New Women in the Weimar Republic

Discover the overlooked female artists in the late 1920s Germany, who captured the pulsating energy of nightclubs and the alternative lifestyles that flourished within them, as revealed in the exhibition, Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art.

Scarred by the unprecedented horrors of the First World War and the collapse of the German Empire, the Weimar Republic (1918-33) was marked by unemployment, disillusionment, and rapid social change. The populations in German cities grew swiftly and Berlin’s bustling streets became the cosmopolitan centre of the country. With the relaxation of censorship, booming numbers of nightclubs, cabarets and variety theatres nurtured a thriving entertainment industry.

Much of the nightclub scene embraced the glitz and speed of mass culture, theorised by contemporary German critic Siegfried Kracauer as a ‘cult of distraction’. Numerous clubs and bars in metropolitan cities, such as Berlin, played host to heady cabaret revues and daring striptease, including the famous Tiller Girls, who performed chorus-line dances in rigid synchronicity.

Many of the nightclubs at the time offered an opportunity for performers to subvert conventions of gender and sexuality. Cabarets were often spaces in which queer or gender-queer artists could express themselves freely; particular clubs (such as the Eldorado) were known for welcoming cross-dressing performers and customers.

‘Slide on the Razor’, performance as part of the Haller Revue ‘Under and Over’, Berlin, 1923

‘Slide on the Razor’, performance as part of the Haller Revue ‘Under and Over’, Berlin, 1923

The 'New Woman' in Weimar Germany

Women in Germany were granted the right to vote in 1919; the so-called ‘New Woman’ frequented bars and nightclubs wearing relaxed, masculine clothes and sporting short bobbed hair. For some, the ‘New Woman’ symbolised modernity and progress – the emancipation of woman socially, economically and politically – while for others she represented the dangerous threat of transgression. Friedrich Hollaender captured the rebellious mood with his 1926 song Raus mit den Männern (Chuck Out the Men), performed by lesbian cabaret star Claire Waldorff.

Female artists such as Jeanne Mammen and Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler were avid observers of the night-time scene, documenting its flamboyance and diversity with a focus on marginalised communities. Whereas the audiences in nightclubs had traditionally been male-dominated, their work shows women mingling among the visitors as well as performing on stage.   

Yet at the same time that creative expression was thriving in Germany, Nazi propaganda was rising. Many of the avant-garde artists, writers, musicians and performers were declared ‘degenerate’ after Hitler came to power in 1933, facing persecution or forced to flee Germany.

Erna Schmidt-Carroll. Chansonette (Cabaret Singer), c. 1928 Private collection © Estate Erna Schmidt-Caroll

Erna Schmidt-Carroll. Chansonette (Cabaret Singer), c. 1928 Private collection © Estate Erna Schmidt-Caroll

Jeanne Mammen

In later life, Jeanne Mammen commented that ‘I have always wanted to be just a pair of eyes, walking through the world unseen'. Like many of her contemporaries in Weimar-era Berlin, Mammen was an observer and critic of the world around her, capturing the infamous nightlife scene of the era and witnessing its diversity of class, gender and sexual expression. As both an accomplished fine artist and a successful commercial illustrator whose fashion plates, satirical caricatures and hedonistic nightclub scenes appeared in newspapers and magazines, Mammen documented contemporary life. Her work is distinctive for its extensive representation of female same-sex desire, with images like Café Nollendorf among the first to capture lesbian clubs. Indeed, many of Mammen’s images were chosen to illustrate Curt Moreck’s subversive 1931 Guide to ‘Depraved’ Berlin, accompanying his account of a lesbian club for ‘open-minded’ clientele.


At a time when same-sex relationships did not exist according to German law, Mammen’s drawings played an important part in queering nightlife during the Weimar Republic and providing affirmative images of lesbian identity . After such imagery was banned in the Nazi period, Mammen turned to abstract and expressionistic styles to convey feeling.

Installation view from Into the Night featuring magazine covers designed by Jeanne Mammen

Installation view from Into the Night featuring magazine covers designed by Jeanne Mammen

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler

Painter Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler captured the increasing presence of women in Germany’s entertainment and nightlife industry.

