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Chapter 3
JEWISHNESS AND
THE VIENNESE VOLKSSÄNGER
d
The interpretation of Jewish history remains open and up for debate. Th
e
fact that for several decades after W
orld War II historians viewed and thus
narrowly interpreted Jewish history from the point of view of anti-Jewish perse-
cution and antisemitism can be linked to the post-Holocaust context.1 Such a
perspective on Jewish history is not fundamentally wrong. Nevertheless, it pres-
ents the Jewish past as one-sided and incomplete. It overlooks aspects of Jewish
experience by largely ignoring the coexistence and interactions between Jews and
non-Jews that did in fact take place. Th
e encounters between Jews and non-Jews
and their cultural interdependencies were signifi
cant events, because they shaped
Judaism and Jewish (and non-Jewish) self-understanding and had a lasting in-
fl uence on social developments. Th
is is why we would be remiss if we ignored
the evidence of interconnectedness between Jews and non-Jews. An examina-
tion of Jewish and non-Jewish interactions helps fi
ll in the incomplete narrative
that results from an analysis limited to antisemitic structures and processes or
an exclusive analysis of Jewish life that fails to take into account relationships to
non-Jews. Taking a look at the larger picture provided by an investigation of the
overlap between Jewish and non-Jewish life thus off
ers a more complete under-
standing of Jewish history.
A confl
ict that took place among Volkssänger in fi
n-de-siècle Vienna illustrates
to what extent we can interpret Jewish history in a wide variety of ways and
how a specifi c interpretation of this history is invariably rooted in the respective
views of the historians who treat the subject. Th
e immediate trigger for this con-
fl ict was the rumor that the well-known and successful Budapest troupe Folies
Caprice was planning to move to Vienna. A large part of the city’s professional
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