BERLIN EXHIBITION

The origins of the Gay Museum date back to 1985, when a pioneering development took place in the former Berlin Museum. At the suggestion of the three committed museum supervisors Andreas Sternweiler, Wolfgang Theis and Manfred Baumgardt, the museum director at the time was persuaded to take an innovative step. Their proposal to organise an exhibition on the history of homosexual men and women in Berlin and present it in the Berlin Museum was well received. The legendary exhibition "Eldorado - History, Everyday Life and Culture of Homosexual Women and Men 1850-1950" took place in the Berlin Museum in the summer of 1984 and was curated by the initiators in collaboration with lesbian activists. With over 40,000 visitors, the exhibition was not only successful but also controversial. Following the success of this groundbreaking exhibition, the idea was born to establish the Gay Museum as a permanent Eldorado. It was to be not just a one-off sensation in the city museum, but a permanent home of its own for a gay museum. On 6 December 1985, the "Verein der Freunde eines Schwulen Museums in Berlin e.V." (Association of Friends of a Gay Museum in Berlin) was founded. The foundation stone for a museum library and archive was laid in the premises of the Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsgemeinschaft AHA in Friedrichstraße. The first exhibition was also held here in 1986: "Yuck - 90 years of the homosexual press". The Gay Museum used the lavishly staged celebrations for Berlin's 750th founding anniversary the following year for a cheeky interjection and presented the exhibition "750 warm Berliners". In 1988, the museum finally moved to a rear building at Mehringdamm 61. Since then, more than 130 exhibitions have been realised in these rooms. Over the years, the Gay Museum has developed into a nationally and internationally sought-after institution. The museum receives requests for loans from renowned institutions such as the German Historical Museum in Berlin to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. Scholars from all over the world use the archive, while universities and research institutes co-operate successfully with the museum.