Modern Lusts

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The first biography of Ernest Bornemann, on the occasion of the centenary of the famous jazz critic, documentary filmmaker and sexual scientist on April 12, 2015. Borneman, a young communist with a Jewish family background, emigrated to London in 1933, six weeks before completing his Abitur. He earned his living doing odd jobs in the film industry and as a journalist and author. During the war he was arrested as an »enemy alien« and interned in Canada. There he worked for the National Film Board from 1941 onwards, making a series of documentary films including propaganda films against the »Third Reich«. At the same time he rose to become an influential jazz critic, working for the legendary »Melody Maker« when the war was over.
From the late 1960s, Borneman became one of the most prominent sexual scientists in the German-speaking world, propagating the idea of the »sexual revolution«, which was met with approval as well as impassioned opposition.

He became known to a wide public through his books (»Das Patriarchat« Patriarchy, 1975), sex advice columns in the »Neue Revue« and many appearances on German and Austrian television.
Owing to his chosen topics of jazz, film and sex, Borneman’s focus was on areas where the special sensory perceptions of 20th century modernism and the conflicts of interpretation surrounding them became clearly visible. Detlef Siegfried traces Borneman’s eventful life and portrays his work from the perspective of the history of the senses.


Ernest Borneman
(1915 –1995) was a criminal author, anthropologist, jazz researcher, filmmaker, psychologist and sex researcher.

His best known publications include the »Lexikon der Liebe (Lexicon of Love) «, »Sex im Volksmund (Sex in the Vernacular) « and »Das Patriarchat (The Patriarchy)«.


The Author
Detlef Siegfried, born 1958, is a professor of modern German and European History at the University of Copenhagen.
Publications include: Deutsche Kulturgeschichte. Die Bundesrepublik 1945 bis zur Gegenwart (German Cultural History. The Federal Republic of Germany from 1945 to the Present Day. In cooperation with Axel Schildt, 2009); Time Is on My Side. Konsum und Politik in der westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 60er Jahre (Consumerism and Politics in the West German Youth Culture of the 1960s, 2006); Der Fliegerblick. Intellektuelle, Radikalismus und Flugzeugproduktion bei Junkers (The Aerial View. Intellectuals, Radicalism and Aircraft Production at Junkers, 2001).