In July, staff members from our archive were invited to Ichgola Androgyn’s private apartment. Ichgola wanted to part with some of his belongings and donated them to the Schwules Museum. This is an extraordinary bequest that we are very pleased to receive, as it preserves the history of ‘Tunten’, Berlin, and activism in equal measure.

Ichgola Androgyn is known as a “Polit-Tunte”—that is, as a representative of a very specific West Berlin scene in the 1980s and 1990s, whose self-deprecating performance culture was closely linked to political activism, particularly in the AIDS movement. Having grown up as Bernd Boßmann in a village in the Lower Rhine region and inspired at an early age by his aunts and female cousins to perform acts of femininity—though discouraged by his parents—Ichgola moved to Berlin in 1984 as a trained nurse. There, he financed his acting and acrobatics training by working as a hospice caregiver, which brought him into early contact with AIDS. Through a classified ad, Ichgola connected with drag groups, met BeV Stroganov and Kasper Kamäleon, and sang kitchen songs, whore songs, and dramatic ballads. At the SchwuZ, many similarly self-assured Tunten came together and put on endless shows. And when Berliner Aids-Hilfe was founded in 1985, they organized a benefit evening under the name “Ladies Neid.” By adopting the term “queen” as a self-designation, they stripped it of its potential as an insult; Ichgola, as well as Chou Chou de Briquette, BeV StroganoV, Melitta Poppe, and Melitta Sundström, Pepsi Boston, Ovo Maltine, and Tima die Göttliche became scene stars and gained international recognition, at the latest, following Rosa von Praunheim’s charming portrait “Tunten Don’t Lie” (2002). Even before that, Ichgola had taken on roles in Rosa’s films, including that of the young Charlotte von Mahlsdorf in “I Am My Own Woman” (1992).

Ichgola’s commitment remains remarkable to this day. In 1987, he co-founded “HIV e.V.” with other nurses, organized benefit events, founded the unsubsidized theater “O-TonArt” (2009), and, under the alias “Kläre Grube,” created two types of lemonade (“Berlinade”), the proceeds from the sale of which benefited social causes. In 2002, Rosa von Praunheim wrote about the spirit of the four Tunten—Ichgola Androgyn, BeV Stroganov, Tima the Divine, and Ovo Maltine—who at one point even lived together on a houseboat: “What they all have in common is that they are not just show queens. Their political activism focuses on AIDS awareness, campaigns against anti-gay violence, the sex workers’ movement, and the fight against the far right and racism.”

In 2006, Ichgola opened “finovo,” Germany’s first cemetery café, at the Old St. Matthew’s Cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg It still exists today (run by a new tenant since 2025). This is the final resting place of many queer activists—including, by now, many of Ichgola Androgyn’s companions: Jürgen Baldiga, Ovo Maltine, and Rosa von Praunheim.

Ichgola meticulously documented his many performances and other activities. The pre-posthumous collection donated to the Schwules Museum contains many photos, including original prints by Jürgen Baldiga and Annette Frick, posters, flyers, handwritten notes, printed emails (including some from Rosa von Praunheim), song lyrics, newspaper clippings, photo albums, and slides—currently packed into three boxes and two large-format portfolios. We are delighted that these materials have found a new home with us and can now share queer history with others from the perspective of a unique queer activist stance.

For the Schwules Museum’s oralHIVStory project (in cooperation with Humboldt University of Berlin, as part of the “European HIV/AIDS Archives”), Ichgola Androgyn gave a detailed interview in 2020 about coming out at the start of the AIDS epidemic, his AIDS activism, and loss and grief—which you can still watch here (in german).

Photo: Jan Künemund