Betwixt and Between: Theatre, Cabaret, and Cultural Experimentation in Interwar Weimar Berlin
- Jonathan Gunson
- Sep 1
- 20 min read
Updated: Oct 13
Introduction
“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be devel-oped, carefully printed, fixed.”
(Isherwood, 1939/1998, p.1)
In this quote, on the first page of Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, the inspiration for the later stage musical and movie, Cabaret, he presents himself as a neutral viewer of events; not a political commentator, not judging, but merely recording the tumultuous period he had found himself in. It is this period which shall be the focus of this article – Berlin during the interwar years (1918-1939), a febrile mixture of political upheaval combined with cultural innovation, culminating in collapse and catastrophe.
Life between the two world wars was a period of profound uncertainty and transition in both the cultural sector and the political world. This piece will focus specifically on the cultural situation in Weimar Germany, and in particular in Berlin, but these trends can be seen across Western countries.
Politically speaking, in the United Kingdom, the country saw the collapse of the Liberal Party following the split between the National Liberals, under the Prime Minister David Lloyd George, in coalition with the Conservatives and the Liberals, under the former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, allowing the Labour Party to come through the middle as one of the two main parties. In 1918, women gained partial rights to vote, and all working-class men were enfranchised. By 1928, women had also gained the full right to vote. The first, albeit brief and minority Labour Government was formed in 1924, and then a further minority Labour Government was in power from 1929 to 1931, followed by the formation of a National Government with Labour, the Liberals, and the Conservatives.
In the USA, women also gained the vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920. Culturally, this was also considered as the Golden Age of Hollywood, as movies moved from silent film to sound-film production and the ‘talkies’. Part of this was a consequence of the studio system, a new form of production, and by mid-1920, the majority of prominent American directors and actors, who had been working on an independent basis since the early 1910s, had become part of the new studio system. The studio system is a form of filmmaking where the production and distribution of films is dominated by a small number of large movie studios. The period between 1927 and 1948 can be broadly summarised as the beginning of sound motion pictures, to the point where studios produced film for the most part on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under a long-term contract with vertical integration. This period is not defined in concrete terms, but it could be argued that it started with The Jazz Singer in 1927, the first movie to introduce sound. It could also be argued, however, that 1929 is the key year, as the silent movie era had definitively ended at that point. There were numerous movies made during this period – given that so many films were produced, it was not necessary for every single one to be a hit, so a studio could take a risk on a feature film of a medium budget with a good script and actors who may have been relatively unknown. The peak of this period of cinema may be 1939, with numerous classics released during this year.
In Spain, the Spanish Civil War saw the rise of fascism under Francesco Franco. In Italy, Mussolini emerged as another fascist leader. In the Roman Catholic Church, the concordant with Italy saw the recognition of the Vatican City State as an independent and separate entity in 1929 with the Lateran Treaty. In Germany, the defeat in the First World War saw the fall of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the creation of the Weimar Republic, ultimately falling to the rise of National Socialism.
In 1929, the economic collapse reverberated across the world. Across Europe, empires fell. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed across Central Europe, the Second German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm II fell, the Ottoman Empire gave way to the Turkish Republic and other countries, and the Russian Revolution saw the fall of the Tsar to the Bolsheviks.
Amidst this, there were fascinating cultural developments taking place. The Weimar Republic (1919-1933), born out of the chaos of Germany’s defeat in the First World War, was marked by political instability and economic turmoil, but also by unprecedented artistic innovation and social experimentation. It was a world betwixt and between, with both communism and fascism rising and fighting, and with new cultural movements emerging in this space between the two world wars. One of the hotspots of this was the capital, Berlin.
Artistic freedom between the wars
Berlin in the 1920s was a crucible of modernism and avant-garde culture (Gay, 2001; Jelavich, 1996). This was a period of enormous artistic productivity and innovation across literature, art, architecture, music, dance, drama, and also motion pictures. German expressionism strongly influenced German visual art, music, and literature at the start of the Weimar Republic. By 1920, however, there was also a turn being made towards the Neue Sachlichkeit, the New Objectivity outlook, which rejected the themes of expressionism such as romanticism, fantasy, subjectivity, raw emotion, and impulse, focusing rather on precision, deliberateness, and the depiction of that which is factual and real. Berlin during this time was a crucible of modernism, radical politics, and social experimentation (Gay, 2001). The city’s cabarets, theaters, art galleries, and nightclubs buzzed with innovation and hedonism (Brockmann, 2010). Expressionism, Dadaism, and the Bauhaus school flourished alongside political movements spanning the spectrum from communism to nascent fascism. This atmosphere of freedom, coupled with the city’s deep economic problems, created a paradoxical environment—one where liberation and anxiety coexisted in tense balance (Peukert, 1991). Appignanesi (2004b, para. 8) describes how “Weimar itself grew out of the debris of the great war and the civil strife it left behind”. People flooded in from across Europe – Russians fleeing the revolution, Jews fleeing pogroms, those affected by the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the new postwar geographies, and artists seeking freedom, both artistic and oftentimes sexual (Appignanesia, 2004a; 2004b).
