Economic
This is an extract from Wikepedia - The Weimar Republic (German: Weimarer Republik ) is a name given by historians to the federal republic and semi-presidential established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government. It is named after Weimar, the city where the constitutional assembly took place. During this period, and well into the succeeding Nazi era, the official name of the state was German Reich (Deutsches Reich), which continued on from the pre-1918 Imperial period.
Following World War I, the republic emerged from the German Revolution in November 1918. In 1919, a national assembly was convened in Weimar, where a new constitution for the German Reich was written, then adopted on 11 August of that same year. In its fourteen years, the Weimar Republic faced numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremists (with paramilitaries – both left and right wing) and continuing contentious relationships with the victors of World War I. However, the Weimar Republic successfully reformed the currency, unified tax policies and the railway system and it did eliminate most of the requirements of theTreaty of Versailles, in that Germany never completely met the disarmament requirements, and eventually only paid a small portion of the total reparations required by the treaty, which were reduced twice by restructuring Germany's debt through the Dawes Planand the Young Plan.
The German government during the Weimar Republic era did not respect the Treaty of Versailles that it had been pressured to sign, and various government figures at the time rejected Germany's post-Versailles borders. Gustav Streseman as German foreign minister in 1925 declared that the reincorporation of territories lost to Poland and Danzig in the Treaty of Versailles was a major task of German foreign policy. General Hans von Seeckt (head of the command from 1920 to 1926) supported an alliance between Germany and the Soviet Unio to invade and partition Poland between them to restore the German–Russian border of 1914.The Reichswehr Ministry memorandum of 1926 declared its intention to seek the reincorporation of German territory lost to Poland as its first priority, to be followed by the return of the Saar territory, the annexation of Austria, and remilitarization of the Rhineland.
The ensuing period of lapsed by 1930, when President Hindenburg assumed dictatorial emergency powers to back the administrations of Chancellors and finally Hitler. Between 1930 and 1933 the Great Depression, even worsened by Brüning's policy of deflation, led to a surge in unemployment. It led to the ascent of the nascent Nazi Party in 1933. The legal measures taken by the new Nazi government in February and March 1933, commonly known as the (seizure of power), meant that the government could legislate contrary to the constitution. The constitution became irrelevant, so 1933 is usually seen as the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of the Third Reich.
Society
Issue 32 Fire Winter 2008/09
Inventory / Everyone Once in Berlin!
Mel Gordon
“Inventory” is a column that examines or presents a list, catalogue, or register.
Between 1919 and 1933, Berlin was one of the Jazz Age’s primary destinations for sex tourists. Its civic leaders even promoted this unsavory attraction in 1927 with the oblique and comic proclamation, “Everyone Once in Berlin!” Nocturnal erotic delights, in fact, had become the metropolis’s third most lucrative industry.
The very first thing foreigners noticed in Berlin was its thousands of prostitutes, on the streets, in hotel lobbies, and seated at cafés and clubs. How many women made their living selling sex in Berlin during the Golden Twenties is impossible to calculate, but estimates range from a low of 5,000 to the oft-published figure of 120,000 (not including the city’s estimated 35,000 male prostitutes). It all depended on one’s definition of the term.
Commercialized sex in the Prussian capital was technically unlawful but allowed in practice. Only two strictures were consistent: unlike Paris, Buenos Aries, or Shanghai, Berlin had no established red-light district or legalized brothels, and prostitutes were prohibited from verbally soliciting customers or announcing their services in print. Instead, they had to signal their vocation and specialized activities by other means: through frequenting specific locales, using the subterfuge of evocative pseudonyms, or adopting particular codes of dress.
Altogether there were seventeen distinct varieties of female prostitutes in Weimar Berlin. Although relatively few in number (300 to 350), Boot Girls, dominatrices near the Wittenberg Platz, provided Berlin nightlife with its most ubiquitous local color. Since the fur-coated Boot Girls’ particular services were suggested by the iridescent colors of their calf-length, patent-leather boots and shoelaces, suitors had to be intimately familiar with their semaphore-like advertising before accompanying them to nearby apartments. Naturally, only devoted aficionados could decipher such specific messages with confidence. Other potential clients had to buy special primers, where Berlin’s complex street semiotics were thoughtfully decoded for the uninitiated.
