Naughty Berlin

This blogpost has been written by Clair Wordsworth, Producer of the BBC Radio 2 vintage music series Barry's Forgotten Musical Masterpieces hosted by Barry Humphries.

Readers who are familiar with my radio work will already know that I spend a lot of time delving in to the music, literature and history of the early 20th century. While there are many great things about now having produced five series (and two Christmas Specials) of Barry’s Forgotten Musical Masterpieces for BBC Radio 2, between 2016 and 2021, one of the most precious to me, is having the opportunity to discover much more about the events & culture of the Weimar Republic. That’s the period of German history, following the First World War running up until the election of an obscure former Corporal (Gefreiter in German) with the Bavarian Army, named Adolf Hitler, in 1933.

The Weimar Republic was an age of freedom and experimentation and, Episode 3 (of the current series of BFMM – available on BBC Sounds for a few more weeks) features a few songs from the era of the Weimar Republic, most notably tracks by The Comedian Harmonists, Marlene Dietrich & Freddy Johnson. Also, underneath some of the links, you should be able to hear snippets of the first ever gay anthem - Das Lila Lied (The Lavender Song is the English title). It was written in 1920 by Kurt Schwabach & Mischa Spoliansky. The whole song was featured in a previous series and, among the recorded versions of it are ones in both English and German by Ute Lemper, should you wish to seek it out.

The atmosphere of the last days for the Weimar Republic is “beautifully” depicted in the film Cabaret starring Liza Minelli, Michael Yorke & Joel Gray, with 1970s Munich substituting for 1930s Berlin. Cabaret is based on the stories of Christopher Isherwood, a British writer, who lived in Berlin during the decadent and sexually progressive 1920s & early 30s. Isherwood, along with his university pals Stephen Spender & W. H. Auden, rejected fashionable Paris in favour of seedy Berlin, in search of homosexual adventure.

One of the real-life characters Isherwood met while in Berlin was a girl called Jean Ross, a former RADA, whom he was later to immortalized as the character Sally Bowles.

By 1930, the licentious German Capital attracted approx. 2 million visitors a year and an erotic guide to ‘naughty’ Berlin was published a year later (Fuhrer durch das lasterhafte Berlin by Curt Moreck). A 1st edition will set you back approx.. £750 today, according to the online seller abe books. Curt Moreck was one of the pen names of Konrad Haemmerling (1888-1957), whose writings were proscribed by the Nazis from 1933. Copies of his illustrated guide to naughty berlin are not that common, especially as many were burnt after it was banned. The book highlights the streets, clubs and cafes to visit. While both homosexuality & prostitution were illegal during the Weimar Republic, severe hunger combined with cold economic necessity emboldened Berliners nightly in clubs, cafes and behind the famous department store KaDeWe.

Tomorrow Belongs to Me from the movie of Cabaret is not featured in our series of forgotten musical masterpieces, but I do think it’s worth mentioning here. As the song finishes – sung by a Hitler Youth-type - the character played by Michael York turns to his German friend and says, “And you still think they can be controlled?” meaning the new generation of Nazis. His question is left hanging in the air, as the two characters drive away in a beautiful old German motorcar as the camera pans out. Germany was no longer merely changing, it had changed!

Stephen Spender also put pen to paper about his experiences in Germany between the world wars, but was unable to get his novel The Temple picked up by publishers back home. The Temple, an erotic novel written and set in 1928/30 was not published until 1988 due to its underlying theme of homosexuality. It touches realistically on this aspect of life in Germany between the wars - the initial youthful quest for freedom followed by a slow decent into hell known as the Third Reich.

I read The Temple recently and, by modern standards it’s hardly shocking. If fact, had it been more socking, it may now be better known. For me though, the most interesting parts of the novel are Spender’s references to the changes he sees happening within Germany society at the time. After the First World War there had been a natural desire for freedom and the Kaiser was ousted. Then came the financial crash! The resulting hyper-inflation forced Germans to start pushing their money around in prams or wheelbarrows whenever they went to the shops, even to buy basic things like bread and milk! Then, they started to look for someone to blame for their reduced circumstances and Herr Hitler manipulated them for personal gain. We all know how things turned out.

In The Temple Spender drew on his experience of his time in Germany during the late 1920s/early 1930s. His authentic descriptions of how a charming, young Germans so easily became vile Nazi thugs are chilling in hindsight.

