It was the decade of bold expressionist paintings, the total artwork of the Bauhaus, transvestite dancing, the film Metropolis and Marlene Dietrich. From busy cinemas to lively jazz clubs, discover the free spirit of Berlin in the 1920s through design, fashion, film and much more.

The spirit of an era

Berlin's Roaring Twenties

This was the era of bold expressionist paintings, magnificent book design, the total work of art of the Bauhaus, drag balls, cabaret, the film Metropolis and Marlene Dietrich, a rising star of silent film and theatre. Between the two world wars in the 1920s, Berlin was experiencing a cultural heyday that provided the perfect breeding ground for groundbreaking new ideas, inventions and avant-garde art.

This book immerses readers in the free spirit of the Weimar era. Through numerous representative works of painting, sculpture, architecture, graphic design, photography and film we discover the innovations, ideas and dreams that characterised this unique cultural window. We explore jazz clubs and dance halls, crowded cinemas and the flapper style, technological and transport advances, radio towers and the rattle of trains and trams, grand buildings, cinema masterpieces and the new independent women who smoked cigarettes, wore their hair short and earned their own money.

Works featured in this vivid cultural portrait include Hannah Höch's The Journalists, Lotte Jacobi's Hands at the Typewriter, Otto Dix's Portrait of Sylvia von Harden, Peter Behrens's Project for the Alexanderplatz, and Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel, starring Marlene Dietrich as cabaret artist Lola Lola.

Along the way, we discover both the utopian yearnings and the grim economic and political realities of the German economy and politics that fuelled both masterpieces of escapism and idealism and those of a more reactionary bent: behind the glittering lights and sequined dresses, there was inflation, factory labour and the fragile political consensus that hid this golden age, which would later brutally lead to the rise of National Socialism in the country.

About the author

Rainer Metzgerstudied art history, modern history and modern German literature in Munich. He received his doctorate in 1994 with a thesis on Dan Graham and worked as an art and architecture editor for the Viennese newspaper Der Standard and has written numerous books on art, including titles on Van Gogh and Chagall. Since 2004 he has been Professor of Art History at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe.

• Pages: 96
• Language: English
• Author: Rainer Metzger
• Year: 2017
• MODEL: 9783836550505

Publisher: Taschen