Ramona Zündloch - Musikalisches Kabarett 1921 - 1933

The German cabaret really began to blossom in the 1920s and 1930s, bringing forth all kinds of new cabaret artists such as Werner Finck at the Katakombe, Karl Valentin at the Wien-München, and Claire Waldorf.
Some of their texts were written by great literary figures such as Kurt Tucholsky, Erich Kästner, and Klaus Mann.

When the Nazi party came to power in 1933, they started to repress this intellectual criticism of the times. Cabaret in Germany was hit badly: In 1935 Werner Finck was briefly imprisoned and sent to a concentration camp; at the end of that year Kurt Tucholsky committed suicide; and nearly all German-speaking cabaret artists fled into exile in Switzerland, France, Scandinavia, or the USA. What remained in Germany was a state-controlled cabaret where jokes were told or the people were encouraged to keep their chins up.

Paul O'Montis was a Berlin cabaret celebrity, featured in several major revues and on dozens of recordings.
As a homosexual and a Jew, however, his career was ended after the Nazis came to power.
In 1933 he emigrated to Vienna, Austria. He fled to Prague after the "Anschluss" in 1938 (the German annexation of Austria).
When the Germans occupied western Czechoslovakia in 1939, O'Montis was arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near the Berlin theaters where he formerly starred. He died there perhaps by his own hand in July 1940, at age 46.
This collection features his song "Ramona Zündloch" besides other great cabaret tracks by Curt Bois, Trude Hesterberg, Ernst Busch, Kurt Gerron and Claire Waldoff.
The cover shows us "Stilleben mit Maske und Fisch" by the great George Grosz from 1931.

Ramona Zündloch - Musikalisches Kabarett 1921 - 1933
(256 kbps, cover included, ca. 88 MB)