When Beni Durrer moved to the German capital thirty years ago, Berlin was a place of freedom for him. He found his homeland to be narrow. Today he feels the opposite. A conversation about a city in which hard-won achievements are once again in danger.
December 26, 2025, 1:41 p.mDecember 26, 2025, 1:41 p.m
Hansjörg Friedrich Müller, Berlin / ch media
As early as the 1920s, the area around Nollendorfplatz in western Berlin was considered a preferred meeting place for homosexuals; During the Nazi era the scene disappeared underground, but after the war it flourished again. For anyone who felt same-sex attraction in the West German countryside with its often rigid moral concepts, West Berlin was a refuge. For several years now, the dome of the subway station, which is an elevated train station above the ground, has been shining in the colors of the rainbow: official Berlin is proud of a tradition that it would previously have shamefully kept secret.
“It feels easy to leave”: René Durrer-Lehmann (left) and Beni Durrer suffer from the conditions in Berlin.Image: chmedia/mario heller
A few hundred meters south of the train station, on Eisenacher Strasse, is the shop of the Swiss make-up artist Beni Durrer, who has lived in the area for almost thirty years. The 57-year-old and his German husband René Durrer-Lehmann, 58, recently told the local tabloid “BZ” that they wanted to move to Lucerne, Durrer’s hometown. Berlin is no longer a good place for gays.
Arab clans set the tone on the streets
“You’re brave,” someone told him after the report came out, but they also received threats, Beni said a few days later at a meeting in his shop. “It’s good that you’re leaving, Islam will soon rule here,” one letter said.
It’s just after work. René, a hairdresser, has just served one last customer. Not everyone wanted to talk about the problems, says Beni. “Some people prefer to act as if nothing is happening,” explains René. Artist friends told him that not all immigrants were gay haters, and that was true: Mohammed, a Moroccan who had lived in Germany for 17 years, called him and said he was ashamed of some of his compatriots. And an Iranian asked him to apologize on behalf of the Muslim migrants.
It is a story of the city’s change that Beni and René tell – and one of social regression. Thirty years ago, says Beni, he felt his move to Germany was liberating. In Lucerne he was raised as a strict Catholic. In Bern, where he later lived and worked as a bartender in the Hotel Bellevue Palace, the gay scene was all too manageable for him.
“Switzerland was too small-minded for me, I had to get out. I was able to realize myself in Berlin.”
Most of the time, the man from Lucerne, a rather cautious man, leaves the talking to his partner. He, a native of Berlin, tells how the neighborhood has changed. Arab clans rule the streets. Anyone who is identified as a homosexual is looked at aggressively, insulted or even attacked. “You gay pig, I’ll stab you,” is what they say. They haven’t walked around hand in hand for a long time, says René, “but when I greet him on the street, I want to be able to kiss him, after all he’s my husband.”
Robust rencontre at the kebab shop
The cityscape around Nollendorfplatz has changed in recent years: where gay bars used to be, there are now often shisha bars; The fact that the establishments belong to criminal clans is considered an open secret in Berlin. The changes are partly due to the advent of the Internet: While homosexuals previously needed meeting places to get to know each other, they now have the Internet. And anyone who is gay or lesbian no longer necessarily has to move to the big city: Germany has become more tolerant overall.
But not everywhere: In Berlin, achievements that once had to be hard-won seem to be in danger again. As a young man in the 1980s, René remembers that he was also “the classic victim”: once he was attacked by right-wing extremist skinheads, another time by Turks.
“But I was able to move more freely than today.”
Now he doesn’t get into trouble every day, but he still gets into trouble again and again. If he comes home late, he often carries a key between his fingers so that he can strike back more effectively in an emergency.
René seems to be a man who doesn’t put up with anything. After he was jostled and insulted in front of a kebab shop, he grabbed the perpetrator and pushed him against the wall. “Now he greets me in a friendly way.” René says about himself that he has a big mouth.
“Beni is sometimes afraid that I will get a knife in the back at some point.”
Violence against homosexuals is increasing
The two men report about clan members who broke into their cars, about a police force that often arrives late and then does nothing, and about a justice system that allows perpetrators to run free, even if they have committed multiple criminal offenses. Her trainees are repeatedly harassed on the way home, says René. Sometimes, especially in the evenings, he prefers to accompany his customers to the subway station. “Berlin is broken,” Beni interjects.
The number of crimes against lesbians, gays and transsexuals in Germany has increased almost every year since 2014; Violent attacks occurred almost seven times as often last year as they did ten years earlier. It’s not just immigrants from Muslim countries that homosexuals have to fear: Right-wing extremists also cultivate an image of male strength in which gays and lesbians become the enemy. Neo-Nazis now regularly march, especially in East German cities, when homosexuals celebrate Christopher Street Day.
Beni Durrer and René Durrer-Lehmann don’t just want to leave Germany because of the harsher customs. Taxes are high, and in the crisis, beauty products and make-up are becoming a dispensable luxury for many, reports Beni. His smaller shop in Lucerne, which he opened in October, is now subsidizing the Berlin business. Because of their seven employees and their regular customers, they wanted to try out for a few more months whether they could maintain their Berlin foothold. If they close, it would be the end of “Beni Durrer Beauty” in Berlin – after almost 25 years in the Schöneberg district.
Other gay couples also want to leave town
Beni and René are currently still commuting back and forth between Berlin and Lucerne, but in the foreseeable future they want to move entirely to Switzerland. They are not the only gays who want to leave the city, says René. His best friend and his husband are moving to Spain soon, and other couples also reported plans to move.
“It feels easy to leave,” says René. When it comes to moving, he is more of the driving force, explains the Berliner. He never felt threatened in Lucerne.
“I can’t understand why Beni really wanted to leave there.”
A place of tolerance seems to have become a place of narrowness – and a place of narrowness into one of tolerance. “Today,” says Beni Durrer, “I feel freer in Switzerland.”
In times of crisis, their products become dispensable luxury: Durrer-Lehmann and Durrer in their Berlin store.Image: chmedia/mario heller