Arriving in Berlin during the inflation crisis of 1922–1923, Klaus Mann remembered walking past a group of the outdoor dominatrices: “Some of them looked like fierce Amazons, strutting in high boots made of green, glossy leather. One of them brandished a supple cane and leered at me as I passed by. ‘Good evening, Madam,’ I said. She whispered into my ear, ‘Want to be my slave? Costs only six billion and a cigarette. A bargain. Come along, honey!’” Eight years after Mann’s encounter, Curt Moreck reported on the same corner: “One favorite tourist site is located near the corner of Passauer and Ansbacher streets, west of Wittenberg Platz. There, a trio of six-foot-tall Boot Girls are garishly costumed in red and black attire like nineteenth-century horsewomen. Snapping a riding crop, the tallest Amazon bellows menacingly, ‘Who will be my slave tonight?’”
The following is an inventory of the services offered by the various types of prostitutes working indoors and outdoors in Weimar Berlin.
INDOOR PROSTITUTES
CHONTESPolish-born Jews, also knows as Lublins, from the Polish industrial town of Lublin.
DEMI-CASTORSYoung women from good families who occasionally supplemented their allowances by working in high-class houses in west Berlin.
DOMINASLeather-clad women who specialized in whipping, humiliation, and other forms of punishment, and worked in lesbian nightclubs that admitted heterosexual couples and free-spending male clients.
FOHSESIndependent prostitutes who advertised in newspapers and magazines as manicurists or masseuses.
MEDICINE GIRLSChild prostitutes who were “prescribed” by pimps posing as physicians in phony pharmacies in west Berlin.
MINETTESExclusive call girls who enacted S&M fantasy scenes involving foot worship and forced transvestitism.
RACE HORSESMasochistic prostitutes who worked in “Institutes for Foreign Language Instruction” where the schoolrooms were equipped with bondage equipment.
TABLE LADIESProstitutes who worked at expensive nightclubs often frequented by politicians and businessmen who paid “table money” for an evening of champagne and conversation prior to a backroom encounter.
TELEPHONE GIRLSChild prostitutes, aged twelve to seventeen, who were made to resemble junior versions of theater or film starlets and were ordered by telephone.
OUTDOOR PROSTITUTES
BOOT GIRLSDominatrices near the Wittenberg Platz whose sexual services were signaled by the colors of their boots, laces, and ribbons, sometimes worn in combination.
—Black boots: buttocks cropping (lying on bed).
—Brown boots: asphyxiation by boot or stockinged foot.
—Cobalt blue boots: forced feminization; penetration by female.
—Lacquered gold boots: bound feminization; physical torture.
—Poisonous green boots: psychological enslavement.
—Brick red boots: buttocks flagellation (tied to bed or cross).
—Scarlet boots: forced feminization; transvestite humiliation.
—Black laces: punishment with a short whip.
—Gold laces: defecation on chest.
—Maroon laces: verbal humiliation.
—White laces: collared like a dog.
—White ribbons on top of boots: a roleplay scenario in which the male customer begins as the dominant figure and ends as the submissive party.
GRASSHOPPERSLowly streetwalkers who performed oral sex in the Tiergarten.
GRAVELSTONESPhysically deformed women who worked in north Berlin.
HALF-SILKSOccasional prostitutes, often secretaries, shopkeepers, and office clerks supplementing their incomes after work.
KONTROLL GIRLSThree defined classes of licensed prostitutes, whose health was certified by city physicians.
MÜNZISPregnant women who waited under lampposts on Münzstrasse.
NUTTESBoyish teenage girls who framed their transactions with the protocols of dating, enticing their customers with lines such as, “Don’t you think we should have a coffee first?”
