When cabaret came to Berlin in 1901, it quickly became a theatrical revolution and an avenue of expression in times of social turmoil – and was then nearly wiped out under National Socialism. More than a century since its arrival, the city is once again host to an abundance of genre-fluid entertainment. How does cabaret continue to thrive in Berlin, even as the era of artist’s squats and low cost of living gets smaller in the rearview?
It’s Thursday night at Ballhaus Wedding. Upon entering, guests are presented with a key to the fictional Hotel Peacock Blue and shown to their seats. Enjo Flint stars as the enigmatic bellboy, guiding his audience through a series of mind-bending cabaret acts with the amiable ease of a court jester. Eva Clumsy performs a sultry pole dance.
Tania G puts on a titillating mime-style burlesque number. Flash Gonzales does scintillating magic tricks. Marta Karta flaunts her pipes (and plenty of skin) as a sloppy, drunk clown. And then there’s Flint again, stunning spectators by fastening 26 mousetraps to his ears, neck and eyelids. At the end of the evening, the audience is prompted to staple (that’s right, staple) tips to the performers’ bodies. It’s grotesque and unbearably decadent. In other words: it’s cabaret.
Hullabaloo Cabaret’s show, a lavishly debaucherous evening of Vaudevillian striptease, magic and public displays of abjection, is one of a flurry of cabaret, varieté and circus events on offer in Berlin on any given week. Like the city itself, cabaret in Berlin has seen its share of permutations and transformations.
I asked myself, ‘How can I push my body to the point that I’m still alive but doing something really dangerous?’ – Enjo Flint
From the minute it hit the capital in the early 1900s, it has offered audiences and performers alike a locus of radical enchantment. But the art form boasted more than hedonistic excess. Kabarett, a distinct performance art that fuses comedy with political commentary, existed in tandem with the boundary-pushing striptease, queer stage acts and acrobatics for which the era is known.
With so many constituent parts – from subversive burlesque to circus freak shows to political satire – it can be difficult to define what cabaret actually is. But if any city can claim to foster the full scope of the form, surely Berlin – with countless venues and wonderfully weird performers – is that place.
Striking Gold
Cabaret as we know it today began in Paris, at Le Chat Noir. Established in 1880, the venue was home to steamy burlesque, can-can numbers and performances by stars of the day like Edith Piaf. The art form was imported to the then-German Empire in 1901 by Ernst von Wolzogen, whose Überbrettl featured the kind of wry political commentary that would come to define the medium in Germany, particularly following World War I.
The decadence of cabaret’s origins was a far cry from the hyperinflation and poverty that characterised the first third of Germany’s doomed Weimar era. Artists and performers responded to the moment with sardonic, inflation-inspired acts like those at star Trude Hesterberg’s Wilde Bühne theatre in Charlottenburg. Distinct yet overlapping with its French forebear, Kabarett focuses less on tantalising stage feats and more on wry political commentary. This coalesced with more provocative underground acts by Anita Berber, Sebastian Droste and Valeska Gert, to name a few.
Berlin, for me, has always represented something forbidden and dark. – Le Pustra
Thanks to some good luck and diplomatic feats, the Weimar Republic entered a fleeting period of stability in 1924, ushering in the famed Goldene Zwanziger. Many now look back on the Golden Twenties as foreshadowing what Berlin would come to represent nearly a century later: raucous, gender-bending parties, expanded freedom of expression, art and literature, an affordable city where artists flocked for adventure, cheap lodging and sexual liberation. The 20s also spawned some of the most important works of literature of the time, like Christopher Isherwood’s novel Goodbye to Berlin, the inspiration for the 1966 American musical Cabaret.
This hopeful era was brought to a close by the global stock market crash of 1929, which hit the German economy hard. When the National Socialist party rose to power in 1933, counterculture ‘Exilkabarette’ like Die Pfeffermühle emerged. Founded in Munich by writers Erika and Klaus Mann, Die Pfeffermühle often criticised the Nazi party, albeit in indirect terms. Under the Nazis, intellectual or artistic critique of the government was squashed, and the troupe was quickly exiled. Kabarett acts got good at sharing their political ideas between the lines, but even a winking version of cabaret had no hope of surviving World War II intact. Cabaret, however, wasn’t finished with Berlin.
