IN THE CHAOTIC AFTERMATH of Germany's unconditional capitulation in May 1945, the tasks of reconstruction and a new beginning in Berlin were daunting. Alongside the ideological and political objectives of democratization, denazification, and demilitarization was the common goal of restoring some sense of normality, which found expression in sometimes paradoxical reinstatements of routines and rituals of everyday civilian life. Many outside observers in the collapsed city of Berlin were astonished by the look of its inhabitants and their general attitude toward appearances. By the end of 1945, a headline in the British newspaper Daily Mail announced “Life Returns to the New Germany” and published a report on the first “after-the-defeat fashions,” richly illustrated by the Berlin-based artist Alice Bronsch and labeled “Fashions for Fräuleins.” Traveling through the decimated German capital in September of 1945, Isaac Deutscher reported in The Economist on the paradoxical presence of elegance against the background of destruction and despair:

That same autumn, the Swiss writer Max Frisch was visiting the city and gauging its contradictory ambience by observing Berliners in the subway and on the streets. In his journal he noted with some astonishment the attempts of women to at put on a more cheerful look: