To browse Academia. On one hand, we have the rather dry, academic approach, sans of all fl avor and colorful description, and at best is only a historical outline of the established theatres, revues, cabarets, composers and performers presenting conventional entertainment. This view tends to leave out the sub-cultural infl uences, the gritty underworld climate of the cellars and dark pubs where many of the intelligentsia and artists gathered.
In the other view of the period, we have a romanticized longing for the torrid dark cellars of Berlin, fi lled with opium smoke, transvestite chorus girls, hot jazz and barons with suspect incomes and perverse tastes. This ignores the wider cultural scope. Much, much more. To even beg The present paper deals with the social context of political cabarets performed in Vienna and Budapest during the interwar period.
Both worked in close collaboration with the Social Democratic Party, engaging in political activities like supporting election campaign. Besides criticizing the oppressive politics of the conservative Horthy regime, including police violence and anti-Semitic laws, comedy sketches also tackled the structural demeanors of Social Democratic party-institutions.
Polin Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 31, , pp. Kosmas is a peer reviewed, multidisciplinary journal that focuses on Czech, Slovak and Central European Studies. Modern forms of popular culture emerged at the intersection of accelerated urban development and increasing transnational interactions in the decades around The urban entertainment sector was a hotspot of globalisation, characterized by intense cross-border transfer and exchange, making cosmopolitan culture accessible for the majority of leisure-seeking urban dwellers.
Only just recently however, has research in this field begun to catch up with developments and debates in transnational and global history, and vice versa. These two edited volumes give an overview of current trends, new conceptual debates, as well as of remaining open questions in research on popular culture in the modern metropolis. Variety and revue shows played a significant role in popular culture during the first half of the 20 th century. Serving as a typical genre of cosmopolitan urban entertainment, these productions consisted of international acts, where a 'foreign' act was mostly defined by music, visual appearances and performance style; thus, not exclusively by the actual origin of the performer.
