Lotte was born on May 23, 1890, in Dresden, Germany, to Alwine Wagner and Carl Hahm. Her father was an independent Kaufmann, or merchant, and she had three siblings.

We know relatively little about her family life, but one detail concerning her youngest sibling caught my attention immediately.

Joachim Karl Hahm was born in 1897. In 1916, when he was approximately eighteen, a district court ordered a correction to his birth certificate declaring that he was “not female but male,” together with the change to his name.

Yes. 1916.

The surviving record does not explain whether Joachim was intersex or trans. Researchers have raised both intersex and trans as possibilities. His dead name is unnecessary here.

Finding that legal recognition in a document more than a century old is striking, especially when people insist that gender diversity appeared approximately last Tuesday.

Apparently the courts had already received some paperwork.

Of course, one court decision does not make Imperial Germany a paradise of acceptance. It does show why sweeping claims about what people supposedly never recognized in the past tend to fall apart once you start looking.

Lotte trained for office work and, around 1920, became the owner of a mail-order bookshop.

Then, in the early 1920s, after the death of her mother she moved to Berlin.

Before we follow her there, we need to establish the scale.

When Greater Berlin was formed in 1920, it became the world’s third-largest municipality by population, behind London and New York. By 1939, approximately 4.3 million people lived there.

Four. Million. People.

This was an enormous city, with different neighborhoods, social circles, publications, venues, and organizations.

Being prominent in lesbian nightlife did not mean every lesbian in Berlin personally knew Lotte. Nor did living in Berlin automatically mean someone knew where the lesbians were.

You could be surrounded by millions of people and still feel completely alone.

That is part of what makes the magazines, advertisements, and gatherings in this story so important. They gave people something to follow: a name, an address, a meeting time, a photograph.

An opportunity.

Berlin’s queer life expanded during the Weimar Republic, with a visible culture of nightlife, publishing, art, and sexual reform. That visibility existed alongside prejudice, restrictions, and political hostility.

Progress and danger occupied the same city.

Which, unfortunately, is another part of this story that feels familiar.

Among Lotte’s events were the Mondschein-Dampferpartien, or moonlight steamship parties.

Lesbian boat outings!

One account describes passengers traveling from Spittelmarkt to Müggelsee, where they went ashore at the Inselhotel for orchestral music, cabaret, a tombola, and dancing until five or six in the morning. Afterward, they returned to the boat, posed for a sunrise photograph, and sailed back.

That is a full itinerary.

Some of us struggle to get everyone to agree on dinner.

Lotte was leading the charge by arranging transport, entertainment, a destination, and a morning return.

She advertised herself using the masculine title Kapitän.

Captain Hahm.

A woman in a suit, organizing the outing and publicly claiming the captain’s title, is a bold statement in 1920s Berlin.

The outing also offered a different setting from the streets and ordinary expectations of the city. Sapphic people could spend an extended evening among other sapphic people completely isolated on the water.

No queer gathering of that period was completely free from risk, but Lotte did make it as safe as possible.

Someone might attend to meet a partner. Someone else might want friends. Another person might simply want an evening without being the only visibly different person in the room.

Lotte helped make those encounters possible.

Violetta was connected with the Deutscher Freundschaftsverband, or German Friendship Association, one of the period’s major homosexual organizations.

Its relationship with lesbian organizing involved conflicts over authority, representation, and money.

Because a shared experience of discrimination has never automatically prevented sexism.

Or you know the exploitation of lesbian women…

Lotte objected to male control over lesbian organizing and publicly criticized the financial conduct of the leadership.

So she helped take the community elsewhere.

Alongside Käthe “Kati” Reinhardt, who led the Monbijou club, Lotte brought Violetta into an alliance that shifted their clubs’ allegiance from the DFV to its competitor, the Bund für Menschenrecht, or League for Human Rights.

This was a collective departure with consequences.

The women brought the communities they had organized, the events they made successful, and the support those organizations depended on.

Apparently the lesbians were capable of deciding where they wanted to be.

Who could have predicted that?

The move generated accusations of betrayal and intrigue within the queer press. Lotte’s criticisms included the objection that a heterosexual man was exercising authority over homosexual women, alongside allegations of financial exploitation.

