The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber - Weimar Berlin’s Priestess Of Depravity

 

Anita Shade Of Pale!

The Seven Addictions
and Five Professions of
Anita Berber - Weimar Berlin’s
Priestess Of Depravity
by Mel Gordon
Feral House
ISBN: 9781932595123

The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber-Weimar Berlin’s Priestess Of Depravity is by the same writer, Mel Gordon, who penned an absolutely brilliant book called Theatre of Fear & Horror: The Grisly Spectacle of the Grand Guignol of Paris, 1897-1962, which I reviewed here This book about a once famous and iconic... well certainly not a stripper but a dark and erotic dancer... is in some ways a little disappointing.

The book starts off with Anita Berber dying in 1928 from pulmonary tuberculosis. After a brief set up of her death and the reception from a jaded country that had all but forgotten her notorious and iconic presence in Weimar Berlin, during a time called the Inflation, we flash back to her earlier life. The writer sets the stage for someone like Anita... in turn an expressionist poet, iconic fashion model, naked dancer and silent movie actress, against the morally bankrupt backdrop of a country in recession, where the completely devalued German economy of the time was such that the price of a British cigarette was the equivalent of the price of a grand piano only a year before (sounds like the state of the UK under the current government might well be heading towards the same state, by the sound of it... so, a cautionary tale, perhaps).

The book shares small events and also the content of some of her erotic dances, such as the ones she performed with one of her less than upright husbands, Baron Von Droste.. the Dances of Depravity, Horror and Ecstacy... with sequences entitled Pritzel Figurines, Byzantine Whip Dance, Cocaine, Martyr, Suicide, Vision, Egyptian Prince, Morphine, Lunatic Asylum, Astarte and  Night Of The Borgias. These are all recounted in seven main sections of the book... The Madonna From Dresden (1899-1918), Dance In The New Nineveh (1919-1928), Berlin’s Naked Goddess (1919-1922), Repertoire Of The Damned (1922-1923), Exit Baron Von Droste (1923-1927), A Carrion Soul (1923-1928) and Rites Of Mourning. Following these are a few poems and more notes on the contents of some of the dances.

The biggest problem in this book, well illustrated with photos (from various sources), is that the writer doesn’t seem to have nearly enough detailed information about the woman’s life as you would perhaps need for a proper biography (which would perhaps explain why the leading between the lines of type is so huge... I mean I like a lot of leading myself but this seems to be double the amount you could comfortably get away with). Also, explaining why he keeps deviating and telling dollops of information about other people Anita might have known rather than concentrate solely on her experiences some of the time. And I don’t blame the writer for the lack of information here... it seems clear to me that there probably isn’t a lot of it to be had... which is a pity because, from the stories the writer does share, she certainly seems to be what people, in the modern parlance, would describe as ‘a character’.

For instance, on meeting a family she was drawn to, once the man went away for a while to look for work, Anita seduced both the mother and 15 year old daughter and turned them into her personal sex slaves, often simultaneously and not gently. Another story tells of her fondness for turning up to hotels and restaurants naked but for a fur coat and her pet orangutan concealed inside, clinging to her shoulders, in order to give the right shock value when she asked waiters to help her off with her coat. Alas, this practice stopped one day when she felt the cold, lifeless hands of the orangutan clinging to her, having suffocated under her furs... something which left her heartbroken. And, furthermore, she was certainly no shrinking violet... often she would show dissatisfaction with hecklers at her nightclub acts by urinating on their tables or breaking bottles over their heads.

Ultimately, there is just enough content and certainly some interesting illustrations to be able to hold this thing together as a slim book, double spacing not withstanding. There are even a few colour plates such as a truly gorgeous print of a painting Otto Dix did of the red headed Anita in a red variant of her Cocaine dance dress (it’s even been featured recently as part of a set of German stamps, from what I understand). I can completely sympathise with the author’s intent to put what he could into a tome of this size because, well, the worrying alternative is that people like Anita Berber are in danger of being forgotten to time, much like she was at the end of the Weimar period. And I was, certainly, entertained as much as I was informed by many of the stories within, it has to be said. All in all, if you like hearing about people revelling in their own decadence while trying to fend off a inevitable death in the face of poverty and sometimes persecution, then you might want to give The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber -Weimar Berlin’s Priestess Of Depravity a go some time. While not completely satisfied with the written content, I certainly do find it a valuable resource and I shall certainly be looking to purchase a few others of this writer’s books at some point down the line, for sure.