After the Bode illustrations featuring spanking and enemas (Angemessene Bestrafung translates as ‘appropriate punishment’) had appeared in Schertel’s books and articles, and especially in the late 1940s and early 50s, several collections of erotic drawings and paintings were published in small clandestine editions, many of them attributed to ‘Helga Bode’. The truth is almost certainly that the name became something of a catch-all for any anonymous spanking and enema art from the 1930s, rather like ‘Richard Hegemann’ was the go-to name for similar material from the 1920s, though the drawings initialled ‘HB’ have a fairly consistent quality so are probably by the same hand.

Thus this collection of ‘Helga Bode’ art, while having in common that it is German and from the 1930s, is in truth a ragbag of artwork of varying quality, reproduced from different sources including Schertel’s many publications. We are not aware of any original ‘Helga Bode’ material, but are always willing to be pleasantly surprised.

But was there ever a real Helga Bode, and if so what was her connection with Ernst Schertel? It has been suggested that as a young woman in her early twenties she was a private patient of Schertel’s at his Berlin consulting rooms, and entrusted him with a considerable number of her drawings and paintings, made as part of her therapeutic process.

Despite all our efforts at researching a possible real Helga Bode in Berlin in the 1930s we have drawn a complete blank.