In particular, the cabaret of the title, the Kit Kat Klub, was made out of whole cloth: its individual features — the half-naked female orchestra, the demonic master of ceremonies, the brassy songs, the jazz-inflected melodies and the expatriate star — may have been on offer separately at different locales, but could not be found all in one place.
And a cabaret with a mixed audience ranging from bohemians to drag queens to profiteers to tourists to Storm Troopers never existed. Berlin cabarets, like London music halls, appealed to and attracted specific groups; a clear distinction was made between those that offered eye candy and those that engaged the intellect.
Decadence applied to Weimar cabaret is something of an oxymoron. The Weimar Republic, although beset with problems both inherited and of its own making, had just been born. The burgeoning population of Berlin had an exceptionally high proportion of youth, due in part to a spurt in the birth rate between and and in part to a loss of adult males in the Great War. As an art form the cabaret was also young, coming out of its teens during the Weimar years.
The cabaret artistique sprang up in the late s in various European capitals as gatherings of poets and journalists in taverns to recite their writing aloud.
Gradually, friends were invited to sit in, and soon the general public paid for the privilege. Even then, the styles differed: in Montmartre, the Chat Noir charmed its audience with courtly speeches, Gothic surroundings and whimsical shadow plays, while at the Mirliton its host Aristide Bruant insulted the spectators and sang slang-riddled ballads of lowlife.
