n Europe
In France, the word "cabaret" initially referred to any business serving liquor. However, the history of cabaret culture began in 1881 with the opening of Le Chat Noir in the Monmartre district of Paris. It was an informal saloon where poets, artists and composers could share ideas and compositions. Performers got to test new material, audiences enjoyed a stimulating evening for the price of a few drinks, and owners could count on a steady flow of regular customers – a win-win-win proposition. Le Chat Noir attracted such notables as Maupassant, Debussy and Satie.
Other cabarets soon sprang up all over Paris, and by 1900 similar establishments appeared in several French and German cities. As time went by, many of these rooms featured scheduled entertainment, ranging in size from a few musicians to full floorshows. Cabarets brought a new intimacy and informal spirit to public performances. Audiences sat at cozy tables consuming food and drink while performers worked right in their midst. Inevitably, audience members became part of the show, interacting with performers -- and even each other.
After World War I, cabaret enjoyed even greater popularity all across Europe, but particularly in Germany, where the Weimar government essentially ended all forms of censorship.
The overthrow of the kaiser, the revolutionary tumult that resulted in the establishment of a Social-Democratic republic, and the hardships of the inflation period were the troubled waters in which cabaretists could fish with spectacular success. Berlin became a maelstrom, sucking in the energies and talents of the rest of Germany. . . What New York in the 1920s was to jazz and speakeasies, Berlin was to cabaret.
-Laurence Senelick, Cabaret Performance, Volume II: Europe 1920-1940 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 25.