Madeline McCord

Cabaret
Character Sketch
Frulein Luise Kost
Facts about Frulein Kost from Cabaret script:
Thirties, possibly a whore"
Lives in one of Schneiders rooms
o pays for it by having sailors pay her visits
Schneider disapproves of the way she earns her money
o constantly fight each other
Any man can be a target for income: Cliff, Schultz, Ernst
German; sides with the Nazis on anti-semitism
Terrible with names
o consistently calls the sailor Rudy by the wrong name
Facts about Frl. Kost from Goodbye to Berlin:
Appearance:
o "Frl. Kost is a blonde florid girl with large silly blue eyes."
o "She is plump but has a good figure."
Kost makes her money by inviting men into her bed: Frl. Schroeder (Schneider)
comically describes her profession as "walking along the line"
o One of her best customers is a Japanese man who hardly speaks German
o Kost describes how they spend their time when not in bed: "we play the
gramophone together, you know, and eat chocolates, and then we laugh a
lot. He's very fond of laughing"
o Schroeder does not have any moral objections to her lifestyle unless she
has done something wrong in her house i.e. breaking the spout on the
teapot
"invariably she exclaims: But after all, what else can you expect
from a woman of that sort, a common prostitute!"
Kost began her career as a servant girl
o "Do you know what she used to be? A servant girl! And then she got to be
on intimate terms with her employer and one fine day, of course, she
found herself in certain circumstances..." -Schroeder
Had a fifty-mark note stolen from her bedroom that was supposed to go to her
rent
o Convinced that it could not have been one of her customers because they
have not visited in the last few days
o It could not have been one of her friends because "they were well-to-do
gentlemen, to whom a miserable fifty-mark note was a mere bagatelle."
o Schroeder was annoyed that she was accusing her or another one of the
tenants, probably a ploy to get out of paying her rent
Having an affair with Bobby
o Snuck around Schroeder, she was angry but most likely more jealous

Kost ignored Schroeder when she was in the bathroom and Cliff needed to
use it, Schroeder burst into tears
Moved out of Schroeder's house, moved on to bigger and better things
o Sees Schroeder again, has real fur coat and snake skin shoes bought by
Japanese friend
o Had an operation: "the doctors cut something out of the back of her nose;
and now she can fill her mouth with water and squirt it out through her
nostrils, just like a syringe!"
o Finally earned Schroeder's respect
o

My Character Background

Luise Kost born December 4, 1898 to a middle-class family in a small rural town
outside of Berlin
o Father fought in the German military, died in France during WWI battle
(Luise was only 15 at the time)
o The oldest Kost daughter, she has one sister and two young brothers
o Grew up with anti-semitic, traditional German political views because of
military father: no stranger to religious stereotypes
Grew up helping her mother around the house but when her father died, she and
her younger sister were sent off to be servants for a wealthy family in Berlin
o As the older, more developed of the two sisters, their employer, Henrik
von Schrute took a liking to Luise and had an affair with her, introducing
her to her love of physical activities of a promiscuous nature
o Despite the fact that Henrik was married, the young Luise Kost fell in love
with her employer and since she was sure of what she wanted, she did not
successfully hide their love affair from his wife, Ava, because she felt like
she deserved Henriks love more than her
o After being employed for four years, Ava found out about Henriks affair
with Luise and fired her immediately, while her sister kept her job and
went on to marry Henrik and Avas son a few years later
Instead of returning home, Kost stayed in Berlin because she enjoyed the amount
of culture and having the ability to meet new people; she barely spoke to her
family again
o Enjoyed going out to drink where she would meet many men who would
fawn all over her, and she loved the attention
o Without a solid place to stay, she spent about three years spending nights
at mens apartments until she had slept with all of the unmarried men in
the neighborhood
Once spent a night with a travelling business man living in Fraulein Schneiders
building temporarily. When she found out he was leaving a small room with such
affordable rent, Kost tracked down Schneider and claimed the room immediately,
despite Schneiders apprehensions about her character and bartering
o As someone accustomed to receiving favors of lodging for intimacy, Kost
started paying her rent with money she made from inviting men over

Spent a great deal of time at the bar by the docks where she could
inevitably find sailors to seduce (who were deprived of women at sea for
far too long) to help fund her rent
Now, in 1931, during Cabaret, Kost has been living in a room in Schneiders
house for almost ten years, successfully using her income from sailors and other
men to pay her rent
o In the beginning, Kost successfully hid all the men she had over from
Schneider, but after a year or so, Kost stopped caring about what her
landlord and the other tenants thought
o The more men Schneider saw around and the more small things that went
wrong, (teapot spout being broken, unlogged phone hours, unlocked front
door, etc.) the angrier she would get about Kosts profession
o As Kost ages into her mid-thirties, she finds it harder to attract all the
young sailors like she used to, so she makes it clear to every man that she
encounters that she is available for her services at anytime
o

World View
Kosts world view is formed by the way she has been treated throughout her
younger years. She is a realist with a light-hearted air and treats most serious situations
with a bit of humor. She only had one love in her life from her days as a servant girl and
since she lost that love so abruptly, she came to the conclusion that she will not find that
feeling again. Still, she enjoys the feeling of intimacy with a man, and has decided that if
she ever really wants something, she will make it happen. Her heartbreak has helped her
build a thick skin that allows her to withstand the cruel words she often hears and has
motivated her to be selfish, and take action for the things she wants. She doesnt
necessarily desire the men she sleeps with, but she needs money and loves having nice
things so she approaches every seduction as a business transaction. She sees Berlin as a
grimy city full of perverts, greedy Jews, and gays but she enjoys that there is never a dull
moment for her living there. When other people in her life have problems, she would not
care at all unless it directly impacted her ability to do her job or have a good time.
Objective
Frl. Kosts super-objective is to do her job. Her only source of income is from
inviting men into her bed because, in her mind, there is nothing else she can do to earn
money. At this point, it is a little harder to find men who are interested in paying her for
her services, but she is determined to find her clients, successfully please them, and keep
them coming back for more so she can pay for her rent and her otherwise upper middleclass lifestyle. She often faces the obstacle of Schneider trying to stop her from having
guests, or men not showing their interest, but Kost uses every strategy she can to get what
she wants. For example, she tries to hide the sailors that she invites over from Schneider
when she is told to get rid of them, and when a man does not reciprocate her interest, she
can easily move on to another target, as long as she is able to get her job done that night.
Other than seducing her clients, her only objective during the scenes of Cabaret is to get
Schneider to fix something in her room.