Representing Berlin: Sexuality and the City in Imperial and Weimar Germany

In this text, Dorothy Rowe demonstrates how the sexualized image of Berlin in Weimar Germany arose at the same time as radical social changes in the history and position of women were taking place. She argues that this specific image related to particular anxieties regarding the role of women in the public realm at this time. She also argues that the pre-war aesthetic responses to the city during the Imperial era, combined with a certain sexual disquiet aroused by some of the effects of urbanization, were accelerated as a result of World War I and led to the overt fetishization of the city so apparent in the culture of the Weimar Republic. The book contributes to the continuing debates regarding the nature of German modernity and the conflicts and tensions between traditionalism and the avant-garde during the modern era. In particular, it offers a peculiarly German paradigmatic model for thinking about issues of cultural modernity that remains historically specific.