Even if the lyrics have lost much of their frivolity ("Ich hab' das Fräulein Helen baden seh'n"), topicality, like the ballad on the mass murderer Haarmann ("Warte nur ein Weilchen, bald kommt Haarmann auch zu dir"), or simply the fun of lightness ("Mein Papagei frisst keine harten Eier"), the melodies have retained their power. This was also proven by the reaction of the audience that evening. Hands, feet, the whole body of many bobbed along to the beat of the pieces. Surely the majority of the auditorium could have sung along with the melodies, even if not with the brilliance of the soprano.
The evening and the terminology of the "Golden Twenties" made one forget that "The Twenties" were only golden for a few contemporaries and for those born afterwards. For the majority of Germans, it was the time of hyperinflation, mass unemployment, political murders and the rise of National Socialism and anti-Semitism. Of the authors of the lyrics or the melodies of the concert, one died in the Dachau concentration camp, one was able to emigrate in time and one was banned from publishing in the 1930s.
The trio was dismissed with long applause after the Yiddish song "Und als der Rebbe singt, singen alle Chassidim" (And when the Rebbe sings, all the Hasidim sing) was sung in reverence to the genius loci.
Those who were still listening to the late news back home with the Federal President's concern about anti-Semitic events remembered the play against Hitler and Nazi ideology with the sentence "The womb is still fertile from which that crawled" (Brecht, Epilogue Arturo Ui).
