Cabaret of the Nameless
The Cabaret of the Nameless was a famous series of cabaret events in Berlin in the 1920s.
The conférencier Erich Lowinsky (stage name Elow ) placed a newspaper advertisement in 1926 in which he was looking for “young talents” who should perform in front of a paying audience on Monday evenings. The event should be called Cabaret of the Nameless . 187 prospective customers responded to the advertisement, to whom Lowinsky pretended that there were influential scouts, Broadway agents or record producers in the audience who were looking for new talent. In truth, Lowinsky primarily selected the most talented applicants. Fifteen of them were given a quarter of an hour each evening to present themselves on the stage of the Monbijou Cabaret on Friedrichstrasse . The actors were mostly laughed at and booed by the audience. Many left the stage distraught and in tears. The criticism spoke of sadism and typically bad taste.
In Erich Kästner's capital city novel Fabian (1931), the cabaret of the nameless served as a template for the cabaret of the anonymous described there . Lowinsky appears in the novel as the emcee Caligula . In the novel, Fabian's friend Labude tells about him: “A resourceful guy has picked up half-crazy people and lets them sing and dance. He pays them a few marks, and they let the audience scold them and laugh at them. They probably don't even notice. ... People certainly go there who are happy that there are people who are even crazier than they are. "
The Nameless Cabaret existed until 1932. It was a forerunner of controversial contemporary television formats such as The Gong Show, Deutschland sucht den Superstar and Das Supertalent .