Cabaret of the Nameless (III)

Erich Kästner, besides his newspaper article of 1929, left a description of the Cabaret of the Nameless, this time in his novel Fabian, from 1931. But here he calls it: Cabaret of the Anonymous. Establishments of this kind apparently also existed in other cities, such as Paris. I had the opportunity to know such a place in the Raval of Barcelona, back in the 1970s. I don’t think it exists any longer.

Suddenly Labude stopped and said, "I cannot go home yet. Come, let's go to the Cabaret of the Anonymous. "
''Never heard of it. What is that?"
'' I've never been there either. A smart guy has made up his mind to put some crazy people together and to get them to dance and sing. They get a couple of marks and they let themselves be mocked and insulted by the public. They probably do not even notice it. It seems that the place is always full. It's understandable, after all. Many people are relieved by the sight of others more crazy than themselves. "
Fabian consented. He turned to look at the hospital, above which the Big Dipper was shining. '' We live in a great age, 'he said,' that grows greater from day to day. '

A great number of private cars were parked in front of the cabaret. At the entrance, a big man with a red beard, a hat with feathers on his head, held a giant halberd and shouted: "Come on, ladies and gentlemen, take place in the padded cell!" Labude and Fabian entered, left the coats in the cloakroom and , after long research, they found a place at a corner table in the crowded and smoky room.

On a rickety stage a girl was jumping, smiling to herself with a dull look. She was probably a dancer. She wore a green dress, clearly made by a housewife, carrying a bunch of artificial flowers in her hand; at regular intervals, she tossed the bunch and herself. On the left, on the stage, a toothless old man strummed on a clunky piano the "Hungarian Rhapsody".

It was not clear whether there was any relationship between dance and music. The audience, all very elegant people, drank wine, chatted loudly and laughed.

"Fräulein, telephone. It’s important!" a bald gentleman shouted. The audience laughed even louder, but the ballerina was not distracted and continued undaunted to smile and jump. Suddenly the piano was silent. The rhapsody was over. The girl at the scene threw an angry look at the pianist and continued with the hops: the dance was not over yet.

"Mom, your baby is crying!" croaked a lady with a monocle.
"Yours too," said one from a table farther away.
The lady turned around. "I have no children!"
"Lucky for them!" shouted a voice from the back.

"Silence!" someone else shouted. The exchange ceased. The girl continued to dance, despite her probably sore legs. Finally it seemed to her that it was enough, she landed badly, smiled more stupidly and spread her arms. A fat gentleman in a tuxedo stood up. "Good, good! Come again tomorrow, to beat the carpets! "
The audience applau

ded, making a great noise. The girl continued to bow in reverence. Finally, a guy came out of the scenes, grabbed the ballerina who did not want to leave and dragged her away, then returned to the spotlight.

"Good ,Caligula!" shouted a lady from a front row table.

Caligula, a plump young man in tortoiseshell glasses, turned to the gentleman who sat next to the woman. "Your wife?"

The gentleman nodded.

"Then tell her to keep her beak shut!" Caligula said. Great applause. The gentleman in the front row turned red like a poppy. His wife was flattered.

"Silence, fools!" Caligula shouted again, raising his hands. There was silence. "This dance ... was it not a memorable event, a sublime thing?"
"Yes ... Yes!" the audience roared.

"But we have something even better. Now I will introduce you to Paul Müller from Tolkewitz, Saxony. Paul Müller speaks Saxon and is believed to be a fine reciter. Presently he will recite a ballad. Prepare yourself for something extraordinary. Paul Müller of Tolkewitz is, if his appearance does not deceive me, completely insane. I have not spared any expense in order to hire this number for my cabaret. Because I cannot tolerate that there are screwballs only in the audience.

"This is really too much!" said a spectator with scarred face. He had jumped on his feet, indignantly stretching the flaps of his jacket.

