Description
Book SynopsisSmith recovers a surprising array of discussions about extramarital sexuality, women's financial autonomy, and respectability in ate Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany.
Trade ReviewBerlin Coquette is well written—an ever-rarer feature of academic writing, it seems—and well researched (Smith's footnotes are especially impressive).... This is an important contribution to a variety of fields (German studies, gender studies, history, urban studies, and theater/film studies come immediately to mind) and certainly one that will change the way we understand prostitution.
* H-Net Reviews *
Berlin Coquette is an innovative interdisciplinary work that succeeds in illustrating the complicated nature of the urban German prostitution trade in the years before and after World War I....With the intent of moving beyond the standard dichotomy of victim/villain, Smith uses myriad sources to sketch a vibrant picture of women in Berlin's sex trade from the Kaiserreich to the end of the Weimar Republic.
* The Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Berlin's Bourgeois Whores1. Sex, Money, and Marriage: Prostitution as an Instrument of Conjugal Critique2. Righteous Women and Lost Girls: Radical Bourgeois Feminists and the Fight for Moral Reform3. Naughty Berlin?: New Women, New Spaces, and Erotic Confusion4. Working Girls: White-Collar Workers and Prostitutes in Late Weimar FictionConclusion: Berlin CoquetteBibliography
Index