Calling it “organizational drama” makes it sound trivial.

These women were challenging who held power over their community. They were demonstrating that the people doing the organizing could also withdraw their participation.

Lotte knew how to rally people.

Within the BfM, she served as a leader of the women’s section, giving her another platform to promote lesbian organizing and argue for greater independence.

The club nights had helped create a community. That community could act together.

And Lotte wanted to take that further.

Her organizing also extended to people described at the time as Transvestiten.

Violetta hosted gatherings for them, and Lotte helped lead efforts to establish a group that could provide connection, advice, and representation.

These efforts involved people with different sexualities, gender expressions, and understandings of themselves.

There were disagreements over how they should organize and whether everyone’s needs could be met within the same group.

Apparently putting marginalized people in a room together did not automatically produce unanimous agreement.

Just like the fractures we still see within our community today.

Lotte helped make room for people whose appearance or identity could expose them to hostility, and she used the press to promote their participation.

Some accounts credit her with founding D’Eon. An association connected with Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. It was named after the eighteenth-century diplomat and soldier Chevalier d’Éon, who lived the later half of their life as a woman.

Later research potentially distinguishes D’Eon from the group Lotte led and challenges that founding credit. Her contribution could have been to a separate organizing effort, rather than necessarily the association named in those earlier accounts.

The broader point remains: she was helping people connect across a community whose boundaries and language were still being debated.

And she was doing it through practical work.

Meetings. Announcements. Events. Advice.

Someone had to make those things happen.

The Great Depression changed the circumstances in which these communities were trying to survive.

Money became harder to find. Employment became more precarious. Paying admission could become a serious obstacle.

Around this period, Käthe Fleischmann became another important part of Lotte’s life.

Her partner.

And yes, this is a different Käthe.

Kati Reinhardt was her fellow organizer. Käthe Fleischmann was her romantic partner and well established restaurateur.

Fleischmann had been married and was the mother of two sons. She divorced her husband in 1929, and her relationship with Lotte developed around this period.

It must be noted that during this time period, Käthe had to also give up her children to be an out and proud lesbian. Many countries have come a long way today – you can be queer as well as a parent.

The precise connection between her marriage ending and the relationship beginning is less certain than some retellings suggest.

What is clear is that Käthe brought business experience and resources to their ventures.

Lotte already had a public presence, an audience, and a talent for bringing people together.

It is easy to see why they were a powerful match.

Someone to bring people through the door, and someone who understood what keeping that door open required.

With Käthe’s involvement, Lotte moved beyond arranging events in spaces controlled by other people.

Their ventures included Monokel-Diele, which opened in 1931, followed by Manuela-Bar in 1932.

A regular, personally owned venue, changed what they could offer.

An occasional event gave people somewhere to go that evening. A permanent address gave them somewhere to regularly return.

You could recognize familiar faces. Meet someone again. Develop a friendship without needing to hope the universe arranged another accidental encounter.

There was continuity.

And for people whose relationships were frequently pushed into secrecy, that mattered.

Käthe’s contribution deserves attention here. She helped make the premises ( the establishments were in her name) and business arrangements possible and was an active businesswoman in her own right.

Together, their work helped create places offering daily music, entertainment, company, and opportunities to belong. Queer safe havens.

The Great Depression soon raised concerns.

What happens when someone needs their community but cannot afford admission?

Lotte waived entrance fees for unemployed women and redistributed proceeds from events to people who needed support.

She made participation more accessible.

A person could be struggling financially and still come through the door.

Still meet people.

Still enjoy an evening.

That is the part I want us to remember alongside the photographs and performances.

Community over capitalism.

My words, rather than a documented slogan of hers, but the principle fits.

A community that celebrates belonging should be thinking about who gets excluded when money becomes the entry requirement.

Lotte’s support gave some women an opportunity to participate when they might otherwise have remained isolated.

They deserved company even when they could not afford a night out.

For a time, Lotte and Käthe helped create those possibilities.

Then the people threatening that world gained control of the country.

The danger reached Käthe’s businesses even before Hitler became chancellor in January 1933.

By autumn 1932, SA men were disrupting her establishments. Antisemitism was already threatening her ability to keep operating.