"Sit, sit!" Caligula ordered and grimaced. "Do you know what you are? An idiot!"
The gentleman with an academic title was gasping for air.

"Calm down," continued the cabaret owner. "Besides, I do not use the word ‘idiot’ to offend you, only to describe you."
The audience laughed and applauded. The scarred guy's friends forced him to sit and tried to calm him down. Caligula pulled out a bell, shook it hard and called: "Paul Müller, come out! " Then he eclipsed.
From the back came a tall, incredibly pale-faced man in worn-out clothes.

"Hi, Müller!" They shouted at him.

"He grew up too fast!" Someone exclaimed.

Paul Müller bowed defiantly, ran his fingers through his hair and then pressed his hands over his eyes, as if to concentrate. Suddenly he pulled his hands away from her face, stretched them out, spreading his fingers, opened his eyes wide and declaimed: "The race to death - by Paul Müller."

From Fabian, by Erich Kästner. My translation. 

The man goes on with his pathetic recitation, people laughs at him and throw him lumps of sugar. He loses patience and attacks somebody in the audience. Caligula drags him away, asking the audience to excuse Paul Müller while at the same time insulting some spectators.

Fabian and his friend leave. “This is an international phenomenon”, he says, “I’ve seen a show like this one in Paris.”

    

More about the Cabaret of the Nameless

An article by the writer Erich Kästner about the Cabaret of the Nameless:

Kästner compares this cabaret (not to be confused with one with the same name which exists today in Berlin) to a Roman circus, where one goes to satisfy one's lowest instincts. Here, it is not gladiators who kill each other, nor Christians who are massacred. No, what one sees are amateurs who dream of being discovered and to make a career in the real cabarets, in the revue theaters. But their talents are completely absent, and that's exactly why they were invited to Kabarett der Namenlosen. This place would be better named "Cabaret of the Zero-Talented".

The Cabaret of the Nameless designates the craziest institution one could possible conceive. Naturally it makes its home in Berlin and represents, as the producer of the cabaret (who is not inclined to embellish) boasts, one of the city's typical instances of tastelessness. He answers to the pseudonym Elow (his real name was Erich Lowinsky) and his leisure palace is only open Mondays. The rest of the week the space is given over to real cabaret performances. Only once a week do the artists seat themselves among the audience, contributing considerably to the "beautification" of the evening.

The first-time guest is in for a surprise. He expects to make the acquaintance of young talents who want to be discovered and to whom Elow has given the chance to try out their act on the boards. Whoever thinks that, discovers himself to be profoundly mistaken. The Cabaret of the Nameless serves a completely different purpose.

The more incompetent and ignorant the poor artist-to-be is, the more welcome he is to the producer. And the more hospitably Elow's public accepts him. For the whole point here in the Cabaret of the Nameless is to laugh oneself silly at stupid and pathological human beings.

The newcomer is seized with extravagant horror at this malicious amusement put on by a resourceful businessman for unhesitating enthusiasts. Sadists find ample nourishment here! Everyone wants to feed on the helpless imbecility of arrogant idiots. Here the public indulges the instincts it otherwise gratifies by visiting insane asylums and attending executions and bullfights. Nothing has changed since Roman gladiators took the field against slaves and Christians. Human beings are astonishingly constant when it comes to vices. The arena has become a cabaret. Armed conflict has turned into recitations. The bulls have become—oxen. Much changes. but the greed for sensation remains the same.

