Kabarett

Unlike comedians who make fun of all kinds of things, Kabarett artists (German: Kabarettisten) pride themselves as dedicated almost completely to political and social topics of more serious nature which they criticize using techniques like cynicism, sarcasm and irony.

Ernst von Wolzogen founded in Berlin the first German cabaret called Überbrettl (literally Superstage, a play of words on Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch, Superman), later known as Buntes Theater (colourful theatre), in January 1901.

In 1935 Werner Finck was briefly imprisoned and sent to a concentration camp; at the end of that year Kurt Tucholsky committed suicide; and nearly all German-speaking kabarett artists fled into exile in Switzerland, France, Scandinavia, or the United States.

At the end of the decade, the students' movement of May 1968 split opinion on the genre as some old kabarett artists were booed off the stage for being part of the old establishment.

After reunification, new social problems, such as mass unemployment, the privatization of companies, and rapid changes in society, meant that cabarets rose in number.

As of 1999, contemporary active political kabarettists and satirists in Germany include: Urban Priol, Thomas Reis, Arnulf Rating, Heinrich Pachl, 3 Gestirn Köln 1, Bruno Jonas, Richard Rogler, Mathias Richling, Dieter Hildebrandt (died 2013), Henning Venske, Matthias Beltz (died 2002), Matthias Deutschmann and Volker Pispers.

[7] It retained the intimate atmosphere, entertainment platform, and improvisational character of the French cabaret but developed its own characteristic gallows humour.

By the late 1920s the German cabaret gradually had come to feature mildly risque musical entertainment for the middle-class man, as well as biting political and social satire.