Die Weltbühne

Die Weltbühne (English: "The World scene") was a weekly magazine focusing on art and politics. It was founded in Berlin in 1905 by Siegfried Jacobsohn and was originally a theater magazine under the title Die Schaubühne (The Theatrical Scene). After the death of Jacobsohn in 1926, Kurt Tucholsky took over the direction of publication, which he handed to Carl von Ossietzky in May 1927. The Nazis banned it after the Reichstag fire and its latest issue appeared in March 1933. In exile the magazine was published under the title Die neue Weltbühne ("The new world scene").

In addition to Jacobsohn, Tucholsky and Ossietzky, the contributors included prominent writers and journalists such as Erich Kästner, Alfred Polgar, Arnold Zweig, Manfred George, Lion Feuchtwanger and Else Lasker-Schüler.  

Even at its peak, Die Weltbühne did not sell more than 15,000 copies, but they succeeded in several journalistic scoops, including the discovery of the Feme murders in the Black Reichswehr’s paramilitary groups, as well as reports on the secret rearmament of the army, which later led to the so-called Weltbühne-Trials.

Here follows an English version of an article by Carl Mertens, published originally anonymously, in 1925. Mertens, after leaving the military life had become a pacifist.

The Patriotic Associations (Die Vaterländischen Verbände)

Having been a member of nationalist para-military organizations for several years, I have had ample opportunity to become acquainted with the hideous face of the secret organizations. I can no longer follow the racial hate, egoism and bestiality of these ‘idealists’. It was only with the greatest caution that I was able to withdraw from the ranks of the fanatics, because with the help of the spectre of the feme (political murders), they force disillusioned members who want to turn to more peaceful, constitutional activities, to remain loyal.

I joined the patriotic movement out of genuine enthusiasm for the ideal of the national idea. What I found there was a swamp of the most base attitudes and wretched passions, an atmosphere which was a mixture of the lust for blood and cynicism. Appalled by it, I tried to escape.

The patriotic associations, which are anything but loyal to the constitution, have their secrets. Weapon depots must be hidden, nocturnal manoevers must be performed, and then, of course, there is the coup d’etat which they are all preparing. Of course, only the most loyal and most radical know about it, but they nevertheless fear betrayal. No law protects their murderous weapons from theft, confiscation and re-sale. In these watchful times, one is prepared to pay a lot for the odd ‘war souvenir’. On the other hand, they are often uncomfortable with genuine idealists, because they are likely to to be put off by the methods with which the associations desecrate the cause. So they try to keep their people together by fear of feme justice. Everyone is terrified of their own organization, of rejection, emigration, settlement, or plantation, as they call it in their private jargon. The ‘settlement’ committees are the strongest tie which keeps the members together. This invisible hand grips the throats of every landsknecht (mercenary soldiers).

Even the slightest mistrust of a superior, the slightest misunderstanding is enough to to provoke the lowering beast to strike. I have often seen how members yearned to escape, but were paralyzed by fear. Only a few managed to get away, and even they were never again able to relax. Followed by the Medusa gaze of white death, life became a burden to them. The members of these circles think that they can fight for the freedom of the German people with the brute force and despotism of the middle ages, and the attitude, “They can hate me if they like, as long as they fear me.” As well as such murders for self-protection, there are assassinations, which, however, are planned so long ahead that it can always be proven that the assassin left his organization years ago.

A big butcher of a man, was quartered in my room for a time. One evening he told me the following story. “The day before yesterday, at Zoo station, I read a wanted poster. A body had been found in the Döberitzer Sands, a Lieutenant Sand, who had been missing for weeks. I could have killed myself laughing. A wanted poster for me, and there was a copper dozing ten yards away.” He neighed woodenly in recollection of his cold-bloodedness. “If they had just recognized you!” “Bah!” he clicked his fingers, “it was nothing, just one of lots I have done.”

