Customer Reviews

Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin

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First a warning this book is NOT for those who want a harmless read about the Weimar years. This book is shocking and extreme, but gives you a honest and frank report off these years.

The film Cabaret and the book it was based on indicated that Weimar Berlin was the place were everything was possible. Well this book proves that it was true and more. It was already well known that it was a decadent and tolerant place for those who wanted to live a life that was viewed in the rest of Europe as unacceptable, like homosexuality. This book however shows that there was more to Berlin than that. It shows the city's true and extreme decadence.

Prostitution was more than normal, prostitutes were a group that existed out of sub-groups and sub-sub-groups. For every kind of sexual taste there was a way to satisfy it and shockingly easy. Nudism, both male and female, both adult and children was seen as normal and there where many clubs. Nightclubs for male and for female transvestites. Occult groups where rampant. Burlesque shows. Cabaret clubs with lavish shows that make the things you could see in the film Cabaret look very mild.
Transvestites, homosexuality, nudist clubs, sadism, masochism, paedophilia, sexual murder it all happened and it's in this book.

There are many photos, posters, artwork accompanying the subjects of the book in a beautiful lay-out. It is as far as I know the only book of it's kind, the only one who is so open and honest about the vices of 1920's Berlin.

It's well written and put together by someone with love for the subject. The book is a kick in the head but worth it if you are truly interested in that era of history. You are going to like it or consider burying it in the garden.

Weimar was anything but harmless. The book centres upon Berlin and provides details of a sexual explosion rom 1927 until 1932 brimming with pictures. It is not an academic book, but also contains considerable insights. The book engages with the changing sexual identities as men and women confronted an abandonment into a sexual abyss where anything, compared to previous decades and eras, went.

So transvestitism, homo-sexuality, lesbianism S&M and no doubt child abuse as another adjunct, exploded into public view and consciousness rather than existing behind closed doors. Prostitution a by product of World War One became a component of Ku Damm and Friedrichstrasse. Gay men and women all vied in disparate areas for clients who were mainly the wealthy. All the antithesis of the austere world formulated by Frederick the Great who wanted his troops to emulate the spartan warriors.

The book brings together the Expressionists along with Dix and Grosz into view along with various adverts and people in various states of undress to focus upon the debauchery which could be had, just before the Nazi coup d'etat when it all closed down.

Badly written. So many better options. The stupid Americanised journalistic title gives it all away. If desperate, read Christopher Isherwood.