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Berlin, the German capital, was a typical arts city full of jazz, booze, nightclubs and liberalism. German soldiers returned from World War I to a Germany they didn’t recognize. One officer said, "Promiscuity, shamelessness and corruption reigned supreme." Women could vote under the Weimar Constitution and wandered around feeling quite liberated. The very gay British author Christopher Isherwood lived in Berlin comfortably, writing what would be adapted into the Kander and Ebb musical Cabaret.
Weimar Germany gave rise to schools of thought like dadaism, expressionism and Bauhaus. It was in Weimar Berlin that Brecht first worked on his vision of epic theatre. And significantly, many of the artists and intellectuals at the forefront of Weimar thought were Jewish. |