| The Battle of Tuntenhaus | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Juliet Bashore |
Release date |
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Running time | 45 minutes |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
The Battle of Tuntenhaus is a 1991 documentary film directed by Juliet Bashore. The documentary follows the inhabitants of the Tuntenhaus ("house of queers") a gay and drag queen squat on Mainzer Strasse in East Berlin.
The first part of the documentary introduces the Tuntenhaus ("house of queers") – a gay and radical drag queen squat on Mainzer Strasse in East Berlin, in 1990; the occupation is one of many on the street, which was known as a "hotbed of revolutionary and anti-fascist activity." The film follows the inhabitants as they go about their daily lives: communal dinners, love relationships, fortifying the squat against Nazi attack. The squatters face ongoing violence from neo-Nazi gangs, and are evicted by West German police in November 1990 as part of the Battle of Mainzer Strasse. In part two of the documentary, two years later, Bashore revisits some of the locations and interviews some of the former squatters again.
The Tuntenhaus was a gay and drag queen squat occupied at Mainzer Strasse 4 in East Berlin following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. [1] [2] [3] The documentary depicts life in the Tuntenhaus. It was directed by Juliet Bashore for British Broadcaster Channel 4. [4] [5] [6] [7] Part one is 25 minutes long and part two is 20 minutes. [8]
Critic Kevin Thomas, writing for The Los Angeles Times in 1992, called The Battle of Tuntenhaus "a tender, angry account." [9] Die Tageszeitung, writing in 2022, said "The Battle of Tuntenhaus is about left-wing dreams and utopias and how they burst" and called the film "a wonderful contemporary document about Berlin shortly after reunification and the autonomous squatter scene, and above all about queer people who tried to create their very own ecosystem." [10]
The Battle of Tuntenhaus has been discussed as an important documentation of radical queer history and as a unique artifact of autonomous and squatter movements. [11] [12] [13] The Tuntenhaus itself was recreated as a squat on Kastanienallee and later legalized. [7] [3]
A 2022–2023 installation at the Schwules Museum in Berlin, [14] curated by Bastian Krondorfer, featured sequences from The Battle of Tuntenhaus throughout the exhibit, and included a life-sized simulacrum of the squat recreated by installation designer Bri Schlögel, based on scenes from the film. [15] The Exberliner reported that the documentary was also screened at the open air cinema in Friedrichshain. [16]
Mitte is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Gesundbrunnen, Hansaviertel, Moabit, Tiergarten and Wedding.
Hafenstraße is a street in St. Pauli, a quarter of Hamburg, Germany, known for its legalized squats. The squats were occupied in 1981 and became a figurehead for autonomist and anti-imperialist politics. After a prolonged battle with the city council which involved demonstrations of over 10,000 people, the buildings were legalized in the 1990s. Today they are owned by a self-organised cooperative.
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Friedrichshain is a quarter (Ortsteil) of the borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany. From its creation in 1920 until 2001, it was a freestanding city borough. Formerly part of East Berlin, it is adjacent to Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg and Lichtenberg.
Dritte Wahl, also written 3. Wahl is a German punk rock band from Rostock in Germany. Their music is classified as Deutschpunk and displays clear metal influences. Dritte Wahl’s lyrics are in German and are very direct, politically motivated, and left-leaning. As a German punk band, and particularly as a punk band formed in the former East Germany under the communist state, their songs handle common themes. In the song Macht die Augen auf they took on the subject of the 1992 anti-immigrant Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots. In their song Mainzer Straße, Dritte Wahl describe the Battle of Mainzer Straße that took place in East Berlin in 1990 when the city decided to clear the squatted houses. In their song Bad K., Dritte Wahl describe the contested circumstances of the death of Wolfgang Grams, a member of the far-left Red Army Faction.
The Teddy Award is an international film award for films with LGBT topics, presented by an independent jury as an official award of the Berlin International Film Festival. For the most part, the jury consists of organisers of gay and lesbian film festivals, who view films screened in all sections of the Berlinale; films do not have to have been part of the festival's official competition stream to be eligible for Teddy awards. Subsequently, a list of films meeting criteria for LGBT content is selected by the jury, and a 3,000-Euro Teddy is awarded to a feature film, a short film and a documentary.
Siegessäule is Berlin's most widely distributed queer magazine and has been published monthly, except for two brief hiatuses, since April 1984. Originally only available in West Berlin, it ran with the subtitle "Berlin's monthly page for Gays". In 1996, it was broadened to include lesbian content, and in 2005 it was expanded to reach a wider queer target base, becoming the only magazine of its scale in Europe to represent the full spectrum of the LGBT community. The magazine is available for free at around 700 locations in Berlin, printing 53.688 copies per month. Since March-issue 2013, it has been overseen by chief editor Jan Noll.
