Weimar
Title: Weimar Media: Photomontage Year: 2013 Based on photographs depicting actress and artist Agnieszka Dellert-Dellfina portraying Anita Berber. Anita Berber 10 June 1899 – 10 November 1928 was a German dancer, actress, and writer who was the subject of an Otto Dix painting. She lived during the Weimar period. Born in Leipzig to musician parents who later divorced, she was raised mainly by her grandmother in Dresden. By the age of 16, she had moved to Berlin and made her debut as a cabaret dancer. By 1918 she was working in film, and she began dancing nude in 1919. Scandalously androgynous, she quickly made a name for herself. She wore heavy dancer's make-up, which on the black-and-white photos and films of the time came across as jet black lipstick painted across the heart-shaped part of her skinny lips, and charcoaled eyes. Her hair was cut fashionably into a short bob and was frequently bright red, as in 1925 when the German painter Otto Dix painted a portrait of her, titled "The Dancer Anita Berber". Her performances broke boundaries with their androgyny and total nudity, but it was her public appearances that really challenged taboos. Berber's overt drug addiction and bisexuality were matters of public chatter. In addition to her addiction to cocaine, opium and morphine, one of Berber's favourites was chloroform and ether mixed in a bowl. This would be stirred with a white rose, the petals of which she would then eat. Aside from her addiction to narcotic drugs, she was also a heavy alcoholic, drinking large amounts of Absinthe. In 1928, at the age of 29, she suddenly gave up alcohol completely, but died later the same year. She was said to be surrounded by empty morphine syringes. She was diagnosed with severe tuberculosis while performing abroad. After collapsing in Damascus, she returned to Germany and died in a Kreuzberg hospital on 10 November 1928. She was buried in a pauper's grave in St. Thomas Cemetery in Neukölln.
