German erotica
Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin (2002) - Barbara Ulrich, Mel Gordon (Introduction)[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Anatomie des Liebesaktes (1970) - Hermann Schnell
Anatomie des Liebesaktes (1970) - Hermann Schnell
image sourced here.
"Anatomie des Liebesaktes" is a sexually explicit film with a healthy attitude. I think we Americans are prudish deep down inside and so we react more strongly than Europeans to anything sexual. It taught me that a film can be truly erotic and not "dirty."
I happened to be an American student traveling in Stockholm in 1970 and went to see what I thought would be some "great Swedish porno." A lot of young people had this image of Sweden as the sex capital of the world and were just dying to see a real porno film. Oh well, what do you know about life when you're 20? This particular theater was showing eight films of a sexual nature. Six of these were only a few minutes long, all in very grainy film stock, showing various sex acts including one featuring two Lesbians.
There was one American film, maybe about an hour long, the story of a sexual pervert who uses prostitutes and drugs, and finally blackmails a single mother into sex by threatening her son's life. I can't remember the name of this masterpiece, but the only person who had even a hint of acting ability was the villain. And yes, he got his comeuppance in the end.
The year before I saw "I am Curious (Yellow)" in California. That was the first "mainstream" movie in America to show real intercourse. We Americans reacted as you might expect. It was banned in my native Pittsburgh after a committee of civic and religious leaders previewed it three times and decided it had no socially redeeming value. And young people managed to get far enough out of town to see this Swedish import.
"Anatomie" was a whole different dimension. The few spoken parts were in German with English subtitles. It was by no means "pornographic' or prurient, featuring a young couple who goes to a sex therapist to improve their marriage. It was really very artistic and truly erotic. As part of "the sexual evolution," the message was that you can enjoy sex. The couple made love using various techniques to the music of Ravel's "Bolero." This was a decade before the movie "10." --http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065397/ [May 2005]
see also: sex education
Josefine Mutzenbacher (1906)
Josefine Mutzenbacher (1906) [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The Austrian erotic classic that'll make any parent think twice about taking their young ones to meet a beloved children's book author. Written by Felix Salten (Bambi), The Memoirs of Josephine Mutzenbacher is the story of a young girl and her many amorous encounters, with friends, family, and the local priest, culminating in her establishing a career as a high-priced courtesan.
The author of Bambi first published this work in 1906. --via Amazon.com
Josefine Mutzenbacher is a famous fictional Austrian courtesan in an erotic fictional autobiography novel which was published in Vienna in 1906. The author is anonymous, but it is generally believed that it was Felix Salten, also known for having written Bambi, A Life in the Woods. The novel has become a matter of debate in Germany, because it describes at great length the sexual activities of Josefine when she was a child. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josefine_Mutzenbacher [Jan 2006]
See also: erotic fiction - 1906 - German erotica - Austria
Johann Heinrich Meibom
Although flagellation is often considered to be 'le vice anglais' par excellence, the first medico-scientific treatise on the subject probably came from Germany. De Flagrorum Usu in Re Veneria & Lumborum Renumque Officio (On the Use of Rods in Venereal Matters and in the Office of the Loins and Reins), by the German doctor Johann Heinrich Meibom, known as Meibomus, was first published in Leiden in 1629. It attempted to explain, in the light of contemporary understanding of anatomy and physiology, why chastisement might be arousing. --http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/pain/microsite/culture1.html [Jan 2005]Proverb
Andere Länder, andere Sitten. -- Other countries, other customs. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."Peter Fendi
Peter Fendi, 1835 - source unknown
Image sourced here. [Dec 2005]
[Amazon.com]
Presumably taken from
FENDI, (Peter). – Genießet die Liebe. Erotische Bilder aus dem Wiener Biedermeier. Nachwort von Ninguno Nemo. (Dortmund: Harenberg 1981). Sm. 4to. Pp. 95. Forty coloured plates.
