Some background
Berlin cabaret, from the 1920s to now
The tradition this bill sits inside — where it came from, what interrupted it, and how today's Berlin stages relate to that history.
See dates on GetYourGuide ↗Cabaret in Berlin, in short
| Period | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1920s | Weimar-era Berlin built small cabaret stages mixing satire, music and burlesque. |
| After 1933 | That scene was shut down under the Nazi regime. |
| After 1990 | A reunified Berlin's nightlife rebuilt cabaret and burlesque venues from scratch. |
| Today | Stages including Showbühne Berlin continue the format with new casts and new rooms. |
Where the tradition starts
Berlin's cabaret reputation is usually traced to the Weimar Republic years of the 1920s, when the city's small stages combined political satire, music, dance and burlesque into a single late-night bill. That period is the one most people picture when they hear 'Berlin cabaret' — a specific decade, in a specific city, rather than a tradition that has run continuously ever since.
The interruption
That scene did not continue past 1933: cabaret as Weimar Berlin had known it was shut down under the Nazi regime, and the city's nightlife did not simply pick back up where it left off once the war ended. No currently running Berlin cabaret room is a direct, unbroken descendant of a 1920s club.
Rebuilding after 1990
Berlin's nightlife, including cabaret and burlesque, rebuilt itself over the decades that followed — first in a divided city, then, after reunification in 1990, in a reunited one with new venues, new producers and new audiences. The stages running today, Showbühne Berlin among them, belong to that later rebuilding rather than to the 1920s scene directly.
What today's shows borrow
What does carry over from the earlier tradition is the format: a compere holding the room together between numbers, a cast working through short pieces rather than one long narrative, and a room small enough that performers and audience share the same space rather than being separated by distance. The Showgirls of Burlesque follows that same shape.
Burlesque specifically
Burlesque as a form — variety-style performance built around striptease, comedy and spectacle — has its own separate history running through Europe and North America across the 20th century, distinct from (though often programmed alongside) cabaret's satirical tradition. Modern productions like this one usually draw on both strands rather than one or the other exclusively.
Why this matters for your visit
None of this history changes what you'll see on the night, but it's worth knowing that a modern Berlin cabaret bill is a contemporary production working in an old tradition, not a preserved historical performance — the cast, the venue and the specific numbers are all current, even where the format has roots a century old.