Lila Nächte: Die Damenklubs Im Berlin Der Zwanziger Jahre (German Edition) by Adele Meyer

Lila Nächte: Die Damenklubs Im Berlin Der Zwanziger Jahre (German Edition)

Adele Meyer

‘Purple Nights: the ladies’ clubs in Berlin in the 1920s. When it comes to breaking a lance for the different, Berlin lesbian women, one could, with Sappho as a model, speak quite poetically of a ?priestly sex? that only knows and loves itself. Alone, mostly unknown, this sex exists in the crowd, cut off from the great, dynamic human movement, without knowing and without wanting to know about the preserving power of reproduction, it lives its fleeting existence entirely according to its own laws.

So writes Ruth Roellig in the introduction to her guidebook Berlin’s Lesbian Women, in which she vividly describes fourteen hedonistic, exuberant and exuberant lesbian clubs that were available to frequent in 1920s Berlin. With a playful and initiated pen, Ruth Roellig brings these multifaceted establishments to life: from simple pubs, sometimes raucous jams, to considerably more elegant clubs, which bring to mind The Great Gatsby.

Using Roellig’s 20s guidebook, Adele Meyer has contextualized the time period and broadened the picture by supplementing it with advertisements from lesbian magazines of the time, about various balls, parties, outings, club announcements and some kitschy and entertaining short stories.

In Lila Nättern – lesbiska klubbar i 1920s-taltes Berlin (Lila Nächte – Die Damenklubs in Berlin der Zwanziger Jahre), translators Ylva Rhedin and Anita Franzén now give Swedish readers the opportunity to put on a “tight, shiny skirt and manly jacket, underneath a silk shirt blouse with collar, cuffs and tie” and trudge from Bülowstraße to Augsburger Straße – from the tavern Die Diele der Damen to the pipe smoking club at the Prinzeß-Café.”

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