Varieté is the spice of life
Just as cabaret was making its debut in Paris, Prussia was developing a new art form called Varieté, a collection of staged musical, physical or magic acts. The nucleus of this genre was Berlin’s famed Wintergarten. Founded in 1888, the Wintergarten debuted as a mere conservatory in Friedrichstraße’s Central Hotel. Soon, the venue began producing some of the first Varieté performances with acrobats, tumblers and magicians. “Wintergarten was the locomotive helping to establish the whole market of entertainment in 1920s Berlin,” explains the venue’s current director, Georg Strecker. In 1944, Wintergarten was destroyed in an air raid, and rebuilt on Potsdamer Straße in 1992.
I definitely feel more like a clown inside. – Jack Woodhead
The theatre’s latest production, Josephine, is a loose homage to the US dancer, singer, and all-around-star Josephine Baker. The show treats audiences to a delightful sampling of some of the most impressive acts in the world, all held together by the stunning pipes of Nicolle Rochelle in the role of Baker. The show’s director, Rodrigue Funke, is no stranger to the stage himself.
During his long career as a trapeze artist, he, too, performed at Wintergarten. With Josephine, he wanted to explore her essence through the art form she loved best. “We didn’t want to make a documentary about Josephine Baker,” clarifies Funke. “Rather, we wanted to fall down on our knees before her as the great goddess of entertainment.”
Luckily, no one actually falls on their knees – but the show still looks like it might hurt. Three young women perform unimaginable balancing acts, and a contortion artist winds his spine around a rope like a human slinky. Later, a woman in bondage gear and roller skates hurls in circles to such an extent that one fears she may fly through the ceiling. This element of risk is, according to Funke, all part of the fun. “This is what Varieté is for me. Each moment is different than the one before, and you have no clue what’ll happen next.”
In March, following Josephine’s final show, Berlin-based cabaret performer Jack Woodhead will take over Wintergarten’s stage. Woodhead’s act is characterised by impressive ivory-tickling, slick heels and lots of leather. Hailing from Manchester, Woodhead grew up studying theatre and classical piano.
When it came time to settle upon a career, he chafed against choosing a medium – which is how he stumbled upon cabaret and eventually Berlin. The fluidity of being able to move between genres and characters appealed to him, presenting a welcome change from the more rigid career paths available to performers back home.
Woodhead’s style mimics the delightfully fragmented nature of his acts, drawing inspiration from Berlin drag bars as well as his childhood dressing up in his mother’s clothes. His original songs and characters are hypersexualised, but always with a humourous, if slightly unsettling twist. “I know I’m probably selling sex in lots of ways,” Woodhead admits, “which is part of the cabaret aesthetic. But I definitely feel more like a clown inside.”
Going underground
If cabaret is many things to many people, most would agree it’s about marching to the beat of your own drum. For some, this means plying their trade on some of the biggest, most traditional stages Berlin has to offer. For others, it means going underground, into spaces ringing with notes of subversion and self-discovery.
One of the most formidable venues for this kind of cabaret is the circus tent at the end of a long dirt road near Greifswalder Straße. Founded by Juan Migama and Max Mond, Zirkus Mond has been a cornerstone of Berlin’s cabaret and varieté since 2018. Two of the Berliners who have graced its stage are Tania G and Fifi Fantôme, performers who defy both genre and gravity. “As soon as I was born, I started moving,” says Tania G, who performed at Zirkus Mond in September for the circus-cum-sideshow cabaret series Cabaret Chatok that she produces with fellow performer Maia Friend.
Growing up as an Italian in the US, Tania G moved around a lot, pursuing competitive and classical dance. She worked as a professional ballet dancer, but found the impact on her body and psyche untenable. After landing in Berlin, her best friend introduced her to burlesque and cabaret. “I was suffering from body dysmorphia and insecurity,” Tania G explains.
“To be in an environment where people are excited to see you and celebrate you and your body – it felt empowering.” Her ballet chops are evident in all her routines, but her characters present a sultry provocation, from the 20s burlesque dancer to a glamorous punk goblin to a bondage-clad clown. Performing in these different permutations helped her discover more about her sexuality. “I found my own queerness,” she says. “I realised that I felt comfortable in these more masculine roles – that I enjoyed having a cock. It’s really allowed me to find confidence in my sexuality, both on and off of stage.”