A single extenuating circumstance for this modern form of entertainment can be noted. And it nearly suffices to excuse the tastelessness of this undertaking: the nameless are for the most part such pig-headed beings that they are completely impervious to the ridicule and laughter of the audience. The reason for their immunity borders on the incomprehensible. Whoever has not been there cannot imagine the psychic lives of these victims. They are so occupied by their need to appear on the stage that they notice nothing of what is happening all around them. They recite the saddest stories one could possibly conceive and take no offense at the howling laughter from the audience because they quite simply do not hear it! They achieve a state of rapture that would cause every serious performer to envy them. With utterly vacant smiles playing on their lips they let the merriment of the others completely pass them by, speak their nonsense or hop their dance steadfastly to the end, and are not even disturbed when Elow leaps onto the stage, bids them to pause, and lets the audience vote whether the “performer” should keep dancing or talking, or whether they have had enough. The ancient Romans turned their thumbs down when the vanquished was to be dealt the death blow. Here they scream: "Keep him up there, Elow! He's sooo good! Let him start over from the beginning!”

The less talented the artist in question. the more “natural” it is for the audience to press energetically for his performance to go on. While his face—in truth !—glows with happiness because he’ll have the opportunity to be ridiculed again from the start.

Elow takes the stage to supply a kind of compensatory justice by reviling the audience in a fashion that would suffice anywhere else to sow mayhem and murder. Since those he honors with such insults are mostly regulars, no serious discord erupts. That is. unless there is a Bavarian in the audience who takes off his coat and threatens to pay Elow a visit on the stage. But peace is quickly restored—the guests after all are free to abuse the performers. which they do with impressive diligence.

The guests treat Elow roughly. Elow treats his guests roughly. Together they treat the "artists" roughly and take no offense whatever when the latter deliver extremely uninhibited responses. In short, people come here to pull out all the stops and let themselves go, to exempt themselves from internal constraints and behave as impossibly as possible.

People unconsciously subject themselves to a psychoanalytic cure here. They are cured of the usual base instincts by allowing them free rein in safe surroundings. Elow is therefore a modern physician attending to Berlin's nervous disorders. . . . To hear him suddenly call oneself an “idiot” means nothing. It is already lucky that it was not much worse. The small room lined with tables from which wine and champagne are being drunk resounds with jokes. insults, and insolence of all sorts. People grow fangs by using them to bite, then return pacified to human society. This is a padded cell for the metropolis! One can rage, claw, and pound without hurting either oneself or others.

The metropolis in its natural form is an inhumane place to be and inhumane means are required for it to be endured. The main thing is that the nameless are as invulnerable as a sword swallower. So it is probably possible after all to absolve this cabaret. just like one excuses dreams in which murderous and shameful acts occur. Such dreams purify people for their doings by the light of day.

From « The Weimar Republic sourcebook », Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, Edward Dimendberg, University of California Press. Originally published at the Magdeburger General-Anzeiger, April 7, 1929

    

Next stop: Berlin Tempelhof

How did people travel in Europe in the 1920s ? Cars were not that common, and I don’t think buses were usual either, at least for long distance transport. I think people travelled mostly by train. And I know for a fact that airplane fares were very expensive, so that only well to do people used it. Still, this post will deal with air transport in Germany and Europe in general.

Deutsche Luft Hansa (DLH) was founded in 1926 in Berlin. The name of the company was a composite of "Deutsche Luft" ("German Air" in German), and "Hansa" (after the Hanseatic League, a mediaeval trading league). The foundation had been made possible by the lifting of restrictions on air operations imposed on Germany by the Peace Treaty after World War I. The route network expanded quickly to cover major European cities.

Berlin-Tempelhof

The most important airport for DLH was Berlin Tempelhof. From there a Fokker F.II took off on 6 April 1926 for the first scheduled flight to Zürich via Halle, Erfurt and Stuttgart. In the same year, Deutsche Luft Hansa launched non-stop flights from Berlin to Moscow, an exceptionally long distance for that time. Shortly after that, flights to Paris were commenced. Deutsche Luft Hansa was one of the first airlines to operate night flights, the first of which connected Berlin with Königsberg (in Eastern Germany) using Junkers G 24 aircraft.

Around 1930, it took 4 1/2 hours to fly from Paris to Berlin and more than 6 hours from Paris to Rome. Flight autonomy was scarce compared with now. The Paris-Berlin flight, for instance, had a stop in Cologne. Belgian Sabena Cologne-Copenhagen with stops at Essen and Hamburg.

