This something a bit different for my “Art’s World” feature, but I trust you will find it very interesting and something to check out further.

Porn has been around longer than most people think. There are some who honestly believe it never showed up until the 60’s. However, the fact of the matter is that it has been around in a variety of forms in this country since the beginning of the 1900’s. It hit a big, but secret, popularity in the roaring twenties. Then came the “smokers”, the black and white loops of the 40’s and 50’s and then the beginning of the golden age of the 70’s right through today.

It was also during those times, especially the 1920’s and 1930’s that porn was also a huge form of entertainment in Europe. France and Germany were the most popular havens for the pornography lovers of the time. Now through Goliath books comes an outstanding book loaded with history and some very rare, private photos that surround and bring alive the history of German porn.

This stunning collection from the Gretchen Kraut Archives gathers amazing vintage photos from the early days of porn photography in the 19th century to the lascivious Twenties, from the crazy 1930’s to the Swinging Sixties. Learn about the good old days when images of sex and nudity were sensational and bold, playful and provocative, hot and forbidden.

After the war, porn was happily transferred outdoors, to Scandinavia, generously partaking in the nude bathing cult. Or it was banned to the German Democratic Republic, where allegedly, women were more willing than in the West. Dreaming was allowed, beyond the borders. There was however, still something left of the good old German wanderlust, spiced up with a little sado-masochism. Fantasizing in the style of the romantic fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm – Hansel and Gretel locked up in the witch’s house. What did go on in there? Is this typically German? Yes, it is. Only it is hard to see, as the Nazis had turned nude culture, which after all had been Germanic, having been invented in Germany, into erotic machinery. All steel-hard boys and Arian women, always willing to do what they were asked to do. Germany militarized the erotic, which was permitted to remain pornographic abroad. The time had come for Germans, characterized by war-time rape and a greatly reduced male population, to put their past skeletons in the closet.

Indeed, the Germans had lost something very important. This book shows what they lost: the legendary roaring twenties, when after World War I they shook off the senselessness of the Age of the Kaiser like a drunken stupor. It was the time when photography commenced its victory march, and dared all, without shame.

It was not before the revolutionary sixties that lust was raised its head once more. Until then, 8-mm trash films and mags rotted away in farm barns. German pornography found its subjects close to the bestial, close to the stables. Only the sexual revolution and the simultaneous invention of video reopened the floodgates to the rest of the world. Today, everything is united by the dream, of a time in Germany, which not even the Germans seem to understand. It is the global myth, telling us about the first half of the 20th century, when the erotic vaudeville theatres in Munich, Berlin and Hamburg were fucking-full with exciting ladies, for the high society who could afford it. A lot of sexual experimentation was going on then, despite the censoring and the vice police, when the Germans shed uniforms and corsets to take a breath of fresh morning air. Two hundred photos, almost all from one private collection, show you these sparkling days; the high time when pornographic pictures were still sensational and daring, coquettish and provoking, hot but most of all: prohibited.

Gretchen Kraut Collection – Publisher: GOLIATH – ISBN 978-3-936709-37-7 -272 pages, 250 photographs – US$   29.95  www.goliathbooks.com

If you are a collector of porn, an aficionado of the genre, a history buff and appreciate rare, untouched photos then I strongly suggest getting this book. I was truly amazed, entertained and informed at the content that is contained in this book and most definitely recommend it.

Art Koch, National Features & DVD Editor, NightMoves Magazine and AAN