The Glimmer Palace (50 page)

I consulted dozens of books in the course of my research, among them:
Before the Deluge
by Otto Friedrich;
Berlin: Culture and Metropolis
, edited by Charles W. Haxthausen and Heidrun Suhr;
Berlin Cabaret
by Peter Jelavich; Baedeker’s
Berlin and Its Environs
(fifth edition, 1912);
Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler
, edited by Charles Kessler;
Berlin in the 20s
by Rainer Metzger;
Dietrich
by Malene Sheppard Skaerved;
From Caligari to Hitler
by Siegfried Kracauer;
Fun in a Chinese Laundry
by Josef von Sternberg;
The German Empire
by Michael Sturmer;
The Haunted Screen
by Lotte H. Eisner;
Home Fires Burning
by Belinda J. Davis;
Lulu in Hollywood
by Louise Brooks;
Memories of a Star
by Pola Negri;
My Years in Germany
by Martha Dodd;
Nights in the Big City
by Joachim Schlör;
Reading Berlin 1900
by Peter Fritzsche;
The Roses of No Man’s Land
by Lyn Mac-Donald;
The Ufa Story
by Klaus Kreimeier;
Voluptuous Panic
by Mel Gordon;
The War from Within
by Ute Daniel;
What I Saw
by Joseph Roth; and
Women and the Great War
, edited by Joyce Marlow.

For the images in this book, I thank Bettina Schulze-Mittendorf; the Bundesarchiv, Berlin; the Deutsche Kinemathek—Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin; the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin; the Filmmuseum, Potsdam; the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, Wiesbaden; and
heimatsammlung.de
.

I also thank Simon Trewin, Zoë Pagnamenta, and Jessica Craig at PFD; my editors, Sarah McGrath and Heather Barrett, Sarah Stein at Riverhead, and Nora Mahony at John Murray; my mother, who always had the right size envelope; my father; all my friends in Scotland and New York who traveled with me, listened, made suggestions, and read early drafts, including my sister Kate, and Lisa, Audra, Charlie, Alison and Greg, Rosie, Louise, Roz, Karen, Giselle, Sara, Andrea and Jon, Stephen and Frances, and Zoë. I’m very grateful to my first agent, Giles Gordon, whose favorable response to the first few chapters encouraged me to keep going, and to Tracey Howell. Finally, special thanks to my children,Theo and Frances, and my partner, Paul Harkin, for everything else.

The writer acknowledges support from the Scottish Arts Council toward the writing of this title.

The verses quoted on page 396 are from Rainer Maria Rilke’s
The Sonnets to Orpheus
, Book 2, XIII, as translated by Stephen Mitchell, in
Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke
(Modern Library).

List of Illustrations

Page ii. Promotional postcard of Henny Potten.

Page x.The Skladanowsky Brothers (1896). Photograph courtesy Bundesarchiv, Berlin. Bild 183-C31914.

Page 10. Promotional postcard for
The Divorcée
(1908).

Page 26. Zeppelin over rooftops (1909). Photograph by R. Schmidt. Private collection.

Page 42. Promotional postcard of Asta Nielsen.

Page 62. Postcard of Alexanderplatz, Berlin.

Page 78. Poster for
Kri-Kri, die Herzogin von Tarabac
(1920) by Josef Fenneker. Courtesy Deutsche Kinemathek—Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin.

Page 106. Promotional postcard of Ernst Reicher.

Page 130. Pola Negri (1930). Photograph courtesy Bundesarchiv, Berlin. Bild 102-10764.

Page 148. German propaganda postcard (1914). “Great events are foreshadowed.”

Page 174. Photographing the enemy’s trenches. Image from
History of the World War
(1919) by Frank H. Simonds.

Page 200. Promotional postcard of Henny Potten.

Page 220.Tempelhof studio, Berlin. Photograph courtesy Filmmuseum, Potsdam.

Page 244. Street fighting in Berlin in 1919: Spartacists.

Page 268. Production still from
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
(1920). Courtesy Filmmuseum, Potsdam.

Page 282. Production still from
Anna Boleyn
(1920). Courtesy Filmmuseum, Potsdam.

Page 300. Promotional postcard of Werner Krauss.

Page 316. Poster for
Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler
(1922) by Theo Matejko. Courtesy Deutsche Kinemathek—Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin.

Page 340. Production still from
Faust
(1926). Courtesy Filmmuseum, Potsdam.

Page 360. Film still from
Metropolis
(1927). Courtesy Bettina Schulze-Mittendorf.

Page 372.The Reichstag fire (1933). Photograph courtesy Bundesarchiv, Berlin. Bild 183-R99859.

Page 398.Torchlit procession in Berlin (1933). Photograph courtesy Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin.