Mel Gordon - Voluptuous Panic - The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin

The German criminal novel, or Krimi , and early film noir floridly mixed scientific detection with psychosexual critique. No outlaw could be sexually healthy in the stencil of Weimar fiction. Correspondingly, anyone with hidden, unresolved childhood complexes or an abnormal sexual appetite could fall prey to murderous sociopathic urges. This meant that the heavy cloud of suspicion and guilt suddenly engulfed more than the professional thief or prostitute. Virtually every German—the sunny-faced peasant, the old flower-lady, the wise-cracking butcher—was a potential lawbreaker and fugitive from the ancient codes of human decency.

Graphic Berlin artists, like George Grosz, Otto Dix, and Rudolf Schlichter, also reveled in horrid depictions of Lustmord (or sex murder) scenes. For them, the political message was obvious and taunting. Behind the most placid bourgeois lifestyle lurked a sick and twisted rage. It was never enough to merely stab or suffocate a mate, neighbor, Kontroll-Girl ; one had to disfigure the body, eviscerate its reproductive organs, and destroy the corpse’s sexuality.

The Neue Sachlichkeit novelists and painters of Weimar claimed that they were only responding to a grotesque reality. Gruesome cases of Lustmord and bizarre serial murders filled the front pages of German dailies. Hundreds of runaway children and prostitutes had not quietly relocated to new climes as their relatives and pimps may have surmised. Eventually the mutilated torsos and limbs of the missing were discovered stuffed in chemical vats or bobbing inconspicuously on edges of polluted rivulets.

The unbroken string of shocking revelations both engrossed and confused the German public. In the midst of every city and town, it seemed, sat innocuous-looking hunters of human souls who waited stealthily like immobile reptiles for their nocturnal quarry. The local constabularies appeared helpless to anticipate or prevent the grim onslaught. And even when caught, the sex-monsters perplexed the courtroom experts. The commonplace explanations of gratuitous sexual mayhem (poverty, retribution, mental illness, shell shock, heredity) paled when the sadistic details were related in tabloid exposés and judicial proceedings.

ALPHONSES—Pimps. [Some variant names: Fiesels, Hackers, Louies, Ludwigs, Oilers, Quick-Businessmen, or Stripe-Men.]

BEINLS—[Corrupted Romany word for “Daughters”] Prostitutes. [Variant names: Brides, Kalles (Yiddish for the same), Hannes, Lauras, Nafkes, Violins, or Wall-Sliders. Common vulgarism was Pussies, which was expressed in some one dozen European and dialect terms.]

BOOSTS—The proprietors of Kaschemmen. [Also called Baases.]

BREAKERS—The geniuses of Underworld Berlin. They researched and planned elaborate criminal schemes, which their accomplices then undertook.

BULLS—The vice squad.

CAVALIERS—Heterosexual pederasts.

CHOCHUM-LOSCHEN—[Yiddish for “Wiseguy Tongue.”] Dialect language of Berlin’s Underworld. A colorful mix of criminal argot, Low-German, Romany, and Yiddish.

CHONTE-HARBORS—Brothels. [Variant names: Cum-Cabins, Exchanges, Slut Huts (pun on Russian term), or Traffic Houses.]

ETSCH—[“H”] Heroin. [From Hamburg criminal argot.]

GONTIFFS—Petty thieves. [From the Yiddish.]

GREEN MINNAS—Police vice vans. [Also known as Children’s Cars.]

HANIDES—Prostitutes who were incapacitated because of their menstrual flow. Said to be “riding the Red King.”

HOUR-HOTELS—Private hotels that rented rooms by the hour for sexual contact. Mostly found in Berlin North.

KASCHEMMEN—Criminal dives. Many were still open at 3 a.m., the official closing time of Berlin Dielen .

KIETZ—Street environs of Underworld Berlin. The Life.

KUPPLERINS—Procuresses.

LAMP-MONEY— Kontroll-Girl’s payment to her Kupplerin .

LOUIS—Syphilis. [Variant names: the Whole Jelly or Turkish Music.]

MARIE—Advance payment for a sexual service. [Variant name: Bread.]

NACHTLOKALS—Afterhours erotic cabarets. [Also known as Nacktlokals.]

NEPPLOKALS—Ripoff tourist traps.

NOSES—Stool pigeons. Criminals who informed on other lowlifes.

POLENTA—[Italian for “corn-meal.”] Police. [Variant name from Viennese criminal argot: Razzis.]

PUSSIE PRESSERS—Berlin vice doctors.

THE ROBBER—Gonorrhea. [Also known as Small Jelly.]

SCHLEPPERS—[Yiddish term for “Laggards,” “Incompetents” or “Lowlifes.” Literally “Creepers.”] Hired street hawkers, usually boys, who led customers to Nachtlokals or Chonte-Harbors .

SCREENS—Professional cat-burglars, known for their daring and physical agility. Typically, they specialized in either ground-floor or upper-story break-ins.

SNOW—Cocaine. [Variant names: Cement, Cocoa, or Koks.]

SOHRE—Stolen merchandise.

SPANNERS—Street lookouts in criminal enterprises, they deflected attention from the “Business” or acted as bouncers in illegal Kaschemmen .

STOCKING-MONEY—Payment from the prostitute’s first customer of the night. Traditionally, the Alphonse allowed his Beinl to pocket all of it, which she concealed in the top of her stocking. The amount was thought to be a portent of the evening’s take.

SUITORS—Ironic term for the customers of prostitutes. [Variant name: Fleas.]

TRANSIENT-QUARTERS—Mini-brothels located in apartment flats and storefronts near the Alex.

WICKER-WAYS—Street-corners or familiar sites where Kontroll-Girls met.

Criminologists reported that surprisingly few murderers, crime bosses, con men, and swindlers performed their misdeeds solely for economic gain. Far too much brutality and unwarranted personal risk accompanied their anti-social endeavors. Even the language, hierarchic relationships, kibitzing, and rewards of Berlin’s outlaw classes contained a morbid erotic component. Sexual perversion inescapably imbedded itself in the elaborate construction of Weimar criminality.

And like the French obsession with the Apache underworld, German popular interest in Lustmord and the forbidden eroticism of Berlin’s gangs revealed a darker middle-class longing for ghoulish sexual pleasures.