Product Description

The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber is the first contemporary biography of a notorious actor/dancer/poet/playwright who scandalized sex-obsessed Weimar Berlin during the 1920s.

In an era where everything was permitted, Anita Berber's celebrations of "Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy" were condemned and censored. She often haunted Weimar Berlin's hotel lobbies, nightclubs and casinos, radiantly naked except for an elegant sable wrap, a pet monkey hanging from her neck, and a silver brooch packed with cocaine. Multi-talented Anita saw no boundaries between her personal life and her taboo-shattering performances. As such, she was Europe's first postmodern woman.

Among those Anita Berber claimed as members of her vast sexual harem were Marlene Dietrich, Magnus Hirschfeld (the founder of modern sexology and gay liberation), Klaus Mann, Conrad Veidt, Lawrence Durrell, and the King of Yugoslavia. Berber acted in Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler and starred in the silent epic, Lucifer. Even Leni Riefenstahl credits Berber for inspiring her controversial career. After sated Berliners finally tired of Anita Berber's libidinous antics, she became a "carrion soul that even the hyenas ignored," dying in 1928 at the age of 29.

The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber chronicles a remarkable career, including over 150 photographs and drawings that recreate Anita's enduring "Repertoire of the Damned."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #225685 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 213 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The life and death of Anita Berber (1899-1928), who was what we would now call a performance artist, are inseparable from the frantically erotic climate of Weimar Germany, as this tabloid-style tell-all biography by Gordon (Voluptuous Panic) makes abundantly clear. A child of divorce, the Dresden-raised Berber began dancing at 16, earning major Berlin reviews and working in film by 1918; she began dancing nude in 1919, and did films titled Prostitution and Different from the Others that same year. Gordon provides numerous photos and titillating anecdotes taking readers from that point to Berber's death in a Beirut nightclub (including her alleged sexual enslavement to a woman and the woman's 15-year-old daughter). This intriguing, haphazard document offers a plethora of clues into a the life of a woman whose repertoire included a dance entitled "The Corpse on the Dissecting Table." Berber's life cries out for thorough study, such as that recently accorded inspired Dadaist Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven.
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About the Author
Mel Gordon is Professor of Theater Arts at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of twelve books, including "The Grand Guignol," "Dada Performance," "The Stanislavsky Technique," and the Feral House titles, "Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant" and "The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber."

Customer Reviews

The career story of actor, dancer, poet, and sex culture icon Anita Berber
The Seven Addictions And Five Professions Of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin's Priestess Of Depravity is the career story of actor, dancer, poet, and sex culture icon Anita Berber, who scandalized Weimar Berlin by appearing naked in nightclubs and casinos save for a sable wrap. Her performance in Expressionist films, her disregard of all taboos and her drug habits all contributed to a life devoted to casting off restraints. Dozens of black-and-white photographs and drawings recreating Anita's "Repertoire of the Damned" illustrate this one-of-a-kind tell-all of Europe's first postmodern woman.

A Trip to Decadent Weimar Berlin
This book is less about Anita Berber than it is about the decadent social scene of Weimar Germany and Berlin in particular. Anyone who thinks the 60s were the decade of sex, drugs and rock and roll should read this book and get some history. Sex, drugs and jazz dominated the Weimer "club scene". Nude dancing, drinking and druggging, homosexuality, S/M/B/D...how like the Nazis to come in and ruin a good thing.

A bland, if well-researched treatment
Although the life of the notorious Weimar Berlin dancer Anita Berber is full of enough drama, passion, eroticism, depravity and conflict to fill a dozen books, Mr. Gordon's treatment is oddly flat, even sterile. The facts are all there, but none of the emotion. Sadly, this book did not engage this reader.