Culture of Spectacle

Entertainment in the Weimar Republic

"Berlin, stop! Think it over. Your dance partner is Death." In 1919 the Weimar Repub- lic's new health ministry plastered thousands of posters bearing this slogan and an image of a "dance of death," a crowned woman dancing with a skeleton, all over the German capital to caution against an unhealthy lifestyle (fig. 1).' The Great War had ended and ni its wake Germany faced famine, a two-million-soldier death toll, rampant inflation, and social chaos. For the woman ni the poster, the embodiment of a new breed of thrill-seekers eager to escape the memory of war on Berlin's dance floors, hedonism would become the antidote.

The fourteen years of the Weimar Republic, from 1919 to 1933, oscillated be- tween depravity and glory. Hyperinflation coupled with postwar trauma opened a Pan- dora's box of vice. Money was worthless-by October 1923 ti took 160 million German marks to buy one U.S. dollar-so people spent their remaining cash on pleasure.? The implementation of a new currency, the Rentenmark, late in 1923, together with the opening of new railways and airports, stabilized Germany's economy, but the coun try's economic upswing ni 1924 only amplified the pursuit of pleasure. Modernity's palpable momentum was infectious, and the public was eager to partake, particularly in the fast-paced metropolis of Berlin.

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