Gay Germany History and Art Tour
From Oscar Wilde Tours
September 10-19. Save $100 when you mention The Men Event
LGBTQ+ Germany, from Mad King Ludwig to Cabaret, Marlene Dietrich, The (gay) White Rose, and Beyond!!
SAVE $100 when you mention “The Men Event”
Full tour details here: www.oscarwildetours.com/gay-germany
To learn more, contact Oscar Wilde Tours at info@oscarwildetours.com or (646)560-3205.
Experience these highlights!
Tour Freddy Mercury’s favorite bathhouse
And have dinner at its traditional Bavarian restaurant
See the places where the brave members of the White Rose staged their anti-Nazi protests and were arrested, and where they were tried
Visit Mad Ludwig’s amazing palaces—one of which inspired Disney’s Sleeping Beauty’s Castle
Learn about the persecution of LGBTQ+ people on a visit to a Nazi concentration camp
Learn about the first LGBTQ+ rights organization and the first sex change operations at Berlin’s Gay Museum
Visit Berlin’s fabulous Museum Island, and see the ancient Greek temple of Pergamon plus ancient Babylon’s Gates of Ishtar (plus the only ancient Greek vase with a gay orgy scene!)
Take a walking tour through the heart of Weimar Berlin’s LGBTQ+ world, where Christopher Isherwood wrote his Berlin Stories, inspiring the musical and movie Cabaret
Visit Berlin’s moving Jewish Museum, and learn about the gay Jewish anti-Nazi hero about whom Professor Lear is making a movie!
Berlin and Munich are Germany’s two great cultural capitals. Although they are very different, they are two of Europe’s greatest cities of art and history, with fabulous museums, palaces, and parks. And of course, they have an amazing and palpable history, with Nazis, Soviets, the Berlin Wall, its fall, and so on. But they also have an incredible LGBTQ+ history!
It is in Germany that the gay rights movement started, that the scientific study of sexuality started, that there were the first sex reassignment surgeries, and that there was the first city with a wild LGBTQ+ nightlife. Then, of course, there was the horrifying backlash, the oppression, and the mass murder of the Nazi years. But even then, there were incredible ant-Nazi gay heroes—including the founder of the most famous resistance group, Munich University’s White Rose. And since the war there has been plenty of LGBTQ+ history—and nightlife—too, starting in the 1970s, when Freddie Mercury’s favorite hangout was in Munich, and leading to today, when Berlin and Munich are both among the openest, most LGBTQ+-friendly of the world’s major cities.
And this is the tour that will show you it all, the history (including its horrifying sides), the culture, and as always with Oscar Wilde Tours, the LGBTQ+ sides of the story that are generally ignored—does anyone else remember that Hans Scholl was gay, for instance? See it all while staying in excellent hotels, eating in charming restaurants, hearing from Professor Lear and his top-notch guides, and getting to know a group of like-minded LGBTQ+ people!
Day 1. Our tour starts in Munich, where we spend the first 4 of our 9 nights. We start our tour in the afternoon. We will divide our walking tour of Munich into halves. This afternoon, our themes will be: the city’s LGBTQ+ history and its favorite drink, beer. We end the afternoon at a place that combines our 2 themes, the Deutsche Eiche (German Oak), a restaurant, bar, and bathhouse that is in effect the city hall of gay Munich—famous as Freddie Mercury’s preferred hangout (or place of debauch)—where we will have an early dinner of traditional Bavarian food to welcome us on our exploration of LGBTQ+ Germany.
Day 2. Today we start our day back at the Deutsche Eiche, where we will enjoy a lecture about the city’s LGBTQ+ history—mad King Ludwig, Thomas Mann, the Nazis, Freddie Mercury, and more—and tour the facility before the bathhouse gets busy. We end our visit on the roofdeck, with one of the great views of Munich. After a break for lunch, we set off on the second half of our Munich tour, covering the center, with its churches, palaces, and markets. Our tour ends at the city’s manicured central park, the Englischer Garten (English Garden), where you may get a look at Germans’ love of nudism. Evenings are free to explore Munich’s lively restaurant scene.
Day 3. This morning is dedicated to the White Rose, an astonishingly brave group of students who distributed anti-Nazi literature in the heart of the regime, until they were caught and executed. Public attention tends to focus on the one girl in the group, Sophie Scholl, rather than on her equally wonderful, and gay, brother Hans, who founded the group. We will pay them both attention as we tour the White Rose Foundation, the university (including the atrium where they were caught), and the Justizpalast (palace of justice), where the room where their trial was held is preserved as a memorial. This afternoon and evening are free. Explore Munich’s world-ranking art museums (Professor Lear can of course, advise), its superb shopping, and more of its culinary culture.