Fendi, Peter, b. Vienna, Sept. 4, 1796, d. Vienna, Aug. 28, 1842, portraitist, genre painter, water-colourist, lithographer and copperplate engraver. F. was a pupil of J. M. Fischer, H. Maurer and J. B. Lampi and studied the paintings of 17th century Dutch masters. From 1818 worked as a draughtsman and copperplate engraver for the Numismatic and Antiques Cabinet, and from the late 1820s focused on genre painting. one of the main representatives of the Old Vienna School (Altwiener Schule), F. was a popular children's portraitist and gave private drawing lessons at court and to the Viennese aristocracy. His water-colour technique reached a zenith during the Vienna Biedermeier era. He was the teacher of C. Schindler. --http://www.aeiou.at/aeiou.encyclop.f/f228730.htm;internal&action=_setlanguage.action?LANGUAGE=en [Dec 2005]
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter Fendi [Jan 2006]
See also: erotic art - Austria - 1700s
Illustrierte Sittengeschichte
Schulmädchen Report #1 (1970) - Ernst Hofbauer
The Schulmadchen Report/Schoolgirl Report (1970) - Gert Wilden & Orchestra [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Schulmädchen Report #1 (Hofbauer, 1970, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066341/) and the dozens of sex report films that followed were anxious hybrids of reportage, sex education films and soft core pornography. The series, designed to titillate a assumed older male spectator, were clearly in dialogue with German student radicalism and the politicization of sexuality and nudity of the 1960s. The Schoolgirl Reports pointedly work against this discourse by locating sexual liberation and nudity in the middleclass milieu with pubescent and teenage girls. It functions to re-privatize sex and nudity and to rediscover the erotic and unpolitical charge ofthe young female body. The fictional psychologist in the film who compiles the report from his research authorizes sexual experimentation as a natural process that schools and parents can and should monitor; sexual liberationas a political force is recuperated as a middle class coming of age story. --Jennifer Fay, Michigan State University, http://www.uiowa.edu/~mmla/abstract-sample.html [Dec 2004]
Magnus Hirschfeld [...]
Magnus Hirschfeld (May 14, 1868 - May 14, 1935) was a prominent German physician, sexologist, and gay rights advocate, who developed the theory of a third, "intermediate sex" between men and women. Today we would call these people "queer" or "LGBT" (Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered). He was interested in all sexual and gender minorities - transvetites, people with fetishes, and so on. His work extended that of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld [Jul 2004]
Erotik
Erotik (v griech. ???? = Liebe) bezeichnet ursprünglich weniger die Sexualität, das Verlangen nach geschlechtlicher Befriedigung und jene pornografischen Inhalte, die unter diesem Stichwort meist in Erotikshops und auf einschlägigen Internet-Seiten zu finden sind, sondern mehr die sinnlich-geistige Liebe, die man einem anderen Menschen entgegenbringt, die aber durchaus sexuell gefärbt sein kann. So verstanden steht der Begriff "Erotik" für alle Erscheinungsformen der Liebe, also sowohl für die geistig-seelische Entfaltung der Geschlechtlichkeit als auch für die Sexualität, wobei letztere als Bestandteil der menschlichen Persönlichkeit eben nicht ausschließlich körperorientiert, sondern als ein Teil des Geistig-Seelischen begriffen wird. Merkur und Herse
Erotische Phantasien haben seit jeher den menschlichen Geist beschäftigt, die Sitten und öffentliche Moral bestimmt und sich gegen jedes Tugendideal behauptet. Dies bezeugt auch eine Vielzahl erotischer Gedichte, Romane oder Bilder. Die Erotik drückt sich im Rahmen der menschlichen Kultur in vielen unterschiedlichen Facetten aus, die sowohl die sinnliche Seite einer Liebesbeziehung als auch das Spiel mit körperlichen Reizen sowie die geschlechtliche Vereinigung umfassen. Man spricht von "erotischer Ausstrahlung" oder "erotischen Signalen", die andere Menschen senden und die intensiver oder weniger intensiv sein können. Dabei wird die Kraft- und Stärkeempfindung der Erotik keineswegs nur durch die Schönheit eines nackten menschlichen Körpers bestimmt; vielmehr können auch die Kleidung (etwa körperbetonte, transparente Gewänder), der charmante, begehrliche, verführerische, zärtliche oder verliebte Gesichtsausdruck einer Person sowie die Gesten, Haltungen und Handlungen von Mitmenschen überaus erotisch wirken. So kann selbst die Begeisterung, die man einem Schriftsteller, einem Lehrer, einem Politiker oder einem Medienstar entgegenbringt, wie auch die Begeisterung eines kleinen Kindes für Kuscheltiere oder für einen ihm lieben Besuch bereits etwas Erotisches an sich haben. Auch ein Bild, eine Statue und selbst die Sprache kann extrem erotisch sein.
