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Babylon Berlin (henceforth BB) premiered in Germany on the pay channel Sky TV in October 2017 and in the United States on the streaming service Netflix in January 2018. It is based on Volker Kutscher's series of crime novels set in late Weimar Republic and early Nazi-era Berlin. At its center are the lives and investigations of the laconic and tormented police detective Gereon Rath and his charismatic and irrepressible assistant Charlotte (Lotte) Ritter. In anticipation of the series premiere on public television, marathon screenings took place in 150 cinemas across Germany, where audience members dressed up in 1920s fashion and enjoyed a Currywurst break. Its viewership in the Federal Republic was topped only by the global fantasy behemoth Game of Thrones. The series is clearly modeled on American series such as Mad Men (2007–2015) and The Wire (2002–2008) as it unfolds a complex web of characters and subplots with loving attention to the history and fashions of the time. Indeed, this collaboration of seasoned directors Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries, and Henk Handloegten is the most expensive German TV series to date. The fact that BB premiered on pay TV while having been largely produced with public funds drew some ire. German reviewers questioned both the circumstances of its production and its creative ambition. While Der Spiegel called it "a masterpiece," one much debated blog review went so far as to call it "pure crap," which neither reflected historical truth nor carried artistic merit. Many critics faulted the series for trading in postcard clichés and creating a 1920s "Berlin Disneyland." The weekly Die Zeit complained that there was a little too much cute dialect, such as "icke" and "kiek ma," which made the critic sometimes feel like wiping the dirt makeup off the proletarian faces. (And indeed, one of the numerous intertexts of this series are Heinrich Zille's unflinching depictions of proletarian misery.)

Introduction : towards a global history of sexual science : movements, networks, and deployments / Veronika Fuechtner, Douglas E. Haynes, and Ryan Jones -- Global modernity and sexual science : the case of male homosexuality and female prostitution, 1880-1950 / Pablo Ben -- "Let us leave the hospital; let us go on a journey around the world" : British and German sexual science and the global search for sexual variation / Kate Fisher and Jana Funke -- Westermarck's Morocco : sexology & the epistemic politics of cultural anthropology / Ralph Leck -- Monogamy's nature : global sexual science and the secularization of Christian marriage / Angie Willey -- The "Hottentot Apron" in the history of sexual science / Rebecca Hodes -- Sexology in the Southwest : law, medicine and sexuality in Germany and its colonies / Robert Deam Tobin -- Explaining R.D. Karve's philosophy of sexual science : women's reform, anti-Brahminism and debates over male sexuality in western India, 1925-1940 / Shrikant Botre and Douglas E. Haynes -- The "Ellis Effect" : translating sexual science in Republican China, 1911-1949 / Rachel Hui-Chi Hsu -- Takahashi Tetsu and popular sexology in early postwar Japan, 1945-1970 / Mark McLelland -- Mexican sexology and male homosexuality : genealogies and global contexts, 1860-1957 / Ryan Jones -- The science of sexual difference : Ogura Seizaburō, Hiratsuka Raichō, and the intersection of sexology and feminism in early twentieth-century Japan / Michiko Suzuki -- Time for sex : the education of desire and the conduct of childhood in global/Hindu sexology / Ishita Pande -- Latin eugenics and sexual knowledge in Italy, Spain and Argentina : international networks across the Atlantic / Chiara Beccalossi -- "Forms so attentuated that they merge into normality itself" : Alexander Lipschutz, Gregorio Marañón, and theories of intersexuality in Chile, c.1930 / Kurt MacMillan -- "Tyranny of orgasm" : global governance of sexuality from Bombay, 1930s-1950s / Sanjam Ahluwalia -- Magnus Hirschfeld's Onnagata / Rainer Herrn -- Agnes Smedley between Berlin, Bombay and Beijing : sexology, Communism and national independence / Veronika Fuechtner -- The limits of transnationalism : the case of Max Marcuse / Kristen Leng -- Afterword / Howard Chiang

"Sex has no history, but sexual science does. During the late nineteenth century, people all over the world suddenly began to insist that understandings of sex must be based on science. As Japanese and Indian sexologists influenced their German and American counterparts, and vice versa, sexuality, modernity, and imaginings of exotified "Others" became intimately linked. The first anthology to provide a worldwide perspective on the birth and development of the field, A Global History of Sexual Science contends that actors outside of Europe--in Asia, Latin America, and Africa--became important interlocutors in a globalizing field where ideas were circulated through intellectual exchange, travel, and internationally produced and disseminated publications. Twenty scholars tackle specific issues, including prostitution and the criminalization of male homosexuality, to demonstrate how concepts and ideas introduced by sexual scientists gained currency throughout the modern world"--Provided by publisher.