Berlin Girls 1923 & Berlin Girls 1925

 
Berlin Girls 1923

Flirty Magazine Illustrations from the Weimar Republic

edited by Thomas Negovan

Century Guild

2019

 

 

Berlin Girls 1925

Flirty Magazine Illustrations from the Weimar Republic

edited by Thomas Negovan

Century Guild 

2022

 

 

I read Berlin Girls 1923 and Berlin Girls 1925 in such close succession that I'm going to treat them as a single entry. They are certainly not a single work spread across two volumes, but they are easier to talk about in direct comparison than they would be individually.

 

Both are art books put together from the Century Guild's excellent collection of 1920s and 30s German illustrations, and both consist almost entirely of images except for brief introductory essays by editor and museum curator Thomas Negovan. The images here come from a handful of Berlin magazines that I think were about bars, restaurants, theater, goings on, the night life, etc.

 

In 1923, Germany was experiencing hyper-inflation, money was essentially worthless, and the future seemed grim. The pictures from this era employ thicker line work, and have an almost pencil sketch quality. The colors are muted and spare and remind me of pastels. 

 

A lot of the images show women alone, often in their slips or other states of undress. There's something candid and un-self-conscious about these solo images, as though the artist actually caught someone getting ready to go out on the town for the night, or unwinding before bed afterward. When the girls are shown with men, half the time they're still in just a slip, while the men are inevitably decked out in tuxedos. I think those images are supposed to look sexy and fun, but there's an undercurrent to them that I find unsettling, like the men know they have the money and power, and the women can't quite hide their desperation.

 

By 1925, Germany's economy had improved. Hitler and his Brown Shirts had made a first attempt at a coup and been imprisoned for it. Prospects for the future seemed brighter. The changes in the visual style are dramatic. The lines are thin, often invisible. The images are in full color, and to me, it looks like watercolor. Instead of realistic proportions, a lot of the figures are boxier, more like statues than living people. They're also larger, or maybe zoomed in, filling the page instead of being surrounded by negative space. The two covers actually do a great job of showing the difference. As a matter of personal taste, I like the 1923 art style much better.

While many of the earlier illustrations showed 'behind the scenes' activities, most of what we see here takes place in public. There are more groups, fewer women alone. In general, the women are dressed nicer, in clothes that look new and maybe expensive. There's a recurring motif of a woman trying on clothes, and being outraged to notice that a man is spying on her. There are also a lot of beach scenes and women in bathing suits. 

 

Aside from the images of a man invading someone's privacy, these images are both less risque and less sinister than the ones from 1923, but on the down side, a lot of them are also more boring. The larger-than-life figures, the artificial poses, the fact that so many of the scenes are of people displaying themselves in public, all contribute to a sense that we're being shown how rich Berliners like to think of themselves, how they would like to be seen. In contrast, the more intimate and relaxed setting of most of the 1923 images appear to show more of what life was actually like for women in the night life.