Berlin Coquette: Prostitution and the New German Woman, 1890-1933
Jill Suzanne Smith
Abstract
During the late nineteenth century the city of Berlin developed such a reputation for lawlessness and sexual licentiousness that it came to be known as the “Whore of Babylon.” Out of this reputation for debauchery grew an unusually rich discourse around prostitution. This book shows how this discourse transcended the usual clichés about prostitutes and actually explored complex visions of alternative moralities or sexual countercultures including the “New Morality” articulated by feminist radicals, lesbian love, and the “New Woman.” The book recovers a surprising array of productive discussion ... More
During the late nineteenth century the city of Berlin developed such a reputation for lawlessness and sexual licentiousness that it came to be known as the “Whore of Babylon.” Out of this reputation for debauchery grew an unusually rich discourse around prostitution. This book shows how this discourse transcended the usual clichés about prostitutes and actually explored complex visions of alternative moralities or sexual countercultures including the “New Morality” articulated by feminist radicals, lesbian love, and the “New Woman.” The book recovers a surprising array of productive discussions about extramarital sexuality, women's financial autonomy, and respectability. It highlights in particular the figure of the cocotte (Kokotte), a specific type of prostitute who capitalized on the illusion of respectable or upstanding womanhood and therefore confounded easy categorization. By exploring the semantic connections between the figure of the cocotte and the act of flirtation (of being coquette), the book presents flirtation as a type of social interaction through which both prostitutes and non-prostitutes in Imperial and Weimar Berlin could express extramarital sexual desire and agency.
Keywords:
Berlin,
lawlessness,
sexual licentiousness,
prostitution,
extramarital sexuality,
financial autonomy,
women,
womanhood,
cocotte,
flirtation
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780801452673 |
| Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: August 2016 |
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9780801452673.001.0001 |