A key moment for German arts was the foundation of the November Group, the Novembergruppe, on 3rd December 1918, in the aftermath of the beginnings of the German Revolution of 1918-19. This followed the end of the First World War and the defeat of Germany, with communists, anarchists, and pro-republic supporters taking to the streets to seek control of the government, culminating in the establishment of the Weimar Republic in 1919. Approximately 100 artists identifying as avant-garde in some sense joined the group, holding 19 exhibitions in Berlin, as well as others in Rome, Moscow, and Japan, until the group was ultimately banned by the Nazis in 1933.
Other art movements of particular prominence included Dada, which had begun in Zürich, Switzerland, and become an international movement, including in Berlin. Cubism, Verism and, with its distinctive modern design, the Bauhaus school of architecture, fused the arts and crafts with practical industrial design. Likewise, cinema also did not shy away from controversial topics but addressed them directly. Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and starring Louise Brooks, involves a woman thrown out of her home for an illegitimate affair and then being forced into prostitution for survival. Meanwhile, Different from Others (1919), directed by Richard Oswald, Sex in Chains (1928), directed by William Dieterle, and Pandora’s Box (1929), directed by Pabst, all dealt with homosexuality – while the first of these was censored, by the end of the decade there was little opposition at all. Likewise, aside from books, the publishing industry in Berlin produced around 150 daily and weekly papers, right wing and left wing, highbrow and popular. Theatres popped up overnight, as did cabarets, offering sex, spectacle, satire, or all of these (Appignanesi, 2004a; 2004b).
In literature, a bleak presentation of the world and the failures of politics and society was presented, whilst foreign writers travelled to Berlin, lured by its freer, dynamic culture, the decadent cabaret, and – by the standards of the time – its sexual openness, with some of the world’s first openly gay literature emerging, such as by Erwin von Busse in 1920. One such foreign writer was Christopher Isherwood.
The British-American writer Christopher Isherwood spent time in Berlin during this pivotal period. He moved to Berlin in 1929, where he taught English and explored his sexuality, and his friendships with figures such as Gerald Hamilton and Jean Ross inspired the works Mr. Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin, with Gerald Hamilton being the real-life Mr. Norris, and Jean Ross the real-life Sally Bowles (Bucknell, 2012-2020). He began a relationship with Heinz Neddermeyer in 1932, with the two of them fleeing the Nazis in 1933, although Neddermeyer was refused entry to England in 1934 on his second visit and the two ultimately separated when Neddermeyer was arrested by the Gestapo in May 1937 (Bucknell, 2012-2020).
Isherwood begins his book, Goodbye to Berlin, with a haunting passage:
“From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied façades, dirty plaster frontages embossed with scroll-work and heraldic devices. The whole district is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bank-rupt middle class.”
(Isherwood, 1939/1998, p.1)
This encapsulates this period of destitution and upheaval. His short stories portray the city’s residents—from destitute families and eccentric aristocrats to queer performers and political activists—in their day-to-day lives during this period, and present a portrait of a society on the edge.
Katja Hoyer, a contemporary German historian, writing about Weimar between the wars, notes that, “Weimar looms large in German history: a crucible of democracy and dictatorship” (Hoyer, 2025, para.15) and that, “Weimar shows us a town and its people on the edge of catastrophe” (Hoyer, 2025, para.16).
This is reflected by Isherwood. In Goodbye to Berlin, he recalls a party he had attended – the attendees singing, chatting, laughing, drinking, swimming in the lake – and yet also discussing politics in hushed terms, awaiting the news from Berlin as to whether the Government had survived the confidence vote it had been facing. He writes:
“Over there, in the city, the votes were being counted. I thought of Natalia: she has escaped – none too soon, perhaps. However often the decision may be delayed, all these people are ultimately doomed. This evening is the dress-rehearsal of a disaster. It is like the last night of an epoch.”
