Organizer and activist Lotte Hahm founded Damenklub ('ladies club') Violetta in Berlin after her arrival in Berlin in 1926. The word "Violetta" (
Violet) was a code word for
lesbian. The club featured the "calling card ladies ball", "fashion shows for masculine women and transvestites", and singalongs of German LGBT pride anthem "
The Lavender Song". It was one of an estimated 50 lesbian clubs and bars in the city of Berlin at the time. The Violetta and other lesbian nightclubs "were the sites which brought women together and which facilitated lesbian identification". Hahm's advertisements for the club and her other events in lesbian magazines featured photos of herself wearing a tuxedo, her hair very short. Famous women like comedian
Claire Waldoff (1884–1957) and actress and feminist
Senta Söneland (1882–1934) are said to have frequented the club. At the end of 1927, the Violetta was described as a "leading organization" in the magazine
Frauenliebe (Women's Love). Some members splintered off to meet at another club, the 'Dorian Gray'. With the arrival of the
Nazis to power, all of Berlin's lesbian clubs were shut down by 1933. Hahm, however, continued to organize lesbian and trans events in Berlin until the post-war period of the 1950s. ==References==