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Filmmakers Benjamin Cantu and Dr. Klaus Mueller in conversation about new Netflix documentary "Eldorado - Everything the Nazis Hate"

On June 28, 2023, the documentary Eldorado - Everything the Nazis Hate, is coming to Netflix. In conversation, Director Benjamin Cantu and Dr. Klaus Mueller, who served as the film’s dramaturgical and historical consultant, discuss the inspiration and process behind the film.

Klaus Mueller: You finished two years of production with a documentary film that I had the pleasure to accompany from the beginning as the film’s scientific and dramaturgic Consultant. Eldorado - Everything the Nazis Hate describes queer lives in the upheaval between the Weimar Republic and National Socialism and will be available on Netflix from the end of June 2023. The original idea for this film came from your long-time colleague, Nils Bökamp, who in turn was inspired by the documentary Paragraph 175 that I initiated.

Benjamin Cantu: Your film Paragraph 175, which was released a good 20 years ago, in 2001, deals with the Nazi persecution of homosexual men and women. The film was like a driving force for us at that time. When Nils and I saw it, it was clear to us that this was a topic we wanted to go deeper into. It awakened the question in us: If all happened here in Germany almost 100 years ago, what do we really know about it? At that time, you as a filmmaker, were in contact with survivors of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals.  And I'm in touch with you now. 

Klaus Mueller: I'm very glad that your reaction to the film wasn’t: "Good that I know that now", but on the contrary: "I want to know more". With Eldorado, you made a film that explores queer lives 100 years ago, and translates their stories for a younger generation. You ask the question about what this most extreme form of homosexual persecution still means today.  

Benjamin Cantu: We thought about how to reprocess this complex history today.

Klaus Mueller: Yes. Eldorado asks different questions, which of course also has to do with the state of research today. What you saw in Paragraph 175 was what we knew at the time. 

Benjamin Cantu: Now, for example, the stories of trans people have been added. They were unknown at the time, and even today we’re just at the beginning. We owe a lot to the work of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society in Berlin, and especially Ralf Dose, Raimund Wolfert and Rainer Herrn. It was Wolfert's research on the transwomen Charlotte Charlaque and Toni Ebel, two of the main characters in Eldorado, that gave us access to them in the first place. 

Klaus Mueller: More research is needed, including in the archives, to make long-marginalized lives visible. Were you planning from the beginning to tell these very different stories in one film? 

Benjamin Cantu: We wanted to show queer lives that took place in Berlin and who experienced the shift from the Weimar Republic to National Socialism. I was looking for stories that were not known to a broad audience, because they have been stigmatized and marginalized since their persecution and in post-war research. From the world-famous tennis player, Gottfried von Cramm, we come to his long-time friend and lover, Manasse Herbst. He was a discovery for us. And it was a total stroke of luck that you did research on Gottfried von Cramm already many years ago. From the likewise world-famous sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, we focus on the story of the relationship between Charlotte Charlaque and Toni Ebel, which has never been told before. We already know a fair amount about the Nazi Ernst Röhm, who also plays a role in the film. What was important to me was to show how homosexuality was defined at that time from different directions - socially, scientifically and politically. It was completely new at that time to talk so broadly and publicly about homosexuality. The topic was politically instrumentalized by the Nazis as well as the Social Democrats and Communists. The characters this film is about were affected by these dynamics in different ways. Within a few years, many LGBT people experienced their sexual and emotional freedom and, at the same time, extreme oppression. The film attempts to trace these major movements.

Klaus Mueller: My goal for Paragraph 175 was simple at the time. The film was the last chance to tell this story in the voices of homosexual survivors themselves. The film is based on interviews with these survivors. We show their persecution not by using Nazi sources, but by listening to them. We talk about men who were nearly 90 years old, or beyond. It was a race against time. 

Benjamin Cantu: I can imagine how urgent you must have felt about this task at the time. You can still feel that urgency in the film today. 

Klaus Mueller: The gay survivors I worked with didn't experience public empathy nor political recognition as persecuted victims. Their voices are still missing from the Holocaust remembrance culture today. After all, they were never part of commemorative events, never addressed as survivors. Their persecution, even after 1945 has isolated them; they have not been able to speak with other homosexual survivors. This is a big vacuum that is hard to fill. 
That's why Eldorado is so important, because the film tries to keep people and fates in our collective memory today. 

Benjamin Cantu: Back then, you preserved memory based on lived individual experiences. I don't have that possibility today. But I want to make these experiences tangible through cinematic means that make the personal level between us today and the people back then tangible again. We do this through historically researched reenactments, that were directed by my colleague Matt Lambert. We  combined these reenactments with meticulously researched archival footage. In the end it became a character-driven historical documentary. We want to make the lives of these people experiential. 

Klaus Mueller: The generation of Holocaust survivors has almost left us. It needs new appropriations, which your film tries out. I am perhaps a mediator, having met and talked with homosexual survivors for many years. Their memories, which they shared with me, have become very close to me; they are firmly rooted in me. I hope that Eldorado will in turn inspire new stories that have never been told before. It's actually amazing how few are aware of what a significant role Germany has played in the history of homosexuality and transsexuality.

Benjamin Cantu: In Western Modernity....

Klaus Mueller: Yes, this is a little-noticed part of German and Western history. In the German Historical Museum in Berlin, queer history is a small subchapter. What does it say about Germany that the first LGBT movement in history evolved here, and shortly thereafter the worst oppression and persecution of homosexuals that we have ever experienced took place?  The fact that all of that happened here is not in Germany’s DNA. 

Benjamin Cantu: I feel that we met in a context that also had an influence on our work on Eldorado: during the Salzburg Global LGBT* Forum, which you founded in 2013 and built up over years with the Salzburg Global Seminar, and which is about LGBT human rights on a global level. In your and also my conversations with activists from all over the world during the LGBT* Forum it increasingly is about the growing backlash that leads to renewed discrimination and violence against LGBT people in many countries. Although Eldorado is a historical film, it also seeks to bridge the gap to the present day, now that the freedoms of queer people are once again being lost in many parts of the world.

Klaus Mueller: Yes, I think that sense of concern we discussed within the Global LGBT* Forum also shaped the film. We see historically how quickly a recognition of equal rights that seemed to be developing in the late 1920s turned into a complete destruction of the world's first LGBT community. Today we hear from our Fellows of the LGBT* Forum how their situation is deteriorating again; from the massive transphobic campaign in the US, new draconian laws in Uganda and other African countries or the state anti-LGBT campaigns in Hungary, Poland, Russia or Turkey. 

Benjamin Cantu: Besides you, other protagonists appear in Eldorado. Among them Zavier Nunn, Morgan M. Page, Robert Beachy and Ben Miller. Each of you describes history as a queer person, who is simultaneously affected by the experience of today’s backlash. There is no Safe Distance to history. Eldorado is not only about coming to terms with the past, but also about the growing tensions in the present.  

* LGBT: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. We are using this term as it is currently widely used in human rights conversations on sexual orientation and gender identity in many parts of the world, and we would wish it to be read as inclusive of other cultural concepts, contemporary or historical, to express sexuality and gender, intersex and gender non-conforming identities.