Berlin Cabaret (Studies in Cultural History)
The definitive account of the German capital's club and revue circuit from its origins around 1900 to its terrible coda in the transit camps, where performers would play for chuckling SS commandants before they were sent to their deaths. (New Statesman and Society)[A] wonderful book...Berlin cabaret...was embedded in Berlin intellectual life. Jelavich's documentation of these relationships offers a great gift to historians of German culture--indeed to all historians of modern Germany. (Barbara Miller LaneCentral European History)Jelavich makes an important contribution to the study of cultural history. (James L. ZychowiczMonatshefte)The reader is transported clearly and smoothly on a fascinating journey through the history of an urban art form that was strongly stimulated by some of the same forces that gave rise to the [Berlin-focused] publications...Covering a period of almost half a century, from the founding of Ernst von Wolzogen's Motley Theater in 1901 through performances by inmates of concentration camps during the Second World War, Jelavich makes an especially valuable contribution to the analysis of culture in an urban context. (Andrew LeesCulture in Modern Germany)Peter Jelavich first explored the development of aesthetic modernism inMunich and Theatrical Modernism(1987). His superb new book carries this inquiry into the more complex and variegated life of Germany's political and cultural capital...Jelavich has contributed significantly to our understanding of modernist culture and its metropolitan context. He illuminates every subject he touches upon: the intersection of elite and popular art in the development of aesthetic modernism, the history of popular theater in Berlin, the city's cultural politics, and the broader social and political history of Germany. Like the best of cabarets, this book enlightens and entertains. (Warren BreckmanJournal of Social History)[A] well-written and clearly organized book that displays all the hallmarks of a comprehensive standard work and reference source, rich in information that entices further investigation. (Frederick A. LubichGermanic Review)Peter Jelavich has dismantled many legends about the politics of popular entertainments in his fine history,Berlin Cabaret. (Anthony GraftonNew York Review of Books)Like the eloquent conférenciers who comment on the cabaret acts that are his subject here, Jelavich expertly takes readers in hand, introduces them to the exuberant affairs of Berlin, and does so in a witty and insightful fashion...A great achievement. (Peter FritzscheAmerican Historical Review)Jelavich has set the stage in a masterful work on the interaction between culture and commerce and the relatedness of decadence and exuberance as manifest in theBerlin cabaret. It was no mere frivolity but a legitimate expression--see Walter Benjamin and Georg Simmel's observations on the big city-see indeed Friedrich Nietzsche's Dionysian exhilaration--of a diversity and fragmentation that conditioned life in the Berlin metropolis. Jelavich clearly has had fun collecting all the evidence on the cabaret, and as he unfolds the story of its proponents, the texts of skits and songs and police reports, he succeeds in moving a seeming fringe phenomenon into the center of political and cultural dialogue of the big city whose idiosyncrasies he has recaptured with skill. The scholarship is impeccable, the writing is elegant; the author's fascination with his subject is contagious to the fellow-scholar as well as, I imagine, to all readers. (Klemens Von Klemperer, Smith College)In this well-written book, Peter Jelavich has tracked down cabaret openings, closings, and programs, and discusses politics and personalities. His writing makes the history of Berlin cabarets come alive in a very special way. I found myself increasingly fascinated with the 'showtime' experiences, both on-stage and back-stage. (Richard Hunt, Harvard University)