Käthe was Jewish.

That is essential to understanding what happened to her.

Under Nazi rule, antisemitic exclusion and coercion stripped away her livelihood and possessions. Her relationship with Lotte was only one part of the circumstances she faced.

Meanwhile, queer publications were being suppressed and meeting places closed.

And for the bustling community?

The magazine that told you where to go disappeared.

The venue where you expected to see familiar faces closed.

The people whose names and photographs had helped you find each other became increasingly vulnerable.

The connections were still there, but maintaining them became dangerous.

Lotte defiantly continued anyway.

She reorganized Violetta under the name Sportklub Sonne, or Sun Sports Club.

“A sports club.”

Behind that organization, social gatherings continued in secret. Accounts describe twice-weekly evenings at a Jewish lodge through late 1934, followed by meetings at the Türkische Zelt restaurant in 1935.

The disguise gave them a way to keep gathering.

It could not guarantee their safety.

Police surveillance, denunciations, and raids eventually exposed the club.

In 1935, the Nazis broadened and intensified Paragraph 175, the law criminalizing sexual acts between men.

It did not criminalize sexual relations between women.

That distinction matters, but it does not mean lesbians were safe.

The regime just figured they could force women to have babies.

And here I sit in the United States staring at these words I’ve written so far…

In the whole of Germany, queer publications and meeting places were destroyed. Individual women faced dangers shaped by their circumstances, including their political activity, gender expression, and the regime’s racial persecution.

Jewish lesbians faced persecution as both lesbians and Jews.

For Käthe, antisemitic persecution would become life-threatening.

And this is where accounts of Lotte’s life become particularly difficult to untangle.

Some accounts describe Lotte being arrested at Alexanderplatz after agreeing to watch a stranger’s suitcase.

The suitcase supposedly contained Communist material.

Those accounts connect the arrest with imprisonment in the Moringen concentration camp. Some also describe torture, physical impairment, and a later release.

The story appears often enough that it initially reads like an established part of her biography.

I encountered it repeatedly, but back then they had to take oral accounts as fact because of the queer erasure.

Later archival research by Ingeborg Boxhammer and Christiane Leidinger challenges those oral accounts. Records of Lotte’s other activities and legal proceedings during the supposed imprisonment period led them to suggest that she had been confused with another masculine lesbian prisoner.

They uncovered police surveillance of Lotte during the supposed years of imprisonment and of her being the ring leader of the Sportklub Sonne, which she couldn’t have been if she were in detention. Also uncovered was a lawsuit against Lotte, in which she went to court and had to pay a fine. Again these records wouldn’t make sense or be possible if she ended up in Moringen.

Her alleged concentration-camp imprisonment therefore remains disputed.

The detailed descriptions of torture, paralysis, and release cannot confidently be presented as events in her life.

I find that highly infuriating.

You follow someone’s story, encounter something devastating, and then discover that the sources disagree with each other about whether it happened to her.

Though, Berlin’s size is worth remembering here too.

A community can feel connected without everyone knowing everyone personally. Someone might recognize a face, know a name, or remember a story they heard from somebody else.

Add persecution, displacement, war, and decades before some memories were recorded, and we can understand how details become difficult to untangle.

Meanwhile, Käthe’s situation was becoming catastrophic.

By 1938, Käthe had lost her livelihood and possessions.

From 1939, she was forced to perform hard physical labor at Berlin’s East Harbor, unloading railway wagons.

At the end of 1941, she injured her foot in a workplace accident.

During medical treatment, she escaped.

She was now a Jewish woman in hiding, with an injured foot in a heavy plastered cast and a continuing need for somewhere to stay.

Lotte helped her for part of that.

They went to Dresden, Lotte’s hometown, and then to Saarland, near the French border. In Saarbrücken, Lotte rented an apartment, but it did not provide lasting security.

By March 1942 only a few months after fleeing together, Lotte had returned to Berlin.

Käthe still injured continued moving between hiding places, attempting survival on her own.

And she survived.

But surviving the Nazi regime did not erase the consequences of persecution, the trauma.

Nor did it resolve what had happened between them.

When I first read about this relationship, I got excited.

