Cabaret and the Weimar Republic

Posted by Lorren on August 13, 2010

I’ve been talking about the Weimar Republic since January of 1998; I believe that America may be headed in that direction. I knew that it was a time of extreme inflation. I learned in German class about how people would take wheelbarrow loads of cash to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread. How people would get paid in the middle of the day, would go buy their groceries, and then would go back to work, getting paid at the end of the day. I wonder how that would work for content production; for some of the things I do, I don’t get paid until two months after some of the work I do. Under extreme hyperinflation, that money would be worthless when I received it. I suppose if the US ever did get into that situation, companies might expedite the payment process… or nobody would work for them.

I watched Cabaret last night in order to try to understand more about the Weimar Republic. The cabaret in the movie was an entertainment establishment of moral decadence. While many people turned to the cabaret in the movie as a response to the despair in the world around them, it’s likely that most of the people were not actually as deep into immorality as the people in the movie. This is apparent when the main characters take a drive out into the countryside, where the “good” people of Germany sing patriotic songs (unfortunately with Nazi leaders).

We see the Nazis duke it out with the Communists. One of the main characters remarks on how they would use the Nazis to get rid of the Communists, and then they would control them. We know from hindsight that it didn’t work that way. In fact, most people that were performers in the Cabaret not only did not control the Nazis, but were sent to concentration camps.

The movie is an interesting look at what the Germans were reacting against. I still want to learn more about that time period, especially if we are repeating the mistakes of the past.