(Isherwood, 1939/1998, p.214)
Theatre and Cabaret
During this interwar period, and in particular during the period of the Weimar Republic, from 1919 to 1933, Berlin emerged as one of the global centres of avant-garde culture, with theatre and cabaret playing central roles in reflecting and shaping this tumultuous period of social, political, and artistic upheaval.
Theatre during this period became a forum for social and political engagement, artistic innovation, and public debate. The immediate postwar years saw the continuation of Expressionism, emphasising emotional intensity, distortion, and social critique, and addressing themes of existential crisis, societal alienation, and the brutality of war, mirroring the fractured postwar psyche (Willett, 1969). Venues included the Volksbühne, or People’s Theatre, which offered affordable theatre for workers, and the Berliner Ensemble, which became a symbol of politically engaged theatre.
![Figure III: Kolbe, Jörg. (1954). Bertolt Brecht ADN-ZB/Kolbe 9.4.1980 [Datum Archiveingang] Bertolt Brecht geb. 10.2.1898 Augsburg gest. 14.8.1956 Berlin, Dichter, Theatertheoretiker und Regisseur. [Porträt Bertolt Brecht] Abgebildete Personen: Brecht, Bertolt: Schriftsteller, Regisseur, DDR (GND 118514768) English: Trimmed version of photograph released from the German Federal Archive of the German theatre director, dramatist, poet and theorist Bertolt Brecht in 1954. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bertolt-Brecht.jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license. Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-W0409-300 / Kolbe, Jörg / CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/82a45e_9e79793b68d74a3798ef4cd516d52600~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_147,h_212,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,blur_2,enc_avif,quality_auto/82a45e_9e79793b68d74a3798ef4cd516d52600~mv2.jpg)
Developments included epic theatre, pioneered by writers such as Bertolt Brecht (Willett, 1969), which sought to provoke critical thinking rather than emotional immersion, and utilised theatrical forms such as direct address, song, placards, and narrative breaks, as well as agitprop, multimedia staging, and direct audience engagement, to spur political consciousness. Bertolt Brecht was a playwright whose major works included The Threepenny Opera (1928), alongside the composer Kurt Weill, as well as Mother Courage and Her Children (1939), which also contained significant contributions from Margarete Steffin. Brecht’s work blended satire, music, and didacticism. Rejecting emotional identification and catharsis, Brecht sought to provoke critical reflection and political action in his audiences. His plays often broke the “fourth wall,” used direct address, visible lighting, and stage machinery, and incorporated songs to interrupt the narrative flow (Brecht, 1964; Thomson, 1994). The Threepenny Opera (1928) is particularly well known, and blurred the lines between theatre and music, combining as it did social satire with popular song forms. It critiqued bourgeois hypocrisy and corruption through the figure of the criminal Macheath. The play’s famous “Mack the Knife” remains an enduring emblem of Weimar cultural ferment (Willett & Manheim, 1979). Weill became a particularly significant figure in bridging modernist composition with popular culture, introducing a musical style that fused jazz rhythms, cabaret melodies, and classical music. Weill’s music was accessible yet subversive, reflecting the contradictions of modern urban life (Hinton, 1992). Kurt Weill also engaged with jazz in works such as The Threepenny Opera and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny; with his collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, Weill melded “the jazz-infected popular music of the period with leftist politics, producing haunting classics like “Mack the Knife””(Wipplinger, 2023, para. 12). Jazz music also arrived from the USA (Taylor, 2007), appealing to young Berliners, with jazz musicians, many of whom were African American expatriates or European artists inspired by American styles, playing in Berlin’s clubs, sometimes alongside classical ensembles or in hybrid jazz-classical performances (Wipplinger, 2023).
Other than Brecht, significant figures included Erwin Piscator, an innovator of political theatre, who was known for multimedia stagings and documentary techniques, and Max Reinhardt, a director who blended classicism with technical innovation. Reinhardt and Piscator were, at different points, artistic directors of the Volksbühne, Reinhardt from 1915 to 1918 and Piscator from 1924 to 1927. Reinhardt directed bold avant garde and classicist productions, accessible to working-class audiences, in venues such as the Volksbühne (Appignanesi, 2004).
