Berlin Coquette Prostitution and the New German Woman, 1890–1933
Berlin Coquette: Prostitution and the New German Woman, 1890–1933

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. In Berlin Coquette, Ji...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Smith, Jill Suzanne 1972- (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Ithaca, N.Y. Cornell University Press [2014]
Series:Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought
Subjects:
Geschichte 1900-2000
Geschichte 1800-1900
Geschichte 1890-1922
Geschichte
Prostitution > Germany > Berlin > History > 19th century
Prostitution > Germany > Berlin > History > 20th century
Prostitution
Deutschland
Berlin
Online Access:DE-1043
DE-1046
DE-858
DE-859
DE-860
DE-473
DE-739
Volltext
Summary: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. In Berlin Coquette, Jill Suzanne Smith 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."Combining extensive archival research with close readings of a broad spectrum of texts and images from the late Wilhelmine and Weimar periods, Smith recovers a surprising array of productive discussions about extramarital sexuality, women's financial autonomy, and respectability. She 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), Smith’s work 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
Item Description:Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed Feb. 24, 2017)
Physical Description:1 online resource
ISBN:9780801469701
DOI:10.7591/9780801469701

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