I have long been fascinated by Weimar Republic cabaret dancer, actress, and extreme performance artist Anita Berber. She, more than almost anyone, epitomizes for me the excesses and decadences of the German Roaring Twenties, with its fascination with addiction, morbidity, narcissism, ecstasy and horror. Addicted to cocaine and morphine, the bisexual Berber's drug of choice was equal parts of chloroform and ether. She would dip a white rose into the potentially lethal concoction and slowly chew off each of the petals. She later segued into a cocktail of cocaine, opium and cognac. As a stage performer, Berber gave extreme erotic fantasy pieces with dancer, poet and husband Sebastian Droste - 'Suicide', 'Morphium' and 'Mad House'. She famously appeared, often naked, at 'Die Weisse Maus' ('The White Mouse') cabaret in Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. This was a small exclusive cabaret club of ninety-nine seats, where the audience wore masks for anonymity. Of her performances there, it has been written: 'After midnight, the guests were ready for the apocalyptic moment when the blouse-less girls pranced up the stage ramp. Anita's girls were powdered in deadly pallid shades and appeared like figures of death incarnate. But Anita performed with bitter sincerity. Each intrusion annoyed her. She responded to the audience's heckling with show-stopping obscenities and indecent provocations. Berber had been known to spit brandy on them or stand naked on their tables, dousing herself in wine whilst simultaneously urinating. It was not long before the entire cabaret one night sank into a groundswell of shouting, screams and laughter. Anita jumped off the stage in fuming rage, grabbed the nearest champagne bottle and smashed it over a businessman's head.' It was Anita's last evening, she was sacked without notice.' Berber's relationships were as unconventional and complicated as her stage endeavours. She married wealthy young screenwriter Eberhard von Nathusiu in 1919, but soon after began a series of lesbian affairs, including one with the young Marlene Dietrich. At the same time, she explored the world of free-lancing S and M sex. Her marriage ended in divorce in 1921. In the following year, Berber met dancer and poet Sebastian Droste and understood that together they could create something theatrically bold, new and shocking, such as their production 'The Dances of Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy'. They married in 1923. However, the pair drifted into greater cocaine use and the relationship failed. Then in 1924, she married American dancer Henri Chatin-Hoffman, whom she'd met at Berlin's Blüthne-Saal. They began performing through Europe and the Middle East with their new production 'Dances of Sex and Ecstasy'. But in Zagreb, Berber publicly insulted the King of Yugoslavia and was imprisoned for six weeks. Returning to Berlin, the pair returned to the cabaret circuit. Almost appropriately Anita Berber died in 1928, surrounded by statues of the Virgin Mary and empty morphine syringes. Or so the myth went -- in fact she collapsed while performing at a Beirut nightclub. She was diagnosed with a state of advanced pulmonary tuberculosis, and died four months later in Bethanien Hospital in Kreuzberg. There is not a large visual record of this extraordinary Weimar Republic icon. While in Düsseldorf in 1925, Otto Dix painted her portrait 'The Dancer Anita Berber', unofficially known as 'The Scarlet Whore of Babylon'. Berber also appeared in nine silent films in the teens and twenties. She played Else (with Conrad Veidt) in the 1919 Richard Oswald film 'Anders als die Anderen' ('Different From The Others'), a film based on the work of famed pioneering sexologist Magnus Hirshfeldt. She also appeared briefly and uncredited as the tuxedo-ed dancer in Fritz Lang's 1922 four hour silent epic 'Doktor Mabuse Der Spieler' ('The Gambler'). This upload is a compilation of the few extant film fragments I've been able to find. The first fragment is -- appropriately - an extreme close-up of Berber, teeth filed vampirishly in an appropriately decadent Roaring Twenties mood. The second shows her 'a table', warmly and seductively cosying up to a gentleman. The third is from 'Anders als die Anderen' where she is being kissed by her co-star, Conrad Veidt. The fourth fragment shows Berber in Berber-ish mode again ... her tongue being the weapon of shock. Finally and most interestingly I think there is the tuxedo-ed dance sequence from 'Doktor Mabuse'. Berber performs on the circular central stage of a nightclub, surrounded on the perimeter by dining patrons a table. While, for obvious reasons, none of this footage reveals the extreme character of Berber's performances at, for example, 'Die Weisse Maus' cabaret in Friedrichstrasse, it does offer a conduit to allow your imagination to go there. Enjoy!

• published: 22 Aug 2013
• views: 50