CABARET!!! Antique German Print - Cabaret in the Weimar Republic - Berlin 1929 1930 - Kempinski's Haus Vaterland

Treasures from THE GERMAN COLLECTION at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 24 x 18, and consciously formatted to work with a standard size store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

As sometimes happens, the more rabbit holes I fall into while researching a particular image, the more there are beyond, and beyond, and beyond. First, as a lifelong fan of 1920s German cabaret and all the ripple effects out into popular Western culture still being felt from it, I saw this and was immediately slammed by the resemblance to the Sally Bowles character in Isherwood's Goodbye To Berlin, brought to life decades later on the stage and screen in Cabaret.

This handsome songbook features musical numbers from what was a colossus of a stage production, not the least bit like the little smoky basement club, barely legal, that we think of as the exclusive venue for cabaret. It was more like Busby Berkeley staged live at Radio City.

The Haus Vaterland was a pleasure palace, and referred to as such, a huge movie theater, the largest cafe in Europe, themed restaurants tucked away on every floor including an American Wild West eatery with over the top cowgirls and cowboys and live music, as well as the main stage.

The whole building lit up at night with thousands of lightbulbs in an animated example of Architektur der Nacht. The story of Kempinski's Haus Vaterland is worth spending a little while on line and digging into properly. Its place in the heart of Berlin's popular culture, its decline and rebirth leading up to 1930, its fall from grace in the years after, eventual dereliction and ultimate destruction are both fascination and tragic.

That said, the era represented here was an apex in popular European culture, even if it was a bright beacon 'while Rome burned' quietly, all around.

The Jewish Kempinski / Unger family, hoteliers extraordinaire, are as well known today in Europe as the name Hilton is to Americans. Already huge when the National Socialists Party rose to power, their amazing ability to dodge the all encompassing hammer blows of the Holocaust, tumble from the heights of wealth and influence yet reemerge stronger and more brilliant after the war was and is truly miraculous.

• Handmade item
• Materials: Art stock enhanced matte paper, archival ink
• Made to order
• Only ships within United States.

SHIPPING

All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.