The legendary Cabaret Cornichon (1934-1951) marks the beginning of Swiss cabaret history and has left behind performance texts of high literary quality and political relevance. This cabaret, which produced numerous popular actors such as Elsie Attenhofer, Zarli Carigiet, Margrit Rainer, Emil Hegetschweiler, and Ruedi Walter, was an extremely successful institution in the entertainment industry of its time. Cornichon also shaped Swiss popular culture and the theater and literary scene with authors like Walter Lesch, Max Werner Lenz, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Due to its political performances, Cornichon is still regarded today as a cultural representative of a resistant Switzerland during World War II. The first comprehensive analysis of all performance texts allows for a reconstruction of the cabaret's content. Distinct phases can be identified in this context. While the political performances in the pre-war period tended to be highly critical, those during the war were more affirmative in nature, and after 1945, they reflected a rather self-critical approach to dealing with the past. Friedrich Dürrenmatt's "Der Gerettete" (1948), for example, is an unvarnished confrontation with Swiss refugee policy during the war years. However, the reputation of a resistant wartime cabaret ultimately proves to be a construct that was solidified in the post-Cornichon era. The history of Cabaret Cornichon, with its diverse connections to theater, literature, dance, new media, visual arts, and popular culture, contributes to Swiss cultural history and also reads as a small history of the mentality of Switzerland in the 1930s and 1940s.