The modern city presented an alluring array of new avenues to love and intimacy that had not existed in the small towns that dominated the nineteenth century, and a great many maverick Berliners, including those looking for same-sex love, embraced these in the hopes of finding love and avoiding the loneliness and isolation that could be so oppressive. This chapter examines a variety of modern methods for finding love in the workplace, in apartment corridors, on the dance floor, and at evening balls that were gradually evolving to accommodate the modern world. The chapter concludes by studying the rise of casual dating, which was characterized by less-than-reputable romantic relationships that rarely led to marriage. It suggests that individualistic approaches such as these marked the beginning, however fraught with controversy and risk, of a potential modernization of the nineteenth-century middle-class sensibilities that formed the bedrock of German social life.
