It may be tempting to think that the cabaret scene in Berlin was quite defined, but this was not so. Cabaret had come to Berlin from France at the beginning of the 1900s, and soon had started branching out in different forms of presentations, with contaminations in different other forms of entertainment, creating a patchwork of possibilities that was indeed quite puzzling.

Already at its inception, cabaret found a difficult time to impose itself. The first forms of cabaret in Berlin were quite similar to their Parisian counterparts: they were café, or pubs, which offered live entertainment of a sort very similar to what variety shows offered.
But variety troupes and establishments had to adhere to a strict code. They had to have a licence to perform, first of all. They had to pass fire-safety inspections, submit material to the censor for prior approval and terminate their shows by eleven at night.
Because pub-cabarets lacked the outward trappings of a theatre or variety show (costumed actors or singers, stage sets and props) they were able to get away with the theatre code, even if they indeed offered very similar entertainment. In fact, often the actors and singers performing in pub-cabarets were those who were not able to gain a contract with actual variety-shows, which indeed means that the entertainment offered by pub-cabarets was lower-rate. Because they didn’t adhere to the theatre code, pub-cabarets would also evade the preliminary censorship and the eleven o’clock closing time requirement, which made for longer working hours at night and more risqué performances.

This made for unfair concurrence according to the variety show directors, who in 1906 succeeded in winning a court trial that imposed the same limitations as theirs to all pub-cabarets who offered live entertainment, with the additional requirements that cabarets did not use costumes, props or proper stages.

Cabaret and Tingeltangel

This ruling greatly curtailed the offerings of pub-cabarets, and created one more differentiation among the ones which survived. On the one hand, cabarets evolved into the form of entertainment that was characteristic of this environment, with performers at close contact with their public. These were reputable establishments, where male waiters served at the tables and which were considered places fitted for a family night out. From this form of cabaret emerged the socially engaged Kabarett.

But other venues became proper dives, offering drinks and risqué performances. These were the establishments that were disparagingly called Tingeltangel, which a court sentence defined as “Commercial presentation at a fixed place of operation, consisting of musical performances, especially vocal music, declamations, dances, shorter musical and similar works, devoid of any higher artistic or scholarly interest, and which are capable through either their content or their manner of presentation, or arousing the lower instincts, in particular the sexual lust of the audience.”

In the Tingeltangel, female waitresses would served at the tables, and often the actresses and singers would roamed among the tables after their performances, selling naughty postcards or encouraging the men to order more drinks. All these women were considered – and often were – ‘available’. Because they had a similar origin, cabaret, Kabarett and Tingeltangle become one thing in the public eyes – and sometimes we still do today, but they were in fact very different forms of entertainment.

RESOURCES

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