THE NEWS came as a shock. Only two days after legendary German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim had shared photographs of his wedding to longtime partner Oliver Sechting—images full of celebrity guests from the film world, a cake topped with a giant penis, and Rosa himself looking radiant in pink despite being in a wheelchair—his husband announced that Rosa had died on December 17th at age 83.
With his 1971 film Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt (It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives), Rosa had ignited the gay liberation movement in West Germany. First screened at the Berlin International Film Festival, then on many university campuses, the mockumentary offered a biting caricature of gay men who sought refuge in “art,” masking their sexuality with “culture” instead of fighting for political change. The film ends with a call to action: “Get out of public toilets and into the streets to protest!” The impact was explosive, especially with a younger generation. In the film’s immediate aftermath, countless activist groups formed, pushing West German society into a new era—long before the first Pride marches.
As a filmmaker, Rosa went on to create works about key LGBT figures such as Magnus Hirschfeld and Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. He also made films about AIDS, including Ein Virus kennt keine Moral (A Virus Knows No Morals). Many screened at international festivals. Their outrageous aesthetic can be compared to the work of artists such as John Waters, though the latter never had such an obvious activist streak.
At the height of anti-gay hysteria during the AIDS crisis, Rosa sparked a major debate. In 1991, on the television show Explosiv—Der heiße Stuhl (Explosive—The Hot Seat), he publicly outed several famous figures, arguing that admired public personalities had a responsibility to show that gay men were not abstract outsiders, but people the public already loved. The backlash was fierce, raising questions about whether outing could ever be justified for a perceived “greater good.” Two of the men involved—TV host Alfred Biolek and comedian Hape Kerkeling—later thanked Rosa for forcing them out of the closet.
For decades, Rosa remained omnipresent in the public eye, often in wildly flamboyant outfits that became his trademark. In the words of gay film critic Axel Schock, Rosa was a “schrille Nervensäge” (“a shrill irritant”). But many were grateful that he volunteered to put himself on the line publicly, confronting hostility head-on while others were too afraid to do so.
Born Holger Radtke in German-occupied Riga, Latvia, and raised in the Frankfurt suburb of Praunheim, he chose his stage name by combining the place of his upbringing with “Rosa,” a reference to the pink triangle used by the Nazis to mark imprisoned homosexuals. Until the very end of his life, he continued making films at an astonishing pace, as well as publishing poetry, penning and staging over-the-top plays such as Jeder Idiot hat eine Oma, nur ich nicht (Every Idiot Has A Grandma, Except Me, 2018), and creating exhibitions of his colorful penis paintings. He also turned some of his older films into modern musicals, including Die Bettwurst (The Bed Sausage) in 2022; it tells the story of a hopelessly stupid gay criminal called Dietmar falling for an elderly woman named Luzi who offers him refuge in her bed with a “sausage” shaped pillow. It’s a high camp classic, on screen in 1971, and on stage five decades later.
His final film, a reflection on his own life, premiered at the Berlinale in February 2025 under the title Die satanische Sau (Satanic Sow). In it, Armin Dallapiccola portrays Rosa, speaking candidly about sex in old age and about mortality. Friends later told me that after a long and severe illness last summer, Rosa had planned an assisted suicide—and had it filmed as part of his cinematic farewell.
His collected plays have been published by the prestigious S. Fischer Verlag. Many of his films are available on DVD. Several of his later stage productions were filmed—often by Rosa himself—to document his work. They are time capsules worth revisiting, including his final play, Die Insel der Perversen (“The Island of Perverts”), which tackles German politics and figures such as the lesbian far-right politician Alice Weidel, a noted favorite of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. It’s still in repertoire at the Kammerspiele of Deutsches Theater Berlin.
In a farewell letter, Deutsches Theater Berlin quotes Rosa as promising to continue putting on shows after death, calling it “Post-Mortem Theater.” If anyone can pull that off, it’s Rosa. R.I.P., my hero.
Kevin Clarke, an Irish German musicologist and journalist living in Berlin, has published books on musical theater and has curated various exhibitions at Berlin’s Schwules Museum.
