DODO The Berlin Years

Abstract

DODO The Berlin Years Kristine Somerville Click for larger view View full resolution Dodo, photographer unknown, 1928 [End Page 148] In 1923, when she turned sixteen, Dörte Clara Wolff, known since childhood as "Dodo," was expected to pursue a profession. She had grown up in Berlin at the dawn of the Weimar era in a liberal, middle-class Jewish household filled with art, music, and literature. The city was a thriving metropolis, and the family enjoyed the rich culture, making regular weekend trips to theaters, museums, and movie houses. Weimar ushered in the era of the New Woman. Young girls of Dodo's class and age were encouraged to lead adventurous, self-determined lives. Women in Germany had acquired the right to vote in 1918, and by the 1920s, they had even more hard-won freedoms: the rights to a professional life, to enter politics, to enjoy sexual liberties, and to play sports. The rise of the New Woman also challenged conventional thinking about gender roles, particularly in terms of dress and behavior. As did America's flapper and France's La Garçonne, the New Woman bobbed her hair, smoked cigarettes, shaved her legs, wore makeup, and mixed a stiff cocktail. In Berlin, while a lust for fashion cut across social classes, the New Woman dictated the trends. Young women's social lives were filled with dances, films, cafés, and bars as well as weekend sailing and rowing on Berlin lakes. They dressed during the day in sporty ensembles and at night in flowing drop-waisted dresses. Germany's defeat in World War I, followed by a long period of rationing and subsequent hyperinflation, had left people with a frantic need to enjoy life. Dodo too was eager to seize the day. She joined the ranks of the modern and emancipated women, adopting a chic and avant-garde look, more French in style than German. She went out to the most fashionable cabarets and coffee houses, filled with cigarette smoke, jazz, talk, and frenzied dancing. She had little sense of a future career. While she had not been a good student, Dodo did excel in art, spending all her free time in the classroom and at home drawing. Her work was often admired for its draftsmanship and creativity. After a stint at a finishing school, which her parents demanded, Dodo enrolled at the Schule Reimann, a private academy for fine and applied arts in Berlin. Classes were taught by professional freelancers, who, through rigorous instruction, prepared students for the reality of everyday work life. Through the academy's "practice-oriented" approach, students received broad artistic training while also exploring their unique talents. After she won school prizes for her costume designs, Dodo focused on fashion illustration. [End Page 149] Click for larger view View full resolution Dodo, Street Scene, 1928 [End Page 150] In 1926, Dodo launched her career as a freelance illustrator and began taking her portfolio around to the city's many newspapers and magazines. The fun-filled, artistic atmosphere of Berlin created a need for a wide range of society newspapers and fashion and women's journals. She was hired by ULK, an illustrated weekly magazine known for its humor and satire. The magazine preached the need for rationality and modernity in place of the emotion and sentimentality of the previous era. Distributed only to the finest places, the magazine reached a circulation of between 250,000 and 300,000 readers. ULK's editor, Mosse Verlag, demanded innovation in content and design. The work could not be purely decorative; it had to push into the boundaries of high art. Because Jeanne Mammen, an artist Dodo admired, was already working for the magazine, Dodo was eager to make her mark. Dodo's illustrations soon graced the front and back covers and filled two-page center spreads. She became known for her ability to capture the jazzy energy and vitality of Berlin while also depicting the antics and elegance of the high society in which she circulated. Influenced by New Objectivism, an artistic movement that rejected the heroic optimism of Expressionism in favor of treating its subjects with a social and satirical bent, she strove to...