I saw pimps offering anything to anybody, little boys, little girls, robust young men, libidinous women, or I suppose animals. The story went around that a male goose of which one cut the neck at the ecstatic moment would give you the most delicious, economical, and time-saving frisson of all, as it allowed you to enjoy sodomy, bestiality, homosexuality, necrophilia, and sadism at one stroke.
Gastronomy too, as one could eat the goose afterward. In , Mel Gordon, professor of theater arts of the University of California at Berkeley, was asked by German punk expressionist Nina Hagen to write and direct a stage show dedicated to the career of s cabaret personality Anita Berber. Gordon had little idea that his desire to immortalize Anita Berber would take him to a time and place that would eventually define decadence in the twentieth century.
Hagen would perform the lead role, Gordon would write and direct the piece. Maybe such print or photographic material from the orgiastic Weimar era never really existed as I imagined them. History has had the last laugh. Within months, he had accumulated an enormous collection of magazines, postcards, playbills, tabloids, guidebooks, street maps, police reports, price lists for a wide variety of sexual offeringsโฆvastly more material than was needed for his Berber requiem.
With the support of Feral House Publications, Mel Gordon has assembled Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, a collection that goes considerably beyond a mere coffee-table history social and sexual excesses.
This handsome book functions as a highly effective time-traveling device. Readers should be warned, however, that such travel might be hazardous, as the imagery of Voluptuous Panic far surpasses any carnival sideshow. The book serves as a tour guide, a tour-de-force in human excess.