A particularly vibrant form of nightlife, bringing together performance, music, satire, and political commentary, was cabaret. Cabaret combined music, theatre, satire, dance, and performance art into a genre that was irreverent, provocative, and deeply political (Barber, 1997). Mocking ideologies such as militarism, capitalism, and rising fascism, it utilised humour to cope with and critique societal chaos. This Kabarett traced its origins to literary cabaret in the early 20th century, such as Überbrettl in 1901 by Ernst von Wolzogen which predated the censorship reforms of the First World War. The economic boom of the 1920s combined with the political upheaval which came with the collapse of the Kaiser, the different political factions of communism, socialism, anarchism, national socialism, fascism, Christian Democracy, Social Democracy, and liberalism, to make cabaret a vehicle for coping and for critique, a combination of carnival and of commentary in a city on the verge of collapse.
Rosa Valetti founded the Café Gröseenwahn (Cabaret Megalomania), a politically engaged venue, with her signature song “The Red Melody” composed by Friedrich Hollaender and with words by Kurt Tucholsky, as well as songs such as “Simultaneous Berlin” by the Dadaist poet, Walter Mehring (Jelavich, 2024). Trude Hesterberg’s Wilde Bühne (“Wild Stage”) hosted a young Brecht in 1922, with him performing the “Ballad of the Dead Soldier”, a grotesque and political song about the horrors of war (Jelavich, 2024). The story tells the tale of how the Germany army had, due to a shortage of manpower, dug up a fallen soldier and then sent him back to the front (Jelavich, 2024). The Kabarett der Komiker (KadeKo) gained fame for its revue-style entertainment and political satire, including a long-running sketch mocking the ambitions of Hitler, which ran for nearly 300 shows. Both the Café Gröseenwahn and the Wilde Bühne were critical in launching new talent and radical performance (Jelavich, 1993). Expressive performers like Anita Berber and Valeska Gert incorporated eroticism, substance use, and political scenes into visceral, shock‑aesthetic performances that defied bourgeois mores and social stability. Erwin Piscator introduced multimedia, projections, and documentary materials in his Proletarian Theatre, emphasizing political consciousness (Innes, 2002). Directors like Max Reinhardt modernized classical works, using expressive lighting and staging (Kolb, 2005). Performers like Claire Waldoff, Anita Berber, and Valeska Gert pushed boundaries in gender, expression, and sexuality (Beachy, 2014). Satirical songs targeted militarism and rising fascism. For example, Kurt Tucholsky’s lyrics and Friedrich Hollaender’s compositions lampooned bourgeois morality and antisemitism (Jelavich, 1993). Venues such as the Moulin Rouge (not the Parisian venue), Schall und Rauch, and Die Katakombe, were the beating heart of this scene (Willett, 2006), a world where artists could push the limits of sexual and gender expression, social norms, and political critique. Performers engaged with themes of decadence, social inequality, the trauma of war, and the rise of extremist politics, often with dark humour, irony, and parody (Schneider, 2009).
Notable figures from the theatre included Claire Waldoff, Anita Berber, and Marlene Dietrich (Gay, 2001; Lehman, 2017). Waldoff was a lesbian performer known for her songs in Berlin dialect and her tough charm, Berber was a dancer and actress who became a symbol of decadent Weimar hedonism, and Dietrich went on to become a hugely successful international star. Waldoff and composers, including Mischa Spoliansky, produced songs which included queer identity, such as “The Lavender Song” (Beachy, 2014).
Venues included the Moka Efti, a cabaret bar which has been featured in modern portrayals such as Babylon Berlin, and Schall und Rauch, or “Sound and Smoke”, which was a venue co-founded by Max Reinhardt that saw the line between theatre and cabaret blurred.
