Artist: Kurt Gerron
Author: Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill
Year: 1928

In Brecht/Weill's Dreigroschenoper. Meaning The Criminal Record Of Mack The Knife. Written on special request by main actor Harald Paulsen to warm up te audience for his breathtaking entrée. That honour went to 'Ausrufer' Kurt Gerron during the 'Uraufführung' in Berlin, accompanied only by a street organ. Die Dreigroschenoper was based on an 18th century play by John Gay: The Beggar's Opera, first staged in 1728. In fact, Brecht wrote his political Three Penny Opera to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the English original. The Beggar's Opera was London's first commercial hit, running almost continuously all through the 18th century, as it was based on the intriguing stories of highwaymen and cutpursers. Clergy and Tory politicians failed to counter its success. The more they even tried to, the more popular it got.

Alex Ross in The Rest Is Noise (Picador - 2007) notised how Weimar culture exhibited an unhealthy fixation on the figure of the serial or sexual killer. The German press had a field day covering cases like Georg Karl Grossmann's (the 'Bluebeard of the Silesian Railway'), Karl Denke's (the 'Monster of Münsterberg'), Fritz Haarmann's (the boy killer of Hannover) and Peter Kürten's (the 'Vampire of Düsseldorf'). In a way, a likewise fascination for dubious masterminds red carpeted the 'Aufstand' of a guy like Hitler.