Love at Last Sight: Dating, Intimacy, and Risk in Turn-of-the-Century Berlin 0190917768, 9780190917760

Citation preview

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Love at Last Sight

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Love at Last Sight Dating, Intimacy, and Risk in Turn-​of-​the-​Century Berlin

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TYLER CARRINGTON

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1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Carrington, Tyler, author. Title: Love at last sight : dating, intimacy, and risk in turn-of-the-century Berlin / Tyler Carrington. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018027024 (print) | LCCN 2018044299 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190917777 (Updf ) | ISBN 9780190917784 (Epub) | ISBN 9780190917760 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Dating (Social customs)—Germany—Berlin—History—20th century. | Single people—Germany—Berlin—Social conditions—20th century. | Berlin (Germany)—Social life and customs—20th century. | Sex customs—Germany—Berlin—History—20th century. Classification: LCC HQ801 (ebook) | LCC HQ801 .C28515 2019 (print) | DDC 306.730943/1550904—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018027024 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by, Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

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For Melissa, Lena, and my parents

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Romantic Fantasies in the Big City

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2. Urban Avenues to Love

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3. Reimagining Marriage

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4. Emerging Technologies of Love

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5. Modern Dating and Respectability on Trial

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Epilogue

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Notes

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References

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Index

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Acknowledgments

This project began at the University of Illinois, where my mentor, Peter Fritzsche, directed me to Berlin’s daily newspapers as the best source for turn-​of-​the-​century urban life in Berlin. Peter then wisely counseled me to embed my burgeoning interest in the newspaper personal ads I found there in a larger investigation of love in the big city of Berlin, and I am thankful to him for his expert guidance in storytelling and historical analysis at every step along the way. Peter taught me that history is, at heart, about telling beautiful stories, and this advice has stuck with me perhaps more than anything else I have learned about being a historian. I had the support of the entire history department throughout my time at Illinois, and immense thanks are due also to Mark Micale, Harry Liebersohn, and Mark Steinberg, who, together, made up my dissertation committee and made that initial project so much better. They recognized that I  had first written a book, not a dissertation, and prefaced their requests for more dissertation-​like theoretical and methodological content with the advice that I should save a copy of my manuscript, make the necessary additions to a separate document to use as the dissertation, and then return to the former. This book is so much more than that saved file, but they were absolutely right, and I am grateful to them for their friendship and training over the years. In a (now) somewhat more distant but no less important way, I would also like to thank my academic mentors from graduate school and college, notably Clint Shaffer, who took me to Germany for the first time and inspired me to study German; Dean Rapp, from whom I took my first (and still favorite) history course; Rainer Nicolaysen and my cohort at Middlebury College, where I sharpened my German-​language abilities; Suzanne Kaufman, David Dennis, and Timothy Gilfoyle, who gave me my first professional historical training; and Ute Frevert, who served as my adviser-​away-​from-​home in Berlin and welcomed me into the fold at her fascinating History of Emotions institute.

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Acknowledgments

For that matter, I first learned German from Margy Winkler and Heidi Galer at Iowa City West High School, and I  do not see how I  would have even come to this project in the first place without their excellent teaching and inspiration. Numerous institutions and archives were critical to the development of this book, notably the Fulbright Commission, which funded a year of research in Berlin; the German Historical Institute, without whose training in reading the old German script I  would have floundered in many of the archives I visited; and the Iowa City Noon Rotary Club and Doris G. Quinn Foundation, both of which provided important funding throughout the research and writing process. Archivists in Germany—​especially the staff at the Landesarchiv Berlin, the Zentral-​und Landesbibliothek Berlin, and the Deutsches Tagebucharchiv in Emmendingen—​were also ever helpful and friendly to me as I came and went each day and made the research experience a degree less lonely and isolating. Special thanks are due to Cornell College, where I teach and have been welcomed warmly by my colleagues in both History and Modern and Classical Languages, not to mention the entire college. The very first course I  taught at Cornell was an upper-​level German seminar on the history of Berlin, and that first class of five students was treated to some early material from this book. From the very beginning, then, my students have been wonderful and insightful interlocutors on the many themes and topics that make up this book. I am thankful also to my editor, Susan Ferber, for taking such a keen interest in this book and shepherding it through to its completion, as well as to the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, whose comments and critiques without question made this book better. My friend Suja Thomas also deserves many thanks for her creative ideas, advice, and friendship along the publishing road. My gratitude to my family extends well beyond this book, but they of course helped in a variety of ways on this project, too. My father-​in-​law used countless frequent flyer miles to cover flights back and forth from Berlin so I could visit my wife back in Iowa during my year of research. My mother-​ in-​law, too, provided critical support for us throughout the process. And my wife’s great aunt, Dorothee, who lived in Munich until her death in 2014 at the age of ninety-​three, was a dear friend and incisive historical interlocutor. My visits to her nursing home were always filled with much laughter and discussion about Germany, past and present, and I am sad that she is not here to see the finished product.

