Lotte Hahm

The merger of the two big clubs and the change caused a great stir in the lesbian scene of the time; in the DFV and its magazine Frauenliebe there was talk of betrayal and intrigue.

As justification Hahm wrote that it would have been considered "grotesque" that "a heterosexual man should be the leader of homosexual women" and on the other hand due to financial irregularities of Bergmann.

She summed up that "the time has finally come for Karl Bergmann, who founded the Monbijou Women's Club only to exploit it for his personal purposes, to disappear.

[4] Together with Felix Abraham,[5] in 1929 Hahm was involved in the foundation of the first German organisation for transgender people, the transvestite association D'Eon, which still existed in 1932.

D'Eon was open to biologically male and female alike, was based at the Institute for Sexology of Magnus Hirschfeld and was directed by Hahm until 1930.

[3] It is certain however, even though the files were destroyed, that she was taken to the Moringen concentration camp in early 1935, as fellow prisoners remembered her telling the tale of her arrest in Berlin at the Alexanderplatz by the Gestapo She said she had been looking after a suitcase, for a person whose name she did not disclose, and when this was searched and Communist material was found within.

[2] By 1937 at the latest, Hahm was free again and working as a textile trader in the Berlin area, but the business was not a success, and she cheated her driver out of his wages.

[4] Having avoided prison, in 1939 Hahm resumed her earlier activities and started for a brief time a lesbian meeting place on Alexanderplatz on the first floor of the old Haus des Lehrers.

[6][2] At the same time, Hahm's business partner, Fleischmann remained secretly active, taking the risk of running a restaurant with a lesbian clientele despite the life-threatening situation for her.

Already for the first anniversary of Klub Violetta two poems about her were published in Frauenliebe, one by Selli Engler: "You, who have prepared a home for us through noble and serious diligence, and who with a proud and free forehead only strides forward with strength, you shall continue to be our guide, and we shall trust in you...