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32 | Entangled Entertainers
with the case, calling it an antisemitic act. In a follow-up, the paper published a
note about the diffi
culties that Kessler’s wife was having with the insurance com-
pany with which her husband had arranged a life insurance policy prior to his
death.96 Th ese two references to the Kessler murder case in this paper did not give
the reader any information regarding what had happened. Th
at is, this example
of reporting in the Jewish press only makes sense if readers were already aware of
the crime. Th
is means that Jewish readers must have also read non-Jewish news-
papers and must have therefore also been consumers of general media targeted at
larger audience. Th
e report on the widow Kessler’s problems with the insurance
company appeared exclusively in the Jewish Oesterreichische Wochenschrift. In this
sense, the newspaper fi
lled in blanks, supplying information not covered by the
general press, which wrote nothing about this particular aspect of the case.
Th
e second piece of evidence concerns advertisements in general newspapers
that specifi
cally targeted Jewish readers. We can identify this specifi city in ad-
vertisments that refer to Jewish religious customs or attitudes. For example, some
non-Jewish newspapers advertised where customers could buy matzah, or un-
leavened bread. Th
e product was advertised in Hebrew letters, which would
habe been illegible for most non-Jewish readers.97 We fi nd another example in
the weekly newspaper Wiener Caricaturen (Vienna caricatures), which praises
the products from “Berg’s Selchwaren-Produktion” (Berg’s salted and smoked
meats), a company based in the Vienna-Meidling neighborhood, indicating that
their products were kosher.98 Clearly, these products were marketed specifi cally
to Jews. Th
e same applies to an announcement for a kosher restaurant in the
O
ttakringerstrasse that appeared in the Vienna Vorort newspaper.99
Th
is does not mean that general newspapers were riddled with a variety of
advertisements specifi
cally addressing Jews. At times, businesses tried to garner
Jewish consumers through advertisements designed specifi cally for Jewish news-
papers. Th
is was the case, for example, with Kunerol, a type of margarine.100 An
advertisement in the Wiener Sonn- und Montagszeitung described it as a cost-
eff
ective and worthwhile substitute for butter and lard. Jews who wanted to ad-
here (at least partially) to religious dietary laws might have felt that such ad-
vertisements addressed them personally—but we can only speculate as to how
individual readers responded to such eff
orts. At the same time, the Jewish maga-
zine Oesterreichische Wochenschrift also advertised Kunerol. Th
is ad states that the
product was manufactured under the supervision of the rabbis of Mattersdorf
and Huszt and was therefore kosher.101 Th e Cologne-based company Stollwerck
pursued a similar sales strategy, advertising in the Jewish press that their choc-
olate and cocoa were “produced under supervision and with the certifi
cate of
the Orthodox rabbinate of Bratislava.”102 Both companies attempted to address
potential Jewish buyers through Jewish-specifi c media.
Precisely because diff
erent versions of the same advertising campaigns ap-
peared in both Jewish and general newspapers, it is striking that advertisements
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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