The whole text : https://weltbuehneenglishtranslation.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/the-patriotic-associations-die-vaterlandischen-verbande/#more-2497

    

Cabaret of the Nameless

The famous Berlin cabaret is but a fond memory. We can see short film-sequences, listen to records, but that’s about it. Nevertheless, there is in today’s German capital, something called Kabarett der Namenlosen. I haven’t seen it myself so I cannot vouch for its interest. But they boast some positive press echoes and they have a website:

http://www.boheme-sauvage.net/kdn_press.html

What follows is a citation from the website :

Le Pustra‘s Kabarett der Namenlosen​ is an​ i​ mmersive theatrical play and contemporary interpretation of the scandalous 1920’s in Berlin. The show is staged at the historical​ Ballhaus Berlin​ in Mitte. ​ Kabarett is currently in its 4th run and directed and conceived by International performer, Le Pustra​ and produced by Bohème Sauvage​ .

In Kabarett der Namenlosen, Le Pustra reimagines the Weimar Republic Cabaret Culture through his own unique point of view. The show explores the sexual and artistic freedom enjoyed during those years and the aim of the production is to recapture the exhilarating​ Zeitgeist of the 1920’s. This celebrated period in Berlin still fascinates us today and is more popular than ever with tourists,bohemians, artists and historians visiting from far and wide in search of that illusive but well documented “divine decadence”.

Le Pustra says “I want to offer our audiences a voyeuristic glimpse into the surreal world of smoky late night “Nachtlokals” of the fabled Golden Twenties where you might meet Anita Berber​ and Sebastian Droste. Anything was possible and everything was available.”

The story of Kabarett der Namenlosen consists of various intertwining “flashbacks” from the past as told by its enigmatic and often menacing conférencier, Le Pustra. The action taking place represents a fantasy, an illusion and what the 1920's could have been like if we could visit for only one night.

Various characters appear throughout the evening in short vignettes, comedy turns and poignant performances. The intimate Ballhaus Berlin provides the mise ​ -en-​ scène for the Kabarett’s surreal habituées and the audience are invited to enter a smoky hallucination of sex, art, beauty and dance the night away with The Beautiful and The Damned.

The original Kabarett der Namenlosen was a famous joint in Berlin in the 1920s but Le Pustra’s production doesn’t seem to have much to do with it, which is probably a good thing…
The Conférencier Erich Lowinsky put a newspaper ad in 1926, in which he sought "young talents", which should appear in  front of a paying audience. The event should be called Cabaret of the Nameless.

Lowinsky chose mostly applicants with very little talent, so that the event was something of a freak-show. The actors were mostly laughed at by the audience and booed. The critics spoke of sadism and bad taste.

The Kabarett der Namenlosen appears in Erich Kästner's novel Fabian, from 1931. 

    

Der Querschnitt, a high-brow magazine

 

"Der Querschnitt" (The Cross-Section) is considered the most intellectually sophisticated illustrated magazine of the 1920s. The gallery owner and art collector Alfred Flechtheim began publishing the magazine in 1921, at first as a bulletin for his new Berliner Galerie. In 1924, Hermann von Wedderkop took over the editorship at Ullstein and "Querschnitt" soon established itself as a modern zeitgeist magazine aimed at an elite interested in cultural topics.

 

The issues were marked by international literary contributions (for instance, by Hemingway, Majakowskij, Ringelnatz, Benn, Lasker-Schüler, Proust, Pound, Joyce), occasionally even in the original language, and often translated or printed here for the first time. Esthetically outstanding illustrations and photographs were accompanied by sophisticated small talk in feuilleton style. Portraits of stars and starlets provided esthetic appeal, as did the pictures of nudes or athletes, or the street scenes captured in the unusual perspectives of Neues Sehen ("New Vision"). Typical of "Querschnitt" were also the often cryptic, occasionally provocative combinations of photographs in the art print sections.

"Der Querschnitt" was banned in 1936. The ostensible reason was supplied by sarcastic definitions of foreign words in Issue No. 9, which could be understood as references to the current political situation. A final issue was produced in October of 1936, but not delivered to newsstands.

https://magazine.illustrierte-presse.de/en/

    

Uhu, a monthly magazine of the Weimar Era

Cover by Walter Trier, who also illustrated "Emil and the detectives", by Erich Kästner

The monthly UHU, published between 1924 and 1934, was considered to be the prototype of the general interest magazine and a groundbreaking publication of the Weimar Republic. It was very popular thanks to its originality, wit and innovative printing technology.

