BY MICHAEL SOZE
Now it is official – there will be no major events in Germany until the end of August 2020. This was decided by the German government to protect the population from the Covid-19 virus. The aim is to prevent the virus from spreading suddenly and uncontrollably, so that the health care systems are not overwhelmed by a sudden massive increase in the number of cases.
Of course this sounds reasonable at first, but it also means the final end for many Pride parades and Christopher Street Days in Germany this year. A unique event in the history of CSDs. More than seventy dates could be cancelled, among them probably all big players like Berlin, Cologne, Munich or Stuttgart. Whether there can or will be individual replacement dates is still largely unclear at present. The CSD on the Spree in Berlin / Canal Pride will take place according to the organizers – the alternative date will be announced online.
Whether the remaining dates from September (Cottbus, Halle, Ingolstadt, Gera, Potsdam, Landshut, Erlangen, Ansbach) may take place remains questionable. All organizers, political fighters and friends of the CSD stand now only once in the rain.
Melanie Kühnemann-Grunow, SPD member in the Berlin House of Representatives (electoral district Schöneberg-Tempelhof) expressed herself very sadly: „This means that the Lesbian Gay City Festival Berlin and the CSD Berlin will be cancelled this year. No Prideweek! It makes me very sad and I am worried about queer structures. In view of the developments in Poland and Hungary it would be even more important that we stand up loudly for sexual and gender diversity.“
Another aspect away from the Pride parades are the large clubs, saunas and other meeting places that form the spine of the community. What will happen to them? Especially within the gay scene many operators fear for their existence. Magazines and publishing houses such as currently the Berlin Victory Column are also affected by this.
What will be left of the gay culture, the gay lifestyle? We talked to Roger Holzapfel-Barta, the managing director of Deutsche Eiche in Munich and comic author Ralf König, who is currently publishing a new comic about the Corona crisis every day.
Roger and Ralf, first of all thank you very much for taking the time for our conversation. The time after Corona, what could it look like? Especially with regard to the gay clubs, saunas and other locations?
Roger: It is logical that the current events will cause a recession for a few quarters, and almost no industry can remain immune to it. However, I believe that the economy will be able to recover more quickly than it did about ten years ago.
We are a community that has experienced much worse and survived as a community and that will be the case in this case. It is important that scene goers remain loyal to their favourite establishments and especially after the crisis, when the authorities consider the situation safe, support the scene’s pubs, saunas, clubs, shops by visiting them again regularly.
These institutions are flagships of the struggle for equality, without them there would be practically no real scene and it would not be possible to win the social majority over to our cause. If we drop our institutions completely, it will be a gain for the extreme right and the homophobes who have always hated us. Surely no normal member of the community could wish for that. There has to be a symbiosis between the community and the scene businesses, cohesion is the order of the day.
Ralf: Let’s hope that the shops survive for now. At the moment the economic consequences are not foreseeable, but when I hear the news, even I, who am an economic fool, realize that this will be considerable. So let’s hope that the lack of fucking and dancing at the moment will have been the biggest problems. We shall see. In Berlin the scene will survive, but in the smaller towns? No idea.
Will our freedom change? Especially with regard to the topic of sex and free living? Ralf, you have been involved with gay sex your whole artistic life. Roger, the German Oak is an indispensable institution in Bavaria, especially when it comes to saunas for men. So, will anything change?
Ralf: Why should it? I think HIV was, in that respect, much more profound. Maybe there is more online sex than before. I think the video conferencing will remain with us, but of course there will also be a hunger for sex dates, live and meaty. This is a spring we probably won’t forget so soon.
Roger: In the community, this crisis naturally brings back memories of the AIDS crisis of the 80s/90s, but there are huge differences: the scene is no more affected in this case than other parts of society, and the lethality rate is incomparably lower than it was at the beginning of HIV infection. I don’t know of any exclusion of gays in connection with Corona, as it was in the times of Gauweiler!
The dating behaviour of many gay men has changed a lot at the moment. Only a small percentage of guys are still dating with an open mind, most gay guys have become very cautious. Will this fear remain with us?
Roger: The fact that people are a little more anxious than usual at this point in time is completely understandable, even sensible and level-headed. It’s terrible to see the collapse of health systems and the sometimes lack of humanity in nearby countries.
I also think it’s good that people are more sensitive, for example with regard to hygiene. We must find the middle way between carelessness and alarmism. The situation must be taken seriously and the government’s instructions must of course be followed. But it is not the apocalypse: the scene will resurrect, I don’t expect a very long-term and permanent change in terms of partying and dating, although people will certainly be more careful at the beginning.
Is it even possible to gain something positive at the end of the crisis so that we can maintain our position in the future?
Ralf: I would at least wish that people would be a little more relaxed with each other again. Especially in Berlin there is this „lesbians against gays against trans against everyone against everyone else’s thing“, and now that it’s all playing second fiddle due to the corona, I realize how much this raging of opinions exhausts me. The discussions may be important, but I think of the saying: Whoever has such friends, doesn’t need enemies anymore.
Thank you very much for the interview.
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