I would have danced tonight

Directed by Isabelle Gensior

Everyone knows his hits, but hardly anyone knows him: the Berlin chanson and cabaret poet Robert Gilbert (1899–1978).

“A Friend, a Good Friend,” “It’s So Green When Spain’s Flowers Bloom,” “Oh Mein Papa,” “Das gibt’s nur einmal, das kommt nie wieder,” “Stempellied, Lied der Arbeitslosen,” “Durch Berlin fließt immer noch die Spree”—to this day, his chansons and rhymes carry the “Sound of Berlin” from the 1920s, early 1930s, and postwar years out into the world.

Robert Gilbert wrote lyrics brimming with inexhaustible wordplay, depth, and cabaret-style barbs against inhuman stupidity. He worked closely with composer and UFA General Music Director Werner Richard Heymann, as well as with Ralph Benatzky, Hanns Eisler, Hermann Leopoldi, and Robert Stolz.

“Ich hätt’getanzt heut’ Nacht” is also a musical and cabaret-style evening dedicated to keeping history alive.

Why? The success of chansons and cabaret in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s would have been almost unthinkable without Gilbert and many other artists of Jewish descent. But starting in 1933, they were persecuted, and the genre of the chanson—the “intelligent song”—was destroyed. We want to commemorate this. “Chanson-Nette” Jeannette Urzendowsky is an honorary ambassador of the German Cabaret Archive.

Robert Gilbert remained true to the Berlin dialect even in exile and was a sharp observer of his time: “Complaining is important; anyone can be nice.”