This form of performance holds important cultural significance, with performances satirising politics, militarism, and nationalism, and attacking antisemitism through biting irony. A particularly dark example of this is in the song, An allem sind die Juden Schuld, composed by Friedrich Hollaender. Hollaender, born in London in 1896 to a Jewish family, worked as a musical director at the Barnum & Bailey Circus and had a strong music and theatre background in his family (Hollander, n.d.). His father Victor was a composer of operetta, his uncle Gustav a director of the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, and his Uncle Felix was a novelist and drama critic who later worked with Max Reinhard at the Deutsches Theater (Hollander, n.d.). His family returned to Berlin in 1899, his father teaching at the Stern Conservatory, with the young Friedrich becoming a student at Engelbert Humperdinck’s master class and playing piano at silent film performances in local cinemas, as well as becoming a repetiteur at the New German Theatre in Prague, and being in charge of troop entertainment at the Western Front in the First World War. He composed music for productions by Max Reinhardt and became involved in the Kabarett scene of Berlin, including working in the Schall und Rauch ensemble at the Großes Schauspielhaus or the Wilde Bühne led by Trude Hesterberg at the Theater des Westens in Chaolttenburg where he established the Tingel-Tangel-Theater cabaret in 1931 (Hollander, n.d.). He ultimately had to leave Germany in 1933 under the Nazis because of his Jewish descent, and moved to Paris, and then the USA, writing music for over a hundred films, as well as the autobiographical novel Those Torn From Earth in 1941, about the many Jewish members of the film industry who fled Germany following the Nazi rise to power and the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws (Hollander, n.d.). He returned to Germany in 1956 and died in Munich in 1976. Marlene Dietrich performed the song “Falling in Love Again (Can’t Help It)” from Hollaender’s film score The Blue Angel (1930). Lareau (1991, p. 471) nonetheless observes that whilst cabaret is often romanticised “as a watering-place for the avant-guard, a wild crucicle for modern ideas and experiments”, they were also commercial enterprises that would need to make concessions so as to accommodate the tastes of their audiences, and that whilst historians may try to present cabaret as “a radical protest art, a satirical form of cultural and political opposition” (Lareau, 1991, p. 471), it can be filled with any number of ideologies, not necessarily or exclusively leftist (Lareau, 1991). Jelavich (2024, para. 1) observes that “The first thing you must do, dear reader, is forget everything you think you know about Weimar-era cabaret.” The depictions which might capture the imagination from the 1966 stage version of Cabaret on Broadway, or the 1972 movie version, were not the same thing as the original cabarets of Weimar Berlin, to the extent that Lotte Lenya, who had played Fräulein Schneider in the Broadway production, did not recognise the resemblance to that which she had witnessed fifty years prior (Jelavich, 2024). Even Isherwood himself saw such venues as tourist traps, whilst Weil himself was not a composer of music explicitly for cabarets but for opera and musical stages (Jelavich, 2024). Actual Kabarett drew its roots in the Paris of the 1880s, cabarets artistiques, in small venues with a few dozen patrons sat around tables with drinks and smoking, with a mixture of short, unconnected numbers such as songs, dances, monologues, dialogues, sketches, and skits, satirising and parodying current political events, commercial fashions, and sexual trends (Jelavich, 2024). Censorship laws of the imperial Germany of the Kaiser prevented cabarets from going too far, but when these fell with the Kaiser in November 1918, cabaret would thrive in the Weimar Republic (Jelavich, 2024).
The song, An allem sind die Juden Schuld, is a sharp and striking critique of the rising anti-Semitism under the Nazis, mocking all of the things which the Nazis were blaming Jews for (Jelavich, 2024). It premiered in September 1931, set to the tune of the aria “Habanera” from Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen”, meaning common tropes about global catastrophes such as the First World War and the Russian Revolution, or economic catastrophes, were reduced to absurdities such as the weather (“Ob es regnet, ob es hagelt, ob es schneit oder ob es blitz”).
This is hinted at in the subsequent stage show and movie of the musical, Cabaret, with the song, “If you could see her”. A powerful updated version of An allem sind die Juden Schuld was released as An allem sind (immer noch) die Juden Schuld by Vivian Kanner (Vivian Kanner – Topic, 2023), addressing modern forms of antisemitism – Kanner has recorded a version of the original (vivian kanner, 2013) and when listening to this new version, the references to modern life and events in the lyrics (in German) bring home the continued resonance of this period.
Berlin cabaret was known for its open displays of queer culture, drag, and sexual freedom. Many artists were Jewish, socialist, or openly queer, all groups targeted and oppressed by the Nazis, and when Hitler came to power in 1933, the cabarets were closed down, and theatre artists silenced or fled into exile (Gay, 2001; Kater, 2003). Brecht fled, first to Denmark, and then to the USA. When Nazi students burned books on Unter den Linden on the 10th May 1933, it can perhaps be viewed not only as the destruction of Weimar art, but of an entire tradition of the enlightenment in Germany which can be traced back to the city of Weimar, and figures such as Goethe and Shiller. As the memorial of the book burning, in the Bebelplatz, with its haunting empty underground library, reads:
“Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt,verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen” Heinrich Heine 1820
(Berlin Tourismus & Kongress GmbH, n.d.-a)
Or in English (own translation), That was only a prelude, For where one burns books, In the end will one also burn people.