Another reason for the many stops was the fact that airplanes transported not only passengers but also mail.

Politically, the leaders of the Luft Hansa were closely related to the Nazi Party; an aircraft was made available to Hitler, free of charge, for his campaign for the 1932 presidential election. Erhard Milch, who had served as head of the airline since 1926, became a high-ranking official at the Aviation Ministry when Hitler came to power in 1933, despite being partly a Jew.

Tempelhof was one of Europe's three iconic pre-World War II airports, the others being London's now defunct Croydon Airport and the old Paris – Le Bourget Airport. It acquired a further iconic status as the centre of the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49. It closed all operations on 30 October 2008, despite protests from the public.

    

The two German capitals

Vienna in the 1920s

Vienna and Berlin. Berlin and Vienna.

The two most populous German cities, but also the most important in terms of art and science, without denying the importance of Munich, Hamburg or Francfort.

But the differences overshadow the similarities. Lutheran Berlin against Catholic Vienna. Vienna, capital since centuries of a great empire that, in 1914, went from the Mediterranean to the nearby Black Sea, and where thirty languages ​​were spoken. Berlin, which until 1871, was only capital of Prussia, a state among others in the space we now call Germany.

Vienna was for a long time the most important capital, it far surpassed Berlin. But in 1871 the German Empire was founded by Bismarck and Berlin became its capital. And, already in the 1920s, it exceeded Vienna in population.

For the Germans, Vienna was still synonymous with culture, but also spirituality, sensuality, warmth. View from Berlin, Vienna was a city of the south, almost Italian. Berlin in turn represented above all modernity, economic but also cultural dynamism.

In the wake of the Great War, Vienna was no longer the capital of an empire but just of a small central-european country. If before the war it could boast intellectual figures like Sigmund Freud, Stefan Zweig, Hugo von Hoffmansthal, Adolf Loos, Gustav Klimt, she now lived mainly of its glorious memories.

But Berlin ... Berlin was still the capital of a great state, the largest in Europe, with France. And it's as if all the creative force that had abandoned Vienna had moved to Berlin. Because it is now, despite inflation and misery, that the era of greatness of the Prussian metropolis begins. The Weimar years.

The relationship between those two cities is somewhat like the one between Rome and ancient Greece, with Vienna in the Hellenic role. A city admired by its past, by its charm somehow outdated.

Karl Kraus, the Viennese writer, 

comes to Berlin around 1927. He is impressed but he disliked the in his view excessive avant-gardism. It is to him we owe the phrase : "In Berlin the situation is serious but not hopeless. In Vienna, it is indeed hopeless, but still not serious. "

The Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti, 

another Viennese by adoption, comes at the same time. In his memoirs he writes: « Everything was close to one in Berlin, all kinds of influence was allowed. It was up to anyone to be noticed, if he was prepared to make the effort. For it was far from easy, there was a lot of noise and din. Still, in the midst of the bruhaha and the confusion, you were aware that there were things worth seeing and hearing. Everything was allowed, all prohibitions – which were many, especially in Germany – withered away in Berlin. Even though I came from an old capital like Vienna, I still felt like a country boy and watched everything with my eyes wide open. There was something sharp in the atmosphere, which teased and stimulated one. The horror and chaos that one met in Grosz's drawings was by no means overstated; it was natural here, one got used to it. Every attempt to cutt off from it was seen as perverted, the only thing still perceived as pervert, and if you succeeded in doing it, it quickly itched into your fingers again and you went out to meet the chaos once more. Everything was transparent, there was no intimacy.

But what made the deepest impression on me was the incompatibility in everything that imposed on yourself. Every individual who was something, and they were numerous, had to force himself on the others.

