and Dr. Julia Schrammel
After sundown, at a respectable address in Berlin, Nazi libertines went in and out of Salon Kitty, a brothel that was an illicit little toast to the Weimar years. Inside, a single mother from Hamburg popped corks for Hitler’s minions and adversaries alike. The S.S. used the louche environment to spy on Kitty’s besotted patrons, through mikes in the upholstery and clerks in the basement. The transcripts are lost to time, and we can’t be sure whether the sex workers even knew about the side hustle. But the authors of The Madam and the Spymaster listen carefully, sorting through 80 years of echoes.
It’s tantalizing to imagine pillow talk changing the course of history. The concept of Salon Kitty has inspired biographers and filmmakers and memoirists with their semi-assertions and soft-core fantasies. The latest authors—Nigel Jones, Urs Brunner, and Dr. Julia Schrammel—strain to sort the facts. As they close in on the truth, the conclusion gets further away. Their nearly 300-page project is not an airtight testimony about what happened but a waltz through a whispery bordello, where something definitely happened.