Day 4. Today we go off into the country and to fantasyland, to visit two of the fabulous palaces built by King Ludwig II, “Mad Ludwig,” Bavaria’s gay (though probably chaste) 19th century monarch—the patron of Wagner, with whom he was clearly in love (though we doubt that “anything happened”). In the morning, we visit Linderhof, Ludwig’s version of Versailles, where he enacted his fantasy of being an absolute monarch. We stop for lunch and a bit of shopping in the lovely village of Oberammergau, famous for its passion play, and then proceed to Neuschwanstein, Ludwig’s medieval-Wagnerian fantasy—which inspired another fantasy castle, Disney’s Sleeping Beauty’s Castle (as will be obvious when you see it). We then return to Munich for a free evening.
Day 5. This morning we look into the heart of darkness on a visit to the concentration camp at Dachau, the original model for the concentration camp system. We learn about the horrors of the Nazi period, and in particular about the persecution of gays—one of whom served as the model for the memorial to Dachau’s prisoners. What can you do after visiting Dachau? We will probably all need some quiet time this afternoon, so have a quick lunch and take the new quick train line to Berlin, where we arrive in the early evening.
Day 6. On our first day in Berlin, we take a bus tour around Berlin to get our bearings, both spatially and historically. The Nazi period and the years of the divided city loom large, inescapable reminders of Germany’s troubled past: the famous Reichstag that saw the rise of Hitler; the Alexanderplatz, with its Soviet-era TV tower that is still Germany’s tallest structure and remains a symbol of the city; and such key sites as the Bebelplatz, where the Nazis held their most famous book burning, on May 6, 1933—including, in the pyre, 20,000 books and journals from Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science), the world’s first center for LGBTQ+ studies. Fortunately, though, there’s another side to Berlin, one that is in fact uplifting. Despite its horrifying cataclysms, the city has retained its own charm and vitality, and it’s important to remember that Berlin in the Weimar Republic was the city that Hitler hated, because of its tolerance and diversity. And, fortunately, in the end it was that Berlin which ultimately won!
After a break for lunch, Professor Lear will guide us on a walking tour through pre-war Berlin’s main Jewish neighborhood (right near our hotel) which became the Nazi ghetto, where over 50,000 Berlin Jews were gathered before being shipped out to concentration camps. From here we will go to today’s famous Jewish Museum, the deeply moving memorial to the city’s Jewish community. There will be an uplifting side to this afternoon as well, however, as Professor Lear will weave into it the story of 2 gay Jewish teenagers who led the city’s largest resistance group in WWII—about whom he is currently making a movie! Free evening: we are in the heart of Berlin, so there are many great restaurants nearby.
Day 7. We spend this morning in Berlin’s amazing “museum island” (also very close to our hotel). These museums contain some of the most astonishing sites of any museum anywhere—such as the whole Greek temple of Pergamon and ancient Babylon’s Gates of Ishtar. There is also (as is always true with Oscar Wilde Tours) material for a whole “gay secrets” tour, including everything from stunning Greek vases (one of them depicting a gay orgy!) to homoerotic German art of the 19thcentury. This afternoon and evening are free, for visiting more museums, shopping, or exploring Berlin’s many hip neighborhoods, chic restaurants, and the LGBTQ+ nightlife of the city were LGBTQ+ nightlife was born.
Day 8. We spend today in the country on an excursion to the charming nearby city of Potsdam, famous for the Potsdam Conference, the bridge of spies, and baroque palaces and gardens. We will see the palace where the Conference took place and cross the famous bridge, but our main purpose will be to visit the park and palace of Sanssouci, generally known as Germany’s Versailles and the favorite palace of Frederick the Great. Frederick was Prussia’s great Enlightenment monarch, the early architect of Germany’s rise to world power, and almost certainly gay (as was his clearly gay aide, Baron von Steuben, who trained the American Revolutionary Army). Lunch will be in the beer garden at Sanssouci’s original farm—a tad touristy, but a great place to experience traditional German food. We then return to Berlin for another free evening and whatever R&R suits you.
Day 9. This morning, on our last day, we take a walking tour of Berlin’s main gayborhood (in the Weimar years and today!) Schöneberg, with author Brendan Nash, who has given several lectures about Berlin’s LGBTQ+ history in our Zooming Through Queer History online series. A particular theme of our walk will be Christopher Isherwood’s stay in the area, where he wrote his Berlin Stories—the basis for the musical and film Cabaret—and the bars he and his friends frequented. We will also learn about the childhood of another great LGBTQ+ (and anti-Nazi) Berliner, Marlene Dietrich, who was born in the neighborhood. After a break for lunch (we will point out the neighborhood’s lovely gay cafés) we visit Berlin’s Gay Museum, a center of LGBTQ+ life and thought for the whole country, and then enjoy a lecture (arranged for us but open to the public) on Berlin’s central role in trans history by Dr Finn Ballard, also known to fans of our online lecture series. This evening, we get together for a farewell dinner, to raise a glass to the two great cities we have explored and also undoubtedly to a group of new friends!
Day 10. Our tour ends with breakfast this morning, but please let us know if you need help with further travel plans. Join us for our Gay Italy tour (September 21-30) and/or Gay Greece (October 1-10)!
To learn more, contact us at info@oscarwildetours.com or (646)560-3205.