50-летний порноактер Ханс Берлин борется со стигмой ВИЧ и продвигает концепцию «незаразимость при лечении»

Over 50, openly HIV-positive, and sexier than ever, Hans Berlin is fighting ageism and HIV stigma in the adult entertainment world — and using his platform to champion U=U and Treatment As Prevention. Florian Klein is an actor, writer, producer and HIV activist. He’s also, at the ripe young age of 50, a successful porn star and online content creator who goes by the name Hans Berlin. Born in Germany, Florian/Hans currently resides in Brooklyn where, earlier this year, a successful production of the musical he wrote and produced about the porn industry, Shooting Star, was staged. The run attracted a who’s-who of the NYC theatre world. “It’s a musical love story set in the world of the gay adult film industry, which I wrote with composer Thomas Zaufke and lyricist Erik Ransom,” Florian tells DNA. “It’s had successful productions in Los Angeles and New York and we’re working on bringing it to London and Berlin next year.” He’s also just sold a scripted TV show he penned about Germany’s reaction to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Then there’s a play he’s writing about his life during lockdown as caregiver to a 96-year-old lady, a one-man show, From Shooting Porn To Shooting Stars, and his autobiography. “Friends told me I should start writing down my story. Am I that important? No, but I’m a big believer in writing what you know.” He also recently appeared in the indie movie Troy, “about a male masseuse who has a lot of sex with his clients, to the dismay of the straight couple he shares a wall with,” currently under Oscar consideration for 2024. You may also have seen his bare butt cameo in a naked pool scene in Ryan Murphy’s glossy Hollywood series. Hans, on the other hand, is someone you may have seen if you’ve been paying attention, and paying money, to OnlyFans sites in recent years. Over 50, openly HIV-positive, and sexier than ever, Hans Berlin remains one of the biggest names in the adult entertainment world. “OnlyFans changed everything,” he says. “We can run our own porn studio now, pick our scene partners, do the advertising and social media. I preferred working for the studios — you just showed, did your job and got paid instantly. They took care of everything else. I still shoot for studios, but there’s less and less as OnlyFans, JustForFans, etc, have saturated the market and made it harder for them to survive. “Many studios I used to film for don’t exist anymore and some of the big studios merged into one, like Falcon Studios. I’m always surprised how they’re still making money as almost every scene I ever shot was put on free porn sites almost immediately after they were released on the studio’s platforms. I guess there are still people out there who prefer to pay for the porn they consume on the internet, and I’m very happy about that! “If you want your OnlyFans to be successful, you must treat it like a real job,” Hans advises. “Sex work is real work.” In the last decade, Hans/Florian says the other big change in the porn world has been the advent of PrEP, “and the knowledge of U=U (Undetectable=Untransmittable) indicating that if a person with HIV is on HIV meds, with a consistently undetectable HIV viral load, the virus cannot be transmitted to a sex partner.” This has brought condomless sex back to mainstream gay porn. “I started in 2012 with condom-only scenes,” he recalls, “that was the standard then. When the effectiveness of PrEP became known, studios like Lucas Entertainment left the condoms in the drawer and switched to bareback. At first they were shunned by the industry. Famous porn director Chi Chi LaRue said she would never shoot condomless porn ever again, but when everyone saw PrEP worked and new infection rates of HIV drastically declined, everything changed. Even Chi Chi is filming bareback now. “I stayed with condoms until 2015 when I shot my first bareback scene for Kristen Bjorn. I felt safe enough to promote condomless porn to my followers and fans, as they had other options to protect themselves from HIV. Now I can’t think of one gay porn studio that still uses rubbers.” As an openly HIV-positive performer, fighting HIV stigma by promoting U=U, Hans/Florian has become a role model for a happy, healthy life with HIV. It is important, he says, “to promote safer-sex options and send reminders that queer lives come with many different challenges. A positive HIV test result is one you don’t want to add to that list. It’s one of the reasons I became an HIV activist. I realised porn gives me a voice to do good, so I became a role model for U=U and TasP (Treatment As Prevention) for the German AIDS Foundation, and in person at events all over Germany.” Additionally, he created his own campaign, Hans Helps, with events across Europe where he talks about life with HIV, HIV in porn, educating people about safer-sex options and spilling some porn tee, too. “It makes me feel good to help and the response has been great,” he beams. “I mean, who better to give safer sex advice than an actual sex worker?” As to the question of ageism in the porn world, Hans/Florian believes it is less ageist now, especially in a world where the “sexy daddy” has become a hot porn commodity. “The internet opened the market up to a lot more niches, like daddy porn,” he reveals. “I’ve started filming for sites like Hot Older Male. I guess that means I can shoot porn until the day I die if I want to! I got into this business because I love having sex. I got paid to have it with some of the hottest men in the world for the studios. Now, instead of opening Grindr, I find other content creators on Twitter/X, pick the ones I like, and get my rocks off with them on camera. The only difference to real sex is that we put our camera phones on a tripod to film ourselves. Florian Klein, the person behind Hans, is not so different than his porn persona!” Hans/Florian came out as HIV-positive on Facebook in 2014, and started talking openly about his life with the virus. “A friend of mine told me that just by speaking the truth, I was helping other people,” he remembers. “Because I’m not hiding, and came out of the HIV closet, I can show that a positive test result isn’t the end of the world. You can have a happy, healthy and fulfilled life, and still look as amazing as I do, all thanks to modern medicine.” Hans/Florian’s commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community remains as rock-solid as other parts of him: “With all the challenges that have come up within our queer community we must stay strong and united to fight against those who want to see us silent or non-existent.” MORE: Find Hans Berlin on his OnlyFans page (hansberlinxxx), or visit shootingstarmusical.com Photography: LaunchFotoStudio