Berlin means depravity. Moralists across the wide spectrum of political and spiritual beliefs have condemned by rote this chimerical metropolis as a strange city. Even the alkaline air around the Prussian capital (Berliner Luft) was said to contain a toxic ether that attacked the central nervous system, stimulating long-suppressed passions as it animated all the external tics of sexual perversity. In 1919, Berlin’s legal structures basically expired and all convention went out the window. Prostitution and all-night dancing were already accepted features of contemporary Berlin life - what else could be added? Drugs and over-the-counter pornography appeared first. Cocaine powder, morphine solution in vials, and opium balls were sold on street corners. In 1923, four years after the Weimar Republic signed the Treaty of Versailles, inflation ruined German economy. Berlin was suddenly inundated with hard-currency tourists, looking for Jazz Age bargains. Swedes, Dutch, French and hordes of Turks and Japanese flocked to the open city. Their modest assets in the form of kronen, guilders, francs, lira and yen metamorphosed the foreigners into multimillion-aires the moment they disembarked at the Stettiner Bahnhof. Five dollars (48 billion marks) could buy a month of carnal delights. The fact that it was such a cheap city and the total absence of censorship in cinema, theater and social life made Berlin a Mecca for musicians, painters, filmmakers, writers, intellectuals and dancers. Bars, nightclubs, dance halls and ballrooms experienced an economic boom, and at the very top of the big venues there was the Admiralspalast.
During the 1920s and 30s, the Admirals was a pleasure palace of sorts, hosting in its parameters a bath house, restaurants, a speakeasy, the world’s first indoor ice skating revue, and, of course, a grandiose Art Deco theatre housing up to 1700 people at a time, but when Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Admiralspalast went through a new phase. It was remodeled, making disappear the Art Deco elements, and Hitler ordered for himself a special theater box in front of the stage. Consequently, they started producing boring conservative theatre pieces. Being one of the few grand theaters that wasn’t bombed during WW II, it hosted in the 1950s and 60s communist party meetings and events. It‘s all the more exceptional that after almost ten years remaining empty and under the threat of demolition, today, the Admiralspalast enjoys a future as a vibrant entertainment venue with the roman style house baths about to be reopened.
 The date was November 17th; Admiralspalast dedicated a night solely to Swing music, high fashion, and old school sophistication. The recipe was 30s glamour, champagne galore, handsome men in tailored suits, beautiful women coiffed and preened, hours of live swing music, tap dancers, an absinthe bar, cigarette girls, and on top of that whole shebang, a whole lot of Berliner air thrown into the mix. The result was a fabulously elegant if somewhat debauched evening. On stage, the star of the evening, Andrej Hermlin and his swing orchestra, churned out the tunes accompanied by two beautiful burlesque icons, Tallulah Freeway and Polly Miss Pinklips, who sat of on swings on either side of the stage as the orchestra played. A fantastic evening that is to be continued on March 22nd with the Swing’n Jive Easter Ballroom. Ladies and gentlemen, swing is back in Berlin and Admiralspalast is the place to dance it.
 
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