Tiergarten (Gay Cruising Area)

Über diesen Ort Tiergarten (Gay Cruising Area)

The Tiergarten has functioned as an outdoor cruising area for gay men for at least 100 years — referenced in the literature of the Weimar Republic era and continuously used through the Nazi period, the division of the city, and into the present. The primary cruising area is in the western section of the park, particularly in the wooded areas around the Siegessäule (Victory Column). The activity is well-known to Berlin's authorities and generally tolerated, operating as part of the city's established tradition of sexual freedom in public spaces. The area is busiest on warm summer evenings and weekends, particularly in the afternoon and early evening. The Tiergarten cruising area is not just a functional venue: it is a living piece of LGBTQ+ history, a continuity with the Berlin of the 1920s that no bar or club can provide. The Siegessäule — which features on the cover of Berlin's gay magazine of the same name — has associations with the gay community that go back to Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft nearby.