For fellow aerial and burlesque performer Fifi Fantôme, the synthesis of identity ushered in by stage life was equally freeing. As a queer kid growing up in Canada, Fantôme felt out of place and left as soon as she turned 18. After a stint working as a music journalist, she found burlesque almost by accident. Her first “lollipop act” was a duet with a friend – a kinky mix of clowning, striptease, pie-baking and (ostensibly) enough lolli-licking to put Lolita to shame. After that, she set to work building a career as an aerialist, burlesque dancer and performance artist – and eventually landed in Berlin in 2017.
Fantôme’s astonishing stage routines are a hodgepodge of delight, replete with mind-bending references from dadaist aliens to gender-fluid circus clowns to can-can dancers. Six years ago, she founded the Velvet Creepers, a queer circus and cabaret company, with Lily Moris and Dunja von K. The troupe performs in circus and cabaret venues across Germany, including Central Kabarett in Leipzig, and are currently residents at Ballhaus Berlin.
For both cabaret creators, shock is a tactic to take the audience outside of their comfort zone. “Some of the ways that I’ve been taught by society to perform femininity really frustrate me,” says Fantôme. “I go against this in my day to day life, but on stage I also try to push or make a spectacle of it.” This subversive trick serves a purpose: “I think people resist any sort of ideology shift when it feels like they’re being attacked. Whereas, if they’re able to come into this fantastical world and see all these amazing things, maybe they come out feeling a bit more accepting of people in their lives.”
Cabaret through crisis
Berlin emerged from reunification as a place of possibility, with creatives flocking in thanks to the cheap rent, abandoned spaces and an ‘anything goes’ attitude. The 1990s and 2000s came to mirror the sense of possibility present in the 1920s. No longer under the shadow of political turmoil, Berlin experienced an outpouring of liberation-infused creativity, leading to brand new forms of cultural output – and to a rediscovery of cabaret.
One of Berlin’s modern cabaret-scene pioneers was not an entertainer herself, but a goth girl whose experimental salon set the stage for one of the most-lauded theme parties in Germany. Else Edelstahl hosted her first 20s-themed event in her Friedrichshain flat in 2004. The concept took off, and Edelstahl has been running the Bohème Sauvage party series for 18 years now.
With a stunning cabaret lineup, dance classes and strict dress code, the event welcomes guests into a proverbial time machine, indulging in all the glitz and glam of the Goldene Zwanziger. Edelstahl also co-hosts Goldstaub, a podcast on the history of the 1920s in Germany, publishes a journal about the time period and organises burlesque shows and private events.
In 2015, Edelstahl also developed Kabarett der Namenlosen with British cabaret artist Le Pustra. Le Pustra, who stars as the show’s lead, describes it as “a musical play set in a decadent and exclusive salon-cum-cabaret in late 1920s Berlin”. Based on the original Kabarett der Namenlosen, a historic Berlin show staged by Erich Lowinsky from 1925 to 1933, the piece delves into the Weimar era’s sense of possibility and innovation, from avant-garde art forms to sexual liberation. Of course, we know how Weimar ended, and Berlin’s status as an affordable artistic mecca is rapidly fading. But for both Edelstahl and Le Pustra, these time-travelling escapades teach us something about the here and now.
“German Kabarett has always been political,” Edelstahl says. One of Kabarett’s early champions was the famed theatre director and playwright Bertolt Brecht. who saw theatre as a vehicle not for entertainment or identification, but as a mechanism for instilling discomfort through spectacle, probing viewers to take political action outside the confines of the theatre.
For performers like Fantôme, this is a no-brainer: “I think this idea of performance as apolitical is just not true. I don’t think you can exist in these spaces, especially underground ones that go against normative culture, and say you’re not political.” Berlin’s modern cabaret certainly bears this out, dissecting issues of the day from the performance of gender to using the stage as fodder for political revolt, as in the cabaret drag shows of The Darvish and Judy LaDivina.
I don’t think you can exist in these spaces…and say you’re not political. – Fifi Fantôme
This may be asking a lot of some cabaret performers, who simply want to show their audience a good time. But whether you view cabaret as political or not, it’s hard to see the engine powering the scene as anything but revolutionary. “In times of crisis, comedy, humour and entertainment become even more essential, as people seek outlets that help them navigate their lives,” says Migama, Zirkus Mond’s art director and self-described resident clown. “Given that we are experiencing such a period of crisis and cabarets are making a comeback, it’s fair to say there might be a connection between the two.”
