Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate

Lots of self appointed experts voicing opinions, with a worrying lack of facts. I'm concerned where Netflix documentaries are going, as they appear more and more to be a vehicle for politics and opinion, and allowing very little space for actual historical narrative. While there are some really excellent subject matter experts involved (mainly the German speaking historians), their credibility is undermined by a number of non-academic commentators. It's really disappointing because this is a fascinating subject that needs intelligent and educated analysis and interpretation but; instead, it's reduced to some student debate.

The new Netflix documentary about sexual liberation and the LGBT clubs in Berline during the Weimar period shows the story in a very glamorous way with all the exxagerations and stereotypes on display. It makes you feel as if the documentary was produced by Bob Fosse and Baz Luhrmann. The fact that you're trans does not make you a historian yet Netflix keeps making the same mistake. While there are indeed characters around which you could built a separate documentary of their own (like Gottfried von Gramm and Manasse Herbst), the rest portrays 1920s Berlin as a giant pot of promiscuity. As a result, homosexuality is turned into a carricature that eventually clashes with the dark reality of Nazi Germany. Production-wise, it's on a sufficiently high level, but it's likely intentionally reduced to an another spotlight for the transgender community while other people, especially LGBT, are just supporting characters. Too bad.

In the challenging, free for all day to day reality in 1920s Berlin one place stood out: the Eldorado. Known as the premier nightclub for LGBTQs it symbolized the city's liberal and economically troubled times with its open lifestyle. "Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate" (Eldorado - Alles, was die Nazis hassen) is a well-done docudrama on the establishment's fabled story and the colorful and tragic figures who made it a legend. Featuring reenactments that ressurect the time and place to life and interviews with historians (most who are gay and transgender themselves) with haunting images and footage of the time the film is a window into a little-known and fascinating period in history. Historical figures like Nazi leader Ernst Röhm, Tennis champion and aristocrat Gottfried von Cramm, pioneering sex author Magnus Hirschfeld, artist Toni Ebel and her lover Charlotte Charlaque who are perhaps the first recipients of sex change operations, etc., bring to life an era with their interesting and tragic lives. The interview with composer and centenarian Walter Arlen brings the compelling and sad saga right to the present. While it may go on a bit too long this is one of the best documentaries on the subject. Colorful and moving "Eldorado" is one history and film fans wouldn't want to miss.

A quote from the movie - "The pace of change is a source of frustration for just about everybody. If you're a radical, then change is happening much too slowly for you. On the other side, if you're a conservative, you're watching everything that gives your life depth and meaning washed away. And its that experience of being threatened by this change that gives fascists fertile ground in which to spread their poisonous ideas."

Excellent filmmaking - documentary like (with historical footage), but also with storytellers, and some very moving love stories at the centre.

Lot of food for thought for the queer community about how an idyllic period can overnight turn into horrific devastation. And also about where our priorities lie - to be foolhardy and to go along with evil only to be fatally betrayed like Ernst Rohm; or to make space for oneself, and a whole lot of others, and to grow authentically, like Magnus Hirshfield ? And in some irony, Rohm was perhaps more overt about his homosexuality than Hirshfield.

Also about how redemption is mostly an inside job - because even several decades after the war, the queer community still faced legal persecution in W. Germany. (Not that Alan Turing had it any better, on the other side)

"Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it" seems to be the underlying theme here in regards to America in the 21st century from the use of lower social classes given the right of violence to achieve a symbolic future under the leadership of a master manipulator to the eroding rights of women, minorities, and LGBT communities in lieu of the establishment of nationalistic Christian warriors. All of the evidence presented here (and in other documentaries) demonstrating media bias, degradation of educational programs and institutions , book censorship, and imaginary philosophical villains out to corrupt the youth of the nation.

The blueprint has been established but, looking around, no one appears to notice because it is not on TikTok.