Long before other publications, the journal trated trends in culture and science that seem to us modern today, such as the importance of broadcasting and television.

No other editorial staff employed such brilliant authors and photographers, none had so many novel ideas implemented with such a high degree of professionalism and, if necessary, at extraordinary expense. Writers for Uhu included Kurt Tucholsky, usually under his pseudonym Theobald Tiger, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Vicki Baum, the French writer Colette, various well-known music reviewers and occasionally famous guest contributors, such as the Danish film star Asta Nielsen, or even Albert Einstein. And UHU featured pictures by photographers as László Moholy-Nagy, Martin Munkácsy, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Sasha Stone, Umbo (Otto Umbehr); Erich Salomon and Yva.

In addition, drawings and caricatures were given high priority. Along with H. M. Bateman, the English UHU caricaturist of the magazine's early days, others deserving mention are Ottomar Starke, Ferdinand Barlog, Georg Kolbe and Martin Koser. Moreover, an especially defining role was played by the inimitable drawing style of Walter Trier, who also worked for the political-satirical weekly "Simplicissimus".

Uhu took position against the Nazis at an early stage, which is reflected mainly in the form of caricatures such as "Hitler receives the Nobel Peace Prize 1932". It is interesting that Hitler receives the prize from the King of Sweden. If he had really been awarded that prize, he would have received it in Oslo, and not in Sweden, from the king's hands.

Sweden's king awards A.Hitler the Nobel Peace Prize 1932. By Fritz Eichenberg.

    

Russians in Berlin: The Blue Bird

There is a lot to be said about Russians in Berlin. In the 1920s they were probably the largest immigrant group. Most of them were refugees from the Bolshevik revolution and its subsequent civil war and terror. Some came to be very well known, like the writer Vladimir Nabokov. So many were Berlin Russians that Charlottenburg district got to be popularly known as Charlottengrad…

There were also artists like Vassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall. And Pavel Tchelitchew, less known than the other but whose works have an unmistakable touch of the 1920s. His are the set designs shown in this post, done for a Russian-German cabaret called Der Blaue Vogel (The Blue Bird) That name should not be confused with another animal of the same colour and times, The Blue Rider...  Nor with The Blue Mouse, another Berlin cabaret founded by the Danish Argus Bang, but that is a completely different and not wholly veracious story...). It was a literary and folkloristic cabaret composed of Russian emigrants, founded in 1921 in Berlin, by J. Duvan-Torzoff.
The style of the show was strongly influenced by the Letuchaya Mysh (The Bat, the first Russian cabaret, created by Nikita Baliev in 1908 at the Moscow Art Theater, known as Stanislavsky and Anton Chekhov own scene) and characterized by a stylized representation in all the elements: sets, costumes, sounds and music, movements of the actors. This was combined with the choice of using a mixture of several languages: Russian, French, English and German.

The contents concerned mainly literary parodies, such as those of Maurice Maeterlinck's works (L'Oiseau bleu was one of his plays, which had its premier in 1908 at the Moscow Art Theater), but also folkloristic staging in Russian style, with elements of social criticism.

The Blaue Vogel knew significant popularity under the direction of J.D. Jushnij, who also performed as conférencier, taking the company on tour all over the world. The project ended in 1931, after over 3000 performances. In 1945, in Munich, some Russian artists tried to revive the Blaue Vogel, but with little success.

Set design by Pavel Tchelitchew

What follows is a piece from 1924 by Ferdinand Hager, a great admirer of the Blaue Vogel:

Contrary to all other birds, the bluebird usually migrates in the summer. And I, its faithful friend and admirer, am sitting in the heat of Berlin, bent over foreign newspapers, following its proud flight. This year I followed the cabaret of Russian emigrés, The Blue Bird, through Austria, Hungary, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, all of Switzerland and the Bohemian spas, and everywhere I read of victories, triumphs, and cheers.

