Database: Academic Search Premier ERNST KIRCHNER'S
STREETWALKERS: ART, LUXURY, AND IMMORALITY IN BERLIN, 1913-16 An
article entitled "Culture in the Display Window," which surveyed
the elegant artistry of Berlin's display windows, appeared in
Der Kritiker, a Berlin cultural journal, during the summer of
1913. Its author stated that these windows were an important
factor in Germany's recent economic boom and the concomitant
rise of its culture on the world stage, serving "as an alarm
clock of our hedonism" and transforming the frugal German
housewife into a fashionable lady.(n1) Women's fashion was said
to be at the heart of a new love of luxury that made Berlin the
economic and cultural equal of Paris. The historical and
theoretical bases of the article's argument lay within recent
developments in German applied arts. For several years the
Deutscher Werkbund had promoted both the aestheticization of
commodities through packaging and display techniques and the
growth of German fashion's prestige within the wor