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Photo credit: “© Uwe Westphal”
“Fashion Metropolis Berlin” includes rare behind-the-scenes photos of the models, cutters, seamstresses and salesmen employed at
Leopold Seligmann Company, another retail concern that controlled all aspects of design and fabrication, from procurement of materials
to the manufacture and sale of the finished goods. Part of its operations moved to England in 1934, some years before Seligmann
established a new business in Albuquerque, New Mexico, specializing in Western wear.
“Die Dame,” “Elegante Welt,” “Der Bazar,” “Der Silberspiegel”
and “Die Neue Linie,” which together sold hundreds of
thousands of copies. The Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
ushered in liberal democracy throughout Germany — as
depicted in Christopher Isherwood’s novel “Goodbye to
Berlin.” The city reveled in its newfound freedoms. Jewish
designers introduced the “reform” movement in clothing
— gone were the figure-constricting corsets and in came
emancipation for women with flapper dresses and raunchy,
androgynous styles as worn by film stars like Marlene Dietrich.
Berlin was the capital of cabaret, revue, theater, film and home
of the Bauhaus architectural movement.
The talented designer Lissy Edler worked for the firm Loeb
& Levy, based in Krausenstrasse, a few blocks from Hausvogteiplatz.
Her beautiful drawings of dresses and shoes were
published widely.
A near neighbor on Krausenstrasse was the H. Wolff fur
company, founded in 1850 in Pomerania, an area on the
southern Baltic Sea shore split between Germany and Poland.
Initially trading in rabbit furs used in collars, sleeves and hats,
the company became one of the largest fur fashion businesses
in Germany.
Modernity, emancipation of women and homosexuality
were all detested by the Nazis. Very quickly, the fashion
industry fell under the scrutiny of those who scorned such
individualism; nationalistic agitators wanted what they called
“Aryan fashion.”
“It’s no surprise that the Nazis focused their attention on the
fashion industry, and very soon after they came to power they
embarked on a program of expropriation,” explains Westphal.
“With 2,700 Berlin-based Jewish fashion companies, the fashion
trade was, besides Paris, the largest exporter in Europe. These
companies also occupied prime central Berlin real estate.”
Decades to Build, Six Years to Destroy
It took Hitler’s Third Reich a mere six years to destroy an
industry that had not only enjoyed a stellar global reputation
for style and innovation but had also been one of the largest
12 WINTER 2019