It was important to show off: the visit to Romanisches Café (and on a higher level to Schlichter and Schwanecke) was a pleasure but not just that. It applied to everyone, also for the uninvited guests who went from table to table at Romanisches Café and always got something, as long as they held on to the figure they represented and did not tolerate it being distorted.”

One feels admiration mingled with repugnance. A tad of envy too?

    

Coup d'état at Bertolt Brecht's theater

Babylon Berlin, the successful German TV-series based on Volker Kutscher’s novels, is an excellent introduction to Weimar Berlin. Not that every detail in the series is historically accurate. But the general atmosphere rings true, 

If I was a history professor, I would certainly use it and maybe even build up my course around it. In every episode, there is material for at least five lengthy essays. About political parties, women fashion or even sports.

Take for instance  fifth episode of season one. We see a planned coup d’état by reactionary forces. Their aim is to kill German and French dignitaries during a representation of The Threepenny Opera, a world famous play by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. The play had really been played there, and had its premiere in 1928. Moreover, it went on playing for many years in the same scene and with the same stage production. Not during the nazi-years, of course, but I had the chance to see one of the performances as late as in 1990.

The coup d’état is to take place on occasion of a state visit to Berlin by Aristide Briand, the French Foreign Affairs minister. I was unable to check if that visit is historically true. At the time, his German equivalent was Gustav Stresseman, who was to die in october, that is, six months later. Stresseman and Briand had a close relationship, and they both worked for a peaceful relationship between their respective countries, which had for so long been sworn enemies. They had jointly been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.

One may of course wonder if a performance of a work by the communist Brecht was really conceivable for a foreign state visit. Two months earlier, the same theater had just had a scandal with Pioneers in Ingolstadt, by Marieluise Fleisser, with the participation of the same Brecht and of Peter Lorre in one of his first roles. Moreover, neither Stressemann nor Briand were known for any leftist ideas, they were rather center-right. No, I think a visit, not to the Threepenny Opera but to the Deutsche Oper would have seemed more realistic.

But a historically authentic visit to Berlin by Monsieur Briand, accompanied by Prime Minister Pierre Laval (who would finish his days before a firing-squad after WWII), did take place in september 1931. Here, a vidcap of the Deulig Woche film-journal, by courtesy of Bundesarchiv. 

    

Berlin, capital of all Germanies

Germany, XVIII century

If we compare a map of France from, let’s say, 1700, with a current map, the differences are not so great. Some territories may be missing, like Savoy, or Alsace, but otherwise France was already what it is today. The same goes for England and Spain.

But the case of Germany is very different. At the top of this page, a map of the German states around 1700.

I say "German states" in plural because Germany, in a political sense, did not exist. There was indeed a Holy Germanic Empire (what the Germans call their First Reich, Reich meaning State or Empire), but it was a kind of confederation without a strong central power, a common currency or even a capital. The territory that today is called Germany was a puzzle of small states: Oldenburg, Mecklenberg-Strelitz, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Württemberg, Hesse-Kassel, Schaumburg-Lippe. Principalities, duchies, landgraviates, free cities, but also some kingdoms. What a nightmare for the schoolchildren to have to draw a German map at that time!

German Empire 1871-1918 (Second Reich)

In time, one of those states, the kingdom of Prussia, in blue on the map above, became more and more dominant. Originally a remote territory, close to Lithuania, it gradually extended to the West, encompassing the city of Berlin and making it its capital. Later, through wars and dynastic alliances, Prussia acquires vast territories, extending its domains to the Rhine. By 1870 it was by far the largest of the German states.

In 1871, Bismarck, having defeated the French Empire, realized his dream: a unified German state under the rule of Prussia, more precisely of its king, who now became emperor (Kaiser). And the Prussian capital, Berlin, became simultaneously capital of the Second German Reich.

But what a war did, can be undone by another war: 1918 brings changes to the map: territories in the East disappear in favor of Poland, and Alsace and Lorraine return to France. Otherwise, the maps before and after 1918 are not that different.