The Schwules Museum in Berlin, Germany, is a museum and research centre with collections focusing on LGBTQ+ history and culture. It opened in 1985 and it was the first museum in the world dedicated to gay history.
Manuela Kay is a German journalist, author and publisher.
The Mehringdamm is a street in southern Kreuzberg, Berlin. In the north it starts at Mehringbrücke and ends - with its southernmost houses already belonging to Tempelhof locality - on Platz der Luftbrücke. It is the historical southbound Berlin-Halle highway, now forming the federal route 96. The main junction of Mehringdamm is with the 19th-century ring road around Berlin's inner city, named Yorckstraße west, and Gneisenaustraße east of Mehringdamm.
Bergpartei, die ÜberPartei, stylized as bergpartei, die überpartei and shortened as B*, is a left-wing anarchist, dadaist party in Germany. Its main proposals include universal basic income, restricting private ownership and leaving NATO.
Berlin was the capital city of the German Empire from 1871 to 1945, its eastern part the de facto capital of East Germany from 1949 to 1990, and has been the capital of the unified Federal Republic of Germany since June, 1991. The city has an active LGBTQ community with a long history. Berlin has many LGBTIQ+ friendly districts, though the borough of Schöneberg is widely viewed both locally and by visitors as Berlin's gayborhood. Particularly the boroughs North-West near Nollendorfplatz identifies as Berlin's "Regenbogenkiez", with a certain concentration of gay bars near and along Motzstraße and Fuggerstraße. Many of the decisive events of what has become known as Germany's second LGBT movement take place in the West Berlin boroughs of Charlottenburg, Schöneberg, and Kreuzberg beginning in 1971 with the formation of the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW). Whereas in East Berlin the district of Prenzlauer Berg became synonymous with the East Germany LGBT movement beginning in 1973 with the founding of the HIB. Schöneberg's gayborhood has a lot to offer for locals and tourists alike, and caters to, and is particularly popular with gay men.
The Berlin Bruisers are a gay and inclusive rugby club based in Berlin, Germany. They were founded in 2012, and are the first team of its kind in Germany. Although they are a primarily gay rugby team, the club is open to anyone with an interest in playing rugby and includes members of all sexualities and gender identities. The club is affiliated with International Gay Rugby.
Køpi is a housing project located at 137 Köpenicker Straße in Mitte, Berlin. It was squatted in 1990 and legalised in 1991 as an autonomous housing project and self-managed social centre. The yard was used as a wagenplatz for people living in vehicles. It is a left-wing project, connected to punks, anarchists and Autonomen. The building has become a symbol for the radical left in Berlin in the same manner as Rozbrat in Poznań or Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen. It has survived several eviction attempts both through political pressure and because the developers have always run out of money.
Silvio Meier (1965–1992) was an East German activist and squatter who was killed by neo-Nazis in Berlin on 21 November 1992. After moving to East Berlin in 1986, Meier became involved in oppositional politics with the Church from Below. His death has been commemorated with an annual memorial march and the renaming of a street in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain.
Liebig 34 was an anarchist squat at Liebigstraße 34 in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district of Berlin. It was occupied in 1990 and cleared by eviction in 2020. The squat hosted an anarcha-feminist housing co-operative, the L34-Bar and an infoshop called Daneben on the ground floor.
The battle of Mainzer Straße took place in Friedrichshain, East Berlin between 12 and 14 November 1990. It was a major incident in the history of the city, following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The magistrate of East Berlin decided to evict a row of squatted apartment blocks and the autonomous movement resisted the eviction for three days, until the buildings were all evicted by the police. One person was wounded by a ricochet and 417 people were arrested in an operation of over 3,000 officers. Following the riots, the magistrate decided to concentrate on legalizing squats in Berlin.
Juliet Bashore is an American filmmaker. She is best known for her award-winning feature film Kamikaze Hearts (1986), a pseudo-documentary set in the Golden Age of Porn in San Francisco.
The modern political squatting movement began in Hamburg, Germany, when Neue Große Bergstraße 226 was occupied in 1970. Squatters wanted to provide housing for themselves amongst other demands such as preventing buildings from being demolished and finding space for cultural activities. The Hafenstraße buildings were first occupied in 1981 and were finally legalized after a long political struggle in 1995. The still extant Rote Flora self-managed social centre was occupied in 1989. Squatting actions continue into the present; more recent attempts are quickly evicted, although the Gängeviertel buildings were squatted and legalized in the 2010s.
Klaus-Jürgen Rattay (c.1963-1981) was an 18-year-old punk from Kleve, Germany, who was run over and killed by a bus in Berlin. He was participating in a 1981 demonstration against the eviction of eight buildings in Schöneberg on the order of senator Heinrich Lummer. His death caused debate in the Berlin Senate and a change in policy towards squatters; his life is commemorated by autonomous groups.