Digital Media Journey: Androgyny During Germany's Weimar Republic

For years I have been fascinated with the Cabaret scene during the Weimar Republic that existed during the 14 years between WWI and National Socialism under Hitler. It is probably an obsession to effortlessly watch the 15 ½ hours of Rainer Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz. Weimar cinema tackled issues such as homosexuality, prostitution and anti-Semitism. After years of watching films by Robert Wiene, Paul Wegener, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, and G. W. Pabst, it wasn't dificult to realize that Fassbinder was taking so long so that the audience could experience the dreariness, stagnation and frustration of the economically less fortunate who then embraced National Socialism.

In 2016 I posted A look at the Metropolis: from Prostitutes, Lustmord, and Cabarets, to Economic Recovery in Weimar Germany and the New Objectivity

This posting will look at female androgyny in lifestyle and fashion.

Otto Dix, Portrait of the Journalist
Sylvia von Harden, 1926.

Otto dix has exagerated the androgynous look of Sylvia von Harden, a poet and writer of short stories who frequented the Romanisches Café in Berlin and sat at her corner table. The café regulars were the who's who of the Belin avante garde, including Oto Dix, Bertolt Brecht, George Grosz, Alfred Döblin, Joachim Ringelnatz, Erich Maria Remarque, and Billy Wilder. Aspiring writers would go the Romanisches Café in hopes of launching their careers. Those already established were at tables séparées. At the beginning of the 1972 musical film Cabaret, about 20 seconds after Joel Grey starts to sing "Willkommen", there is a brief recreation of this painting. Von Harden loved this caricature of herself. Many of the industrialists hated the distortions in their portraits by Dix. Her female figure is flattened by the dress. The fingers are grossly elongated, her right hand covers her breasts and the left hand goes across her pelvis. Her hair was in the new bob style or as it is called in German, Bubikopf. Dix told von Harden "I must paint you! I simply must! ... You are representative of an entire epoch!' The monocle was Dix's idea.

Otto Dix, The Dancer Anita Berber, 1925

Anita Berber frequently danced in cabarets totally nude. Her drug addiction and bisexuality were no secret. Besides alcohol, cocaine and opiates she was partial to chloroform mixed with ether. She frequently would be in a hotel lobby nude but partially covered with a fur coat.

The more traditional couple in the background are gossiping about the absurdity of Fräulein Mia a man wearing high heeled shoes or a woman in a man's jacket and tie. The short hair style, in the popular Bubikopf, could be that of a woman.

Liebende Frauen (Women in Love), 1929

Lebende Frauen was one of several lesbian magazines published during the Weimar Republic.

Poster for German version of The Blue Angel, 1930

Josef von Sternberg, the Austrian American film director was invited to make the first feature-length full-talkie in Germany, The Blue Angel (1930), a co-production of Paramount and UFA. English and German versions were made simultaneously. Dietrich played Lola Lola, a cabaret performer in a top hat and with her legs exposed.

Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, 1930

Later that year Von Sternberg bought her to Hollywood. They made six more films together. In her first American film Morocco (1930), Sternberg insisted that she wear a black tuxedo. Her insatiable sexual appetite for both women and men started in Germany, but received its notoriety in America. Dietrich had affairs with men who had had affairs with woman that she had affairs with.