Филип Керр - Metropolis

Theo Wolffwas editor of the Berliner Tageblatt until 1933, when the Nazis took control of the paper. It was finally shut down by the Nazis in 1939.

Walter Gemppwas head of the Berlin firefighting department at the time of the Reichstag fire, in February 1933; in March 1933 he was dismissed from the fire department for suggesting that the Nazis had had a hand in the fire. In 1937 Gempp was arrested and accused of malfeasance. He was sent to prison, where he was strangled in his cell.

The biggest criminal rings in Germany were the Grosser Ring, the Freier Bund and the Frei Vereinigung; these were all part of a larger syndicate called the Middle German Ring.

The Sing Sing Clubreally did have an electric chair; it was closed down by the Nazis in 1933.

The Threepenny Opera opened at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on 31st August, 1928. Despite an initially poor reception, it became a great success and played almost four hundred times over the next two years. But both Brecht and Weill were forced to leave Germany in 1933. Lotte Lenyaalso left Germany in 1933; she and Weill remained together until 1933, when they divorced. But they remarried in New York in 1935, and the marriage lasted until Weill’s death in 1950. Lotte Lenya died in Manhattan in 1981.

Otto Dixwas a friend and contemporary of George Grosz; his works are perhaps even more visceral: some remind one of Goya at his darkest. He was also regarded as a degenerate artist and was obliged to leave Germany in 1933; he did not return until after the war and died in Baden-Württemberg, in July 1969.

The Cabaret of the Nameless, which reminds me of Pop Idol and anything with Simon Cowell, was closed in 1932.

There is some confusion about his formal titles: According to his daughter Hilde Horton, née Weiss, he was both chief of the Berlin Criminal Police and vice president of the Berlin police during the Weimar Republic (Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide, https://portal.ehri-project.eu/units/gb-003348-wl1768). Moreover, Philip translated the title Polizeivizepräsident as both ‘deputy police president’ and ‘deputy police commissioner’. Although the team at Putnam, Philip’s American publishers, made a valiant attempt to identify the preferred titles, in this — though nowhere else — their search was unsuccessful, and they decided to acknowledge the inconsistency, which may well be what Philip intended all along.