A Young Woman Jumps Over a Puddle (1930)

Berlin writer and translator Franz Hessel is remembered as one of the city’s greatest flaneurs. In Spazieren in Berlin (1929), he commented on women’s fashions in the city: “Is what people are beginning to declare so loudly true – that, when it comes to elegance, Berlin's women can compete with the best women in Europe? We don’t want to nit-pick about how exactly. It should be enough to see these crowds of young and and even younger girls, this parade of youth and freshness in tight, well-fitting clothes and little hats oozing a lock of hair, the elastic strides of their long legs, to be convinced that Berlin is well on its way to becoming an elegant city.”

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© Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz/ Friedrich Seidenstücker