Voluptuous Panic
by Mel Gordon
Feral House

Ask most people what they know of Weimar Berlin culture, and they're likely to respond with films — Cabaret and Sally Bowles, The Blue Angel and Marlene Dietrich — films that, for all their fictionalizing, are some of the only reminders of a very hedonistic time and place. Weimar-era Berlin (1919 to 1933) was most certainly not the epitome of propriety — it was, and still is, commonly referred to as the "Babylon on the Spree." But beyond a handful of memoirs and films, there's never been a full accounting of just what Nelly Lucas, in her 1927 memoirs, referred to as "the most lurid underworld of all cities — that of post-war Berlin."

Mel Gordon, a professor of theater arts at the University of California, Berkeley, intends for "Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin" to answer just that question. The book is not for the squeamish — 267 pages of S&M, B&D, "Lustmord" and just about everything else imaginable. Gordon spent years amassing his collection of Weimar-era erotica, from magazines to posters to books to photographs — an impressive feat, given that most of this material had been destroyed by the Nazis or repressed by the post-war, conservative German Republic. The images alone give the reader some idea of just how hedonistic a place it was.

Along with the book's hundreds of images, Gordon does a more than adequate job of filling in just what is implied by the term "erotic world" — here is a lengthy sidebar column explaining the typology of Berlin prostitutes, there is a list of all the magazines that served Germany's millions of nudists.

Indeed, the point of "Voluptuous Panic" is supposed to be that for all the decadence and depravity of Weimar Berlin, it was not the larger public's disgust with it all that brought the Nazis to power, but rather a combination of economic and political factors. A fascinating argument, and, given the stereotypes of inter-war German decadence, one that needs to be made; unfortunately, Gordon fails to provide even a scant amount of evidence to support his conclusion. In fact, his thesis is so blatantly unsupported and so seemingly tacked on at the end that one gets the feeling Gordon was just looking for a quick way to give legitimacy to an otherwise straightforward collection of lurid, antique erotica.

However, "Voluptuous Panic" is more than just intellectualized porn, at least in one important respect. Gordon's images could put even the most far-out fetish Web site to shame, and by presenting an encyclopedic account of the ghosts of erotica's past, a contemporary reader couldn't help but come away feeling a bit Victorian.

"Voluptuous Panic" is not a very good book. There are glaring editing mistakes throughout, and Gordon's baroque prose often seems written to highlight the shock value of the images, rather than put them into perspective (words like "wacked-out" and "pervs"). Nevertheless, the book itself is important as an historical document — in an era where politicians and pundits worry that Britney's excessively exposed tummy is turning our children to sin, these images put it all into perspective. The sight of singers running around on stage in their underwear may put some of us into a state of moral frenzy, but it would probably just put the denizens of Weimar Berlin to sleep.

— Clay Risen (clay@flakmag.com)