Concluding Thoughts
In the musical Cabaret, as Cliff Bradshaw sits on the train, preparing to leave Berlin, he begins to write:
“There was a Cabaret and there was a Master-of-Ceremonies and there was a city called Berlin in a country called Germany and it was the end of the world …”
(We begin to hear the music of “Willkommen”)
“……… and I was dancing with Sally Bowles and we were both fast asleep …”
(Masteroff, Kander, and Ebb, 1998, p.92)
Despite its harrowing end, the cultural innovations of the Weimar Republic profoundly influenced the 20th century’s theatre, music, and popular culture worldwide. Epic Theatre’s techniques remain a staple of political theatre. What can be seen is a period of extraordinary cultural diversity, and at times cultural, political, and sexual liberation, combined with a mounting sense of underlying fear and looming collapse and catastrophe. It was a period of change, of tension, and, looking back with hindsight, of dread in the knowledge of what was to come. This piece has explored this period of transition in the context of the cultural experience that was in flux and flow, both in terms of what was happening in this period, and how this relates to the horrors that had proceeded, and those which were about to come.
Bibliographical References
Appignanesi, L. (2004a). The Cabaret (1975, 1984, Revised and expanded edition 2004). Yale University Press. (Original work published 1975).
Appignanesi, L. (2004b, November 27). Wicked joys. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2004/nov/27/theatre1.
Bach, S. (1992). Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend. HarperCollins.
Beachy, R. (2014). Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a modern identity. Vintage Books.
Berlin Tourismus & Kongress GmbH. (n.d.). Denkmal zur Erinnerung an die Bücherverbrennung. Retrieved August 30, 2025, from https://www.visitberlin.de/de/denkmal-zur-erinnerung-die-buecherverbrennung.
Brecht, B. (1964). Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic (J. Willett, Ed. & Trans.). Hill and Wang.
Brockmann, S. (2010). A critical history of German film. Camden House.
Brockmann, S. (2016). A critical history of German film. Camden House. (Original work published 2011).
Bucknell, K. (2012-2020). Biography. The Christopher Isherwood Foundation. Retrieved August 13, 2025, from https://www.isherwoodfoundation.org/biography.
Carlson, N. (1993). Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey, from the Greeks to the Present. Cornell University Press.
Carlson, M. (1993). Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey, from the Greeks to the Present (ENL-Enlarged, 2). Cornell University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv6jm9dn.
Gay, P. (2001). Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider. W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1968).
Hinton, S. (1990). Kurt Weill: The Threepenny Opera. (Cambridge Opera Handbooks). Cambridge University Press.
Hollander, M. (n.d.). BIOGRAPHY: FREDERICK HOLLANDER alias FRIEDRICH HOLLAENDER. FREDERICK HOLLANDER MUSIC. Retrieved August 29, 2025, from https://www.frederickhollandermusic.com/en/biography.
Hoyer, K. (2025, August 10). Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe. Retrieved August 13, 2025, from https://www.katjahoyer.uk/p/weimar-life-on-the-edge-of-catastrophe.
Innes, C. D. (1972). Erwin Piscator’s political theatre: The development of modern drama in Germany. Cambridge University Press.
Isherwood, C. (1998). Goodbye to Berlin. Vintage Books. (Original work published 1939).
Jelavich, P. (1991). The Limits of Political Satire: Cabaret in the Weimar Republic and the Federal Republic. In U. Ursula Hoffmann-lange, P. Jelavich, R. Rickards, & L. J. Edinger (Eds.), Social And Political Structures In West Germany: From Authoritarianism To Postindustrial Democracy. Routledge.
Jelavich, P. (1993). Berlin Cabaret. Harvard University Press.
Jelavich, P. (2024, February 1). Cabaret in the Weimar Republic. Carnegie Hall. Retrieved August 29, 2025, from https://www.carnegiehall.org/Explore/Articles/2024/02/01/Cabaret-in-the-Weimar-Republic.
Kanner, Vivian. (2013, May 13). Vivian Kanner - An allem sind die Juden Schuld [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved August 30, 2025, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPznfiB5OJ0.
