My kind of Diva - Anita Berber

I am enjoying a rainy mid week day off, pottering around the the house. Without much to do, it's time for a new post methinks.

This one is about my constant search to discover fab divas, both old and new.
We kick off in Germany with:

Anita Berber (1899-1928)

What attracted me to her? Here is a clue.

Anita Berber was immensely famous in 1920s Berlin, for reasons not acknowledged in polite society.

She danced nude in nightclubs, seduced a wide swathe of the the population both male and female, appeared in soft porn silent films, drank on the average one bottle of cognac per day, married three times, was addicted to cocaine and opium, was never seen in public without heavy make-up, talked incessantly, told lies with abandon and, predictably, died at an early age.

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Known as the “The Priestess of Depravity”,  in June 1926, Anita was on tour in a new production “Dances of Sex and Ecstasy”.  Whilst in Zagreb, Anita publicly insulted the King of Yugoslavia and was imprisoned for six weeks.

Broke, she returned to performing cabaret at The 'Weisse Mausin' in the busy Friedrichstadt area of Berlin.

She performed in the nude along with her own troupe of six teenage girls.
Customers who wished to conceal their identities were given a choice of a black or white mask to wear.

”After midnight, the guests were ready for the apocalyptic moment when she pranced up the stage ramp. Anita’s girls were powdered in deadly pallid shades and appeared like figures of death incarnate. But Anita performed with bitter sincerity. Each intrusion annoyed her. She responded to the audience’s heckling with show-stopping obscenities and indecent provocations.

Berber had been known to spit brandy on them or stand naked on their tables, dousing herself in wine whilst simultaneously urinating”

One night the entire cabaret sank into a groundswell of shouting, screams and laughter. Anita jumped off the stage in fuming rage, grabbed the nearest champagne bottle and smashed it over a businessman’s head.”

It was Anita’s last evening , she was sacked without notice”

From Mel Gordon's ‘Voluptuous Panic’ and ‘ The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber'

The 29 year old dancer, actress and ‘wild-child’ of the Weimar cabaret era died in 1928. She was buried in a pauper's grave in St. Thomas Friedhof in the Neukoln district of Berlin. The cemetery is now disused and her grave gone.

When I first started researching Anita, I thought I knew nothing at all about her but as with several others, something had already been absorbed into my consciousness. In her case this fabulous painting by Otto Dix, ‘The Dancer Anita Berber’ (1925).

"Otto Dix was never huge on using the color red, but did so here for his friend to eye-popping effect. we are nearly physically assaulted with her sexual power - even on canvas, even 80+ years after the fact."

She also starred in probably the first real gay film ever, the ground-breaking  film ‘Different From The Others” (Anders als die Anderen) 1919. Only one print survives as a fragmented copy. The rest were destroyed by German censors in 1920.

Conrad Veidt plays what was probably the first homosexual character written for cinema.

"You must not condemn your son because he is a homosexual, he is not to blame for his orientation. It is not wrong, nor should it be a crime. Indeed, it is not even an illness, merely a variation, and one that is common to all of nature."

Not bad for 1919!

Hope you liked this as I am planning a little mini series of them - keep posted let me know what you think.

ttfn