Lohse-Wächtler primarily worked in Hamburg, focusing on the St Pauli area, where she documented nightlife characters in sympathetic terms – in her watercolour
Lissy, this includes a figure identified as a sex worker, whose gaze meets the viewer’s with power and self-assurance. In this drawing, View of a Nightclub, we see the female patron of the bar (the woman is probably Lohse-Wächtler herself) with her cropped head in profile. She leans avidly forward, eyes rapt: transfixed by the vibrant scene of the night club beyond the frame of the canvas, she is as much a spectator as an object of the gaze.

Lohse-Wächtler’s works were banned as ‘degenerate art’, and sometimes destroyed, under Nazi rule. Desperately poor and suffering from schizophrenia, she was committed to a psychiatric institution where she continued producing drawings. In 1940, at the age of only 40, she was murdered as part of a Nazi forced euthanasia program.

Elfriede Lohse - Wächtler Ausblick im Nachtlokal (View of a Nightclub), 1930 Private collection, Berlin

Elfriede Lohse - Wächtler Ausblick im Nachtlokal (View of a Nightclub), 1930 Private collection, Berlin

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler Lissy, 1931

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler Lissy, 1931

Anita Berber and Valeska Gert

Valeska Gert (1892-1978) and Anita Berber (1899-1928) were celebrated – and reviled – for playful and expressionist performances that rejected the identikit movements of the popular chorus lines and often conveyed abject states of being. Gert was known for visceral and anarchic dances inspired by subjects as diverse as death and the orgasm. She chose to channel marginalised urban characters in protest against society’s prejudices. Gert’s work is now recognised as a forerunner of the punk movement, and she described her intentions in a memoir (I Am A Witch, published 1950):

‘I wanted to dance human characters. I invented an intricate fabric, one of whose strands was modern dance pantomime; another strand was abstract dance; other strands were satiric dances, dances to sounds, expressionistic dances. I exploded a bundle of stimuli on the world; other dancers would make a whole program out of a single strand, but for me they were loud, whizzing little rockets, shooting around the world…For me the only important things were attack, tragic or comic climax, subsidence, nothing more. Because I didn’t like solid citizens, I danced those whom they despised – whores, procuresses, down-and-outers, and degenerates.’

Berber’s performances, by contrast, were highly erotic, often performed in the nude. A dancer, model and film star, her taboo-breaking performances made her one of the most controversial dancers of her time. She performed at major Berlin venues such as the Wintergarten and the Apollo, the political cabaret Schall und Rauch (Sound and Smoke), and the lesbian club Toppkeller; at the Weisse Maus (White Mouse) cabaret, the audiences were masked, adding to the frisson of voyeurism. Berber’s 1926 performance at the Metropol theatre was recorded in a police report:

‘In dances 1, 3, and 4, Berber appeared in entirely see-through clothes, with fully exposed breasts, unclothed backside, the genitals only inadequately covered by narrow ribbon.’ The dancer’s well-publicised addiction to cocaine, morphine and opium, and her mesmerising stage presence in the iconic ‘Dances of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy’ (1923), made her the epitome of modern decadence and debauchery.

Atelier d’Ora (Dora Kallmus) Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste performing Night of the Borgias, 1922 Black-and-white glass plate negative. 24 × 18 cm Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna

Atelier d’Ora (Dora Kallmus) Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste performing Night of the Borgias, 1922 Black-and-white glass plate negative. 24 × 18 cm Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna

The two of them came to embody the 1920s New Women: confident, provocative, and professionally successful. Their stardom was short-lived, however: Berber died of tuberculosis in 1928, while Gert, a Jewish woman, was banned from the stage in 1933, going into exile first in London and then New York, where she carved herself a new career.  

Into the Night: Cabarets & Clubs in Modern Art

4 Oct 2019—19 Jan 2020

A journey into the world’s most iconic cabarets, cafés and clubs in modern art through the lens of pioneering artists.

This landmark exhibition explores the history of cabarets, cafés and clubs in modern art across the world, from London to New York, Paris, Mexico City, Berlin, Vienna, and Ibadan. Discover works of art, many rarely seen in the UK, as well as life-size recreations of avant-garde spaces.

Listen to a selection of music from the clubs and cabarets we explore in Into the Night: Clubs and Cabarets in Modern Art.

Watch the 'Into the Night' exhibition trailer: