During the four years that British author Christopher Isherwood lived in Berlin, he wrote his most famous book. “Goodbye to Berlin” was later adapted into the musical “Cabaret” about the people in the fictional nightclub Kit Kat Klub.

In March 1929, Christopher Isherwood went on a 10-day trip to Berlin, where he had an affair with a young man he met in a bar. He also became acquainted with Magnus Hirschfeld, who researched gender and advocated for the repeal of the infamous Paragraph 175, which prohibited men from having sex with each other.

Later that year, he moved to Nollendorferstraße in the Schöneberg district of Berlin.

It was on this small street in the middle of Regenbogenkiez that Isherwood lived his life of nightclubs and eccentric people until Hitler came to power. His experiences in the neighborhood later became the book “Goodbye to Berlin.”

The book is fiction, but all the characters are based partly on Isherwood himself and the people he met in the Regenbogenkiez.

Christopher Isherwood was gay, and the characters he writes about in the book are part of the sexually liberated Weimar Republic scene, for better or worse.

In the musical version of “Cabaret,” the fictional Kit Kat Klub is most likely a reference to the Eldorado nightclub, which was located just around the corner from where Isherwood lived.

Click here to read the story of the Eldorado nightclub

Isherwood himself was reportedly a guest at Eldorado, where he hired young male prostitutes.

Both the book and Isherwood’s own story in Berlin end with Hitler’s rise to power. Many of the people he associated with were suddenly at great risk of persecution by the Nazis, and with that risk hanging over his head, Isherwood left Berlin in 1933.

Today, there is a modest memorial plaque at the entrance to Nollendorferstraße 17, where Isherwood lived.

The neighborhood where Isherwood lived is still Berlin’s rainbow neighborhood, or Regenbogenkiez in German.

Much is the same as it was back then, but some things have changed with gentrification. There are fewer misfits on the streets, cafés and bars are less rough, and the Eldorado nightclub is now an organic supermarket.

And the address where Christopher Isherwood lived is just a reminder of the time he described in “Goodbye to Berlin.”