It was the club where Weimar decadence exploded, a frantic hotspot where Berliners drank and danced amid Moorish arches and Orient Express decor. With the help of a group of London-based investors, Efti was able to purchase a much larger two-floor palais on the corner with Friedrichstrasse in April — the location where Babylon Berlin has the dance hall set, in the same year.
The decor inside the original venue, however, was even wilder than the imagination of the TV producers has allowed. An elevator took visitors from street level to the first floor — a technical invention so new and laden with the promise of social mobility at the time that many Berliners visited Moka Efti merely for the ride. The original Moka Efti was a fluffier, more backward-looking affair. There was a billiard hall, a barber shop and correspondence room filled with typists ready to take dictation.
Along with the Haus Vaterland pleasure palace on Potsdamer Platz, where model trains and miniature planes on strings zipped among the coffee drinkers, Moka Efti was one of the most prominent themed establishments offering exotic entertainment and much-needed opportunities to dance away the memories of the first world war.
By , venues with a dancing licence were registered in the German capital, most of them in the central Mitte and western Charlottenburg districts.
In keeping with modern-day national prejudices, there were rumours in Berlin newspapers about two Greek investors who had run off with the savings. By , Eftimiades had sold off the premises and bought a new, even grander, venue further west, which he called Moka Efti am Tiergarten. An even less convenient truth is that Berliners continued to dance the night away even as the political mood darkened and Jewish musicians began to pack up their instruments.
