Cabaret

After the War
“At the end of World War I, Germany was in the midst of crisis. The country suffered economically not
only from the international depression, but also from heavy war debts and reparations imposed by the
Allies following the war. In addition to the economic woes, the loss of the war and forced demilitarization
resulted in a lack of national pride and a longing for a restored Germany, reflected in the multiplicity of
parties represented in the Weimar parliament and society at large. The tension between the hardships of
life and the escapism of the theatre was characterized as a “dance on the volcano”; live life to the fullest
because one could never be sure what tomorrow would bring. “
-Katrina Dettmer (dramaturg of Brown University’s 2009 production of Cabaret)
“The overthrow of the kaiser, the revolutionary tumult that resulted in the establishment of a Social-
Democratic republic, and the hardships of the inflation period were the troubled waters in which
cabaretists could fish with spectacular success. Berlin became a maelstrom, sucking in the energies
and talents of the rest of Germany. . . What New York in the 1920s was to jazz and speakeasies, Berlin
was to cabaret.”
-Laurence Senelick, Cabaret Performance
Workers in the Kruegerman factory
yard, 1929
Female farmers harvesting hay
Tiller Girls in Berlin 1920
“We stand alone in the world. Let us
not forget one thing: Any recovery of
Germany must and will arise from the
moral experience of the German
people.”
-Chancellor Stresemann. 25 Oct 1923
Chancellor Stresemann
“Berlin transformed itself into the Babel of the world. Bars,
amusement parks, pubs shot up like mushrooms. [It was a veritable]
witches’ sabbath, for the Germans brought to perversion all their
vehemence and love of system…Amid the general collapse of values, a
kind of insanity took hold of precisely those middle-class circles which
had hitherto been unwavering in their orderliness”
– Stefan Zweig (Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and
biographer)
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