I would have danced tonight

"A friend, a good friend", "It's so green when Spain's blossoms bloom", "Oh my papa", "It only happens once, it'll never come again", "The Spree still flows through Berlin" - until today many of his chansons and musical songs are popular.

The man with the inexhaustible wit worked closely with the composer Werner Richard Heymann, but also with Ralph Benatzky, Oscar Strauss and Robert Stolz.

Gilbert rhymed, his musical partners set to music.

A lifelong, creative friendship connected him with Heymann.

The success of chansons & cabaret, hits & revues in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s would be unthinkable without Robert Gilbert, Werner Richard Heymann and a number of other Jewish composers, poets, singers and actors.

Their poetry, music and stage art has wit, verve, variety and depth, in short: the makings of classics. But from 1933 they were persecuted, the genre of the chanson, the "intelligent song" was destroyed. We would like to remind you of that.

Gilbert remained true to the Berlin dialect even in exile and was a pointed observer of his time: "It's important to complain, anyone can be nice".

The German Cabaret Archive writes: “The texts by the great Robert Gilbert carry the sound of Berlin from the fateful 1920s out into the world to this day.”