Erotik gab es zu allen Zeiten. Bereits die Antike befasste sich mit der hetero- und homosexuellen Erotik; sie spiegelt sich im antiken Mythos und Kult. Auch in späteren Jahrhunderten stellten sich Fragen nach der Organisation des Gemeinschaftslebens, dem realen wie philosophischen Verständnis von Liebe, den Liebespraktiken etc. Zu bestimmten Zeiten hatte die Erotik innerhalb des gesellschaftlichen Denkens Hochkonjunktur, so z.B. in der Epoche des Rokoko.
Als Ideal haben viele Menschen die harmonische Verbindung von Erotik und Sexualität im Auge, also die Vereinigung von geistig-seelischer und körperlicher Liebe. Doch immer seltener scheint dies in unserer heutigen, hektischen, auf schnellen Konsum hin ausgerichteten Gesellschaft zu funktionieren. Nicht von ungefähr wird das Wort "Erotik" heute meist sinnentfremdend für die plattesten Formen der Geschlechtlichkeit missbraucht. Daher wandelt sich der Begriff "Erotik" immer mehr zu einen Synonym für Pornografie (siehe auch: Pornografiesucht). Dies drückt sich etwa in Wörtern wie "Erotikshop", "Erotikmesse", "Analerotik" oder "Eros-Center" aus. --http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotik [May 2005]
Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
In 1919, under the more liberal atmosphere of the newly founded Weimar Republic, Hirschfeld opened the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research) in Berlin. His Institut housed his immense library on sex and provided educational services and medical consultations. People from around Europe visited the Institut to gain a clearer understanding of their sexuality. Christopher Isherwood writes about his visit to the Institut in his book "Christopher and His Kind." The Institut also housed the Museum of Sex, an educational resource for the public which it is reported that school classes visited. The Institut is depicted in Rosa von Praunheim's film "The Einstein of Sex."
When the Nazis took power, one of their first actions, on May 6, 1933, was to destroy the Institut and burn the library. (The pictures you see of Nazi book-burnings are usually pictures of Hirschfeld's books ablaze.) Fortuitously, Hirschfeld had left Germany on a world speaking tour in 1930. He never returned, dying in exile in Nice in 1935. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld [Jul 2004]
Eduard Fuchs (1870-1940) [...]
October 25, 1933 – Eduard Fuchs extensive art collection is confiscated by the Gestapo and partially destroyed. In 1937/38 what's left of the collection is sold off at various auctions. Fuchs dies January 26, 1940 in exile in Paris. --http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/people19.html [Jan 2005]
Aufklaerungsfilme/Sittenfilme [...]
Isidor Isaak Sadger (1867 - 1942)
Isidor Isaak Sadger (1867 - 1942) was a forensic doctor and psychoanalysist in Vienna. He studied with Freud from 1895 to 1904. He studied homosexuality and fetishism. He coined the term "Sadomasochismus" in 1913. He was deported in September 1942 to the Theresienstadt concentration camp where he died in December. -- translated from http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidor_Isaak_Sadger [Jan 2005]Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin - Mel Gordon
Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin - Mel Gordon [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
An intriguing cache of recently discovered erotica from 1920s Berlin (photographs, theater programs, guidebooks and pictorial magazines) is on display in Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin. U.C. Berkeley theater professor Mel Gordon (The Grand Guignol) enhances the compelling visual images with snippets of personal memoirs, interviews and other sociological accounts that describe a sexually charged city brimming with prolific prostitution, homosexuality and drugs in the heady days before the Nazis came into full power. --From Publishers Weekly via Amazon.com
Between 1921 and 1933, Berlin developed a reputation for debauchery unrivaled by any city before or since. Unlike European capitals like Paris, Barcelona, and Amsterdam, where brothel districts were extensive but discreet, in Berlin sexual tourism was a primary industry. On any given evening, over 600 establishments, from massage parlors to sex clubs to cabarets to private torture dungeons, promised unique sights and pleasures. Using tourist guidebooks that appeared before the Nazi period, historical memoirs, and more than 400 specialized journals and books, Mel Gordon has put together a controversial exploration of Berlin's erotic demiworld and its relationship to the rise of Nazism. --Book Description via Amazon.com
Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin (2002) - Barbara Ulrich, Mel Gordon (Introduction)[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
...evokes an era when sexual orientation was a laughing matter and cruel boots were not. --Playboy, February 2003
Fascinating snapshots and artworks of the women of that incredible time and place... Delicious, decadent and delightful. --Harry Eugene Baldwin, Frontiers, 2/28/03