Het Onderwater Cabaret

The strategy and design agency Q, Wiesbaden have realized an extraordinary remembrance project: Het Onderwater Cabaret by Curt Bloch is now accessible both as a trilingual website and as a book—a carefully curated digital archive and a thoughtfully edited print edition.

The project began in 2021 with a Facebook message from Simone Bloch. Living in the United States, Curt Bloch’s daughter had preserved her father’s magazines in the family apartment in New York for more than 75 years. She was looking for a way to make this hidden legacy accessible to an international audience. That first digital contact led to a close collaboration with Thilo von Debschitz and his agency Q, Wiesbaden, resulting in a comprehensive online platform dedicated to Bloch’s work.

Curt Bloch was born in Dortmund in 1908. After studying law, he was banned from practicing in 1933 because Jews were no longer permitted to hold legal professions in Nazi Germany. Following physical attacks and growing antisemitism, he fled to the Netherlands. When systematic deportations began there in 1942, Bloch went into hiding. From August 22, 1943, until April 3, 1945, he wrote, designed, and produced a weekly satirical magazine from his hiding place: Het Onderwater Cabaret. In total, he created 96 issues containing 492 poems across more than 1,700 pages. The handmade booklets, measuring approximately 10 × 13.5 cm—slightly smaller than a standard postcard—were written in both German and Dutch. Bloch designed the covers as collages, cutting letters and images from printed materials and reassembling them into striking visual statements. Often, he transformed fragments of Nazi propaganda into subversive compositions. His poems blend satire, political commentary, diary, and cabaret. Humor became a deliberate act of resistance. The final issue, published after liberation, was renamed Überwasserfinale (“Above-Water Finale”).

The trilingual website developed by Q provides full access to all magazine content. Multiple entry points structure the archive: a filterable overview of all 96 issues, a timeline connecting historical events to Bloch’s writing, a visual display of every cover at a glance, and an extensive keyword index. A growing media library features numerous German and Dutch voices reading the poems; actor Bjarne Mädel played a key role in helping recruit speakers. The original magazines are now held by the Jewish Museum Berlin, and the platform functions as a digital extension as well as an independent space of remembrance.

In April 2025, the first German book edition was published under the title Curt Bloch – Das Unterwasser-Cabaret. Edited by Aubrey Pomerance, with a foreword by Simone Bloch and designed by Q, the volume presents a curated selection of poems and scholarly contributions by Aubrey Pomerance, Ulrike Kuschel, Kerstin Schoor, and Saskia Schreuder. The publication was realized in collaboration with the Jewish Museum Berlin. Together, the website and the book form a project that unites literary legacy, design, and remembrance culture—making a body of work created in hiding visible to the world today.

Curt Bloch – Das Unterwasser-Cabaret

Publisher: Die Andere Bibliothek
Editor: Aubrey Pomerance
Author: Curt Bloch
Design: Q, Wiesbaden
Release: April 2025
Format: 21.1 × 13.1 cm
Volume: 372 pages
Language: German
ISBN: 978-3-8477-2062-1
Price: €28.– (DE)

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© Convolute/816, Curt Bloch Collection, on loan from Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family