Light And Shadow

Daisy Edgar-Jones photographed for New York Times

— ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)

Margot Robbie photographed for Vanity Fair

“Anita Berber was born into a middle-class family with artistic leanings. Her father, Felix, was First Violinist of the Municipal Orchestra, and her mother Lucie was a dancer and aspiring actress. After her parents’ divorce, Berber lived with her grandmother. In 1913, she attended a modern dance school where she learned rhythmic gymnastics. She later studied traditional ballet in Berlin.

Germany from the end of World War I until the rise of the Nazi party in 1933 was a time of both economic instability as well as artistic creativity. The art world embraced Expressionism, and the cabaret scene exploded with risque performances thanks to a loosening of censorship laws. By the age of 20, Berber was performing nude in many of these cabarets.

In 1919, Berber married the wealthy screenwriter Eberhard von Nathusius. They divorced after she fell in love with a lesbian bar owner, Susi Wanowski, who became her manager as well as her lover.

Besides dancing in cabarets, Berber also made more than a dozen appearances in film, including a role in the 1919 silent film Different From the Others. This film is often considered the first sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality on screen. The movie was a direct challenge to Germany’s laws against homosexuality, and the Nazis later banned it.

Berber’s bisexuality and her overall defiance of traditional gender norms were often the subject of the tabloids. Berber reportedly had a brief liaison with a young Marlene Dietrich, the Hollywood star known for her sexy androgynous style.

In 1922, Berber married the dancer Sebastian Droste and the two of them created a book of poetry and photography titled Dances of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy, which they also performed in various nightclubs. They both struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, most notably cocaine, and their performances and poetry often included references to drugs.

Berber and Droste’s performances continued to shock and outrage the public. She was jailed for several weeks after personally offending the king of Yugoslavia with a nude dance performance. As a result they were both banned from performing in European venues for several years. Reports of scandalous behavior followed Berber wherever she went. She was often seen around town with her pet monkey draped around her neck. There were reports that she visited restaurants naked but for a sable coat. After Droste was jailed for fraud (he also stole Berber’s furs and jewelry), Berber met and married American dancer Henri Chatin-Hoffman in 1924, two weeks after they met.

In 1928, Berber collapsed during a performance at a Beirut nightclub. A few months later she died from tuberculosis, most likely the result of years of drug abuse. Following her death, an unflattering and largely fabricated biography emerged, which shaped Berber’s legacy for decades. More recently she’s been seen in a new light, thanks to LGBTQ+ and feminist studies. Berber was an early performance artist at a time when that label didn’t even exist.