Page - 91 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Jewishness and the Viennese Volkssänger | 91 Houdini. But no one can outwit the ‘King of the Escape Artists’; no matter how strong and secure his bonds are, Houdini frees himself within seconds.”52 We also see Houdini’s enormous popularity in the number of artists who sought to imitate him and his profi ts. After Houdini concluded his guest per- formances in Vienna, copycat artists performed under a similar name and with almost the same routine. At the Wiedener Variété, one could admire the “escap e artist king Alfred Mourdini,” who announced in newspapers that he bet a hand- some sum of 500 crowns that he could free himself from any and all shackles.53 In 1904, audiences could marvel at the “escape artist king Esco Nordini” at the Ronacher. However, Nordini att racted attention mainly through a lawsuit that he brought against Josef Modl. Modl slapped Nordini in the face because he had insulted his wife.54 Th e Volkssänger in the Context of Modernity Th e variety shows off ered a more modern form of entertainment than the Volks- sänger and contributed signifi cantly to their crisis. In a sense, they began their succession without completely ousting the Volkssänger. On the one hand, we can see the connection between the two in the fact that variety shows often engaged renowned Volkssänger as part of their programs. A prime example of a famous Volkssänger who made vaudeville appearances was Josef Modl, the co-founder of the Budapest Orpheum Society. In 1889, Mod l moved to the Ronacher and remained a celebrated star there until 1900. At the same time, the Volkssänger en- sembles expanded their programs and thus increasingly resembled cheap variety theaters or even included the term in their ensemble names.55 But in addition to overlap between these two aspects of the Viennese entertainment industry, I have identifi ed three main diff erences between Volkssänger groups and vaudeville shows. Although not all groups and institutions display evidence of these three diff erences, they nonetheless allow us to distinguish in broad brushstrokes be- tween the vaudeville variety acts and Volkssänger troupes. First and foremost, the vaudeville varieties were keen on presenting the lat- est international developments in the entertainment sector, even if their per- formances made overt connections to Volkssänger culture and thus also to local Viennese ambience. Th e vaudeville variety shows endeavored to bring everything that caused a sensation abroad to the Habsburg capital and off er it to local audi- ences for consumption. In contrast, the Volkssänger had little interest in interna- tional trends. Rather, they demonstrated xenophobic tendencies and lobbied for political measures to prohibit the appearance of foreign performing troupes in Vienna. Th e Volkssänger were intent on communicating down-to-earth folksiness and local tradition in the pieces that they performed. Because people perceived this local culture to be vanishing as a result of the modernization of everyday life, it was fi rst and foremost associated with the past. This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.