Date of Award
5-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master Art in Art History and Visual Culture
First Advisor
Stefanie Snider
Second Advisor
Trenton Olsen
Third Advisor
Sara K. Berkowitz
Abstract
This thesis examines Anita Berber’s performances Cocaine and Morphium within the cultural climate of Weimar Germany, where the body became closely tied to ideals of health, productivity, and national renewal. Through the framework of disability aesthetics as defined by Tobin Siebers, this study argues that Berber transforms addiction, collapse, and bodily decay into a visual and affective language of artistic and political critique. Rather than present the body as disciplined or morally ideal, Berber stages instability, excess, and death through gesture, costume, set design, and music. In doing so, she reimagines the stigmatized female body as a site of agency and resistance against dominant cultural ideals. These performances reject Weimar Germany’s fixation on bodily perfection and expose broader anxieties surrounding gender, morality, and social change.
Research Highlights
The Problem: The research examines how Anita Berber's 1920s dance performances, specifically Cocaine and Morphium, challenged Weimar Germany's cultural ideologies surrounding bodily health, productivity, and national renewal.
The Method: The study analyzes surviving visual and textual accounts of Berber's performances—including set design, costume, score, and gesture—using Tobin Siebers' framework of disability aesthetics, alongside gender theory and dance semiotics.
Qualitative Finding: Berber transformed the physical deterioration of addiction into a deliberate aesthetic strategy for political critique; her performances reimagined the stigmatized female body as a site of artistic agency; her embodiment of instability deliberately exposed Weimar-era anxieties regarding gender, morality, and social change.
Recommended Citation
Summers, Blair, "Staging Collapse: Anita Berber’s Cocaine And Morphium as Disability Aesthetic Performance" (2026). Theses. 1742.
https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/theses/1742
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