Voluptuous Panic

The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin

de Mel Gordon

"Weimar Berlin has been immortalized as the nastiest, wickedest, and most debauched place on earth. Novels, plays, and films have told the story of the erotic Mecca and its descent into Nazi rule. Voluptuous Panic, however, is the first book to actually document the madcap world of the sexual metropolis during the interwar years. Mel Gordon's detailed survey explores the lost paradise from the perspective of Weimar Berliners and tourists who flocked there for its extraordinary and sordid night-life. Based on guidebooks, programs, pictorial magazines, sociological accounts, personal memoirs, and interviews, Gordon has assembled a first-hand, voyeuristic visit to Babylon-on-the-spree. The book is divided into chapters on Berlin's "collapse" and War World One, Prostitution, Girl-Culture, Gay Life, Lesbianism, Transvestitism, Nudism, Sexology, Sexual Perversion, Criminal Life, the Nazi destruction of the city's demimonde, and a Directory of 50 Berlin Night Spots."--BOOK JACKET.