Yes, I just started watching Babylon Berlin on Netflix, but I've seen portrayals of prostitution and perversity in other media when portraying the Weimer Republic setting. Was it worse in Germany than typical vice issues in other parts of the world?
The impression of Weimar Berlin as an especially seedy decadent place owes a lot in the popular imagination to Bertolt Brecht, Christopher Isherwood, the musical Cabaret, and… well, the Nazis. Conservative organizations like the Nazis made a rhetorical point out of the perceived decadence and alienation of Weimar Berlin, as did communists and socialists who chalked this alienation up to capitalist exploitation, but when the Nazis came to power they took credit for ending crime and restoring law and order… even in cases when they didn't. Go figure. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 the effect of their policies on this climate of sexual and artistic freedom relative to the rest of Europe can hardly be overstated, and it's the contrast between the relative openness and nascent liberality of the preceding period (where gay people, Jewish people, socialists, and sex workers all had places to congregate in one degree of openness or another) and the murderous restrictions of the Third Reich that has made this period so indelible in the artistic imagination for subsequent decades.
Several factors positioned Berlin differently than other cities in other eras -- first and foremost being its state of economic crisis and subsequent limping recovery, its not-unrelated political difficulties, and the social after-effects of World War One. Some of the more banal aspects of vice as presented in Babylon Berlin were definitely represented in reality -- people went dancing, people liked drinking, people did sex work to supplement their wages in other low-paying jobs like Charlotte Ritter is shown doing. Part-time prostitution to make ends meet isn't typically depicted as glamorous, though, and was common enough in other major cities like Paris or New York. Prostitution in Berlin was nominally government-regulated in a way that would allow for public health measures against the transmission of STDs, but this was accompanied by lots and lots of unlicensed prostitution as well. Numerical estimates of the number of sex workers of various kinds in Berlin, part-time or full-time, vary so widely as to not be particularly useful in actually conceptualizing the landscape of the sex industry.
Other cities in Europe and indeed within Germany had their own share of nightclubs, theaters, and places of prostitution, licensed and otherwise. But in Berlin these places became attractions for tourists, both local and domestic -- young people who lived elsewhere in Germany might sneak off to sample Berlin nightlife, and visitors to the country who were just passing through might dally a while in the nightclubs or strike out on their own to seek sexual or social novelty. A number of guides to Berlin nightlife were published for sale in the city, focusing on various aspects -- vanilla heterosexual prostitution, theater and music, gay scenes, lesbian scenes, fetish venues -- but you don't need a guidebook if you're already in the know, do you? However, some of these guides were not necessarily for tourists; they had advantages for local first-timers in gay and lesbian subcultures, who might be entering tentatively into a scene that prior to this Weimar sexual modernity would have been strictly reserved for friends of friends, people who already knew the right people and the right signifiers.
The first guide to the homosexual club scene, Ruth Roellig’s Berlins lesbische Frauen (Berlin’s Lesbian Women), was published in 1928 with a foreword by Magnus Hirschfeld. This guide purported to educate and enlighten homosexuals and the public, but it also served to alert and connect women to the wider lesbian community. One woman recalled that Berlin’s Toppkeller Club was “so exciting that women from all walks of life came, even actresses. It was always so crowded, and on Fridays you could hardly get in at all.” One of the most popular ladies’ clubs was the Damenklub Violetta, led by Lotte Hahm, a well-known figure in the homosexual rights movement. The Violetta hosted many dances, such as the “Calling-Card Ladies’ Ball” (Damenball mit Saalpost) and the “Dance Roulette” (Roulette-Tanz), and also auto tours of the Spreewald and fashion shows for masculine women and transvestites. One of the most popular activities was the “Moonlight Steamship Party” (Mondschein-Dampferpartie), in which a ship carried passengers from Spittelmarkt to Mugelsee, where they disembarked at the Inselhotel, enjoyed orchestra, cabaret, and tombola, and danced until 5 or 6 a.m., after which they returned to the ship for a quick sunrise photograph before sailing back.
Fashionable expats from other countries like Christopher Isherwood (whose Berlin Stories inspired the musical and later film Cabaret) spent time in Berlin and transmitted stories of the Berlin underworld -- its nightlife, its gay subcultures, its networks of prostitution, and where all three intersected -- to the rest of the world. Some of this reputation for sexual vice was likely inflated, a put-on for the gullible tourists, and it was by no means enjoyed by all individuals of all ages and demographics -- many middle-class gay people, for instance, steered well clear of notorious gay nightclubs due to their perceived disreputability. Many transgender people and transvestites were ambivalent about the gender play on display in Berlin nightlife because of how it reinforced the popular association between transgender identities and antisocial criminality, especially in the eyes of law enforcement. This association between gender variance and vice made it harder for many to explore their gender identities safely and without stigma, not easier, but at the same time there were many others for whom Berlin nightlife was an escape hatch from banality.
Weimar Berlin was also known for its edgy theater scene, sometimes overlapping with sexual commerce or sex shows and sometimes not. This is one area where the transgressive reputation of Weimar Berlin has been overstated in hindsight -- there was artistic innovation but also a lot of predictable dross. For every Threepenny Opera there were a dozen shows with less catchy tunes or less incisive commentary; for every cabaret song that's stood the test of time, there were several hundred forgettable ditties that will never make it into an Ute Lemper album. The same is true of any highly productive artistic scene, and it doesn't mean that Weimar Berlin was "really" artisticall mediocre, it just means they can't all be winners, and sometimes what was innovative about the content being showcased was that it was being showcased at all -- as was the case with theater companies churning out fairly orthodox thematically safe melodramas about gay love and tragedy. These theaters were nevertheless churning out plays about gayness, plays with gay leads that dared to mention and describe homosexuality, and the same could not necessarily be said of every other city in Europe or in America, even if those plays were somewhat tame and fell into the same cliches of blackmail and suicide as mainline gay media outside Berlin. Still, the fact that the content of these songs and plays assailed and satirized commonplace middle-class morals relied for its pungency on the fact that commonplace middle-class morality still existed and still held sway, even if to many it certainly seemed like respectable life was massively more uncertain and hazardous than it had been before WWI.
The association between Berlin and edgy theater took a beating as Nazis took power; many performers kept it up as long as possible, while others folded to external pressures and cleaned up their acts.
Surprisingly, [openly gay, occasionally cross-dressing comedian] Wilhelm Bendow was able to stay in Germany through the Third Reich, though he had to play down the more transgressive elements of his act. He was just too popular a comic, and beloved by many Nazis as well, to lock up, and his campy humor was too outrageous to be considered dangerous. When he was questioned by the Gestapo with a direct reference to whether he was a homosexual, he responded bluntly: ‘‘Yes, I am, but I don’t practice it, the Führer doesn’t want me to’’ (Luga 53). Toward the end of the war, he was arrested for an improvised political joke on stage: ‘‘We’re saved, we’re saved!’’ his partner cried out in a sketch about two shipwreck victims. ‘‘Isn’t it too late to save us now?’’ Bendow quipped (Krüger). The house roared and Bendow landed in a work camp.
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