Cabaret

After Germany’s loss in WWI, the collapsed
Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs were
supplanted by governments in central and eastern
Europe which, at least at first, permitted broad
latitude of expression in the performing arts. Longdamned-up
protest and dissent spilled over into a
waterfall of political satire. During the war itself, this
dissent had taken shape in the cabaret as Dadaistic
anarchy; but with the new order in Europe, Dada
seemed too cryptic and irrelevant. Cabaret audiences
demanded and got direct reference to current events.
The excitement of what was happening in the streets
was mirrored on the cabaret stage not as abstract
opposition but as specific and circumstantial
criticism.
Berlin Cabaret
As cabaret shifted from an underground or avant-garde form to a genuinely popular entertainment, the heterogeneity
of its audiences compelled it to dilute its message. The twenties was a period of considerable instability in Europe,
and the larger public, wanting to forget its troubles in the theater, preferred satire glancing and sarcastic; the more the
political situation became embroiled, the more the public sought light entertainment and diversion in the cabaret.
While left-wing cabaret moved increasingly towards agit-prop to counteract the rise of fascism, the run-of-the-mill
cabaret offered witty song-and-dance, tinged perhaps by liberal sympathies but by no means doctrinaire in its form or
content. This enabled the mass audience to feel au courant but basically unchallenged. And gradually censorship
resumed, in the form of libel suits instigated by indignant private individuals, obscenity prosecutions by state’s
attorneys, and harassment by the right-wing governments that came to power in the 1930s.
The cabaret was, moreover, omnivorous. It
shoveled in great helpings of whatever was
exciting and innovative—North American jazz
and South American tango, “expressive” and
undraped dancing, cinematic and radio
techniques, the latest literary fashions—and
regurgitated them, often in an only partially
digested form. This led many cabarets to
adopt a revue format, a well-organized
sequence of acts ostensibly grouped around a
given theme.
Photo of the infamous WinterGarten, one of Berlin’s most popularWeimar
Cabarets
WinterGarten
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