Berlin

Because the currency collapse brought a demand to live for today as if there were no tomorrow, many Berliners tried to pack their days and nights with as many thrills as possible. Much of the thrill-seeking had a gross, almost sadistic side to it. Barefisted boxing matches became all the rage, the bloodier the better. Another popular attraction was women’s mud wrestling, less bloody but more titillating. For those who wanted to mask their prurience with fake aestheticism, there was the famous “Ballet Celly de Rheydt,” which featured virtually nude female dancers, some of them in their early teens, performing programs supposedly inspired by classical art. According to Celly’s husband, who managed the enterprise, its primary goal was “to bring the ideal of beauty to our shattered people, and to raise it up from its misery.” Fully aware that Celly’s show was bent on raising something other than the human spirit, and worried that its sold-out houses might undercut Germany’s claim to have no money to pay reparations, the police took Celly to court for indecency, but the ensuing trial resulted only in a token fine. Likewise free to follow her muse was a stripper and erotic dancer named Anita Berber, who captivated audiences with her version of the Shimmy, which she did au naturel

. When she died at age thirty from drug and alcohol abuse, her admirers recalled her as one who “personified the feverish twenties in Berlin, as no one else.” Berliners who wanted to see misery disguised as sport could watch the infamous Six-Day Bicycle Races, held in the Sport-palast on the Potsdamerstrasse, where riders whirled around a circular track for six days and nights without interruption. The crowd cheered as some contestants crashed in exhaustion while others went on to win prizes like new suits or bottles of Sekt. Witnessing one of these races, the writer Joseph Roth got the feeling that if he stayed much longer he would take on “the physiognomy of the megaphones used in this mad house to make announcements to the public.”

Weimar Berlin’s commercial sex scene did not change much in its fundamentals from the imperial era, but the number of folks selling their bodies went up substantially. Police estimated the number of prostitutes at 25,000, but this included only the full-timers. According to one observer, all sorts of young girls “from so-called good families” were turning into whores, and countless marriages had become “a facade for the most wanton sexual chaos.” There were 8,000 to 10,000 pimps, most of whom controlled only one or two “spiders,” as they called their girls. A famous exception was “Student Willy,” who ran a stable of ten. The heart of street prostitution was the Geile Meile

on the Oranienburger Strasse, a grim strip staked out by strapping Valkyries in fur boas and low-cut frocks. (A new generation of whores, accoutred in Spandex short-shorts and thigh-high boots, patrols the strip today.) If you wanted something on the younger side you went to the Chauseestrasse, which was lined on both sides with preteen girls. The man-and-boy trade was centered in Friedrichstadt or along the Kurfürstendamm, where, according to Stefan Zweig, “powdered and rouged young men,” many of them “high school boys out to earn a little extra money,” sauntered up and down. The director Josef von Sternberg recalled that Berlin was “full of females who looked and functioned like men.” But the reverse was also true. As the actress Anita Loos learned on a visit from Hollywood, “any Berlin lady of the evening might turn out to be a man; the prettiest girl on the street was Conrad Veidt, who later became an international film star.” Veidt’s favorite hangout was the El Dorado, which attracted gay males and tourists to its famous female impersonation shows. Another popular night spot was “Aleifa,” or “Alles eine Familie”—One Big Family. It was indeed ecumenical, welcoming heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, and people who probably would have been transsexuals had the operation been available. Several clubs, most notably the Resi and the Femina, had telephones at each table, marked with a number, which allowed guests to call each other and make arrangements for the evening.