We see the main entrance to the public men’s restroom at Hamburg’s Spielbudenplatz, photographed in 1986 when it was already closed: In 1980, there were 244 public restrooms in Hamburg, many of which were closed in the following years due to budget cuts. In the absence of other venues, many men used restrooms, as well as public parks, for quick, casual sexual encounters (also known as “cruising”). The homophobic atmosphere of the 1960s made them subjects of police surveillance in these places, against whom the “Hammerschlag” campaign was ultimately directed.
In Rosa von Praunheim’s film “It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Situation in Which He Lives,” the Klappe is also examined in more detail:
To clear up a common misunderstanding: Even though the mirrors in the restroom at Spielbudenplatz were the first to be smashed on the night of June 29–30, 1980, the iconic photo of the hammering that we know from the media was not taken until a few days later at Jungfernstieg.