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18 | Entangled Entertainers
many scholars endeavor to identify as many Jews as possible.24 Whether some of
these scholars consciously engage in this kind of practice simply for the purpose
of bolstering their research fi
ndings remains unclear. Whatever the motivation
for the negligent treatment of biographies, it distorts the results of this kind of
scholarly work.
For historians, it may therefore be diffi
cult to identify Jews among the artists
who were a part of Viennese popular culture. Th
eir custom of performing under
a stage name often conceals clear references to their Jewish identity. Th
is problem
may constitute one of several reasons why scholarly research has tended to neglect
them.
Th e Subversive Dimension of Popular Culture
Another reason that may have contributed to the widespread omission in schol-
arly research of the topic “Jews in popular culture” could be their subversive
potential. Because popular culture is primarily constituted by practices that can
easily elude established social standards, popular culture off
ers the possibility for
criticizing normative prescriptions as well as countercultural ambitions.25 We see
this potential for subversion in Viennese popular culture around 1900, not least
in the performances of Jewish Volkssänger and cabaret artists. Th
ese performers
often ridiculed the values that were considered bourgeois and with which a large
portion of the Jewish population identifi
ed. “Jewish” humor, with all its irony
and sarcasm, rebelled against middle-class Jewish self-understanding, a practice
that was often met with irritation among predominantly Jewish audiences. In
this context, I draw the reader’s attention to an indignant letter addressed to the
Oesterreichische Wochenschrift. Th
is anonymous letter submitted to the newspaper
remarks about the Budapest Orpheum So ciety: “A Jew (in the case of the Buda-
pesters, everyone speaks Yiddish)—so one Jew spits in the other’s face; the same
Jew engages in toilet humor, and so on with grace into infi
nity . . . any decent
person can only react by saying ‘ugh!’”26
A similar reaction to a performance deemed indecent occurred during a solo
scene that Heinrich Eisenbach performed. After Eisenbach engaged in all sorts
of lewd behavior while on stage, the audience broke out in a tumult. As one
newspaper reported, they began to make noise, stamp their feet, whistle, and
hoot. It was only after a long break and a formal apology from Eisenbach that the
audience members calmed down enough for him to continue his performance.27
Th
e deliberate violation of social conventions and widely accepted mores and
the parodying of these values articulated a critique of the self-understanding of
much of the Jewish community. Th
is popular cultural revolt against bourgeois
values may have contributed decisively to the fact that Jewish newspapers had
little regard for this kind of performance and the artists responsible for them.
This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.
Entangled Entertainers
Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
- Title
- Entangled Entertainers
- Subtitle
- Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
- Author
- Klaus Hödl
- Publisher
- Berghahn Books
- Date
- 2019
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-1-78920-031-7
- Size
- 14.86 x 23.2 cm
- Pages
- 196
- Categories
- Geschichte Vor 1918
- International
Table of contents
- Introduction 1
- 1. Jews in Viennese Popular Culture around 1900 as Research Topic 13
- 2. Jewish Volkssänger and Musical Performers in Vienna around 1900 44
- 3. Jewishness and the Viennese Volkssänger 78
- 4. Jewish Spaces of Retreat at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 121
- 5. From Difference to Similarity 148
- Conclusion 163
- Bibliography 166
- Index 179