Page - 63 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Jewish Volkssänger and Musical Performers in Vienna around 1900 | 63 Th e plays that the Budapest Orpheum Society produced became the epitome of jargon comedy. Unlike many other singspiel groups, this ensemble was only partly associated with an aspect of popular culture that many viewed in a neg- ative light. Th e Budapest Orpheum Society was also able to draw intellectuals and people from the upper echelons of society into their audiences. With their attractive performance lineup that was both extremely humorous and critical of the times, the ensemble found its way into literary works and thus became a part of collective memory.87 Karl Kraus, though he wasn’t entirely serious, even com- pared the Budapest Orpheum Society with the Burgtheater.88 In any case, there was no other theater company in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century that embodied Jewish entertainment like the Budapest Orpheum Society. Th eir most important and best-known work was probably Die Klabriaspartie (Th e game of Klaberjass). Antal Oroszi (Caprice) wrote the play in 1889 and debuted it in Budapest in the same year. A year later, a somewhat altered version of the play written by Adolf Bergmann appeared in Vienna (see chapter 3 for a longer discussion).89 Die Klabriaspartie enjoyed thousands of performances. Th e play focuses on a card game that Jews named Prokop Janitschek, Simon Dalles, and Jonas Ries, as well as the “Bohemian” Kiebitz Dowidl, play in a coff eehouse. Th ere is also a character named Moritz, who is a waiter. Subtle punchlines and humorous statements run through the entire piece, and there is no recognizable course of action.90 Despite the lack of plot, the play addresses the question of Jewishness like almost no other production of the time. It rejects all attempts to defi ne Jewishness in a comprehensible fashion, suggesting that Jewishness cannot be described or measured empirically.91 Similar to the other Volkssänger pieces that I have discussed here, the message of Die Klabriaspartie seems clear: there are no predetermined criteria for determining Jewishness, because it can only be negotiated contextually. Distinguishing between Jewish and Non-Jewish groups Th us far, I have focused in this chapter on Volkssänger ensembles that were gen- erally considered to be Jewish and are still viewed as such today. Th is categori- zation appears to be justifi ed in that the majority of these groups were made up of Jewish members, when we consider their ethnic, cultural, and religious affi li- ation. In addition, they performed pieces that often speak to a Jewish milieu or articulate a Jewish theme. Because these “Jewish” groups often hired and rehired the same actors and performers, they may well have made up an entire Jewish Volkssänger milieu. Examples of actors who performed with various Jewish groups are Karl Noisser and Mi zzi Symer. While Noisser worked for the Hirsch Society, the Kassina Ensemble, and the Lemberg Singspiel Society, Symer performed with the Hirsch Society, the Karl Kassina Ensemble, the S. Fischer Society, as well as the Folies Caprice. To cite additional examples, Karl and Anna Kassina were This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.