Stephen Spender’s autobiography is also very interesting about his time in Germany. It also highlights how many of his English friends were initially very sympathetic to Nazi Germany, before the Second World War. In the 1930s, many members of the English aristocracy actually believed Hitler was good for Germany and were prepared to look the other way, for far too long. [For instance, two of the Mitford sisters – Unity and Diana – were huge fans of Hitler. Also, the German Ambassador to Britain, von Ribbentrop sucked up to Wallis Simpson in the hope of influencing the Prince of Wales to go easy on the Third Reich. British intelligence were so concerned that Wallis was possibly passing on secrets to the Nazis, a phone tap was placed on the Prince of Wales’ phone line. Later in the 30s, Wallis and Edward visited Hitler at his mountain retreat.] Alarmed at his English friends' laissez-faire attitude to Nazi Germany, Spender did his own research and, while in Germany, purchased some Nazi "literature" to read, but he found the contents of these Nazi pamphlets utterly vile that he knew he had to leave. It was not a regime he could every be supportive of.

Regular listeners to BFMM will already be familiar with the German singing sensation, The Comedian Harmonists (Barry Humphries’ favourite group) – in terms of fame, one could say they were the Westlife or Boyzone of their day, but that’s where the similarity ends. The rise of the National Socialists eventually put huge strain on the relationships between members of the group. Some members fled to the United States of America, while others remained in Germany and became party members. When the second World War was finally over, good relations between the six members of The Comedian Harmonists were never restored, too much water had gone under the bridge!

Incidentally, you may be interested to learn that in the 1990s a German movie was made about the band’s story - it’s worth seeking out! The Harmonists is the English title it has subtitles.

When Christopher Isherwood first arrived in Berlin, he lived in rooms next door to Magnus Hirschfeld’s exceptionally progressive Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft – a research centre about Sex, Sexology and Sexuality, situated in Berlin’s Tiergarten (not far from where the German Reichstag still stands today). By the time of Isherwood’s arrival in Berlin, Magnus’ Institut had been going for a decade and he’d been a committed campaigner for LGBT rights and tolerance years before that and had built up a unique library on same-sex love and eroticism, held at the Institute. It no longer exists - the Nazis burned the books from the library along with the Institute’s archives, as part of the party’s extreme and in lots of cases deadly programme of censorship.

Marlene Dietrich grew up in Berlin, but it’s a city she had a love/hate relationship with all her life. She is buried there, although her funeral service was in Paris, where she lived out her old age at The Ritz Hotel from where she often telephoned Misha Spoliansky who, by that time, was living in London. After he fled the Nazis he came to Britain and became a composer of film music. When I lived in Berlin, in the 1990s, I visited Marlene’s grave. It’s easily found because, rather fittingly, a statue of a blue angel stands at the end of the row of graves where she’s buried. Her daughter Maria Riva wrote a book about her famous Mother that’s worth seeking out.

Before Cher, Kylie, Cheryl and Adel there was Marlene, who was so famous, you didn’t need to say her surname. Something that isn’t so well known today is that the title of the first song she ever recorded was, Wo Ist Der Mann? She recorded it in 1933, the year Hitler came to power and Marlene is accompanied by Freddy Johnstone and his jazz band. Freddy was an African American jazz musician, who’d achieved great deal of success performing in Europe in the 1920s and early 30s. He much preferred the freedom and working conditions that he found in Europe, to the segregation and racism he was subjected to daily back in the country of his birth. The rapid rise of Hitler however, made Freddy suddenly unwelcome. Listeners to episode 3 also get the joy of hearing Freddy Johnson’s own composition, Harlem Bound, a deeply invigorating track even for 21st century ears!

Isherwood, Auden & Spender had the good sense to leave Berlin just in time. Auden & Isherwood ran off to America, avoiding any service in the Second World War at all. Spender returned to Britain where he volunteered as a Fire Warden when he couldn’t get into the forces and raised a family with his wife Natasha, who was a professional pianist. Stephen Spender died in 1995. Incidentally, he was Barry's farther-in-law.

Another important commentator is Victor Klemperer (1881-1960), a German scholar who became famous for his diaries. His journals, published in Germany in 1995, detail his life under the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Third Reich and German Democratic Republic. Those covering the horrors of the Third Reich have become hugely important sources for historians of the era.

Episode 3 of BFMM can be heard here for a short time and the whole series is available here until mid-August 2021.

Thanks for reading!