Cabaret Fledermaus, founded by the Jewish businessman and art patron, Fritz Waerndorfer, operated in Vienna from 1907 to 1913. Its team of cabaret writers included the Jewish satirists Peter Altenberg, Alfred Polgar and Egon Friedell. Poster design: Berthold Löffler, 1907
Must Know
In 1907 the „Wiener Werkstätte“ founded the „Theatre and Cabaret Fledermaus“.The architect Josef Hoffmann, the painter Koloman Moser and the financier Fritz Waerndorfer, in collaboration with the artists they employed. They were responsible for everything: financing, the program and, perhaps most important of all, the adaptation into a theatre-hall of an underground location in the cellar of a large block of flats on Kärntner Strasse in central Vienna. It was a combination of innovative, avant-garde artists and a brave businessman. The theatre was the fulfillment of the aspiration to realize the idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art. Instead of creating a formal theatre they turned to cabaret with its lack of respect and traditions, and its ability to imitate and subvert – a modern type of theatre created in the metropolis of Paris.