It is interesting to note a parallelism between the Second Empires, French (1852-1870) and German (1871-1918). The war against Prussia marked the end of Napoleon III’s kingdom, an economically sound and politically stable country. Without that war Napoleon III could have reigned a few more years and even bequeathed the throne to his son.

The 1914 Reich was also a prosperous and flourishing country, the most powerful of the continent possiblly. Without the First War, who knows how far Germany would have gone? But the war did take place and the Empire turned Republic.

Weimar Republic 1919-1933

A Republic where Prussia was still the most important part, no longer a kingdom now but a Free State with a democratic organization. And its capital? Always Berlin, which was also capital of the Republic.

If this German republic is known as "of Weimar", the reason is not that the good city of Weimar was its capital. No, Weimar was the seat ofthe assembly that proclaimed the Constitution, but the capital remained Berlin.

During the Nazi nightmare, known as the Third Reich, Berlin, despite the lack of sympathy enjoyed by Nazism there, remained the seat of government. After 1945, Berlin was the capital of the Communist GDR, becoming in 1990, again capital of a reunified Germany.

    

A guidebook to Berlin

The original cover from 1931

Suppose you, by some miracle allowing you to cross time barriers, find yourself on the Kurfürstendamm, in the heart of Berlin, not today’s Berlin, but the Berlin of 1931. What would be the first thing you’d do ?

I don’t think it would be to rush to the nearest bookshop to buy a guide. I think I would start immediately to explore the city, to look for all those streets blown up by the war, those places we can only find in vintage postcards, old black and white films or watching a TV-series like Babylon Berlin. 

But I would probably be better advised to buy a guidebook. A copy of Curt Moreck’s book for instance. Its title : « A guide to disreputable Berlin ».

"Curiosity and a hunger for new experiences drive the people of our time from city to city, country to country, and continent to continent. For most, daily life is tiresome. So they get into a car, board a train, or take a seat on an airplane and put many kilometers between themselves and their everyday lives.

Big cities have created visitors' bureaus and provincial governments are already beginning to entrust tourism ministries with the organization of this profitable trade.

One day the visitors‘ bureau in Berlin issued the slogan : “Jeder einmal in Berlin !” « Everyone to Berlin ! » Modern advertising sounds like a categorical imperative. It has adopted a dictatorial tone. These days one receives orders as to which toothpaste, razor blades, fountain pen, beer or holiday resort to choose. "Everyone to Berlin!” The phrase has something irresistible about it. Something enticing, promising, and fascinating hovers around the word Berlin.

The big questions arise once one has left the train station. Then things become problematic. Big cities are indefinite promises. They are labyrinths in which the most beautiful streets betray no hint of where they might lead.

Every city has an official and an unofficial side. The face that appears so clearly in the light of the arc lamps is more like a mask. lt wears the makeup of the coquette, applied too thickly to permit the true features underneath to be recognized. Those who are looking for experiences, who long for adventure, who hope for sensations— they must go into the dark side, venture into the depths. The depths are the more amusing side of life.

City officials offer travelers a guide that refers them to a tiring succession of representative sites and monuments with some kind of historical significance. But intensity is to be experienced only at the vital sites of life, where polar opposites touch, where contradictions become one, where humanity is blended together like a piquant ragout, where the big world lives and the demimonde visits, or where the demimonde lives and the big world visits, and ultimately where the underworld is at home.

Everyone to Berlin ! Nighttime Berlin too. But nighttime one does need a guide. Theseus would never have ventured into the labyrinth without Ariadne‘s thread. And what was the labyrinth compared to Berlin at night, the metropolis of pleasure equally dazzling whether by light or dark? "

(my excerpt and my translation)

Curt Moreck’s right name was Konrad Haemmerling (1888-1957), a journalist and writer. His guidebook (Ein Führer durch das lasterhafte Berlin) is available in a new edition for about 20 euros, but only in German.