Sex sells! Wolfgang Gurlitt, erotic print culture and women artists in the Weimar Republic

This article explores erotic material commissioned by the art dealer and publisher Wolfgang Gurlitt (1888–1965). Between 1919 and 1920, Gurlitt published a hand-printed series of erotic volumes Der Venuswagen (The Chariot of Venus), which straddled the areas of art, literature and sexology that saw him end up in court. A decade later, he commissioned the artist Jeanne Mammen to illustrate Pierre Louÿs’ Les Chansons de Bilitis [The Songs of Bilitis] – a fictional set of poems supposedly written by the lover of Sappho. At a time when women’s sexual autonomy was frequently pathologised, Mammen’s images made a powerful visual statement about homonormative experience in 1920s Germany. But they remained unpublished. Investigations into Gurlitt’s early career expose the limits and tensions of Weimar sexuality, as well as open up important lines of enquiry regarding women artists’ roles as active contributors to, and shapers of, erotica.