What is it that compels such a variety of people to a unanimous, nearly identical assessment and enthusiasm? There are, aside from religion, only two personal experiences capable of achieving such a result: that of genuine art and genuine humanity. And I believe it is just these two things that allow these minor entertainment arts from Russia to assume the proportions of a revelation for Europe and America. Perhaps it is wrong to speak of "minor arts" at all. it is major art in a minor key. It is modest: for a miniature, it sacrifices no less time, work, and spirit than would be required for an entire drama—and everything just to captivate the senses, to tune the soul for a few minutes through light, gesture. color, motion, and sound. The principles are: national flavor; resort to native popular painting in its sentimental and grotesque elements, treated here with a most modern audacity; an astounding pairing of expressionism and primitivism; and, in consequence, the introduction of expressionism to the stage. And, alongside sturdy folk art stand vital cross-sections from past epochs: the Rococo, the Renaissance, the Russian eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the most modern Americanism, not mimicked, not caricatured but lived and raised to the level of overpowering effectiveness.

What the Russians have to offer is a cultivated art—not that for: pour I'arr understood only by those possessed of a superior aesthetic turn of mind but rather a bit of fantasy lent naive form in which lifeless objects take on human essence or are filled with human essence; an art that glimpses in objects, in a machine or a toy, the smiling caricature of human actions and deeds.

Set design by Pavel Tchelitchew

It is no accident that it is precisely Russian art that we seek out and treasure today. It is somehow the expression of a deep longing for which we no longer find any resonance in Western European art. We expect of it the fulfillment of some kind of hope slumbering within us, unsuspected and inexplicable, and that is what unites all the different people over whose native lands the Blue Bird has made its summer migration.

For only in this way can one explain how all of these people listen for an entire evening to performances conducted in an utterly foreign language- and understand. That is where the Russians' achievement is manifest: they fill an entire evening using scarcely any of the words of the country in which they are performing, and one understands them anyway, as one rarely has understood anything. For the spectators do not consider what they have seen and heard might be—they simply experience it. [ . . . I

But what is this remarkable thing that sweeps the audience along, that excites it, that causes this cold, spoiled audience of the European metropoles to give up their inner reserve and feel the feelings, join in the action on the stage? It is perhaps quite simply what the emcee does, with such cheerful and cordial directness, beyond all the limitations of distance, as if to every spectator personally: he speaks. All of these things and characters on the Russian’s stage speak. They do not declaim ; they do not present something ; they are not supposed to be works of art, they speak. They speak and we understand.

Hager's text from « The Weimar Republic sourcebook », Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, Edward Dimendberg, University of California Press

    

Moka Efti in German literature

The Moka Efti, as shown in the TV-series Babylon Berlin, is a restaurant and ballroom. But in the basement it is another profession, a very old one, that is practiced. Guests move freely between the two levels. If they are waved through by the « madame » downstairs, that is.

Erich Kästner, a well-known writer and journalist, in his 1930 novel Fabian, describes a joint he calls Haupt’s Ballroom which has similarities with Babylon Berlin’s MokaEfti, though it is said to have a real night-club as its model : Mundts Festsäle, on the Köpenicker Strasse.

Kästner is famous for his novel Emil and the detectives, a very succesful book for youth. However, the excerpt from Fabian I transcribe here is by no means aimed to the youth under 18…

Berlin's Bloody May

The 1st of May 1929 is known as Blutmai (« Bloody May ») in Berlin's history. That day, Communist demonstrations in Berlin led to several days' street fighting.

Already in November 1928, Adolf Hitler had delivered a speech in Berlin (at the Sportpalast) after many years of being banned in the capital. That led to political agitation and in the end Police Chief Karl Zörgiebel (a Social Democrat) banned all open air demonstrations in Berlin, including the traditional ones on Maj 1st. Social Democrats (SPD) respected the prohibition and had theirs indoors (at theSportpalast, incidentally). The vice-chief of the police was Bernhard Weiss (see link).