Click on the link below to view the U-Bahn map. You will find a hotspot for Nollendorfplatz. Click on the hotspot and watch the film that is in the pop-up window. When you have watched the film, click back on your browser to return to this page.
Dance halls pushing popular music, nightclubs with resident jazz bands and cinemas could be found in cities across Europe in the 1920s, but it is worth noting that in Berlin transformations in popular culture seemed to be much more extreme than elsewhere, the result of a combination of political freedom (ie, the absence of censorship legislation) and a deep sense of instability. At the same time though, those extremes were often experienced by a small minority – elements of the intelligentsia, or even tourists to the city intent on seeking out pleasures for which Berlin had acquired a reputation. As the British diplomat Harold Nicholson later wrote, ‘it was not the Berliners themselves who most frequented these palaces of delight; it was the tourists and the businessmen from Dortmund or Breslau’. Yet the perception of cultural extremity can be just as important as the reality.
Read the Source 3.
For now, I want to end this tour with a hint of what was to happen next, through a little case study of the famous erotic dancer of 1920s Berlin. Watch the following film:
OpenLearn - Roaring Twenties? Europe in the interwar period Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.