Unsurprisingly, cabaret and nationalism always had a difficult relationship. The more effective cabaret is the one which challenges prevailing values, successful fashion, and the political powers that be. It makes people re-examine their preconceived notions, and it attacks figures, institutions and symbols of authority. Even when non-political, cabaret questions social mores with special regard to sexuality, religion and commercialism and this is what constitutes its form of humour and its stronger point of social commentary.

Of course, no nationalistic force would ever have any of it.
The antagonism between cabaret and nationalistic forces started very early in the Weimar Republic life. Right-wing attitude were always a target for cabaretists, who, after all, were more often than not liberals and leftists. Cabaret also addressed Hitler’s ambitions of power since he first raised to national attention. It pointed out the flaw of his ideology, and ridiculed the goals of the NSDAP as outlandish and crazy. This may even be the reason why most of the cabaret movement failed to understand his true threat: it ws just too absurd, they could see it clearly, and they thought other people could see it as clearly.
Even after 1931, when street violence became particularly virulent in Berlin, cabaret had a hard time intercepting the danger that was coming, in the same moment they had to start making concession to it. After 1931, in fact, many cabarets decided to stopped using politics in their shows.

When Nazis came into power in 1933 they soon sought to destroy the cabaret movement, for most of the entertainers were liberal, leftist and Jewish. Many of these artists fled Germany in the first days and weeks of the Nazi rule and those who remained, being them Jews or ‘Aryans’, had to come to heavy terms with the new regime. They often had to bow to the new ideology (or pretend they did) or face the consequences of keeping to address the problem Nationalism posed. Most of them were persecuted and ultimately forced to close down.

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Positive cabaret

The Nazis tried to counter the criticism of the cabaret movement by creating their own cabaret form, one that would not criticise but applaud the good things the new regime brought about. Which was a plan destined to fail from the beginning.
Cabaret is inherently a form of social criticism, one that looks at reality in a subversive way so to cause critical thinking. Admittedly, there was nothing more alien to the Nazi’s ideology than this. The last thing the Nazis wanted was critical thought. They wanted conformism, a ‘healthy folk mentality’. Individualism was dangerous and undesirable. In May 1933 Goebbels told his audience of actors and theatre directors that ‘individualism will be smashed’ and replace by dedication to the ‘Volk’. The positive cabaret was supposed to give a strong, unambiguous response to people who disturbed the homogeneous mindset.

By the outbreak of WWII Goebbels had achieved the ‘complete harmlessness’ of all entertainment. Cabaret went back to noncritical vaudeville as it had been before the 1890s. In short, it was not cabaret anymore.

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RESOURCES

Limelight – ‘Willkommen’: the History of Cabaret

Peter Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret. Harvard University Press, Harvard, 1993

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