Kanner, Vivian - Topic. (2023, May 1). An allem sind (immer noch) die Juden schuld [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved August 30, 2025, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCmVDuaKBMc&list=OLAK5uy_ncNb-bmM-jknlhARqvt9-eOlaslSqen3g&index=1.
Kater, M. H. (2003). Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press.
Kracauer, S. (1947). From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton Universität Press.
Lareau, A. (1991). The German Cabaret Movement during the Weimar Republic. Theatre Journal, 43(4), 471–490. https://doi.org/10.2307/3207977.
Lareau, A. (2011, April). Frederick Hollander’s Road To Dr. T.: From Weimar Berlin To Hollywood Sound Stages (With Digs at Hitler At Every Stop). The Bluegrass Special. Retrieved August 29, 2025, from https://www.thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2011/april2011/dr-t-frederick-hollander.html.
Leffner, J. (2006). Black Cats, Berlin, Broadway And Beyond: Cabaret History In The Making [A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in the Department of Theatre in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida, University of Central Florida]. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2072&context=etd.
Masteroff, J., Kander, J., & Ebb, F. (1967). Prompt Book of Cabaret (1998 Version) (1998 Version). Tams-Witmark Music Library. http://www.roundlaketheatre.com/uploads/4/2/7/5/42757847/cabaret_1998_libretto_with_translations.pdf.
Peukert, D. J. K. (1993). The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (R. Deveson, Trans.). Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1987).
Thomas, P. & Sacks, G. (Eds.). (1994). The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Cambridge University Press..
Willett, J. (1967). The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A study from eight aspects (3rd ed.). Eyre Methuen Ltd. (Original work published 1959).
Willett, J. (1988). The Theatre of the Weimar Republic. Holmes & Meier Publishers.
Wipplinger, J. (2023). The Rise and Fall of Jazz in the Weimar Republic. Retrieved August 30, 2025, from https://www.carnegiehall.org/Explore/Articles/2023/12/20/Rise-and-Fall-of-Jazz-in-1920s-Weimar-Germany.
Visual References
Cover Image: Unknown author. (1927). Omschrijving: Een rijtje danseressen uit de revue (dans-girls) uit Berlijn, Duitsland 1927. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Een_rijtje_danseressen_uit_de_revue_(dans-girls)_uit_Berlijn,_Duitsland_1927,_SFA001018666.jpg.
Figure I: English, Don. Paramount Pictures. (1932). Publicity photo of Marlene Dietrich for the film Shanghai Express (1932). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marlene_Dietrich_in_Shanghai_Express_(1932)_by_Don_English.png.
Figure II: Daily Herald Archive at the National Media Museum. This photograph shows playwright Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) chatting at Victoria Station, London. (1938) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christopher_Isherwood_en_route_to_China,_1938._(7893554712)_(cropped1).jpg.
Figure III: Kolbe, Jörg. (1954). Bertolt Brecht ADN-ZB/Kolbe 9.4.1980 [Datum Archiveingang] Bertolt Brecht geb. 10.2.1898 Augsburg gest. 14.8.1956 Berlin, Dichter, Theatertheoretiker und Regisseur. [Porträt Bertolt Brecht] Abgebildete Personen: Brecht, Bertolt: Schriftsteller, Regisseur, DDR (GND 118514768) English: Trimmed version of photograph released from the German Federal Archive of the German theatre director, dramatist, poet and theorist Bertolt Brecht in 1954. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bertolt-Brecht.jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license. Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-W0409-300 / Kolbe, Jörg / CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.
Figure IV: Unknown. (1932). Porträt Kurt Weill. Kurt Weill in Wien Kurt Weill, der bekannte Komponist der "Drei-Groschen-Oper", ist zur Premiere seines neuen Stückes "Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny" nach Wien gekommen. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-2005-0119,_Kurt_Weill.jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license. Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-2005-0119 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Figure V: Perscheid, Nicola. (1911). Max Reinhardt, 1911. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Max_Reinhardt.jpg.
Figure VI: Unknown author. (1931). Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel. Low-resolution reproduction of publicity photograph for the film Der Blaue Engel (w:The Blue Angel) (1930), featuring Marlene Dietrich. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marlene_Dietrich_in_The_Blue_Angel.png.
Figure VII: Unknown author. (1931). Berlin; Tanzkabarett im Europahaus, Stresemannstraße. German Federal Archives. Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung - Bildbestand (B 145 Bild). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-P062899,_Berlin,_Tanzkabarett_im_Europahaus.jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license. Attribution: Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-P062899 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.
