Acknowledgments
My great-aunt Nina Schmidt, who worked in the marketing department of the German company Ufa in the 1920s, inspired this book. It was her scorn at my ignorance of this period that led to my initial research and the discovery of a wealth of fascinating material. I chose to tell one story, but there were countless others.What took shape is intended to be a parallel history, one that might have happened; although much of the novel is firmly based on fact, I have fictionalized events and invented films, characters, places, and plots.
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.
The Glimmer Palace Page 38
