Cultural History of German Fashion

Designed for the Department of History, University of Victoria
Course by Dr. Kat Sark ​


Course Outline: 

(Subject to changes / in progress)

Week 1
Turn of the Century
  • Herman Freudenberger, "Fashion, Sumptuary Laws, and Business" 
  • Ingrid Loschek, "Contributions of Jewish Fashion Designers in Berlin" in Broken Threads (2007)
  • Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin 1900 (1996), selections
  • Alexandra Richie, Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin (1999), selections
SCREENING: TBA
Week 2 
Weimar 
  • Excerpts from Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin (1939) “Sally Bowles”
  • Excepts from Imgard Keun’s The Artificial Silk Girl (1932)
  • Janet Ward, Weimar Surfaces: Urban visual culture in 1920s Germany (2001), Chapter 4: The Display Window: Design and Desires of Weimar Consumerism (pp.191-240)
  • Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: the Outsider as Insider (2001), selections


SCREENING: Excerpt from Cabaret (dir. Bob Fosse, 1972)
and Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Story (dir. J. David Riva, 2001)
Week 3
War
  • Roberta S. Kremer, Broken Threads : the destruction of the Jewish fashion industry in Germany and Austria (2007), C. Schramm, "Architecture of the German Department Store"
  • Irene Guenther, Nazi Chic?: Fashioning women in the Third Reich (2004), Introduction (pp.1-19)
  • J.G. Klein "Fashion in Concentration Camps"
  • J. Craik, "The cultural politics of the uniform," in Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & ​Culture, Volume 7, Number 2, 1 June 2003 , pp. 127-147. 
SCREENING: Excerpts from A Foreign Affair (dir. Billy Wilder, 1948)
Week 4
Economic Miracles
  • Sark, Katrina. “Fashion among Ruins: von Trümmerfrau zu Modefrau. Fashion in Berlin 1945-46” in Berlin’s Culturescape. Ed. by Thomas Bredohl and Michael Zimmermann. Regina: CPRC, 2008, pp. 113-128. 
  • Sark, Katrina. “Berlin, May 1946.” Short Story in Descant 166: The Berlin Project. Volume 45, Number 3, Fall 2014. 1-6. 
SCREENING: Excerpts from The Marriage of Maria Braun (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1980) ​
Week 5 
East Germany
  • ​Judd Stitziel, Fashioning Socialism: clothing, politics, and consumer culture in East Germany (2005), Chapter 3: From New out of Old to Socialist Fashion (pp.49-77)
SCREENING:  Comrade Couture (dir.Marco Willms, 2009)
and excerpts from OstPunk! – Too much future (dir. Michael Boehlke, 2006)
Week 6 
West Germany
  • ​Tricia Henry, Break All Rules!: Punk Rock and the Making of a Style (1989), selections
  • Jose Blanco F., "Punk Male Fashion and the Aesthetic of Entropy"
  • Thomas Jerome Seabrook, Bowie in Berlin: A New Career in a New Town (2008), selections
SCREENING: excerpts from Christiane F. (dir. Uli Edel, 1981)



​
Week 7 
Reunified Germany

  • Danielle de Picciotto, The Beauty of Transgression, A Berlin Memoir (2011), selections

SCREENING: Excerpts from In Berlin (dir. Michale Ballhaus, 2009)
​

​
Week 8
New Berlin

  • Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape (1997)
  • Karen E. Till, The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place (2005), selections
  • Janet Ward, Post-Wall Berlin: Borders, Space and Identity (2011), selections
SCREENING: Excerpts from 24h Berlin (dir. Volker Heise, 2009) ​ 

Timeline:

1850s to 1870s – The beginnings of “Berliner Chic” and a manufacturing industry (Hermann Gerson, Berlin vs. Paris, Berlin becomes capital under Bismarck)

1880s to 1900 – The rise of the ateliers and department stores (Heinrich Zille, Jewish manufacturers, Wilhemine Berlin)

1920s – Glamour and inflation (Cabaret, Marlene Dietrich, Irmgard Keun, advertising, fashion magazines, flappers, Kurfürstendamm and Weimar surfaces, consequences of WWI and the Versailles Treaty)

1930s – The destruction of the Jewish manufacturing Industry (Uwe Westphal, Nazi fashion)

1945 – Fashion in the ruins (Black Market, rubble women, cabaret entertainers, fabric shortages, female labour, Allied division of Berlin) 

1950s – The economic miracle and the reconstruction years (Uli Richter, Heinz Oestergaard, and F.C. Gundlach, the New Look, from ruins to prosperity)

1960s – Berlin Wall – The rise and fall of an industry (DOB, Berlin vs. Düsseldorf, Cold War Berlin)

1970s and 80s – GDR Fashion Institute vs. Underground fashion scene (State-produced fashion, Comrade Couture, shortages and smuggled Western fashion, East-Berlin fashion)  

1970s and 80s – Punk chic in West Berlin (David Bowie, Christiane F., subsidized and anarchic life on the “island” of West-Berlin)
 
1990s to present – Reunification and the contemporary transformations of the fashion industry (Fall of the Berlin Wall, German Reunification, end of East German fashion and manufacturing industry, Berlin as new capital of a New Germany, with a new fashion industry, Berlin Fashion Week, struggles for a fashion museum) 
​

Books:

Karin A. Wurst, Fabricating Pleasure: Fashion, Entertainment, and Cultural Consumption in Germany, 1780–1830 (2005)
Richard W. McCormick, Gender and Sexuality in Weimar Modernity (2001)
Katharina von Ankum, Women in the Metropolis: Gender and modernity in Weimar culture (1997)
Mila Ganeva, Women in Weimar Fashion: Discourses and Displays in German Culture, 1918-1933 (2008)
Thomas J. Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin: American Cinema and Weimar Germany (1994)
Barbara Kosta, Willing Seduction: The Blue Angel, Marlene Dietrich, and Mass Culture (2009)
Eugenia Paulicelli, Fashion Under Fascism: Beyond the Black Shirt (2004)
Eugenia Paulicelli, The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity, and Globalization (2009)
Katherine Pence, Paul Betts, Socialist Modern: East German everyday culture and politics (2008)
Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss (eds.) On Fashion (1994)
Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (2003)
Stella Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies (1997)
Susan Ingram and Katrina Sark, Berliner Chic: A Locational History of Berlin Fashion (2011)
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