What does a historical tour look like when it refuses to filter the past?

Recently, the ZAUBAR team traded our desks for the vibrant streets of Berlin’s Nollendorfplatz neighborhood to experience Berlin Uncensored: A History of Sex & Freedom. The tour is created and led by Jeff Mannes, a passionate guide and activist who has dedicated himself to uncovering the city's complex, radical, and often heart-wrenching relationship with human sexuality, identity, and liberation.

But this wasn't just a regular team outing. Jeff is a ZAUBAR creator, utilizing our platform to transform standard city walks into immersive, emotionally resonant time-travel experiences.

Here is what happened when our team went behind the scenes of Berlin's most provocative history tour — and how technology is helping Jeff keep these vital stories alive.

The Visionary Behind the Tour: Meeting Jeff

For Jeff, history isn't just a collection of dates; it is a direct line to understanding who we are today.

"I first got into giving tours like Berlin Uncensored because I was always fascinated by human sexuality," Jeff shares. "After my gay coming out at 16 or 17, I wanted to understand why people have the sex they do — how desire, identity, culture, politics, shame, pleasure, and freedom are all connected."

Upon moving to Berlin, Jeff began learning more about the city, the pioneering work of Magnus Hirschfeld, and Berlin’s incredible queer and sexual history. Surprised that there wasn’t already a tour dedicated specifically to the history of sexuality in Berlin, he decided to create one himself.

Years later, his motivation remains unchanged: "What keeps me excited after all these years is the emotional reaction of the guests... I’m an activist at heart, and for me, this is a very direct and meaningful form of activism."

The Experience: Walking Through Nollendorfplatz

Our walk took us through the historic gay kiez of Nollendorfplatz, a neighborhood layers deep in queer history. Throughout the tour, Jeff kept us locked into the narrative by using the iPad to ask multiple-choice quiz questions, testing our knowledge of Berlin's past as we walked.

Rather than just talking about abstract concepts, the app was used to show real archive photos, videos, and documentation on the spot, bringing the history right to the pavement. Two specific moments during the walk highlighted how the AR helps tell these sensitive stories:

1. The Realities of Weimar-Era 

While on Schwerinstraße, the discussion turned to the complex history of 1920s sexual liberation and the realities of sex work during a time of hyper-inflation. Jeff used the iPad to show images explaining the different realities of the era. For example, because directly asking for clients was illegal, women — like the Tauentzienstraße girls — had to dress extravagantly to make it clear they were offering sex without breaking the law. Seeing those archive images on the street gave us a very real look into how people actually navigated daily survival and control at the time.

An iPad showing an augmented reality layer

2. The Transformation of Eldorado

Another pivotal moment happened outside the building that used to house Eldorado, the famous 1920s club. Jeff shared how a Vogue writer had traveled to Berlin specifically to find and write about the city's famously chic women, finally discovering them inside this very space.

Through the viewport, the history hit us on an emotional level as we saw a stark transformation:

  • The app first showed the building at its peak in the 1920s, a symbol of freedom and diverse crowds dancing under its famous slogan, "Hier ist’s richtig!" (Here is the right place!).
  • Then, it shifted to 1933, showing the exact same facade completely covered in Nazi swastikas after they took over the space.

Today, that historic building is just an everyday organic grocery store. Standing on the sidewalk and seeing that rapid shift from a haven of liberation to a Nazi stronghold right on the screen was a heavy, eye-opening experience.

How ZAUBAR Empowers the Storytelling

Teaching history on the exact pavement where it happened is powerful, but seeing it with your own eyes changes everything. Jeff uses the ZAUBAR app to ensure his guests don't just hear the history — they feel it.

"Using the ZAUBAR app has made a real difference in how guests experience the tour," says Jeff. "It helps them dive deeper into history and get a more immediate feeling for the past. When people are standing in front of a building and can suddenly see how it looked around 100 years ago, it becomes much easier for them to imagine what happened there — not just intellectually, but emotionally."

One of our team's absolute favourite parts of the tour was creating Mixies — interactive group photos that allowed us to snap a picture together with historical overlays, playfully connecting our team to the timeline we were exploring.

"It’s playful, but it also does something quite meaningful: it allows people to feel, even for a moment, connected to the people whose stories we are talking about," Jeff notes.

The ZAUBAR team posing for a Mixie group photo with historical overlays

What’s Next for Jeff?

Jeff isn't stopping with Berlin Uncensored. Looking ahead, he is currently developing an idea for a vital new tour that he hopes to bring to life.

"At the moment, I’m also developing an idea for a new tour called Berlin’s History of Evil," Jeff reveals. "The idea is to explore the German colonial past, Nazi history and the Holocaust, the GDR dictatorship, as well as current fascist and libertarian-authoritarian movements. I want to help people understand “evil” through established sociological and psychological theories and studies — but in a way that is accessible, engaging, and easy to understand. The goal would be to give people tools to recognize dangerous authoritarian patterns more clearly today by learning from the past. It will still take a while to build properly, but it’s a project I’m excited about."

We are incredibly proud to partner with creators like Jeff, who use the ZAUBAR platform to make complex histories accessible and keep these important community stories alive on the streets where they happened.

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👉 Want to experience the full history yourself? Book a slot directly on Berlin Uncensored.

👉 Are you a tour guide or creator looking to bring history to life? Discover how the ZAUBAR Platform can transform your stories.