortly after the Second World War, in 1949 he founded the ‘Institute for Sex Research’ in his parents’ apartment in Frankfurt/Main, later relocating to the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE). As one of the leading interdisciplinary sex research institutes in Europe, the Institute for Sex Research and Forensic Psychiatry still exists today in Hamburg, providing legal and medical support in relation to questions and problems associated with sexuality as well as transgender and intersex issues.
Following the establishment of the institute, Giese initiated the groundwork for the German Society for Sex Research (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sexualforschung – DGfS) to create awareness of sexual matters in the field of research and education. In other words, Hans Giese was the leading figure in successfully reinstating sex research in Germany after the Nazis destroyed this field of research completely. His public appearances as an expert were cautious, even conservative. Sex before marriage was considered sinful, while homosexuality or extreme forms of sexual desires were not talked about in public. The Catholic as well as Protestant churches tried to protect their family traditions in public and would not allow any conversation about sexual desires. Hans Giese was very much aware of that and wanted to protect his ‘young’ field of research from negative associations, which in those days were inseparable from the public discourse about sexuality, so that people would take his work seriously.
The transformation of German society, initiated by the liberal tendencies of the 1960s, rapidly gave way to a public intimacy in which sexuality and sexual practices were discussed openly. In part, Giese was responsible for opening up these debates. During the so-called ‘sex-wave’, referring to the sexual revolution of the 1970s, mostly spread by mass media, Giese took up the position as a public expert on sexual matters. He established research projects, wrote articles and suggested a radio-based format to provide information to educate younger and older people. Not only did he see the need to regulate the exuberant effects of the sex wave, so that his knowledge could function as a vehicle for sexual education in society, but he was also one of the most influential actors in the field of sex research, mass media and popular culture.

Quotes from the article; What other scholars rarely achieve was for Giese at any time: wherever his subject was spoken about in Germany, his name cropped up. In several processes, the authors of several standard and special works appeared as reviewers. Three days before Gieses’s death, the district court of Düsseldorf decided to hear him as a reviewer in the second trial against the boy-murderer Jürgen Bartsch. Gieses’s death is also controversial. There was no witness and yet became public. After attending a jazz concert, Giese had an argument in his holiday destination on the Côte d’Azur with his friend, his playmate Klaus Hartmann, 26. Hartmann went to Avignon, Giese went to the mountains. Why he fell 40 metres deep remained unexplained; there was nothing to indicate a crime. Depressive moods, from which he suffered, would explain suicide. Relatives and friends believe it was an accident. Courtesy, Der Spiegel

CAKE AT CAFÉ GNOSA

Valued by generation after generation, Café Gnosa is one of the oldest remaining traditional coffeehouses in St Georg, located at Lange Reihe. It is one of a number of buildings in this street, which leads from the central station to the Outer Alster, that are all protected as historic monuments.
In the 1950s the café was a sought-after destination for pastry connoisseurs. The gay and lesbian café is committed, traditionally and locally. Every day a new selection of homemade cakes, drawn from a collection of 70 recipes, are prepared from local produce. There is a wide variety, from fancy cream cakes to seasonal fruit pies and pastries, poppy seed cake, rhubarb cake, cheesecake, eggnog cream cake, spice cake, gooseberry pavlova, tiramisu, lemon cake, strawberry cream cake – you name it, they have it – or at least fifteen different kinds each day. Displayed in glass vitrines, by the entrance, the cakes embody the turn-of-the-century style interior of the café, which has been kept original and plain. True to the original style, the coffee comes in a small jug and is served on a silver platter. For those who seek pleasure through sweet calories, this celebration of cake culture cannot be missed.

At Café Gnosa, a gay-lesbian café in the district of St Georg, time has come to a standstill. Since the 1950s, the cakes here have always been opulent. And even if the zeitgeist has changed, at Gnosa, you can continue to indulge. The display case with the wonderful cakes and pastries lets you forget a fearful look at the scales: Lübecker nut cake and rhubarb strudel invite you to feast as though there were no tomorrow. The Gnosa is a popular meeting point, not just for coffee. You’d actually like to spend the whole day in the stylish retro-chic café. No question: it never gets boring at Café Gnosa, in a culinary nor in any other regard. The tables are set close to one another; not only are the service staff friendly, but the guests are too, making it easy to join into a conversation. You’re never alone, which is why it can be a good idea to make a reservation beforehand.

9 Hamburg: Gate to the World of Pleasure

by Kerstin Niemann