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Acknowledgments

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My mom and dad, brother and sister, grandparents, and wonderful in-​laws have been enthusiastic supporters of this book project and were always eager to celebrate each milestone along the way. Special thanks are due to my mom and dad, who, among many, many other things, provided a most idyllic and nurturing upbringing and set me on a path for success and, more importantly, happiness. My siblings and their families have made every step along the way fun and memorable, and I am so very thankful to my grandpa and grandma for their innumerable kindnesses over the years. This book is a history of love and dating, and it is dedicated to my own two loves: my wife, Melissa, and our daughter, Lena. Though she was not in Berlin with me when I made my archival discoveries, Melissa was the first to learn about each find, first to hear my ideas for weaving this story together, and always full of outstanding ideas for making it better. She has read, edited, and praised every part of this book, and it is infinitely better for it. And I am infinitely better because of her. As for my daughter, I was editing portions of this manuscript as a week-​ old Lena lay sleeping in my arms, and I was sublimely happy. Lena will be just under a year old when the first copies of this book are printed, and while she is not yet old enough to read it, I hope and trust she will be proud of her dad when she is.

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Love at Last Sight

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Introduction

On June 17, 1914, a thirty-​nine-​year-​old, single seamstress named Frieda Kliem left Berlin on a suburban commuter train to meet the man she had fallen in love with through a newspaper personal ad. What she found when she got there was not the wedding proposal she had hoped for or even the man she thought she knew. The man she met murdered her, stole her keys, and made off with the few valuables she had in her tiny Berlin apartment. When a forester found her body over a week later, the police launched an investigation into her upbringing, adult years, and love life that later made up the core of a highly publicized murder trial during World War I, one that pitted the full legal resources of the state against Berlin’s most famous defense attorney, featured delays, false starts, and lengthy recesses, and produced more than one shocking twist. After the jury’s verdict rang out in 1916, the case documents were placed back in their file folders, the evidence was sealed in green police envelopes, and the entire stack was filed away in the police archives, where it sat unused and unopened for the rest of the twentieth century. On August 22, 2011, while searching through Berlin’s state archive for material related to love at the turn of the century, I came across these files, the first of which detailed the police’s frantic search for Frieda Kliem’s murderer. As I worked my way through the file, opening green police envelopes of sealed evidence and hoping the archivists would not mind that I was ripping into previously unopened, century-​old materials, I  began to piece together the fascinating story of a poor, single Berlin seamstress who spent her life searching for love in the modern metropolis but found each effort to make connections and find intimacy thwarted. Here was a woman who, like hundreds of thousands of others, had arrived in Berlin at the moment of its metamorphosis into the most dynamic city in the world and then struggled to make her way without much in terms of family connections, employment

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Love at L ast Sight

prospects, or, crucially, money. It soon became clear that while Frieda Kliem was, paradoxically, totally unknown and, for a few weeks during 1914–​1916, a sensation about whom every Berliner was talking, she was also the consummate turn-​of-​the-​century Berliner. Apart from the fact that she was violently murdered, her concerns, her joys, and her everyday existence were shared by thousands upon thousands of other similarly ordinary Berliners whose lives were unremarkable enough that they have all but been forgotten.1