Today we are putting Dennis Lalla in the spotlight: as a young music fanatic, community organizer and skinhead, Dennis once left the province of Lower Saxony to get to the bottom of the Berlin myths of the turn of the millennium. He grazed the typical hotspots of the queer scene, including the Sonntags-Club and the Schwules Museum. In the interview, he talks about his work in the Eurovision song contest community – yes, that’s a thing! – and shows us a similarly dressed-up find from the archive of the Schwules Museum, which has earned a special place in Dennis’ heart.
Hello Dennis! Thank you for talking to me today. First and foremost, I’m actually interested in how I was able to get you interested in this interview; I remember asking you a year ago…
(laughs) You know, at some point you just have to surrender to your fate, and that’s what I did. But I like being here now!
As fate would have it! Will you introduce yourself to everyone who doesn’t know you yet?
Sure: I’m Dennis and I was born near Hamburg, but Berlin has always been my dream city. At the end of the 1990s, I went to the Love Parade with friends and shortly afterwards, as a tourist, I was fascinated by the flair and lightness of Berlin. I remember once standing on the corner of Eberswalder Strasse and Danziger Strasse, next to me was a man in a skirt and school backpack, and on the other side was an older lady, dressed very smartly, very chic… I looked at her a little bashfully, she looked back and the next moment we all shrugged our shoulders and moved on. It sounds banal, but I simply didn’t know that! Neither from Hamburg nor from Hanover, where I moved to as a young adult. At the beginning of the noughties, the move to Berlin also worked out!
It sounds like you really enjoyed the freedom of judgment at that moment!
Yes, every Jeck is different, as the saying goes. The turn of the millennium is also simply mythical for Berlin, with all the clubs in the most broken down back alleys. For example, I got to know the Pfefferberg when it was still made up of old GDR buildings and was falling apart. There were lots of gay parties there, for less than 5 marks… Years later, when it was already renovated, I helped organize a few events there!
What kind of events were they?
Well, I have to admit that I’m a big Grand Prix fan. Accordingly, they were Grand Prix events that I hosted together with friends. Together we created the Eurovision Weekend. Every summer we organized a three-day event where real Grand Prix participants appeared as guests. For each year, there was a partner country that joined forces with us and brought along artists. For example, we had the very first Grand Prix winner Lys Assia as a guest, who won in 1956! This then led to smaller formats such as the Fan-Vision Song Contest, a smaller competition for smaller stars. In the meantime, however, it has also become bigger: whoever wins now gets the right to host a party weekend for the community for the year in question.
Wow, I’ve never heard of that before… That’s an insight into a real subculture! What fascinates you so much about Eurovision that you put so much work into its community?
I haven’t the slightest idea! I watched it as a child with my grandparents, recorded the evenings on my tape recorder, even dubbed over my Benjamin Blümchen tapes with the recordings… Of course, when I recorded the songs, the stupid cuckoo clock always bleated or my nasty sister came in and made noise (both laugh). That just continued. When I got wind of organized fan communities, I had to become part of them. In Berlin, it wasn’t difficult to make the connection.
Is there something inherently queer about Eurovision?
… it’s an incredibly gay competition. In my estimation, 80% of the fans are also gay men. I don’t know why it has developed like this over the years.
I’ve been told that you used to be a punk before your time as Mr. Eurovision…
I reject that! I was a skinhead! But that’s probably true, I still organize a skin and punk regulars’ table with old acquaintances in the Sonntags-Club. I was part of the queer skinhead scene back then, with a wet-shaven bald head and combat boots. A few photographs of this were part of our exhibition “love. fight. dance.” to mark 50 years of the Sonntags-Club. I can be seen a few times in the club’s old program booklets; they are also part of the SMU collection and are in the archive.
Did you already know about the Schwules Museum in your Sunday Club days and would you have thought that you would be working for it a dozen years later?
You just knew the Gay Museum, that’s for sure. As former colleagues migrated from the Sunday Club to the Schwules Museum to work there, I’ve also been to a few exhibitions over the years. At some point, they also gave me a tour of the archive; I remember well how impressive I found it at the time. Later, when I ended up working in the archive, I thought to myself “Wait a minute, that all looked completely different…” – It’s fascinating how something like that works!
How did you get your job with us?
It’s the result of a job creation by the Left Party, which distributed a thousand jobs in a program for art and social affairs in the city about five years ago. I applied here and there as part of this. At the time, I had a really good relationship with my caseworker at the employment office, who also knew that I was working in the queer sector – I was basically outing myself to her (laughs). And shortly afterwards, she sent me an ad from the Gay Museum about a vacancy for a cultural organization assistant. Of course I wrote straight away, got through the interview and got the job. Today, I do tasks all over the museum that help to ensure that the museum’s operations and in-house events run smoothly.
Now you wanted to show me something in the SMU archive; what did you bring back with you?
A portrait of Marcel André! One of the grand dames of the Berlin travesty scene in the 1970s. The photograph is life-size and really impressive. On one of my first days, I almost walked into this work of art when I was wandering around downstairs in the archive on my own. I’ve never seen Marcel André live, but she is a legend, and I find that fascinating.
What connects you to your find? Similar to Eurovision, it’s definitely a glamorous subject…
It was love at first sight! (laughs). As the photograph is one of the few works of art that stands around downstairs and I’m often in the archive for work, I was and still am confronted with this portrait a lot. Sometimes, when I’m frustrated with work in the office, I like to go to the archive and take a moment to breathe with Marcel André. However, I would hate to confirm your assumption that I have a penchant for glitz and glamor.
Can you summarize the image of Marcel André in three words?
Then I would have to use the word: Glamor, show, confidence!
And if you could give it to one person, who would it go to?
To my stepmother! We have a slightly messed up family history, but she took great care of me, even though I only met her when I was 17. Today she has two gay sons, one of her own and me, is a really chic, confident woman who has worked against oppressive systems her whole life, and loves Berlin, even though she likes living in the provinces. She could certainly do a lot with this stunning work of art.
(Interview & photo: mino Künze)