dehumour1-3, Exercise 3: "German satire did not exist until the cabaret"

Model answer (check the sources named):

1. Who says it? Casual claims in popular accounts of German comedy, which start the story at cabaret or at the Weimar Republic.
2. Record? Satirical writing and drawing is documented long before cabaret: Heine's poems and prose in the 1830s and 1840s, the satirical magazines Kladderadatsch (1848) and Simplicissimus (1896), and the 1898 prosecution of the Simplicissimus staff.
3. When? The cabaret form dates from 1901 in Berlin; the sources above are earlier.
4. Definition? If "satire" means a stage show of sketches and songs, then cabaret is its start. If it means mocking public figures or institutions in print or drawing, the tradition is older.
5. Who gains? Accounts that want to present cabaret as a new, modern art; also those who like the story that German comedy was a product of one dramatic period.
6. What would change my mind? Evidence that the earlier works were not seen as satire at the time or had no public.

Careful sentence: "German satire in print and drawing is documented from the early 1800s, and the stage form of cabaret arrived in 1901; the claim that satire began with cabaret confuses one form with the whole tradition."