Context of the time- Anita Berber

1920's/1930's Berlin was all about the Weimer culture. Every type of artist joined forces in the German expressionism. Among these artists were people such as George Grosz and Otto Dix who has such an influence on art during that time. But art wasn't the only exciting thing going on during Berlin at that time. Cabaret was just getting started. Imagine seedy club and saucy dancers moving to jazzy music, that is exactly what you would see if you took a walk through Berlin in the 1930's.

Girls would move to Berlin as teenagers looking for their calling and find themselves in the centre of a crowd, dancing on stage with a group of other girls or at the forefront of a painting. One woman that lived life to extremes was Anita Berber. To me she symbolises what that era was like, seductive make-up, clothing and behaviour. She was an icon of her period and in fact was even painted by Otto Dix himself. Drugs, alcohol, sex and glamour were what drove the people at the time, many would die young from overdose or extreme drug or alcohol abuse and even sexually transmitted diseases. It doesn't sound very appealing but it was what sold... the lifestyle is what people wanted. I honestly don't think there were any boundaries and if there were they were in place to be broken. It was party time, all the time.

(http://arthistory.about.com/od/from_exhibitions/ig/glitterdoom/gad_07.htm)

Towards the end of the Cabaret era was when the war began. Berlin was a showcase of lots of different people including Germans and Jewish people. Before the controversy of politics began about the separation of the two everyone would mix quite happily without the worry of being different.