Cabaret, he believes, strikes the perfect balance between entertainment and art – which is why audiences are perennially interested. “I believe the cabaret scene in Berlin endures through time, continuously evolving with each new generation and emerging formats,” Migama says. “This format has persisted in the city, adeptly adapting to contemporary trends and changes.”
Get your freak on
If you think Berlin’s cabaret scene is all glitz-and-goblin striptease, you haven’t seen Enjo Flint, who turns pain management into a one-man spectacle. Born and raised in Berlin, he kicked off his cabaret career doing fire shows with a small sideshow group. Like Tania G and Fantôme, his initial impulse was to push his body beyond its natural limits – and eventually, setting himself aflame became tedious: “I was getting bored, so I asked myself, ‘How can I push my body to the point that I’m still alive but doing something really dangerous?’”
While performing with sideshow group Pain Solution, he met Princess Tweedle Needle, known to her fans as “Holland’s one and only human pin cushion”. After some trepidation, she agreed to mentor Flint. “I told her I wanted to put my hand in a giant rat trap,” he chuckles. “And to jump into a pile of broken glass. She was game, and when I tried it, she said, ‘That’s good. Now do it on your knees.’”
We’re the kids who probably were made fun of most of our lives, and we’re finding ourselves right here. – Tania G
These days, Flint’s act includes munching glass, taking a chainsaw to his throat and ascending ladders made of machetes. Does it hurt? Hell yeah, it hurts. But as Flint explains it, the trick is teaching the body to accept the pain. Why would someone do this? The answer, like for many cabaret artists, has everything to do with the magic of the spotlight. “I’m not a person who wants to be alone,” says Flint. “And I like when people laugh! When I see laughing people, I’m also happy. I feel so stupid on stage, but I also feel free.”
Despite this emotional allure, producing cabaret in Berlin is still a challenge – it’s competitive, and can be difficult to profit enough to keep going. “I organise a lot of cabarets, and I see how much you have to invest, and how hard it is to earn money,” Flint says. “For me it’s really a risk to invest so much money and to pay the performers. And if it doesn’t sell, I get really fucked. And this is really hard, but I’m so happy with my performers. I try my best, and they see that… they say, ‘We love to perform with you because you take so much care.’ And now I want to try to think bigger.” Flint hopes to one day create a cabaret collective that might attract public funding.
Even for venues as established as Wintergarten, the primary goal is simply covering expenses. “You see, the aspects of the city that make it so exciting for those of us who live here or for the people who come to visit [are] a huge challenge for the people who offer cabaret, because there is so much competition in Berlin – there’s so much on offer. Every night something’s happening in our field: musical theatres, variety and circus,” says Strecker. “And there are roughly 3,000 to 3,500 events taking place every day in this city. Within this quantity, there’s always a very big range of quality as well. And it’s really, really difficult to keep up.”
Hats off to Berlin
Given the challenges of producing cabaret in a city full of entertainment options, why does it still so abound in Berlin today? The answer may lie with Berlin itself, which continues to attract people like Fantôme, Woodhead and Tania G. “We’re all just a bunch of wonderful weirdos,” Tania G says. “We’re the kids who probably were made fun of most of our lives, and we’re finding ourselves right here – celebrating our uniqueness and creating a place where we all feel like we fit in.” She feels like the city offered her a home. “Everywhere I moved, I was trying to assimilate. In Berlin, in this cabaret community, it’s okay to be just me.”
The community that those in the cabaret scene are forging is supportive beyond measure – a celebration of freaks and outcasts finding their home. And for cabaret performers, being part of a ‘freakshow’ isn’t an insult, it’s an honour – on this much, Berlin’s chorus of cabaret stars can agree.
“Historically, people saw freaks as a negative thing,” says Fantôme. “For me, it’s interesting to be different – I don’t want to fit in a crowd. That’s why I moved to Berlin.” “Berlin, for me, has always represented something forbidden and dark,” adds Le Pustra. “The city feels like a refuge, a playground for outsiders, lost souls, misfits, perverts and artists seeking inspiration.” Woodhead agrees: “There’s nothing like this in London, or really anywhere in Europe. The scene is truly unique to Berlin.”
