Lotte at the Movies: Gendered Spectatorship and German Histories of Violence in Babylon Berlin

Abstract

The citational world of the hit television series Babylon Berlin is vast and complex, but only one film appears as itself on movie theater screens in the first two seasons: Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, 1930). Focusing on the only feature film made in Weimar Berlin that is viewed repeatedly by Babylon Berlin’s endearing female protagonist Charlotte (Lotte) Ritter and her childhood friend Greta Overbeck, this essay takes a close, critical look at which elements of Weimar’s history of gender and sexuality the series conveys to contemporary viewers. By exploring People on Sunday’s hints at chauvinism and sexual violence as a dark undercurrent to its light exterior, this article engages with conflicting scholarly readings of the Weimar-era film to show how intimately linked sexual liberation and gendered violence are in Babylon Berlin as well. Recognizing the historical film enhances viewers’ appreciation of the contemporary series’ narrative construction and heightens the sense of tension between gendered levity and threat that the series conveys.