Page - 55 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Jewish Volkssänger and Musical Performers in Vienna around 1900 | 55 Marietta Krieba um and Paula Baumann d irected two other ensembles that sought to imitate the Lemberg Singspiel Society. Kriebaum presided over the Polish Vari ety Show from Lemberg, which performed in the café Zum goldenen Widder (the Golden Ram) located in 36 Taborstrasse.49 At the same time, Bau- mann’s troupe gave its performances in the Antreiber’schen R estauration, which was situated in the Krummbaumgasse.50 Just like Fritz Lung, Kriebaum was not Jewish, but also had many contacts with Jews and was familiar with the Jewish milieu. Sara Frimmel, who appeared under the stage name Paula Baumann, was the fi rst wife of Salomon Fischer, a well-known director of Jewish singspiel halls (see below). Marietta Kriebaum was married to Franz Xaver Kriebaum (1 836– 1900), the director of Danzer’s Orpheum, who died in July 1900.51 At one time, he performed with Albert Hirsch, alongside Josefi ne Schmer ( 1842–1904).52 Kriebaum and Hirsch remained close acquaintances. We know this to be the case based, among other things, on the eulogy that Hirsch gave at Kriebaum’s funeral. Hirsch’s son Adolfi also had a personal connection with the Kriebaum family. We see evidence of this close connection in a letter to the editor that Adolfi wrote, whi ch appeared in the Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt in the summer of 1901. Th e author of the letter asks the Jolly Knights , the Volkssänger associ- ation, why they have not yet arranged a tombstone for their former chairman, Franz Kriebaum. Adolfi mentions that immediately after Kriebaum’s death, Jo- sef Armin announced a collection to fi nance the tombstone and that they had already commissioned it. In December, it was reportedly too cold to set up the gravestone. Adolfi ’s letter goes on to say, “Well, today it’s 29 July 1901, and it’s not that cold out anymore! Kriebaum’s grave is still missing a gravestone. Or is it the intense heat that prevents you from installing it? . . . How many degrees Réaumur, Celsius or Fahrenheit must it be for you to make good on your prom- ise?”53 A week later, Marietta Kriebaum also addressed the gravestone situation with her own letter to the editor. She corrects Adolfi to some degree, saying that Armin’s idea for organizing a collection, which he had mentioned, never came to be. At that time, she explains that she objected to it, because she found it unpleasant “to beg for money for [her] deceased husband.” Th at’s why the Jolly Knights, she said, had agreed to organize a gravestone at the group’s own expense. Nevertheless, Marietta Kriebaum concludes her own letter by complaining that her husband had been forgotten. She laments that in earlier times, when he was still director of Danzer’s Orpheum, he had enjoyed the company of many friends, who had since vanished.54 Franz Kassina, Hirsch’s son-in-law, took Emma Kriebaum, the daughter of Marietta and her deceased husband, under his wing and invited her to join his troupe in the summer of 1901.55 Th is provides additional evidence that the Krie- baum family moved in a—albeit not exclusively—Jewish Volkssänger environ- ment. It therefore comes as no surprise that Marietta Kriebaum, although she wasn’t Jewish, operated a troupe in Leopoldstadt, which embraced the peculiari- This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.