The contrast between the foreigners’ opulence and the natives’ destitution naturally sparked resentment. Die Weltbühne, a cosmopolitan journal published in Berlin, could not disguise its unease over the fact that foreign diplomats—even those from “exotic lands” like the “Nigger Republic of Liberia”—could live much better than their hosts. In his book Hinterland, the writer Alfred Polgar took bitter note of American culinary extravagance at a local hoteclass="underline"
In the small side room of the hotel there is a table not like other tables. A little flag with the stars and stripes stands in a vase amidst the flowers. A plate overflows with the whitest, wheatiest, sliced bread. Under a glass bell shimmers real butter, golden-yellow. There are unfamiliar boxes and cans, round and square, containing God knows what delicacies. From bowls and bottles waft delicate scents of spices and spirits. The natives at neighboring tables regard this culinary still-life with awe. Here dine the victors, the Americans! Hail to them! It is to their intervention in the war that we owe this peace with its Fourteen Points, these packets of dollars, this democracy, this being-eaten-out-of-house-and-home. We are loving America!
Not just the finest food was going to the visiting victors with their fists full of dollars. Berlin was now crawling with so-called “Valuta Frauen” or “Devisen Damen”—ladies whose motto was: “The man doesn’t have to be hard, but the currency does!” Apparently the currency in question need not be in large denominations. In one instance, reported by Hans Ostwald, an American began throwing small change on the floor in a seedy bar, shouting that only naked women were allowed to pick it up. A few girls smirked, but when a fat lady took off her clothes and dropped to her knees, all the others stripped and joined her on the floor in a mad scramble for the Yank’s spare change. One of the German men watching this scene was indignant, while another simply shrugged. “What’s wrong?” he said. “These women have to work a whole day for one American penny.”
“Berlin has become a much rawer place,” reported the police in July 1923. As we have seen, the German capital had never been a model of refinement, but the inflation era further roughened its edges. Crime rates rose as the mark fell, and the nature of the criminality tended to match the strange times. A band of thieves swept through the cemeteries and carted away bronze grave markers. Pickpockets working the streetcars eschewed coins and bills in favor of watches and money clips. A new kind of thief called a Fassadenkletterer (cat burglar) scaled the sides of apartment buildings and broke into elegant dwellings to steal jewels, furs, and silverware. Professional arsonists were much in demand to torch failing business for their insurance value. Like many branches of criminality, arson-for-hire was controlled by the Berlin Ringvereine, which took a percentage of the insurance payments. Another crime of the times was the hoarding of foreign currency, which by law had to be exchanged for German money at the official rate. Of course, no one in his right mind gave up his foreign currency except to buy goods, so the police conducted periodic Devisenrazzien (foreign exchange raids) in places where hoarders were known to congregate. A raid in several Berlin coffeehouses in September 1923 netted 3,120 dollars, 36 English pounds, 373 Dutch guilders, and 475 Swiss francs. In addition to foreign currency and precious metals, much of the inflation-era criminality focused on food. Grocery stores and bakeries were robbed so often that owners posted twenty-four-hour guards and fitted their windows with iron bars. When some of Berlin’s finest racehorses went missing, it turned out they had been taken to a local slaughter house, where they fetched a fine price. Meanwhile, thousands of Berliners returned to their wartime practice of plundering outlying orchards and farms, but now they carried pistols and hand grenades to deploy against the farmers and their armed guards.
Because the currency collapse brought a demand to live for today as if there were no tomorrow, many Berliners tried to pack their days and nights with as many thrills as possible. Much of the thrill-seeking had a gross, almost sadistic side to it. Barefisted boxing matches became all the rage, the bloodier the better. Another popular attraction was women’s mud wrestling, less bloody but more titillating. For those who wanted to mask their prurience with fake aestheticism, there was the famous “Ballet Celly de Rheydt,” which featured virtually nude female dancers, some of them in their early teens, performing programs supposedly inspired by classical art. According to Celly’s husband, who managed the enterprise, its primary goal was “to bring the ideal of beauty to our shattered people, and to raise it up from its misery.” Fully aware that Celly’s show was bent on raising something other than the human spirit, and worried that its sold-out houses might undercut Germany’s claim to have no money to pay reparations, the police took Celly to court for indecency, but the ensuing trial resulted only in a token fine. Likewise free to follow her muse was a stripper and erotic dancer named Anita Berber, who captivated audiences with her version of the Shimmy, which she did au naturel. When she died at age thirty from drug and alcohol abuse, her admirers recalled her as one who “personified the feverish twenties in Berlin, as no one else.” Berliners who wanted to see misery disguised as sport could watch the infamous Six-Day Bicycle Races, held in the Sport-palast on the Potsdamerstrasse, where riders whirled around a circular track for six days and nights without interruption. The crowd cheered as some contestants crashed in exhaustion while others went on to win prizes like new suits or bottles of Sekt. Witnessing one of these races, the writer Joseph Roth got the feeling that if he stayed much longer he would take on “the physiognomy of the megaphones used in this mad house to make announcements to the public.”
Weimar Berlin’s commercial sex scene did not change much in its fundamentals from the imperial era, but the number of folks selling their bodies went up substantially. Police estimated the number of prostitutes at 25,000, but this included only the full-timers. According to one observer, all sorts of young girls “from so-called good families” were turning into whores, and countless marriages had become “a facade for the most wanton sexual chaos.” There were 8,000 to 10,000 pimps, most of whom controlled only one or two “spiders,” as they called their girls. A famous exception was “Student Willy,” who ran a stable of ten. The heart of street prostitution was the Geile Meile on the Oranienburger Strasse, a grim strip staked out by strapping Valkyries in fur boas and low-cut frocks. (A new generation of whores, accoutred in Spandex short-shorts and thigh-high boots, patrols the strip today.) If you wanted something on the younger side you went to the Chauseestrasse, which was lined on both sides with preteen girls. The man-and-boy trade was centered in Friedrichstadt or along the Kurfürstendamm, where, according to Stefan Zweig, “powdered and rouged young men,” many of them “high school boys out to earn a little extra money,” sauntered up and down. The director Josef von Sternberg recalled that Berlin was “full of females who looked and functioned like men.” But the reverse was also true. As the actress Anita Loos learned on a visit from Hollywood, “any Berlin lady of the evening might turn out to be a man; the prettiest girl on the street was Conrad Veidt, who later became an international film star.” Veidt’s favorite hangout was the El Dorado, which attracted gay males and tourists to its famous female impersonation shows. Another popular night spot was “Aleifa,” or “Alles eine Familie”—One Big Family. It was indeed ecumenical, welcoming heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, and people who probably would have been transsexuals had the operation been available. Several clubs, most notably the Resi and the Femina, had telephones at each table, marked with a number, which allowed guests to call each other and make arrangements for the evening.