TAUENTZIEN GIRLSWomen wearing the latest fashions and hairstyles, often working in mother-and-daughter teams near the Kaiser Memorial Church.
Art
Otto Dix was a German artist, painter and print maker. He documented post-war Berlin and life during Weimar society. There were many successful artists around at this time doing the same thing, but Otto Dix paintings to this day continue to shape our impressions of the Great War and the secret society of sexual depravity.
I am really fascinated by how his work is segregated into three key areas; modern war, its aftermath and femme fatales. It seems, those were the three areas in which life itself was divided up by also. There is a brutal honesty about Dix's images, despite the colours being so flamboyant and decadent, there is a hollowness to the characters disposition, you get a sense of the ever decaying life surrounding the Weimar Society.
This drawing, was originally titled 'Whore With War Cripple' created in 1923 it was then renamed 'Two Victims of Capitalism'. I was drawn to this image because of the lack of the colour, it has a distasteful dull and dreary vibe. The woman looks like an old prune, all shrivelled and concaving. She looks as though she hasn't washed since the war began and has no life in her eyes. I suppose this was a typical state for an older lady to be in during this time, however I can't help but feel because of lifestyle choices this lady would have been a lot younger than she looked. The wound on the face of the war victim looks like the female genitalia, but an infected and contagious one, spreading all over his face. It is as if, his sexual endeavours and darkest sins are beginning to to surface from deep within.
The image to the right, is 'Nelly as Flora' 1940. I think this painting is incredibly intriguing because of the huge contrast in style and subject in comparison to the Dix's earlier work. I went on to discover this was one of the last paintings Otto ever created. The subject is his daughter Nelly and at the time in which this was painted, the Nazis regime ended expressionism once Hitler took control of the state. Dix had no other choice but to tame his style and soften his motifs. I feel there is a kitsch style to this painting and can't help but feel empathy toward the artist and his family. His freedom, opinion, voice and expressionism has all been taken away from him, yet I can't help but think that looking at the painting, that the vines wrapping around her wrist are symbolic of chains and repression.
There are some incredible visuals from this era that have evoked my thoughts into thinking how sexually bizarre and surreal time this really must have been. I have come to realise, that with any difficult and tragic time, comes incredible artwork that transports you to a time that is hardly recognisable. I am particular interested and curious in artwork surrounding ladies of the night. I'm curious to see how they lived and looked. I find the mundane things, like what they ate for breakfast and where they bought their underwear from the most fascinating. I find myself day dreaming about the decadence and in some way, gritty charm that Berlin would have offered and wonder if I could be transported back, what would I have done? Who would I have been friends with and how would I have made money. Its hard to accept that my research isn't an extension of the screenplay, and that this was once real life.
I was really inspired by Otto Dix work, and had a play with some of my Supra Colour Paints.
I wanted to take elements of the painting, i.e; the colours and texture, and manipulate it in a slightly different way to make it more my own. If I were to do this again, I would have used a lot more product in areas and really worked into the skin to manipulate the features, such as the bags under the eyes a lot more.
Here are some more artists I have come across;
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This is an illustration created by George Grosz and is called 'Fern im Sud das scone Spanien'. I look at this image and of course, it couldn't be more apparent how seedy it is, yet I can't quite believe how ahead of his time George Grosz was. I am fascinated by the sporadic uses of colour to signify different areas of the image that may have a greater symbolic reference. For instance - the lady in the centre of the photo who is naked from behind. The buttocks is highlighted in a red stain which could be an indication of sore, raw skin possibly from spanking and whipping, or it could be used to symbol danger and decadence. The foghorn type of object projecting onto the bottom in yellow may also be an indicator that she was a showgirl, possible part of a cabaret.
The men in the drawing, are depicted in a distasteful and vulgar light, They remind me of sex vultures flocking around the naked caucus of a shattered soul. The men painted also look very typically German and old, which may be a reflection of Grosz personal feelings towards them. This is one of my favourite images from my research, as each time I look at it, I notice something that I didn't notice the last time.
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