They seemed like the perfect couple, something to aspire to be and have…

Then I reached Käthe’s later account.

In 1966, when she was asked about an official honor for Lotte’s assistance during the Nazi period, Käthe did not support it.

The record describes her feeling that Lotte had abandoned her. Left her to try to live or die on her own.

That stopped me.

We do not know enough about why Lotte left.

But Käthe’s own story and emotions belong here.

Her experience should not disappear just because Lotte is the person whose activism brought us into the story.

Lotte did help her for a time.

Käthe was left later and felt abandoned.

Both statements can be true.

Their relationship is heart-wrenching because there is so much happening within it: love, persecution, dependence, fear, and survival.

Both women survived the Nazi regime.

But the community they had once known could not simply start back from where it had stopped.

In Berlin, those four million people became two million.

People had been murdered, displaced, and scattered. Publications had disappeared. Venues had closed. Berlin had been devastated.

Accounts describe Lotte returning to organizing with Kati Reinhardt, her earlier collaborator.

Remember her?

The other Käthe.

A postwar lesbian venue at Spittelmarkt, dated to 1945–1947, is associated in those accounts with Lotte and Reinhardt.

Some histories identify it as an early postwar lesbian venue in the Soviet sector. Later researchers note that firm documentation for parts of Lotte’s postwar venue history remains limited.

The accounts suggest an attempt to rebuild the kinds of spaces they had known, even if the exact details are not fully established.

In 1958, Lotte and others attempted to reestablish the Bund für Menschenrecht.

The effort failed.

Postwar Germany remained hostile territory for queer people in many respects. In West Germany, Paragraph 175 continued to be enforced long after the fall of the Nazis.

The end of the regime had not delivered equality.

Decades after founding Violetta, Lotte was still involved in trying to organize.

That persistence deserves recognition.

Lotte and Käthe Fleischmann had separated by the late 1950s.

Yup! Käthe still tried making it work even after being left alone and on the run.

Käthe died in Berlin-Schöneberg in February 1967, aged sixty-seven.

Lotte died in Berlin-Wannsee on August 17 of the same year, aged seventy-seven.

They died a few months apart, both in West Berlin.

Their lives had encompassed an extraordinary period of change: the growth of visible queer communities, the destruction of those communities under the Nazis, the struggle to survive, and the difficult years afterward.

Their relationship had ended, but both remained part of that shared history.

In 1969, two years after Lotte’s death, West Germany partially reformed Paragraph 175.

Her work has since been recovered and reconsidered through historians, archives, and community remembrance.

In September 2023, a memorial stele honoring her was unveiled in Berlin.

A woman who spent so much of her life making people visible became more visible in the city herself.

Lotte Hahm helped create places where people could meet, enjoy themselves, find support, and organize.

She understood how to attract attention.

She also understood that an audience could become a community, and that a community could act together.

The women had built something valuable.

There is power in recognizing that.

Lotte’s life also involved failed ventures, disputed accounts, and a relationship whose ending is painful to read.

I can admire her organizing and take Käthe’s hurt seriously.

I can recognize her connection to butch history without pretending I know exactly how she would describe herself today.

And I can see resistance in the practical work she kept doing.

Booking the room.

Writing the advertisement.

Answering the correspondence.

Arranging the outing.

Making it possible for someone without money to attend.

Bringing people together when the authorities had forced those gatherings underground.

A person could live in a city of millions and still need someone to show them where they belonged.

Lotte helped do that.

The moonlight outings matter to me for the same reason the organizing does. Our history includes people fighting for their rights and people wanting to dance until morning with someone they fancied.

They deserved both.

And that brings me back to why we created The Sapphic Archive, and to what we want to build through The Sapphic Holiday Company.

I want us to know these names.

To remember the people who created opportunities for connection, the people whose practical support made those opportunities possible, and the people whose experiences complicate the stories we initially want to tell.

To make room for the joy, the clothes, the politics, the disagreements, and the messy relationships.

And the lesbian boat itinerary.

Especially that.

Before the algorithm, someone had to tell you where the girlfriends were.

For a time in Berlin, Lotte Hahm helped show them the way.

Sapphic visibility. Sapphic history. Sapphic connection.

~ Remy Marsden